Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “Now we can talk,” said Soapy. “Sit down.”

  He took one chair. Baird accepted the other. Both of their faces were in shadow from the light of the lantern which was bracketed against one wall. Only a high light gleamed steadily upon the bald head of Soapy.

  How many other men had sat in this room with the gangster? wondered Baird. He began to grow a little nervous for the eye of Soapy would never let him go.

  “When you saw me lying there in the road, as you say,” Soapy took up the conversation, “what did you do?”

  “I got you into the back of the buckboard I was driving and headed for town as fast as I could drive. You were bleeding to death.”

  “Go on.” The eyes of Soapy were eyes unchanging as he listened.

  “After I’d gone half a mile,” continued Baird, “I decided that the blood was running out of you too fast. You wouldn’t last until we reached a doctor. So I stopped and got off your clothes. I cut them away for the sake of speed. I used your clothes to tie up the wounds.”

  “Where were they?”

  “Two through the body. One looked as though it went straight through your lungs. But you were not choking with blood. Two more were through the right thigh, and the thigh bone was broken. I put a tourniquet above the wound in the leg. That stopped the bleeding. Then I covered you with the buggy rug and went on. I got you to a doctor on the edge of town.”

  “Go on,” Soapy urged again.

  “That’s all. I left you there and went on. I had important business ahead of me.”

  “You could have heard of all this,” said Soapy.

  “Yes. Perhaps I could.”

  “What you say is not worth anything. You could have heard it all.”

  “I’ll give you proof. One bullet had cut through your wallet. Cut through it at the lower edge. The wallet was sopping with blood.”

  “You could have heard about that, too.”

  “Yes, I could have heard about that, I suppose, but I didn’t. I saw it.”

  “Where there any initials on that wallet?”

  “There were.”

  “What were they?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “The first question I ask you, and you don’t know the answer.”

  “No, I don’t remember the initials. One of them had been clipped off by a bullet.”

  “You remember that, do you?”

  “Yes. It was the middle initial.”

  Soapy Jones turned his eyes up to the ceiling in thought. “I think you’re straight,” he said at last. “Now what do you want out of me?”

  Not a word of gratitude, mind you. The man was as practical as a banker.

  “I want help,” answered Baird.

  Soapy waved his hand. “Of course you do. What kind of help?”

  “A kind that will cost a lot of trouble.”

  “Partner,” said Soapy Jones, without the slightest warmth in his voice, “I’ve never had a chum, but I’ve never let a friend down, and I’ve never let an enemy off. I’m logical, and I’m logical now. You can have anything that belongs to me, from my gun to my wallet. You have the cards. Deal any sort of a hand that you think fit — and you can pick them off the bottom.”

  XXI. THIS IS FRIENDSHIP

  THE UNMOVED, THE indifferent manner of Soapy Jones when he made these large proffers was what convinced my friend, Baird, that there was something in him that might be trusted. He thanked Soapy. The latter merely shrugged his shoulders, as though all he offered should really be taken for granted in the normal course of events.

  Baird said: “What I’m going to ask you to do is probably harder than anything you’ve ever undertaken before.”

  Soapy merely smiled. He never appeared weary, and he never appeared excited. Except that his eyes were dark, they were something like Cobalt’s, bright and steady.

  “There’s a man in this town named Cobalt.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Soapy said. “He’s usually inside. He’s a hard nut. I’ve heard something about him. He breaks men up when he gets into a fight. Is that the one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, he won’t break me up.”

  “I would like to have Cobalt kept in hand for two days — until the next steamer sails south. Do you think you could manage that?”

  “I’ll manage it so that he’ll lose all interest in sailings south or north.”

  “I don’t want him harmed. Rather than that, I’ll ask you not to bother about him.”

  “I see what you are. You’re one of the kind that wants to sell a horse and ride him, too.” Soapy said this without a sneer. He was merely and calmly placing Baird in a category.

  “No matter what you think about me,” responded Baird, “I wouldn’t have a hair of his head harmed.”

  “He might lose a little hide. What about that?”

  “He can’t be handled easily. I know that. Only, there must be no real physical damage done to him. Otherwise the thing’s not to be considered.”

  Soapy raised a hand, dismissing the subject at once. “He’ll be handled. What’s the look of this fellow, Cobalt?”

  “You can spot him in any crowd. He looks bigger than he is, and yet he’s bigger than his looks. He has pale-blue eyes. There are muscles around the base of his jaw. You’ll know Cobalt the instant you see him. He’s quiet. He never makes trouble but, if it starts around him, he’ll do the finishing.”

  “Not in this town.” Soapy Jones smiled again. He had an ugly smile. I’ve seen it myself, and I know.

  Then Baird said: “This affair will be a good deal of trouble to you. You name your own figure for it.”

  Soapy stared at him. “Partner,” he answered, “this is friendship. You can’t pay me money for this sort of work.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “I guess you are. This fellow Cobalt has thrown a chill into you, but you don’t need to worry about him now. He’s in my hands.”

  “I’ve warned you about him before. I warn you again. He’s a hard man. He’s the hardest man we ever saw inside.”

  “They don’t have any hard men inside. I have the hard men here. I have all the hard men. They have some fellows inside with strong hands, but I have man-breakers here that ride the tough boys to death. Let me tell you something. I won’t send two men to tackle your friend, Cobalt. I’ll only send one.”

  Baird sat still and stared, agape. “Do you mean it?”

  “I’ll send one man. As small as this. Hardly more than a boy. And he’ll ride your tough friend to death. He’ll tame him.” He leaned back a little in his chair and laughed. “That’s the kind I have around me,” he went on. “Man- breakers. Experts. I train them myself. I have the best-trained man-breakers in the world. That’s all, now. Go home and stop worrying. This fellow Cobalt is already out of your way. I’ve taken him out of your way.”

  Baird certainly knew a great deal about what Cobalt could do and had done, but he could not help believing what Soapy told him. He thanked the crook again and came straight back to me. Sylvia had gone to bed, tired out, and I asked Baird what he had done. He was afraid that I would not approve, and therefore he merely said that he had seen Soapy and discovered that he had known the man before in Spokane. He said that Soapy seemed to be a human devil, and that was all. But Baird told me not a word of the real subject of his conversation with Soapy Jones. If he had, it might have saved something in the end.

  We did not go to bed. We were too excited. Besides, there was a rising tide of noise through the muddy streets of Skagway, so we went down to find out what was in the air. We got no farther than the downstairs entrance hall, where the desk was located before we had a chance to learn everything that was going on. There were twenty men gathered around one speaker. The speaker was a rough-looking fellow with a brown, weathered face, a resolute expression, and a deep, harsh voice. He talked rapidly and with emotion, but he did not shout. He seemed rather like a man expressing his fury in the bosom of his family.<
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  He said: “Gentlemen, we’ve stood quite a pile from Soapy Jones. I don’t hanker to stand no more. If there’s anybody here that has any backbone, he’ll stand by me. I mean to fight Soapy Jones. I’m wearing a gun, and I intend to use it on him the first time I see him. You all may think that’s boasting, but it ain’t. I come here from the inside with a partner. We’d worked like dogs for three years. You know what it means to work three years on the inside of Alaska. Well, we’d done that.

  “We go to the first saloon that we sight to get a drink. My partner pulls out his poke to pay and lets the poke drop with a thud that shakes the bar. There’s thirty pounds of good red dust in that poke. What’s more, there’s three years in it. Three years of hard slogging. Maybe that’s not much. I don’t say that it is. But thirty pounds is around ten thousand dollars. That was his half of the work we’d done. I had the same amount. Well, the bartender in that saloon is a little fellow with buck teeth and a sort of a foolish, smiling look, except around the mouth—”

  Someone broke in to say that they knew the man. So did I. The description was unmistakable. “Jess Fair,” someone named him.

  “This bartender ups and tells my partner he’d better leave that money with him for safe keeping, seeing it’s so heavy to tote around. My partner only laughs and says that he knows how to take care of his own money.

  “‘Do you?’ says the barkeep, this fellow you call Fair. And he reaches over the bar with a big Colt in his hand and slams my partner over the head with the barrel of the gun. While my pal drops, Jess Fair takes the poke and shoves it under the bar!

  “I didn’t have no gun, but I jumped for that thug. He just jammed the muzzle of his gun into the hollow of my throat and told me that I was stupid to associate with such a fool, and he told his bouncers to throw the pair of us out into the street. They did it, too. They threw us out, and I got my partner to a room and found a doctor. Maybe his skull is fractured. Anyway, he’s still got a fever, and he’s out of his head.

  “I left him flat on his back, moaning and muttering. I hired a kid to look after him for a while. Then I bought me a gun. And I went and looked up a fellow who they said was a deputy sheriff. He said the matter would be looked into. I waited two days. I asked him what he’d done about it, and he had forgotten who I was. I had to remind him, and he said he’d had his hands full and that he would look into it the first chance he got, but I knew when that will be — just never.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here. You’ve averaged about a dead man a day for a long spell here in Skagway. Why? Because you’ve got Soapy here with his gang. That’s why! Every kind of dirty work in the world is done by him and his gang. Now, gentlemen, I’m gonna tell you that in half an hour there’s gonna be a meeting where the best men in the town are gonna be present and try to work out some way of handling Soapy and cleaning up Skagway. I’m gonna be present. So will a lot of Soapy’s agents. But we want the decent people to come along with us. Why, every man here oughta follow me!”

  He finished with this and, turning on his heel, walked out of the room and into the street. Just as he suggested, every man followed him. For my part it seemed impossible that such things as the brutal robbery he described could be tolerated by the adherents of law and order even in a wild frontier town like Skagway.

  I went along with Baird at the heels of this group. Looking back, I saw that the proprietor remained at his desk, smiling sourly after us.

  “I’ll bet he’s one of the gang,” I said to Baird.

  “Of course he is,” agreed Baird. “Every crook in town is with Soapy, or else he’s not in the town long. Soapy won’t allow any rivalry, they tell me. He’s a monopolist, pure and simple.”

  On the way to the meeting place, we fell in with a decent sort of fellow who had the look of a gambler, if I ever saw one. His fine long hands were a treat to see, and I could imagine him doing real magic with a pack of cards.

  “What do you think of all of this?” I asked him. “I’m a newcomer. I’m an old hand in Alaska, but I’m a cheechako in Skagway.”

  “I’ll tell you,” replied the stranger. “Soapy’s about half a curse and half a blessing to Alaska. He weeds out the crooks. He keeps some, but he knocks others over the head. Besides, Soapy’s not such a bad fellow in a way. He knows his friends.”

  “Does he rob people in open daylight in his saloon?” asked Baird, growing hot.

  “Of course he does, and the poor fools still flock there,” said our new friend. “The trouble with us Americans is that we don’t particularly care about law and order. It takes time and trouble to organize an efficient legal system and protection for the people. We don’t waste that much time and trouble. We leave it for the other fellow, and the other fellow is as likely as not to be a crook himself. He knows we won’t watch him. Look at Canada — the difference just over the border. Six Northwest Mounted Police could clean up the whole of Skagway in a week if this were in Canada. They have the public and the public interest behind them.”

  We could not help agreeing. There’s no finer body of men in the world than the Northwest Mounted.

  “What’s your line here?” I asked the stranger because he interested me.

  “Oh, I’m one of Soapy’s dealers,” he said with a grin and drifted away from us in the crowd.

  XXII. SOAPY AND THE CROWD

  AS WE WEDGED with the entering crowd into the big room that housed the meeting, Baird said to me: “That’s pretty cool. I wonder how many more of the same kind are down here spotting for Soapy?”

  “Plenty,” I suggested. “Keep your voice down. Let others do the talking. Soapy has Skagway in his pocket, it seems to me.”

  It was true, too. Soapy’s reign of terror has become famous since that day. I saw the town when his reign was in its prime, and still I look back to those days as to a bad dream.

  The room was packed. We remained rather near the door because it was impossible to get in much farther. Then somebody stood up on a chair in the middle of the room and began to harangue us. He was a fat man with a big, round, bald, red head and a thick-lipped mouth. He looked like a white Negro. He was quite a talker, and he painted the picture of Soapy Jones with all the colors of the rainbow. He told us that Skagway could be the key to Alaska. He told us what Soapy was making of it. He gave us a list of crimes that made my blood run cold.

  I whispered to Baird: “There’s going to be a riot at the end of this meeting. White men won’t stand for the sort of things that Soapy’s doing here.”

  “I don’t know. It may be that Soapy has this meeting already salted,” said Baird. “Look yonder. There’s Jess Fair, the barkeep. Look at him applauding. He’s not afraid.”

  “He’s a young demon,” I said, and added: “Keep your voice down. You don’t know who’s listening in on what we say.” It was my second warning to Baird, and I thought it was very good advice.

  In the meantime the people in the crowd were getting hot under the collar. When the first speaker ended, others jumped up on chairs, sometimes four or five at a time, all ready and bursting to tell about the evil things Soapy Jones had done. Finally a man of dignified presence stood up and raised his hand until he silenced the others. He then asked them what was to be done. He wanted to know the sentiment of the meeting whether they considered Soapy a public menace or not?

  There was a hoarse, deep-throated roar from that crowd. It sounded like the barking of the sea lions on the Cliff House rocks at San Francisco. When the roar died down, the tall fellow raised his hand, and the crowd was silent again. Then he said: “My friends, I propose we march in a mass to Soapy’s saloon, smash the place, and search it from top to bottom. We may discover some interesting things there. I’d particularly like to examine the inside of his roulette wheel!”

  There was a sour burst of laughter at this.

  “After we’ve smashed the saloon, we’ll close up the place tight. To the thugs we catch in it, we’ll give a fair trial and a quick ending. There’s plenty of ro
pe lengths in Skagway, I take it!”

  Another roar went up from the crowd. I was once the unwilling witness of a lynching. The faces I saw around me looked like the faces I remembered having seen in that other crowd long before.

  Just then a voice spoke from the doorway, a loud, ringing voice, that made every face jerk around to see who was speaking. “Gentlemen!” said the newcomer in a loud voice.

  It was Soapy Jones standing in the doorway, with a high hat on his head and wearing a long-tailed coat. Over the bend of one arm he carried a riot gun.

  “Gentlemen,” said Soapy, “have I your attention?”

  He hardly needed to ask that question. I could hear the breathing of the people about me, but I could hear nothing else.

  He went on: “It seems to me, friends, that it’s time for you to disperse.”

  He waited. No one stirred.

  “A good pow-wow is an excellent thing at times,” continued Soapy Jones, “but after a talk there’s nothing better than a little walk. I advise you to start walking gentlemen!”

  Still no one moved. The air was tense. Just before me was the fellow who’d made the talk in the hotel lobby. I saw his hand stealing inside his coat probably for that gun he had advertised having, but I did not actually see the glint of the weapon.

  Soapy was saying: “Mister Haven, no one seems willing to take the place of honor. Will you lead the way out?”

  I heard a man near the door mutter an oath, but suddenly he slouched forward and went through the doorway past Soapy. The whole crowd lurched a little.

  “Mister Jenkins,” said Soapy, “suppose you go next. And you, Mister Cross, and you, Marrow!”

  I got to know Marrow later. He was quite a humorist and now he said: “I’d like to stop and argue with you, Soapy, but some of your friends might help me along from behind!”

  He laughed at his own joke. Others began to laugh. I felt the danger melting out of the air. I felt the crowd weakening.

  “We’re all salted down with his thugs,” muttered somebody near me. “There’s no chance to do anything today!”