by Max Brand
Sylvia, who had been listening with all her heart and soul, asked: “Tell me, did you know him well? Or did he just trust you?”
“He trusted me,” said Cobalt. “All men trust me.”
Well, it was rather a grand thing to hear. There was perfect truth in it, too. All men trusted Cobalt, even those who wronged him. He might kill them, but he never would slander them, try to trick them, or take them from behind. He stood up and let the fire shine in his eyes.
“I say that I saw Sylvia, and I wanted her. I tell you just how I wanted her. The way that yegg wanted the emerald. The prison meant nothing to him. Well, prison would mean nothing to me either, except that there’s a slight difference. Emeralds don’t grow old, women do. I want Sylvia now. I want her where I can look at her.”
“When she’s happy?” I suggested.
“Oh, I don’t much care about that,” said Cobalt. “Mad or glad or sulking or dancing or sorry or jolly, I’d be about equally glad to look at her. People spend millions for a picture. Well, there’s the picture that I want.”
I wondered that he could keep the emotion out of his voice, but he did. You might have thought that he was speaking for another person and not himself. You may be sure that Sylvia neither smiled nor looked self-conscious when she heard those remarks. Rather, she looked as though she were on trial for her life. In a sense she was.
“Then I went to you and told you that I wanted her. I went to her and told her I intended to have her,” Cobalt went on. “That sounds eccentric. Well, it wasn’t as eccentric as I may have seemed. I wanted to get her attention from the crowd for a minute. So I made a bit of noise and gesticulation — at least I caught her eye. I made her listen. Now, you tell me, Sylvia, when I informed you that I intended to marry you, you were angry, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was angry,” she admitted.
“But you believed that I seriously intended doing what I said?”
“Yes,” she agreed slowly, “I think that I felt that.”
“You only thought so?” he repeated. “You didn’t know it?”
“Yes,” she said, rather faintly, “I suppose that I knew it.”
“Be honest,” he urged.
“I am honest,” she said. She drew back in her chair, seeming to feel that the presence of his argument and his questions were hemming her in. Her eyes flashed toward her father then toward me.
“If you’re honest,” argued Cobalt, “you knew by the way my eyes handled your face that I wanted you as desperately as the thief wanted the emerald.”
She actually raised her hand and touched her face with a startled and pained look. It was a very strange thing to see. “Yes,” she said then, “I know that you wanted me. No man ever looked at me like that — as if I were not even a human being, not even a dog or a horse, just something to look at.”
“Ah,” said Cobalt, “that’s it. Now we’re getting along.”
“But what’s the direction of all this talk?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope that I can give it a direction. Then we come to the time when I said good bye to you.”
“You mean that I kissed you good bye?” she said. “That was only a part of the ironical game which we were playing. You know that, Cobalt. You wouldn’t be unfair about that.”
“That kiss? Rot!” he expostulated. “That was nothing. That made no difference to me. The touch of the wind would have been as much to me. But it gave me a chance to see what your hair was like, and I saw that it was spun finer than cobweb. I thought it would be like that, but I couldn’t be sure until my eyes were close. That finished the picture. I’d seen your hand and watched it moving. So that kiss meant a good deal, but not because it was the touch of your lips.”
She sighed with relief.
“Now, man,” I said, breaking in because I couldn’t stand the tenseness of the atmosphere, “tell me what you think, no matter what has gone before, can a girl honestly marry a man she doesn’t care about? And you don’t love him, Sylvia?”
She clasped her hands together and stiffened her arms a little. She closed her eyes. “I do not love him,” she whispered.
X. CAVE MAN STUFF
EVEN AS THE case stood perhaps Sylvia might have found a little less emphatic way of speaking, but I must say that Cobalt did not seem in the least shocked. He merely looked at her with greater interest, at the repulsion that showed in the faint curl of her lip, at the small hands, the loveliest that ever were seen. With an impersonal interest he examined and analyzed her.
“From my point of view, that ends it,” I said abruptly.
“That isn’t the point on which I want your view,” said Cobalt. “That angle doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Great Scott, man,” I said, “are you back in the cave age when women were chased and captured? Do you mean to say that affection isn’t what civilization has been built on and — ?”
“Civilization! Stuff and nonsense!” replied Cobalt. “I don’t give a rap about all that rot. Besides, there’s the contract marriage of the Greeks and Romans. Love had nothing to do with it. They were fairly civilized, I dare say. Don’t talk rot about civilization to me. Keep to facts. I want her. That’s the important thing, and I certainly think I have a right to her. I’m trying to prove it out of her mouth.”
“Go ahead, then,” I said, not at all proud of my last sally.
The man baffled me. He shamed me a little, too. I had a dawning feeling that, perhaps, he might be right a thousand years hence a more cultured race might consider women in just such a light.
“Sylvia,” he said, “when I looked at you, you know that you felt no other man had looked at you in just the same manner.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She was beginning to be frightened. It was touching to see her try to stick to the truth in spite of her fear of what some admission might do to her.
“Oh,” he said, “other men have looked at you like starved wolves, or like sick calves, I dare say. But no man ever looked at you as I did that day.”
She nodded, speechless, her eyes haunted. This was not the gay Sylvia, bright and impudent as a bird. She raised a hand and pressed a handkerchief against her lips. Over this she stared at Cobalt.
“You felt,” he pressed quietly ahead, “that I was in your power?”
“You?” she exclaimed. “I felt that you were in my power?”
“Yes — that day,” he insisted. Then he raised a finger to caution her. “Remember,” he said, “the whole truth, and only that.”
“I suppose, in a way — I suppose that I felt I had some power over you.”
“You had a feeling that you could use that power. You thought of the Lightning Warrior—”
“Because of you!” cried the poor girl, and my heart bled for her. “I looked at you — and I don’t want to be unkind — but looking at you made me think — I mean, something about your eyes and your face and the wildness of it — I don’t want to say cruel things!” concluded poor Sylvia.
“Come, come,” I said, half under my breath. “This is enough, Cobalt?”
“Enough?” he asked. He turned his head in that quick way of his, and I shrank deeper into my chair and wished myself far away. Cobalt then proceeded: “When you smiled at my offer of the engagement ring, then the thing flashed over you. The sense of your power. The cruel pleasure. You thought of the Lightning Warrior, and you asked for his skin.”
“I wasn’t thinking!” cried Sylvia.
“You were thinking,” persisted Cobalt gravely. “You thought in this manner: this brute of a man with all the strength he seems to have, what would become of him, if he were matched with that dog killer, the Lightning Warrior? The two pictures jumped into your mind. The thing came out of your mouth almost without your thinking. You wanted the fight.”
“No!” cried Sylvia.
She got up from her chair. So did the three of us.
“Well,” said Cobalt, his voice as always even and quiet, “I
can’t force you to say anything, I can only suggest. When you said it, you had in mind storm, wind, starvation, fighting in the wilderness, all that sort of thing. Am I wrong?”
Sylvia looked at her father, then she looked at me hopelessly. Tears began to run down her face.
“That isn’t fair,” insisted Cobalt. “You’ve no right to cry to soften their hearts. Their hearts are like putty so far as you’re concerned.”
“I’m trying not to cry,” Sylvia protested. “I don’t want to, and I’m trying not to.” She bit her lip. She dabbed at her eyes. She drew in a breath.
“That’s better,” said Cobalt in his calm way. “That’s more honest. There’s honesty in you. I’m glad to see that. Now, don’t cry any more but tell us the truth. When you asked for the skin of the Lightning Warrior, did you or did you not think of a long, fierce battle?”
“Yes,” whispered Sylvia, “I did.”
“Sylvia!” interrupted her father, “what are you talking about?”
“And you knew that I would go and do what I could about it?”
“I didn’t know,” she said and halted.
“Tell us honestly. Did you feel convinced that I would go out and do what I could about it?”
“I wasn’t logical,” Sylvia confessed with a shaking voice. “I didn’t follow things to their ultimate conclusion. But — yes, I thought you would do something about it.”
“That meant life or death?” he asked her remorselessly.
She only stared. He did not insist on the answer.
“I took it that way,” he said. “I jumped into the lion’s den, but I’m not going to throw the glove into your face now that I’m out again. I’m going to hold you to your promise.”
Sylvia, gazing like one enchanted by horror, backed slowly up until her shoulders were against the wall.
“Don’t do that, child,” cried out Baird. He went over and put an arm around her. “I’m going to take care of you,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Sylvia, look at me. Don’t you trust me? I’m not going to let anything happen to you!”
She put a hand up to fend him off. She kept looking in that terrified way at Cobalt. “Don’t you see it’s no good?” she said rapidly to her father. “You can’t help me. Nobody can help me, only myself. I’m alone with him.”
I tried to help by saying: “There was no real promise, Sylvia.”
“Of course, there was no real promise,” agreed Baird.
“Bless you, Chalmers. You help to bring us back to terra firma.”
Sylvia shook her head. “Think it over a moment, and then tell me honestly. Tell him, and tell me.”
When she said that, I looked toward Cobalt. He did not assume a threatening or a blustering attitude. There was no need of that. He had folded his arms and leaned a shoulder against the wall. He had finished his case, and now he waited for the decision. Realizing that, I cursed the unlucky chance that had brought me into the house this day. I cursed Cobalt as well in the silence of my mind. Why could not one turn to him and say: “Man, you’re mad! This thing cannot be!” But there was no use making an appeal to him. Public opinion did not matter to Cobalt.
“I’ll tell you,” said Baird, breaking in. Then he paused, began to shake his head, and exclaimed at last: “I don’t deny the existence of some obligation on your part, some slight obligation.”
“What sort of an obligation?” inquired Sylvia. “That’s what I see myself. But I’m no good to him in a shop window. Don’t you see? He wants me in his pocket, as the thief wanted the emerald. Either he takes me as a wife, or else I’m no good to him at all. That’s the point. If he has a call upon me, that’s what the call amounts to. I can’t be one percent wife or a quarter wife, even. I can’t be a wife for one day or a week or a month. I’ve got to step over the threshold. That’s what I’ve got to do.” Her voice faltered.
Cobalt said: “You’re a good girl, Sylvia. You’re such an amazingly good girl that I’ve almost made up my mind to let you get out from the contract.”
“There’s no contract,” cried Baird. “I don’t understand what’s happened! Chalmers, because my girl out of excess of spirits — !”
He saw me shaking my head and stopped there. I answered: “Out of excess of spirits, or however you want to put it, she challenged Cobalt to do an impossible thing. Well, there’s the impossible thing accomplished.”
I pointed to the white monster in the corner shadow. Baird, with an exclamation, threw up his hands. He was in a state of great excitement. Sylvia went to him and put an arm about him and tried to quiet him. It was charming to see her forget about her own trouble in her sympathy with his.
“Such a thing would never hold in a court of law! Never in the world” insisted Baird. “Any judge or jury would simply laugh at such a claim.”
“Well, Father,” said Sylvia, “I suppose that a judge would laugh. But we’re not judges and juries in a law court, are we?”
I turned to Cobalt. “Cobalt,” I said, “there are a thousand appeals that I could make to you. You have some claim, some slight claim on Sylvia. Her exquisite sense of honor admits that claim, as you see. But I don’t believe that you’ll take the pound of flesh nearest the heart. I see that you were serious, and that you’ve spent a terrible year in executing your part of the bargain. But look at it the other way. If you insist upon the bargain being fulfilled, you’re wrecking her life. I can’t believe that you’ll do it. I won’t believe it. Surrender your claim, Cobalt. You’ll have the reward of friendship. Out of that friendship something may come — marriage, perhaps, in the end. What would this chains-and-slavery idea of yours amount to compared with Sylvia as a wife who loved you and had chosen you?”
These were not the most eloquent words in the world, but I put a good deal of emotion into them because I felt them to the quick. I could see also that both Baird and Sylvia thought that this was the final appeal. Baird looked at Cobalt with a face of wretched pain and suspense. Sylvia, suddenly weakening, was close in her father’s arms, her face against his breast.
How could Cobalt resist the appeal of such a picture? Well, he resisted it well enough. In that casual voice which I was beginning to hate he said: “Friendship ripening into love, and all that rot, eh? Mutual esteem, followed by affection. Is that the new way to sing the old song? Stuff, man, stuff! I’m ashamed to hear you say such things. Sylvia, can you turn around and look me in the eye?”
Turn she did and faced him. She rested against Baird for a support. Her hands clung to his hands. The unfortunate part of it was that he could not be a real help to her.
“Now you tell me,” said Cobalt, “married or unmarried, friends or not friends, in a hundred years do you think that you could ever come to love me?”
She looked at him very earnestly. It was a pitiful thing to see her honesty and her fear of him fighting in her face. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t think that I could.”
“Well said!” muttered Cobalt. “There’s honesty for you. But you see what remains? She’d never take me for love, but she’s made the bargain, and she’ll stick to it. Sylvia, when does the wedding take place?”
I could not speak. I was struck dumb. So was poor Baird. From the rolling of his eyes, I thought he was going mad.
“When do you think?” Sylvia asked. “After we’re out of Alaska, of course!”
“No,” said Cobalt, “right now is the time! You have the Lightning Warrior, haven’t you, as sure as cash in the hand?”
XI. WOLF TAMER
I HAD INTENDED to remain in the town for a few days longer, but I would not remain there to see Sylvia Baird led to the slaughter. I went off to the Birch Creek diggings and arrived there to find that Cobalt had arrived before me. When I asked him how the wedding ceremony had gone, he told me that he was not yet married to Sylvia. He was going to spend that season in the mines and try to make what he could. In the winter he would haul Sylvia out overland. That would give her time to adjust her m
ind to him.
“I hope you’re right,” I reflected, “and I hope she doesn’t run away.”
“No. She won’t do that,” said Cobalt. “I don’t think that she’ll do that. Do you?”
“Not if she thinks that it’s dishonorable.”
“And what do you think about it?” he asked me, curious.
It took courage to stand up to Cobalt, but I managed to get my nerve together and say: “I think that anything she does to get away is all right. You’ve trapped her, Cobalt. It’s always fair for the trapped thing to try to get away.”
He was not angry, only thoughtful. He went off hanging his head a little on one side, and I saw very little of him during that summer. However, the rumors about him were always afloat. He panned hardly a dollar the first four weeks, and then he got into good pay dirt and made it by the thousands. Yes, I mean by thousands a day. He had nine men working under him. He paid them a full ounce a day, every day, and a short working day at that. Then he gave them double that rate for overtime, and that gang fairly tore up the tundra for their boss. I don’t know how much he made altogether, but it was enough, with what he had already saved, to make a tidy fortune back in the States. He would not be rich, but he would be mighty well off.