Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Suddenly I knew that he was right. Nothing would be done on this day. Nothing would probably be done on other days for a long time. It was that remarkable man who stood there in the doorway that had quelled them. I never have seen such an exhibition of the force of will power, never in all my life, and I’ve seen some odd corners of the world and some hard breaks. Soapy Jones, smiling faintly there in the doorway, seemed to reach every face and every soul with his bright, moving eyes. He seemed to be writing things down in his memory. As the people brushed by him, going out he occupied half of the entrance, so that we had to get out in single file he made cheerful remarks here and there.

  “The air’s bad in here,” he observed. “You know, I’ve studied to be a doctor, and I wouldn’t keep even a dog in a crowd like this. You’ll like everything a lot better once you’re out in the open.”

  In a steady file the people went past him. Some of them looked at him with angry defiance. Others were plainly frightened to death, hanging their heads and hurrying by him as though they prayed that he might not file a picture of their faces in his cunning mind. Still others and I think these were in the majority smiled or laughed openly, as though they found the whole thing a joke and had looked on it as a joke from the first.

  “Don’t forget Soapy Jones’s emporium, gentlemen,” he was saying. “An asylum for the thirsty and a place where one can make the time pass quickly. A day is like an hour in the Soapy Jones saloon.”

  “It goes like an hour, and it costs like a year!” said some wag who was passing him.

  “So it does,” said Soapy, laughing in the most amiable manner. “I remember you, young fellow. You did very well at faro last night. Come and try your luck again.”

  “I’ve had my luck, and I’ll keep it,” said the other.

  “That’s not a bad idea, either,” answered Soapy. “Now, who’s for Soapy’s place? You know how it got that name? Because it’s scrubbed clean every day. Every floor, window, and every door.”

  “But some of the stains don’t come out,” said one.

  “So they don’t,” agreed Soapy. “If you’re ever bored in my place, you can look at the floor and find more there than you would in a book. Come along, boys. Who’s for Soapy Jones’s saloon?”

  It was an amazing thing to see how he gathered them. They went in troops after him. They began to laugh and whoop and shout. A great many of them were wild young boys, such as always form the body and the forefront of every gold rush, but some of them were old enough to have known better.

  I’ve always felt that it was the very nature of Soapy’s place that intrigued people and got them in. Robbery, murder even, walked through the rooms of Soapy Jones and, therefore, every man prided himself on the number of times he had been there and his ability to call the bartenders and the dealers by name. To be recognized as an old patron in the saloon of Soapy Jones qualified a man, not so much as a fool as a desperado.

  That was the ending of the first memorable meeting of protest against Soapy Jones. If there had been really efficient preparation and leadership, the power of the man might have been broken on that day. But the leadership was lacking and, therefore, the whole scheme fell through. Instead, the hand of Soapy Jones was strengthened for days to come. Many a man can remember that meeting. Many have described it. But I believe that it went almost exactly as I have remembered and written it down. To the end of my life one of the clearest of my memories must be Soapy at the door of the meeting, smiling and chatting with the people who filed past him, the very men who had just been discussing a necktie party at which he was to be the honored guest.

  Baird, watching the people drift down the street, finally said to me: “I’ve a mind to go with them.”

  “Have you lost your head?” I was alarmed.

  “It may be worthwhile, for one to know some of those fellows better.”

  “You’ll be tapped over the head. And you have something in your poke, too!”

  He smiled at me, a faint smile “No, you don’t have to worry about me. You don’t have to worry about yourself, so long as you’re with me. I have what you might call a pass with Soapy Jones.”

  I rubbed my chin with my knuckles and shook my head at him. It was long after this before I understood the details of his interview with the thug and, therefore, I was thoroughly mystified. I knew Baird was a man of many experiences, and I was willing to let him keep his mystery a secret.

  “If you’re sure it’s safe,” I said, “of course there’s no place where I’d rather see a show than in that tiger’s den.”

  So we went down the street after the rest, and at their heels we pushed through the door and entered the rambling rooms that made up the establishment. There was already an air of mad gaiety, and people were thronging between the bar and the gaming tables. Then Baird gripped my arm. His fingers bit into my flesh like teeth.

  “Cobalt. Let’s get out,” he whispered.

  XXIII. THE WILD MAN AGAIN

  WHEN ONE SEES lightning, it is already too late to run. When we saw Cobalt, he was stepping straight toward us. How do you think he greeted us after the long absence and after all that had passed between us? He simply said: “Hello, fellows! What did you think of that meeting? There was a show for you!”

  “Were you there, Cobalt?” I asked.

  “Yes. I was there. I was standing a little behind you.” A glint of amusement came into his eyes.

  I understood at once. He’d been following us. He knew all about us. He had known, perhaps, ever since we came into town, but he did not gloat over us. Neither did he show the slightest feeling of any kind. He merely said: “It was a good show. That fellow, Soapy, he’d be worth knowing. He has something more than cloth up his sleeve.”

  I looked at Baird, and Baird looked at me.

  “It’s a wonder we ever left Circle City,” I said, taking the conversational bull by the horns.

  “Well, you might have waited,” said Cobalt. “You were afraid of trouble with me, weren’t you?”

  “Of course we were,” put in Baird.

  “As long as we didn’t meet on the trail,” said Cobalt, “it was all right. That might have been bad. Did you ever notice the queer ideas that a fellow gets when he’s on the trail?”

  I listened to him and could not believe my ears. “Cobalt, you would have killed me on the trail?”

  “Yes,” he replied as calmly as you please. “Of course, I would have killed you — if I could.”

  Baird glared at us in a wild way. This sort of talk was too much for him. It was like having a bounding, roaring lion come up and lick your hand. “I’ve got to get back,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get back to my girl.”

  “Oh, she’s all right,” said Cobalt.

  “What?” exclaimed Baird.

  Cobalt grinned at us in a friendly way. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “I only looked at her. I didn’t steal her. She’s asleep.”

  “You looked at her? Through the window?”

  “No, not through the window. I opened the door.”

  “That door has a lock on it,” exclaimed Baird, all in a sweat.

  “I jimmied the lock and walked in.”

  “The mischief you did,” said Baird.

  “I wanted to see her. It had been ages, since the last look. So I spoiled the lock on that door. It doesn’t amount to anything, and it’ll save me some trouble the next time.”

  “Cobalt,” I said, “why did you do it? Did you throw her into a fit? A thing like that’s enough to kill her.”

  “Of course it is, only I didn’t wake her up. I didn’t want to talk to her. I just wanted to look. I would be there still looking, except that the wolf got a shade restless, and I was afraid he was growling loud enough to wake her up.” He gestured toward a corner. “Let’s go over and have a drink.”

  I was still more than half staggered. My brain reeled. Toward this encounter I had been looking as toward the end of the world, and yet here was the great enemy who’d haunted our ver
y dreams as calm and as gentle as a lamb.

  It was quite too much for Baird. He repeated hoarsely: “I’ll see you later, Cobalt. I’d better get back to my girl — broken lock on the door — all alone.”

  Cobalt laughed, answering: “Do you think another man is likely to walk into that room? If he does, he’ll walk out again with his throat cut. The wolf is fond of the girl, it seems.”

  He took us each by an arm and determinedly carried us into the corner where he set us down at a table and ordered three drinks. While he was getting the drinks, Baird said to me: “Tom, he’s lost his wits. He’s completely mad!”

  It showed me how excited he was. “What makes you think so?”

  “I know it. I can tell by the look of his eye. His mind’s on fire, but he’s choking off the flames.”

  When Cobalt came back, Baird said: “You’re sure she doesn’t know you were there?”

  “She won’t know it till she wakes up. She was sleeping soundly with one arm curled under her head. She was talking in her sleep and laughing a little. It was a pretty sight to see.” He smiled as he thought of it then went on: “She was murmuring something about Tommy being fun. Does she call you Tommy now, Chalmers?”

  I gave him something like two looks in one. He did not seem angry or jealous as his remarks implied that he might be. He looked at me with a new interest, only I could not tell what was in his mind. A watchdog looks as he did then when its head is raised and its eyes are shining. It may be ready to jump forward and lick your hand. Again, it may be ready to jump forward and slit your throat. That was the way Cobalt looked. Anything might have been stirring within him.

  “She calls me Tommy. That’s her way of talking down to me.”

  I was all in sweat, but Cobalt simply smiled.

  “I’m glad I didn’t meet you on the trail, Chalmers. You’re all right. You won’t burn through steel, but you might rust it.”

  It was not very hard to see there was an insult in this speech, but I was not the man to take up the challenge in any haste. I let it fall flat, in fact. I would as soon have picked up and held in hand a nitroglycerine bomb as to trouble Cobalt on this day. Besides, we had something coming in our direction, after the way we had run out on him at Circle City.

  “I’m glad you didn’t meet me on the trail,” I admitted. “In other words, I’m glad to be here!” I smiled at Cobalt, and he smiled back.

  “You talk against yourself a lot,” he said. “As a matter of fact, you’re about the only man in Skagway with the nerve to walk the streets and not pack a gun.”

  “How do you know that I don’t pack a gun?”

  He sipped his drink. It was poison so rank that one could almost see the fumes from it rise. But Cobalt tasted that liquid fire and ran it casually over the back of his tongue, though it would have removed the membrane of an ordinary person.

  “I know,” said Cobalt, “because you’re afraid you might get scared into using it. But you’re all right, Tom. You’ll fight when you’re cornered, and you might be hard on the eyes of the fellow who cornered you.”

  I suppose there was an insult in all of this too, particularly in the suggestion I might scratch like a woman but, again I repeat, I was not looking for insults in the speeches of Cobalt. I was sedulously avoiding them.

  “Well, Cobalt, I’m glad that you’re not doing the cornering.”

  “Of course, I’m not doing it. I’m only glad to have met you all again. You made good time coming in with only the three of you and two sleds.”

  “Sylvia and the wolf pulled one,” said Baird.

  Cobalt half rose and suddenly slumped back into his chair. After the real or the affected calm of his meeting with us, it was a shock to see him hit hard by what seemed to me a thing of no very great consequence.

  “You mean she made the Lightning Warrior get out and pull on a line?” he asked.

  “That’s what she did,” I said. “I never saw a wolf pull so hard or a dog, either. He was like a horse, and I remember once when—”

  Cobalt waved this remark to one side. “Tell me how she did it?” he said, leaning forward and looking eagerly at me.

  “How she tamed the wolf?” I asked. “Yes, I’ll tell you how she tamed him.”

  “Start in. I’m interested.”

  “She went out into the yard, back there in Circle City, and let him off the chain he’d been chewing on.” As I explained, I kept looking him in the eye. “You know what that means. The wolf was ravening, but she simply went out, leaned over him, and took off his collar.”

  Cobalt looked blank. “She sort of hypnotized him, you mean?”

  “No, but she didn’t care. She didn’t much care what happened. That was the way of it. And the unexpected happened. The wolf loved her because she wasn’t afraid of him.”

  Cobalt took his face between his hands and rested his elbows on the edge of the table. How he stared at me. “The wolf never loved me,” he said then.

  “You know how it is with dumb beasts,” I said. “They’re apt to give you back exactly what they get from you.”

  He nodded at me, a mere jerk of the head. “I guess you score off me there. But she made the beast love her, eh? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. He stood between me and her bed. The longer I stayed, the worse he got. He would have jumped me in another moment. He seemed to have forgotten everything.”

  What had he forgotten? Why, the manhandling that Cobalt had given the brute when they fought it out there in the wilderness. The mystery of the girl’s accomplishment seemed to interest him more than the actual meeting with Sylvia herself.

  Then he repeated: “You don’t know what her methods are?”

  “Just fearlessness,” I said.

  Cobalt laughed in a very odd way. “Maybe she’ll tame me one of these days.”

  “Well, maybe she will,” I said.

  He gave me an ugly look, his upper lip lifting at one corner in a way I shall never forget. One doesn’t expect to see such an expression, not in the face of a man.

  “Let it go at that!” said Cobalt, leaning back in his chair suddenly. He glanced about then remarked: “I know that there are some people watching me here in Skagway.” He turned to Baird. “Have you put somebody on my trail?”

  I did not know at that time what had passed between Soapy Jones and Baird. Therefore I was surprised when Baird changed color.

  “Would that be out of the way?” Baird spoke, frankly enough.

  “No,” replied Cobalt, “but I’ll have a look at that lad over there.” He got up from the table and turned his back on us.

  XXIV. THE RAWHIDE KID

  HE WENT STRAIGHT toward a young fellow who was seated in a chair tilted back against the wall, quite close to us. In one glance I read him to be one of the Soapy Jones’s men. I cannot tell exactly why I was sure of this. It may have been because Cobalt already had mentioned that he was being followed. It may have been simply the look of the boy, for he was hardly more than that, nineteen or twenty, lean as a greyhound, strong as rawhide. He seemed very slender, but the size of his neck showed his real strength. When Cobalt came before him, we could hear perfectly what they said to each other. Cobalt spoke first.

  “I didn’t get your name, friend.”

  The other looked up at him as fresh as salt. “I never seen you before,” he said.

  “Is that so? Then it was your ghost that’s been following me around Skagway.”

  “I never follow anybody. I show the way, old-timer, and don’t you forget it.”

  “I’m not going to forget you easily, but I’m going to try to put you out of my mind.”

  “How will you go about the putting?” asked the lad.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Cobalt reached for him. At this gesture the boy moved as light moves when it twinkles on the face of a mirror. All in a flash he was on his feet and in the same instant a gun winked in his hand, a gun which was polished with use and good care so that it shone like something trans
lucent. You could tell that the lad did his thinking, not pen in hand, but gun in hand, so quick was that draw. But as the gun came out, Cobalt reached the wrist of the gun arm and his grip froze on it. The boy smashed the other fist into Cobalt’s face and tried to hit him again, but Cobalt picked the second drive out of the air and held the fist fast. It looked as though the boy had struck a wall of iron. There they stood, the lad cursing, his face contorted with pain, and Cobalt smiling at him gently. Their faces were only inches apart.

  “Skagway is getting introduced to Cobalt,” I told Baird.

  He looked very grave. “Cobalt will be a dead man inside twenty-four hours!” he predicted.

  I paid little attention to that remark at the time. It seemed to me to come rather out of Baird’s wish than any possibility. Cobalt stepped back to the table, bringing the boy with him. He held the gun hand of the lad over the top of the table and squeezed the heavy Colt revolver out of his grasp. It was not surprising that the gun fell. Blood fell with it. With my own eyes I saw a thin spurt spring out from under a fingernail of the youngster. His white, writhing face was too much for me.

  I sprang up and clapped Cobalt on the shoulder. “Cobalt, hadn’t you better let him go? He’s done no harm!”

  Cobalt turned his head slowly until he could look at me and there, for the first time, I saw the thing that had frozen so many hearts. I saw the mask of Cobalt fighting, a mask of ice and fire, and it sickened me. I slumped back into my chair as though he had struck me. All he said was: “That gun was meant for me. Murder was all this lad meant. Isn’t that enough?” It was enough. In the meantime we had the eye of the crowd. All heads were turned our way. I saw Jess Fair, behind the bar, watching with a curious detachment.

  “Keep a good hold on the Rawhide Kid,” said one of the men nearest to us. “When you let go of him, he’ll sting you sure.”

  “This Rawhide Kid will never sting again,” said Cobalt gently. “His nettles are all gone.”

  I thought the Rawhide Kid was about to faint. Cobalt had shifted his grip so that he held him by both hands. I could judge of the pressure that was being exerted by the tremor of Cobalt’s forearms. He backed the boy into a corner. The big lad laid his shoulders against the wall and endured the punishment. He set his teeth in his lip. His eyes bulged a little.