Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “I know.”

  “What am I, then?”

  “Eighteen, last summer.”

  “Humph. No wonder you talk to me like a baby. I’m twenty-two.”

  “Stuff!”

  “Ask Dad if I’m not. Dad, how old am I?”

  “How should I know?” responded Baird, involved in finding the continuation of a long article.

  Sylvia frowned, then she smiled. “Well, I’m nearly twenty-one, anyway. Now you tell me how old you are, Tom.”

  “I’m going to get out of this.”

  “You sit where you are. If you get up and go, I’ll tag along.”

  “Oh, leave Tommy alone,” growled Baird. “Leave him alone, can’t you? You’re a torment, Sylvia.”

  “I’m not flirting with Mister Chalmers. He’s forty-something. I don’t flirt with middle-aged men.”

  “Hum!” said Baird, looking over the edge of his paper at her with a scowl. “You don’t, don’t you? Since when, please? You’d flirt with Father Time. You make me a little tired, Sylvia. Stop the nonsense and run along.”

  “Will you run with me, Tommy?” Sylvia suggested.

  “Confound it, Sylvia,” I said, “what’s the matter with you? Can’t you leave me alone?”

  “Isn’t it undignified — to call you Tommy? Is that why you’re angry?”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Yes, you are. You said ‘Confound it!’ and you frowned at me.”

  “I’ll say worse than that. Leave me alone, Sylvia. You’re a young demon, and I won’t let you make a fool out of me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only asked you how old you are.”

  “Well, I’ve told you.”

  “You haven’t at all. Let me guess.”

  “I can’t keep you from it.”

  “You’re twenty-seven,” she said, after thinking for a moment.

  I pushed my chair back a little. “Great Scott, my dear, where’s your sense of humor? Twenty-seven? With a growing family? Well, well!”

  I grew rather hot, but Sylvia did not mind in the least.

  “You may be a bit older than that. But not more than thirty, I know.”

  “The deuce you do. I’m not thirty, eh? And you’re sure, are you?”

  “I can always tell.”

  “Perfect rot. How could you tell?”

  “Oh, by a certain sign — it never fails.”

  “What sign? I never heard of such nonsense!” I was getting still hotter at the way she sat back, assured and certain.

  “By the wrinkles around the eyes. You haven’t any, hardly. You’re not more than twenty-eight — about.”

  I banged my fist on my knee. “I tell you what, you bright young thing. I’m thirty-two years and three months and four days old. There you are with your infallible signs!”

  She leaned forward with a little gesture of interest and compassion. “Oh, Tommy, are you only thirty-two? Are you really only thirty-two, poor fellow?”

  XIX. SYLVIA AT WORK

  WHEN I SAW how neatly she had trapped me, I grew hotter than ever in the face. Baird noticed the moment of silence and glanced at me.

  “What’s the matter now?” he asked. “Are you two fighting?”

  “She’s got a long way past that,” I answered. “She’s started pitying me.”

  “Look out for her,” said Baird, yawning, and went back to his paper.

  “I’m not pitying you,” protested Sylvia. “I mean I’m only being sorry that you’ve had so much pain.”

  “I really wish you’d stop, Sylvia. I’m a little tired of it.”

  “I know. People don’t like to talk about sorrow and all that. I didn’t mean to intrude on you, Tommy. I do humbly beg your pardon. Tell me that you’re not offended?”

  “I’m not offended, and you don’t have to be so starry eyed about it. Do your rehearsing with somebody else, will you? I’m too old to enjoy the sport.”

  “Don’t you know, Tommy, that a girl much prefers an older man, somebody that’s stable, with greater experience and knowledge of life? Don’t you really know that, you strange fellow?”

  “You treacherous little cat. You mouse eater, you! Take your claws away from me.”

  Sylvia leaned back in her chair, sighed, and shook her head. “Oh, Tommy,” she murmured, “you don’t understand me a bit!”

  “Only a few footnotes,” I admitted. “The text is in a foreign language. I’m not a scholar in your sense of the word, Sylvia. Not a bit.”

  Baird stood up. “I’m going out to have a look around,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you,” I proposed.

  “I don’t want to be left here all alone,” said Sylvia.

  “Then you come along,” said Baird.

  “I’m too tired. I’m worn out. Are you going to leave me, Tommy? Please!”

  “Oh, plague take it. I suppose I’ll stay.”

  Baird grinned down at her with a wise and understanding twinkle in his eyes. “You watch her, Tom,” he warned. “She’s poison, slow but sure.”

  “What a way to talk!” said Sylvia.

  Baird went out the door, turning up the collar of his coat, and tucking the newspaper under his arm.

  “The thing to do,” I said, “is not to march aboard the boat when it comes in. He might be watching. We can take a canoe and go on board after it’s started south and then—”

  She broke in on me dreamily. “How old are your two children, Tommy?”

  “Oh, let me see. Seven and five. Why? I was saying about the boat that — ,” I started off again.

  “Seven and five! That’s a charming time. It’s the boy who’s seven?”

  “No, it’s the girl.”

  “That’s a pity. Girls need older brothers.”

  “She’s an independent youngster.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Celia.”

  “That’s a charming name. And the little boy?”

  “Bill.”

  “I’ll bet he’s a man!”

  “He’s kind of cross-eyed.”

  “Which is their mother’s favorite?”

  I looked at her for a moment before I answered, gathering myself a little. “Their mother died when Bill was born,” I told her at last.

  Her face puckered up with pain. Then, suddenly realizing why I had wished to avoid this conversation, she caught her hands together with a faint cry.

  “It’s all right,” I assured her. “I don’t mind. I ought to talk about her. It does me good.”

  “Oh, Tommy, why should life have hurt you like that?”

  “A harmless little fellow like me?”

  “She meant a frightful lot to you? Her name was Celia also?”

  “Yes. She was one of the best. She was about the best.”

  “Was she a lovely girl, Tommy?”

  “No, not lovely. She could have done with a little more nose and a little less mouth. But her heart was right. She never yipped during the pinch of the hard times.”

  “That’s why you’re up here, Tommy — to try to get for the youngsters what their mother never had?”

  “In a general way.”

  “But you’ve chucked that in order to help me. That’s what you’ve done!”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve got a pretty good stake now. Close to sixty thousand. I know some range land I want. Thirty thousand will get me the grazing land. I know where it’s cheap. The rest goes into a shack and barns, horses and cows. You know? A small beginning and a lot of hard work but youngsters turn out well in a life like that.”

  “Is that your ambition?” she asked dreamily.

  “Yes. To develop my own strain of tough ranch stock, horses and cows. To have my brand known. To spread the elbows of my outfit on the range. To make a garden. Improve the house. See the kids grow up, wild but straight. That’s about my whole ambition. You see, I’m a simple fellow, Sylvia. I’m not one to set the world on fire or take it by the hair of the head.”
<
br />   I was amazed to see moisture in her eyes. “I’d better go upstairs and leave you. I’m going to be crying over you in another minute.”

  “Great Scott, Sylvia, what’s the matter? Are you pitying a poor fellow who can be contented with a few acres of bare range land and a few cows bawling on them on a winter’s day? Yes, you’re pitying me. You’re thinking of something else.”

  “You tell me what I’m thinking of.” She put her head on one side, not archly but in grave thought, with her eyes almost closed, so that the blue of them was lost and there was only the black shadow of the lashes curving.

  I said: “You’re thinking of Fifth Avenue shops and houses that have Persian rugs on the floor, the real quill, and country houses with hunters in the pasture, and ocean liners to link you up with Nice and Seville and Oxford, and all that.”

  “Look, Tommy—” She pushed back the hair from her temple and let me see the beginning of a white scar. She raised her sleeves, and I saw another cut on her arm, the white sign of it.

  “That top one is where a mustang’s shoe grazed me. The one on the arm I got from a mesquite thorn, going lickety split — you know how!”

  “I know how!” I agreed. “By jiminy, Sylvia, I never thought of you as a ranch girl, but you’d make something to fill the eye, all right. I’d like to see you ride over the rim of the world.”

  “Where’s the rim of that old world?” she asked, smiling at me and wrinkling her eyes a little.

  “Right on the land I’m going to buy. That’s why I’m going to buy it, because it’s the top rim of the world. You’d look grand riding over the eyebrow of Talking Mountain.”

  “Look, Tommy, you know what I can do?”

  “Plenty, but go on. You tell me.”

  “I can ride. I can ride ’em straight up. And I can fan ’em, too.”

  “Aw, go on. You can land on your head, too.”

  “You bet I can, and you bet I have. I’m not bragging, but don’t you go thinking that I’m so crêpe de Chine.”

  “I saw you on the march. You’re tough enough, all right.”

  “Go on and laugh at me, but you said that I’d tie up with Nice and Seville and Oxford. What would I want to be doing in Oxford? Feeding the swans in the gardens? I’d rather be out daubing a rope on a yearling.”

  “Go on! You couldn’t daub a rope.”

  “Couldn’t I just?” She crowed with indignant protest. “I could go and daub a rope right with you, Tom Chalmers, I’ll bet.”

  “I’m not much, but I’ve got a big brother that can do a day’s work, all right.”

  All at once she leaned back in her chair and began to chuckle. It began away back in her throat, and it just bubbled and bubbled.

  “Why, Tommy, you’re not so serious after all. You’re fun!”

  “Don’t stop laughing, Sylvia. You look great. I like to see you laugh with me or at me. When I get Talking Mountain, you come and we’ll have that ride. You can daub that old rope, too. I’ll bet you throw it underhand, like any Mexican.”

  “And overhand,” she said with pride. Then she grew serious. “But don’t you be sidetracked. You hold out for Talking Mountain. You keep heading that way.”

  “Do you think I may be sidetracked?”

  She sat very still, her chin on her brown fist, and studied me. Her eyes were as blue as one of those little mountain lakes that drink up the whole sky in an acre of water. “Oh, I’m afraid you’ve been sidetracked a good many times.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “I’ve always been beaten. I’ve always been a bust.”

  “Because you’ve tied to the wrong people!”

  “Except one.”

  “I wish I had known her. I would have loved her. It makes me pretty sick at heart when I think of you, Tommy, up here in the North and the two youngsters down there.”

  “I left them pretty well heeled.”

  “I don’t mean that, but all they’re missing, and all you’re missing — !”

  Baird came in then and stood over us. “Has she been working on you all this time, Tom?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m a little dizzy, but I feel like a new man now. What have you seen?”

  “I’ve seen him,” said Baird.

  XX. PRODDING A MEMORY

  I THOUGHT BAIRD was joking because of the casual way in which he had first spoken but, when I looked up to him, I saw the pupils of his eyes staring as though he had just come in out of pitchy darkness. He was thoroughly wrought up, and he showed it. Sylvia and I stood up.

  We huddled off upstairs to the room which belonged to Baird and to me, and there we sat in a mute and wretched conference. Baird told how he had seen a crowd of a dozen men just landed from Dyea, and among them he recognized the head, the shoulders, and the springing step of Cobalt. He drew back into the mouth of a small alley and watched the group go by. It was Cobalt beyond a doubt. He had seen his face.

  When we heard this story, we sat for another long moment in silence. I remember that the Lightning Warrior chose this instant to stand up, stretch, and yawn, and then couch himself again at the feet of the girl. He seemed to know something keenly affecting her was under consideration.

  “Well,” I said at last bitterly, “all that we can do is to lie low.”

  “He’s sure to find us out,” said Sylvia sensibly. “In a town of this size, every coming and going is pretty well noted.”

  This was plain.

  “This end of the town will get to know Cobalt for the first time,” I reflected. “The next time I ask about him, they’ll recognize the name at least. I suppose that’s only a pale consolation, but I’d like to see him in action against some of the thugs of Soapy Jones. He’ll break up a few of them like kindling wood.”

  “Soapy Jones? Soapy Jones?” murmured Baird. He fell into deep meditation. “I’ve heard of him before.”

  “Of course you have. Tom told us about him when he came in this morning,” Sylvia put in.

  “I’ve heard of him before that,” said Baird. “I heard of him in Spokane one winter, if I’m not mistaken. I’m curious to find out — I’m going to find out now!” He got out of his chair.

  “What are you going to find out?” we asked him.

  “Well, you’ll see. Maybe there’s a way out for us after all.”

  He seemed excited and very keen. We let him go without further protest and since what he did that day was important so important that all that followed hinged upon it it will be best to follow his steps to discover, as we discovered later, what he did.

  He went straight down to the saloon in which I had seen Soapy and the four men who were playing poker. The place was nearly empty now. Soapy and the rest of the poker players were out of sight. Only two lumbermen were off at an end of the bar, bending over their drinks and talking mournfully of the good days in the great logging camps and lamenting this miserable North country.

  Baird beckoned the bartender down to the place where he stood, and he looked into the pale-gray eyes of the little man. “I want to see Soapy Jones.”

  “Do you?” replied the barkeep. “Wait a minute.” He felt in one pocket and then in another. “I don’t seem to have him about me. I must have left him at home on the shelf.”

  I can imagine how he would have said all that, and the sneering, steady way in which he would look into the eyes of poor Baird. The latter was stumped.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said. “Could you send a message to him for me?”

  “I dunno,” said the barkeep, beginning to polish the bar with a soiled towel. “We don’t keep many messenger boys around here. What sort of a message?”

  “Five words.”

  “What are the words?”

  “These: ‘Do you remember Digger Merchant?’”

  The barkeep considered for a moment. “I don’t know you,” he said then.

  “He does, I think,” assured Baird.

  The little man made up his mind. He called to one of the lumbermen: “Buck!”
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br />   “Well?” answered Buck.

  “Go find Soapy and tell him that there’s a man here asking: ‘Do you remember Digger Merchant?’”

  “What’s a digger merchant?” asked Buck, looking for the point of the joke with a scowl.

  “Never mind about that,” insisted the barkeep. “You hop and find Soapy and tell him what I’ve told you. If anybody starts following you when you’re on the way, come right back here.” He looked darkly at Baird as he said this.

  The other lumberman showed signs of wishing to be friendly, but Baird retired to a corner to wait. He sat there for a full hour. The time of good business arrived. Another barman joined him of the buck teeth. A crowd began to seep in. New lamps were lighted. All at once there was the reek of cheap whiskey in the air. The floor and the ceiling were sweating with moisture. Around the big stove in the center of the room men were standing to dry themselves or for sheer need of warmth. Baird stuck in his cold, dim corner and waited. He stared continually through the wraiths of tobacco smoke expecting each minute to see the celebrated Soapy.

  Someone stood suddenly beside his chair. “Who are you?” asked a voice.

  Baird looked up at a long black beard and a bald head, curiously pale and polished. He rose. “My name is Baird. Are you Soapy Jones?”

  “I’m Soapy Jones,” said the ministerial presence. “What is this about Digger Merchant?”

  “You wouldn’t remember me. I don’t remember your face, either. You weren’t wearing that beard when I last saw you.”

  “Where was I?”

  “You were lying in the middle of the road with four bullet holes in you. You were sopping with blood. That was four miles from Spokane.”

  Soapy Jones looked at the other intently. He wound his long white fingers into the black of his curling beard and hung the weight of his arm upon it.

  “Come along with me. We’ll talk,” Soapy said.

  He led Baird into the rear of the saloon. There he unlocked a door and admitted him into a small room, a mere closet, for there was only one window, very small and close to the ceiling. A screen hanging in front of this aperture prevented any eye from looking in from the outside. In the closet there were two chairs and nothing else by way of furniture.