Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “My dear fellow,” said he, though I think he started a little in relief as he discovered that it was to be a fair fight, after all, “my dear fellow, it makes not the slightest difference to me. Choose your own favorites. Whatever you choose, you are a dead man, Porfilo, if you dare to stand up to me!”

  I more than half believed him. It was only the thought of what I was losing in Mike that nerved me. I had been half mad on the night that sent me lurching into the cabin of Ricks. I was half mad now, I suppose, with a cold ecstasy of battle fury working in me.

  “I think you are lying,” said I. “You have never handled a knife in your life. Would you stand up to me with knives, Andrew?”

  He hesitated the split part of a second. “With the greatest pleasure,” said he.

  I laughed — a sound that jarred even on my own ears. “A bigger lie than before?” said I. “I throw a straight knife, Andrew. Will you admit that you are not ready for that sort of work?”

  “Well, curse you,” said he, with a touch of heat, “I admit it, then. The knife is not a fit weapon for a gentleman.”

  “But scoundrelly blackmail and bribery is,” said I. “To buy a gunman to hunt down another man” I could not continue.

  “You really seem to believe that fable,” said Andrew, without apparent concern.

  “I do believe it,” said I, but seeing him standing so straight and tall, and hearing his calm voice, a great deal of my surety in that matter left me. “But what else shall it be? You wear a gun, and I wear a gun. Do you wish to have it a matter of revolver play, Andrew?”

  “Certainly,” said he. “That will be perfect!”

  “We would have to stand within thirty yards,” I warned him, “and at that distance I could not miss.”

  “I am glad to take my chances,” said he, as quietly as ever.

  “Have you done your hours of practice every day?” I asked him.

  “Hours?” said he, with a little start. “However, I am perfectly prepared for you, my friend. You cannot talk me out of it!”

  “Ah, well, Andrew,” said I, “there was a day when you knocked me senseless.”

  “You would never dare to stand to me, hand to hand,” said he with a thrill of hunger in his voice.

  “Dare?” said I. “You shall see!”

  I warned him to stand quiet, and with my gun in the small of his back I searched his clothes and found two revolvers stowed neatly away, besides a small derringer that hung around his throat. Certainly he had been prepared for me!

  I took them from him and threw them into the brush. Then I stripped off my own guns and my cartridge belt; I jerked off my boots and tossed all in a heap. I found Andrew shedding his coat, and now we faced one another, and I saw that he was laughing by the pale moonshine. He had never seemed so handsome or so tall.

  “Porfilo! Porfilo!” laughed he. “What a jackass you are to give yourself into my hands like this! Mike will be delighted when she finds that I am not only her lover, but a hero able to kill the great Porfilo with my bare hands!”

  “Save your breath,” said I, “because you’ll need it. Only, Andrew, I wish that you would tell me the truth of one thing. It will do no harm to speak it, because only one of us will quit this place alive. Did you or did you not bribe Turk Niginski to murder me?”

  “Why should I not tell you?” said he. “Of course I bribed him. If I had not, my foolish brother would have jumped into his grave trying to get even with you for the beatings you had given him.”

  “There was some other reason, Andrew,” said I, with a bit of emotion in my throat. “I tell you no man in the world is such a complete devil that he would ruin the life of a boy of eighteen like that and drive him into danger of his life as you did!”

  “How could I tell,” said Andrew, frowning, “that Niginski would not only be beaten, but that his gun would disappear so that you could be charged with murder instead of self-defense?”

  “But when that did happen, you let me go before the jury. You would have let them hang me, Chase, and never have lifted a hand to save me?”

  “Why should I have accused myself and ruined my own life for the sake of a mongrel greaser?” said Andrew scornfully. “You have no sense of proportion, my lad. A gentleman has a certain debt of self-respect owing to himself!”

  He had maddened me so that I leaped in at him with my hands open and my arms extended like any fool confident in his brute strength, but the fist of Andrew, like a straight-aimed rifle bullet, shot against my face.

  It was a sledge-hammer stroke with all his weight behind it, and it rocked me back on my heels and sent me staggering. The whole side of my face turned numb and a wave of black mist rushed across my brain. Nausea seized the pit of my stomach. Never before had I felt such a blow!

  Yet Andrew seemed more amazed than I. I suppose he had used that terrible right hand of his enough to feel that it was a sword of fire before which everything must go down; and now he saw me standing, though sadly staggered, to be sure.

  He hesitated and lowered his arms for a single instant.

  “My Lord,” said he, “you’re not down!”

  Then he leaped at me like a tiger. I say that he leaped, because of the speed with which he came, but there was no blindness in his rush. He moved rather like a stalking cat than a springing one — as smooth as a dancer, incredibly light and quick, he darted in, always poised, his left arm well extended, jabbing me back and breaking down his guard, his grim right hand poised for the finishing stroke.

  It would have been the end of me, I have no doubt, had he followed up his first advantage sooner, but his moment of pause had allowed my head to clear. I was in perfect trim. My life in the raw, clear mountain air, my days of hard riding and climbing, had turned me to flexible iron. When he loosed his right hand for the flooring punch, I had my wits about me enough to block it.

  It was like raising one’s arm against a flying battering-ram. The weight of that blow bruised the flesh of my forearm and raised a great swollen place on it, and the force of even that partially blocked stroke was sufficient to turn me half around. Then I fell in on him, ducked low, and got my two arms around his middle.

  I locked them, and turned loose all the strength of nerve and body. I felt belly and ribs sink in under that pressure. The hands of Andrew Chase began to beat and tear blindly at my head.

  “Ah — Lord!” I heard him gasp. “Fair fight — fists — Porfilo!”

  I loosed him at once, and cast him away. I had had him on the verge of helplessness, and with the taste of that power in my heart — the wild, sweet taste of it — I thought that I should go mad with joy. The blood was running down my face from his first blow, and that side of my face was swelling rapidly and painfully, but I laughed like a drunkard.

  “You’re beaten, Andrew!” said I. “Get down on your knees and beg for mercy, and I’ll let you live if you swear to leave the mountains and Mike forever!”

  XXVI. THE FIGHT ENDS

  HE STOOD ON the verge of the clearing, one hand resting against a sapling, his head fallen, dragging in breaths with a painful sound, and I let him get his wind again. It came back to him suddenly. His body swelled again to its full heroic size.

  “Who would have thought it?” gasped out Chase. “Like an infernal bear! But you’ve had your last fling at me, my dear fellow. You’ll never come within grip of me again!”

  I had no intention of making it a wrestling match. For, since I had closed with him, the last fear of Andrew left me, and there remained only a vast confidence in my strength. If he wished straight fighting, stand up and fist to fist, he could have his desire. But now I went at him more coolly, with all the skill that Father McGuire had taught me in the old days in my mind.

  He struck and danced away, and I waded in, taking heavy punishment. I was not slow, but he was a will-o’-the-wisp. You have seen a dragon fly darting back and forth in the air of the garden, stopping in mid-drive and shooting back again without pause? Imagine two hundred and twen
ty pounds of dragon fly and you will have an idea of the uncanny grace and speed of Andrew Chase as he fought for his life.

  Twenty times I smashed at him with all my power, and twenty times my huge fists plowed through the air while he side-stepped like a dancer and cuffed me with long-ranging punches. They cut my face as though he wore a knife edge across his knuckles, but he could not stun me or put me down; I was watching him too closely for that and playing for one opening — one opening.

  I found it at last. He had flung up his guard a little in jumping back, and I brought a long right fairly under his heart. It dropped him upon his knees and jammed the breath out of his lungs with a great, loud gasp. There he hung, swaying, propped on one muscular arm, the other clasped about the hurt place.

  “Have you had enough, Andrew?” I panted.

  For answer he forced himself slowly to his feet and squared away, his face contorted with pain, but his guard still stiff and high. I rushed him, and the body blow had sapped the strength of his knees. I broke through that long guard and thudded a short blow against his chin. It snapped back his head as though his neck were broken and sent him reeling to the edge of the clearing.

  Yet I backed away. I did not want to finish a half-stunned, weakened man.

  “Take your time out,” I advised him. “Take your time out and be easy with it! I don’t want to beat a cripple!”

  He had come up with a jar against a tree, and there he leaned with his head fallen back, his knees turned to water, his arms sagging at his side. I could have killed him with a blow, but, instead, I stood back and tasted the sweet relish of his helplessness with a brutal joy.

  He must have remained there a full minute, and I could see the life begin to return to him; watch his knees hardening; see his chest swell with breath and power; note the lifting of his head. Then he leaped suddenly back at me and, before I was prepared, had clipped me across the jaw with a swinging blow. A little nearer the point of the chin and I should certainly have gone down immediately.

  There was something treacherous about this tigerish attack, after the excellent fair play which I had given him, that maddened me. I damned him for a yellow dog and ran at him again. Twice I missed him with blows that would have stretched him senseless, I know. But as I drove at him a third time he stepped neatly and courageously inside my arm and whipped up his right hand of flame to my chin.

  Like flame, indeed! A shower of sparks exploded before my eyes and I reeled backward, striking blindly to protect myself from him. His cry of joy was like the yelp of the wolf as it sees the bull totter. He came in lunging, desperately eager. Right and left he clipped me. I felt as though hammers were thudding against the base of my brain. My knees suddenly unsnapped and went loose. I was sinking toward the ground. My outstretched hands clutched at his body, but there was no strength in them. The numbed fingertips slid away, and I dropped upon my face.

  I suppose that it was only an instant of unconsciousness. Then a ripping pain across my face forced me back to life. Andrew, who had pleaded for fair play; Andrew, who had begged for a stand-up fight, had gripped the back of my neck in both hands and was beating my face against a rock.

  This was for life, indeed!

  I twisted my body with all my force, and the suddenness of the move broke his grip. I reached for his arm and caught it with the power of a hard-screwed vise; with so much power that he cried out in fear and tore himself away. His own effort half lifted me to my feet, and I flung myself at his throat.

  He retreated desperately before me, and there was terror in his face because of the silence of my fury and because by this time I suppose that my torn and bleeding face was a frightful thing to see in that white moonshine.

  Twice, as he sprang back before my lunges and struck out, I saw him cast jerking glances over his shoulder, and I knew that he was prepared to take to his heels in another moment. I leaned in against a rain of blows that had all his power behind them, but there was no feeling in my body now. I walked through those flying fists as though they had been lightly stinging drops of water, and set my grip on his shoulder.

  He could not break it. I felt the corded and writhing strength of that shoulder play beneath my hands as he strove to fling himself clear, and then I managed to clutch his other arm just above the wrist.

  There was death in his face then, and just before I stepped in close and took him in both arms, he screamed with terror, as a man might scream when he feels the long tentacles of an octopus thrown about him.

  So I laughed, close to the white face of Andrew, and then took him in my grip. I shook him as a cat shakes a rat, and all his body became loose.

  It came dimly across my battered, reeling brain that he no longer fought back. I slumped to the ground and sat beside him, thinking it over with a sort of drunken solemnity, fumbling at obvious things. This was not the joy of which I had told myself. There should have been the strain of hand against hand and muscle against muscle to the last moment. But here was a man turned into a worthless mass of pulp!

  And this was Andrew Chase, the handsome, the magnificent!

  I laid a hand upon his heart, at first, and felt in an instant a feeble, fluttering pulse. He was still alive. It did not please me. I wished him dead with all my soul, and I knew now that I could not finish him while he was helpless. But something told me, as I looked into his white face, with the flesh loose and fallen upon it, that he would not be able to fight, not be able to stand, for some days to come.

  I had not struck him often, but those few times had told a story. Where my fist had landed under his heart, withering his strength for the rest of the battle, no doubt the flesh was bruised and swollen. That was when the devil was raging hottest in me.

  In the meantime, here was Andrew Chase, a very sick man. What should I do with him?

  I thought of him then not as himself, but as Mike O’Rourke’s man, and that thought started me into action. I picked up Andrew and slung him across the back of Roanoke. Then, steadying him with one hand, I guided the big mule down the hill, through the thick timber, and back to the village, and through the O’Rourke gate and up to their veranda itself. There I took him off and put him across my shoulder.

  As I did that I squeezed a faint groan from his lungs. The door was before me. I struck it with my foot, tore the lock loose, and knocked it violently open. Inside, Mike and her mother, with blond-headed Tom O’Rourke behind them, came running. Three pairs of eyes widened at me.

  I think that Mrs. O’Rourke fainted. At any rate, her face suddenly disappeared from before my dulled sight. I threw the loose body of Andrew on the bed.

  “There’s your man,” said I to Mike, who could neither speak nor move. “Take care of him. He’s not dead, but he ought to be!”

  When she heard that he was living, it brought the life back to her. I saw her throw herself on her knees beside the couch. I heard her cry out to him and beg him to speak to her.

  That, in some manner, affected my knees oddly and seemed to turn them as lifeless as cork. I went out of that house with dragging feet. At the door, a strong hand took me beneath the arm. I heard the crisp voice of Chet O’Rourke saying:

  “Partner, you ain’t fit to go on riding by yourself. You got to let me lend you a hand — come in here with me!”

  I could not resist. He took me to the side door of the house and dumped me into a chair in the kitchen, and there I lay, a very sick man in body, and a sicker man in soul.

  XXVII. GIVING HIMSELF UP

  TOM O’ROURKE WENT from the front of the house to the back, not of a great deal of use to anyone. It was Mrs. O’Rourke who did the most. I think she divided her time between us. She herself washed my wounds and then swabbed them with iodine that jerked me straight up in my chair and made me sweat with agony. It was as though I had been bathed in living fire. After that, she bandaged the larger cuts and plastered the smaller ones. Then she stood back and looked at me.

  “He’ll do pretty well now,” said Pat O’Rourke, puffing co
ntentedly at his pipe. “That time the Geary boys got me down and beat me up, I was smashed worse’n this, I think. I went back to work the next day! But then they didn’t hit with the weight of Andrew Chase behind their punches. He sure give you a dressin’ down, my son!”

  I asked him for whisky. He brought out a bottle, and I emptied a generous portion of it down my throat.

  “This stuff is watered. It’s no good!” said I.

  “That’s a lie and a loud lie,” cried the Irishman. “I know, because I made it myself. It’ll put some life and power under your belt!”

  In fact, I found that I could stand up lightly enough, and that my wits were clearing fast. I asked for paper, pen, and ink, and when they were brought I wrote to Andrew Chase:

  You were down and out, Andrew, when I brought you in, as the O’Rourkes will tell you if you don’t know anything about it yourself. We went out to kill each other if we could, and you did your best, as you know. I gave you your own choice of the way you cared to fight — and that when I had a pistol and the drop on you. We fought your own way, and as long as you wanted it fists, and nothing but fists, I fought that way, as you have to admit. You tried to trick me and to finish me by dirty work the first time you got me down. I wish to Heaven that I’d finished you when the luck turned my way. But that’s ended and over. You’re alive and you have Mike to make you well. But as soon as you can ride a horse, I expect you to get into a saddle and leave this part of the country — by yourself! I expect that you’ll never come back.

  Leon Porfilo.

  I sealed the envelope in which I put that letter and asked Chet O’Rourke to see that it got to the right place. Then I thanked the family for their care of me, and left the house with a silence behind me.

  Why I was not taken within the next five minutes, I don’t know, because I mounted Roanoke and trotted him slowly straight down the valley and then up the valley, and through two villages. The luck was with me simply because I did not care what happened to me, I suppose.