by Max Brand
“Decided that he must die?” cried Baird. “Is Soapy trying to have Cobalt murdered?”
“I saw the thing tried today,” I told them. “It will be tried again.” I could not help adding: “They’ve got me in their black book also.”
Baird exclaimed again. He seemed very excited. “I’m going back to see Soapy,” he declared. “You’re coming with me.”
“Thanks,” I declined, “I’ll stay here and rest a while. You can go. But I prefer to stay here.”
“Sylvia,” said her father, “persuade him to go, will you?”
“Of course I’ll persuade him,” replied Sylvia. “Tommy, you run along. There’s a lot of drafts in this room, and you’ll catch your death of cold, if you stay on here.”
“There’s not enough kindness in you, Sylvia,” I said, “to warm the heart of a little fly-catching lizard. Come along, Baird. I’ll go with you!”
At the door I looked back at her, scowling. She showed no emotion. She was merely thoughtful and detached, watching me as though I were a mere machine. The attitude became her, with her head canted over upon one side. It became her so much that my heart was still aching a good deal when we got downstairs.
There the proprietor gave us a corner of his eye and immediately lost himself in his accounts again. This made me so angry that I lost control of my temper entirely. Sylvia had irritated me too much just before. Now I stepped over and tapped the brute of a proprietor on the shoulder. He raised his head with a jerk, but he lifted his eyes slowly.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m watching you, my friend, I’m watching you all the time.”
He looked me straight in the eye, sneering.
“You’ll need the help of your patron demon,” I told him, “if you interfere in my affairs, or in Baird’s affairs. And if you go near the girl, I’ll have your heart out. I’m holding you responsible for her safety. You hear?”
I thought he would jump over the desk to get at me, he was so swollen faced with fury, but he gradually settled back into the chair from which he had just risen. “Yeah, I hear,” was all he said.
I went out into the street, Baird asking me if I were not mad to talk like this, making such a foolish scene. I told him that I was tired. I was tired of the crime and the treacherous suggestions that filled the whole air of Skagway. He only answered, after a moment, that at least Sylvia was perfectly safe. Of course I agreed with him, but I was not so sure. Nothing that I can put down in words will give the true atmosphere of Skagway at that time. I really believe that it was a more dangerous cap than even those early murder nests, the Montana gold mines.
The wind had died down when we got into the street, and it was much colder. The snow that had fallen had collected, here and there, in ruts and depressions, crisp and grating under the heels.
I said to Baird: “Soapy is liable to have the pair of us knifed.”
“I’ve got to take the chance,” replied Baird. “That’s twice in half an hour that they’ve tried their hands with Cobalt. They’ll have the man dead before long. They’ll never try only one man against him. Not after what he’s done today.”
I agreed with that. We went on, but there never was a more nervous and unhappy fellow than I was when we entered the saloon. Baird asked for Soapy from my friend, the barkeep, and he looked at us with his bright, unfriendly smile before he would answer.
“You’ll find him back in the little room,” he told Baird. “You know the way. Let your friend stay here and have a drink on the house. Soapy never sees more than one man at a time.”
I only laughed. “Fair,” I said to the bartender, “I’d rather put in my own strychnine. I’d rather pour it in my own coffee than let you in on the job.”
The fellow was the coolest in the whole world. When I accused him of wanting to poison me, he merely laughed.
“I don’t use strychnine,” he said. “Matter of fact, I use something a lot swifter. You won’t have a drink?”
“No. I’m with Baird.”
We walked off but, as we turned away, I faced a small mirror at a side of the barroom. By chance it showed me the face of Jess Fair behind me, and I distinctly saw him make several movements with his head. At the same moment two or three fellows got up from a table in a corner of the room. One of them cursed loudly and swore that he would never try his luck at poker again. I was not surprised. I decided that Fair’s signals must have been intended for this table. What a lot they were, the three of them. They did not look like the dregs of humanity. They were not even as near human as that.
A sapient thing is vice. In their wrinkled eyes, in their foreheads, and about their mouths was the stamp of worldly wisdom. They all seemed to have the same blood. They looked like brothers, but this was only because they descended from the same fatherhood of crime.
“We’re followed, Baird,” I said. “We’re followed by fellows who would as soon brain us as take out a handkerchief.”
“Shut up!” demanded Baird. “We’re inside now, and we’ve got to try to fight it out.”
“We’ve got to try to fight it out, but I’m scared almost stiff right now.”
“So am I,” confessed Baird, “but let’s keep walking.”
Our terror thawed a little by action of this sort, and so we came to the door of the small closet where Baird had been interviewed previously by the great Soapy Jones. First Baird rapped at the door.
“It’s sound-proof,” said one of the three, passing with a leering look of contempt.
“It ain’t fool-proof, though,” remarked another wag.
The three of them laughed, nodding their heads at one another. Then the door opened, and Soapy Jones was inside, looking out at us and smiling.
“Hello, Baird,” he said. His smile went out as his glance fell on me. “I’m mighty glad to see you both. Come in, boys, come in.”
Baird went in first, and I trailed after. The place was so odd. I never had seen anything like it.
“Not a sound goes through these walls, and not a sound enters,” remarked Soapy Jones. “So you can explain the mystery, Chalmers, of your return to my place.”
“No mystery at all,” I said.
“Tut, tut, no mystery? You’ll find it mysterious enough.”
“Shall I?” I asked, getting more frightened every moment.
The door opened behind me. I dared not turn, but I got an impression of a dozen men entering the room.
XXIX. SOAPY’S CABINET
MY OWN EYES would not have served me as well at that moment as the eyes of my friend, Baird, for he was facing me, and in his face I saw mirrored the danger which was coming on me from behind. I still wonder that I did not cry out, or leap to the side, or attempt to pull out the revolver which Cobalt had given me, but I was paralyzed. Hands suddenly gripped me by each arm. There was enough power in their grasp to have mastered ten people like me.
Then Baird got his voice and shouted: “Soapy, is this the result of your promises to me?”
“What promises have I made to you?” he asked coldly. “You never mentioned this sneaking fellow.” He pointed at me.
It was not pleasant to have Soapy scowl and sneer at me. His scowls and sneers were likely to possess a peculiar efficacy as all men knew. His gestures generally were quite as effective as axe or sword strokes.
“He’s with me, he’s my man,” said Baird frantically, as the others drew me back toward the door. “I owe him more than I owe any other man in the world. He’s been more a friend to me and to my daughter and—”
“What are your friends to me?” asked Soapy. He grew white. His face shone as if it were freshly covered with grease.
For my part I pitied poor Baird. The fury of the gangster was so intense that I felt that I was as good as dead. I was not even badly frightened. The horror which I felt of that black-bearded ogre was sufficient to make all other fears as nothing.
“My friends are nothing to you,” insisted Baird, “but you owe me something. You’re a man wh
o pays his debts of gratitude. You won’t let harm be done to poor Tom Chalmers?”
“Chalmers? Is that his name?” Soapy asked. “He looks like a cur to me. He has the hang-dog look. What use would he be to any man in the world? Why do you want him, Baird?”
“I want him — ,” began Baird.
At this moment there came three knocks in quick succession on the door of the little cabinet.
“Who’s there?” demanded Soapy. He did not wait for an answer but opened the door in person.
Framed in the opening appeared two men who supported a third man between them. The man was limp as a rag. His clothes were torn. His face looked as though it had been beaten with heavy clubs. I cannot describe the look of his features or the swollen, closed eyes. I thought he was dead, and so did Soapy apparently.
“Who is it?” he asked and added: “What do you fools mean by bringing a stiff here?”
“He’s alive,” said one of the two men. “We found him. It’s Blacksnake Loren.”
“Who jumped him? What gang did this?” demanded Soapy. “What in the hell is happening in Skagway?”
“No gang. Cobalt done it,” said one of the men.
“You lie,” insisted Soapy. “Blacksnake is a man-breaker. He’s been in the ring. He’s wrestled, too. No one man could do that to him unless he used a club!”
They said together: “We seen it!”
“What?” shouted Soapy. “You saw it, and you didn’t give Blacksnake a hand?”
“It happened kind of fast,” said one of the men sullenly. “I was taking him in front, and Buck here behind. Blacksnake, he jumped out of the doorway, and Cobalt sort of exploded. That’s all I know what to say. He exploded. He seemed to hit us all at once. I went down hard. Through a haze I seen that Buck was down, too, and poor Blacksnake, he was in the hands of Cobalt all by himself. First he struggled. Then he was just hanging like a rag out of those hands, and Cobalt dropped him into the mud and—”
“Get out of my sight,” breathed Soapy through his teeth.
They backed up. Soapy slammed the door again. If he had been angry before, he was almost hysterical now. Not that he shouted or pranced, but the fury showed in his rolling eyes and in the twitching of his lips, now and then, which gave him a most animal and frightful appearance.
Baird, I must say, was a fellow of a great courage. Even then he did not keep still, but went at Soapy vigorously. “There’s the man you promised not be hurt,” he stated, “and you’ve sent three of your best to murder him.”
“Murder him?” asked Soapy, beginning to pace up and down. He laughed a little, excess of passion making the noise bubble over at his lips. He resumed: “Three of my men were to take him without more than giving him a crack over the head, but I wish now that I’d had them poison him. I will. I’ll have them bump him off. There’s room for him with the sharks of the Pacific, maybe. There’s no room for him in Skagway!”
“I don’t think you’ll have him killed,” counseled Baird, always surprising me with his equable manner.
“Don’t you?” asked Soapy.
“No,” Baird replied. “There’s too much honor and decency in you. You’re not a fellow to break your word of honor which you’ve given to me.”
One of the men who was holding me broke into a loud, braying laughter. Soapy glanced at him, and the glance was enough. The fool cut off his laughter so suddenly that he almost choked. I heard him stifle and gag.
“I’ve made the promise, and I hope that I’ll keep it,” continued Soapy, “but I’ve never made a promise that has cost me more. You,” he barked at the men who held me, “get that trash out of the room!”
“And do what with him?” asked the one who held me.
“What do I care?” Soapy shrugged. “Just get him out of here.”
Baird exclaimed. He ran across the cabinet to get to me. He would have caught hold of me, I think, but they thrust him off, dragging me through the door, and hurried me almost at a run down a small corridor. My brain was whirling. I should not have been surprised if the final blow had fallen on me from behind at any moment. Then they took me up a short, narrow flight of steps, kicked open a door, and thrust me inside.
“Fan him,” said one of them.
They fanned me. They went through my clothes and took from me nothing but my gun and a smaller pocket knife. When they had finished with that, one of them said: “Are we gonna waste time over him?”
“What do you think?”
“I’d tap him on the head and see how much salt water he can drink.”
“I dunno. The chief didn’t say.”
“That’s because he didn’t care. He said that he didn’t care.”
There was this conversation about my life or death being carried on, and I was listening with the last hope gradually flickering out.
“If he don’t care,” said another, “suppose that we bleed him for what we can get.”
“He’s got nothing. He looks poor.”
“He’s from the inside. He must have something.”
“Soapy don’t like it when you bleed without orders.”
“I’d like to get somebody’s opinion.”
“My opinion is what I said before. Soak him between the eyes and see how far he’ll float on the tide.”
I stared about me at the room and the faces. The only window was shuttered. The place was as dark as night. One lantern burned on a small deal table which stood in the center of the compartment. In a corner there was a cot with a thin straw mattress but no bedding on top of it. I knew that the stuffing was straw because it stuck out in a bristling handful from one torn corner. Worse than all else the miserable room was dripping with moisture. There was a dark, shallow pool in one corner, with a limp piece of paper half sunk in it. Altogether it was as depressing a cell as I ever have seen.
“I’m not gonna stay here forever,” said one of the men.
“Let’s do something.”
“The gent that makes the wrong step for Soapy never gets a chance to make another.”
I blessed that thug for his cool common sense.
“There’s the door to Jess Fair’s room,” said one. “Jess, he’d know what to do with the bird.”
“Go on, Kid. You find out.”
“Yeah,” said the Kid, “the rest of you ain’t so keen to bother Jess, are you?” He sneered back over his shoulder at them as he went toward the door. What a face the Kid had! White, scowling, with puckered brows and ferociously flaring nostrils, there was still an element of debauched youth in him. He had big shoulders and a big, square jaw. He paused by the opposite door and knocked gently, almost reverently.
A quiet voice called out to enter, and the Kid opened the door. I looked straight into a room of about the same size as the one we were in, but it was arranged more pleasantly. There was at least covering on the cot. Quantities of spare clothes hung from pegs along the walls. A small stove burned in the center of the room and near the stove, propped back in a chair with his heels on the edge of the table, was Jess Fair, reading a magazine. He held it with one hand, the read page turned back inside the hollow of his palm. He looked across at us with a quiet indifference, as cool and smiling as when he stood behind the bar. He showed no surprise at the sight of me.
“Hello, Chalmers,” he said. “Poison might have been better at that, eh?”
“Yes,” I said frankly. “I think that it might.”
“Shut up, you,” snapped the Kid at me. “Hey, Jess, what’ll we do with this sap? Sock him or tie him?”
“What’s the order?” asked Jess, not even giving me a second glance.
“There wasn’t no particulars. Soapy said he didn’t care,” came the answer.
“Soaking him takes less time,” said Fair.
“That older guy, that friend of his, has he got a real pull with the chief?” asked the Kid, rather anxiously.
Jess Fair looked at the ceiling and yawned. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess he’s got a pull, all right.”
XXX. THE KID
IN THIS MANNER, by a casual speech, my life was undoubtedly saved. When I think back to it, I feel that this incident better illustrated the cruel callousness of Soapy’s gang than all their murders. To kill me or not to kill me was a mere matter of convenience. It was only extraordinary that they wasted so much time in debate and, I am sure, if the remark of Jess Fair had not turned the situation in my favor, someone of my precious guards would have ended the dispute by braining me on the spot. Not that Jess took any personal part in the question. He merely delivered the one opinion and then, turning his eyes back to his magazine, he recommenced his reading, saying in a drowsy murmur: “Shut the door, will you?”
They shut the door. I noticed that they closed it quietly, as if thus to show their respect, and this alone would have been enough to establish Jess as a person of importance.
When they had me again in the other room, the Kid said: “Tie his hands, and you birds slide. You find out something about him. Did he bring anything out of the inside? If he did, we’ll get it. Go on!”
They thought this idea was a masterpiece. They tied up my hands as he had directed, and I was allowed to sit on the bed. The Kid took his place on the table, dangling his legs. His head sagged forward and thrust out like the head of a great bird. His back sagged and bent forward. He made a cigarette out of brown wheat-straw papers and some tobacco in a sack. He lighted it, tucked it in a corner of his mouth, and spoke, the cigarette flopping rapidly up and down while he talked. It never was shifted from this post until it was burned to a butt.
“That’s likely to stick and take off some skin when you peel it away, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Aw, maybe it sticks sometimes,” said the Kid. “That don’t make no difference. That’s nothing. What was your lay before you come up North?”
“My lay? Oh, I was a common ‘puncher.”
“Was you? That’s no kind of a lay, is it?”
“It’s pretty hard work. It’s all right if you like it. Cows and horses, I mean, and plenty of roof over your head.”