Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “You mean sky? Eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I guess you never scrape off your hats ag’in’ that roof.” The Kid grinned a little at his own remark.

  “I’ve had a mustang buck me up to the rafters of that same little old sky,” I told him.

  He lost interest in this conversation and yawned, exhaling a quantity of thin, blue-brown smoke. Just then we heard Jess Fair cough, a light, barking sound in the next room. The Kid listened, canting his head to one side, instantly intrigued.

  “Listen to him,” he said.

  “It’s not a very good-sounding cough.”

  “He’s cooked,” and the Kid nodded in confirmation of his words. “He’s cooked, all right. You hear that?” He had lowered his voice, so that the sound of it might not reach the man on the farther side of the flimsy partition. “He just sets there. He can’t sleep.”

  “The cough keep him awake?”

  “The cough? Yeah. Maybe the cough, partly. He’s got something on his mind.”

  “Nothing seems to bother him a great deal.”

  “No. Because he’s cooked, and he knows it. That’s why he gives you the glassy eye. He knows that he’s cooked!” He laughed a little, inviting me to share in his amusement, but I could not laugh.

  “He knows he’s cooked. That’s why even Soapy is afraid of him. When you know you’re cooked, you don’t care about nothing. That’s the way with Jess Fair. That’s why he could go and get anybody, because he don’t care.”

  “I wonder if he could get Cobalt?”

  “Cobalt? Oh, that’s the strong boy from the inside. Sure, Jess could get him. Jess could get anybody. He always has.”

  “What’s Jess done?”

  The Kid jerked up his head and stared at me. “You think I’m a fool?” he snapped. “No, no, brother. I ain’t as simple as that. I don’t know nothing about him. Not a blooming thing. There was a bird up here from Tucson. He said he knew a lot about Jess. He comes in and hunches up to the bar, shakes hands, and calls Jess by his first name and old hoss. But he lost his memory the next day.”

  “He shut up, did he?”

  “Sure he shut up.” The Kid silently demonstrated by placing a forefinger between his eyes and moving the thumb as if on a trigger. “Yeah, he lost his memory. He didn’t have nothing left to remember with. But Jess is that way. He ain’t no historian. He hates history, matter of fact.”

  I left the subject of Jess Fair. “What was your lay, Kid?”

  “Me?” replied the Kid, puckering his white fleshy brows.

  “Aw, I dunno. I kind of floated around. I punched a cow or two myself,” he concluded cautiously, eyeing me.

  “Where was that?”

  “Oh, around here and there,” he said vaguely. Then he warmed up. “I’ll tell you what, if I’d had a chance, I would’ve stuck to it. I liked it. I had everything from pretty near blizzards to pretty near sunstrokes. But I liked it all. Horses like me, if you know what I mean. They take to me, and I take to them. There was a little ornery no-’count filly on a ranch that I raised on a bottle till she could take to hay and stuff. I raised her myself. They used to laugh at me. She’d foller me around. They called me the ‘old mare’ on that outfit. That little beast, I tell you what, she used to come and steal lump sugar out of my pocket. She never thought I knew. She was a little witch, that filly.” He laughed silently at the memory of that distant joy.

  “What did you call her?”

  “Her? I called her the Princess. That was what she was like. When spring came around, she lost her pot belly, and the way she stepped around, she looked like she could gallop on clouds. That was the kind of a look she had.”

  “What became of her?”

  He scowled at his knuckles. “Well, I moved on. That’s all.” He stared earnestly at me. “You know the way it is. The way some people are, they never forget nothing. They never give you a chance.” He sighed. “That little witch, she come into the bunkhouse after me one day. They was playing poker. She stood there and looked on, with the lantern reflected in both of her two eyes. She looked like she understood. I called her the Princess. That was what she was like!”

  I thought that I could see the slender filly with her eyes like two stars. I wondered if she might not have been able to bring the Kid back into a clean life. But now she was only a symbol of all that was true and beautiful from which the cruelty of justice had parted him.

  We fell silent, partly because the thoughts of the poor Kid were far away and, in part, because a strong wind had come up, battering and clattering away at the building, slamming doors, rattling shutters, and making conversation more or less difficult. So great was the force of the wind that the door to the room in which we sat oscillated violently back and forth, stopped, and slammed and shuddered noisily again.

  “You’ve had a rough time of it, Kid.”

  “Me? Aw, I don’t sob about it,” he said hastily, defending his manly spirit. “I don’t hang around and sob about it none.”

  The door opened. In the opening stood not one of the gangsters but Cobalt. He closed the door behind him, slamming it carelessly, as though the wind had accomplished the thing. The Kid was so thoroughly deceived that he did not even turn to look.

  I tried to think of something to say to get the attention of the Kid and keep it. But he chose this moment for yawning. Well, I knew that was the end for him. Up came Cobalt, tiptoe. The floor creaked under him at the last moment, and the Kid jerked his head around to be caught in Cobalt’s hands.

  Have you seen a cat strike its claws into a bird and seen the poor thing flutter and turn limp? Or have you seen a mountain lion strike a young deer and watch the deer fall? I have seen those things, and I thought of them as the terrible grip of Cobalt paralyzed the Kid with the first pressure. As though his fingers were talons, they seemed to drive into the boy. There was no question of resistance. Cobalt lifted him from the table. The Kid vaguely struggled with his arms and kicked with his legs. Then he was still. He did not even cry out. With hypnotized eyes he watched the face of the other.

  “What was it? Jujitsu?” he asked.

  Cobalt placed him on the cot beside me. He stuffed a wadded bandanna into the mouth of the boy and lashed it securely in place with a cord. He cut the rope from my hands and, with an addition to it from the twine which he carried, he trussed the Kid hand and foot.

  I leaned over the boy. “Can you breathe all right, Kid?”

  He jerked his head to signify that he could. He shook his head again, looking at Cobalt, as much as to say that no ordinary but a supernatural agency had taken him in hand. I almost agreed with him.

  Cobalt was already at the window shutter. He worked it open and told me to climb through. I told him to go first, but he took me under the pits of the arms and lowered me though the opening like a sack. My feet struck the ground, and the cold wind whistled about me. Cobalt jumped down at my side.

  At the same time we heard a door open inside the building, and the voice of Jess Fair was saying: “Hey, Kid, what’s the big idea of all the cold air?”

  We waited to hear no more but went hastily down the street.

  XXXI. A LITTLE SMASHING

  WHEN WE HAD gone a short distance down the street and saw that there was no sudden pursuit, I asked Cobalt how he had managed the thing. He said that he had seen me enter the place, doubted my safety there, and made a tour around the outside. Luckily he heard voices, mine among them, so he spotted the room where I was kept and entered by forcing a nearby window. As he described the thing, he made it seem the most natural and normal act. A thing to be expected of anyone. But I know that the house of Soapy Jones was a tower of dread to everyone in Skagway. Not another soul in the world, I verily believe, would have dared what Cobalt dared that day.

  It does not seem much compared with his final exploit in Skagway. It hardly seems to be a stepping stone to the tremendous achievement with which he staggered us all, and which I shall have to describe presently
. Yet his present exploit of entering the Soapy Jones place was alone enough to shock the whole of Skagway into attention, you may be sure.

  As we went down the street, the wind hurling us forward so that we had to lean back against it, we fairly stumbled into two other pedestrians who were going along with their heads down, bucking against the wind-driven sleet. It was the pair who, together with the Kid, had taken me in hand. I made a dive for one of them, shouting out to Cobalt. I think I should have had my hands full, for the fellow I tackled was a robust rascal but, when the two saw me, they were limp with astonishment. They did not even defend themselves. We got their guns from them without an effort.

  They kept saying: “Did Soapy do it? Did Soapy turn you loose?”

  “Cobalt pried me away from Soapy. That’s all,” I said. “And one day he’ll go back, take an hour off, and kick that whole shack to pieces.”

  “I almost think he will!” rasped one of the thugs. “If he’s got you away from Soapy, he can do anything.”

  We took them to the police. The thing was a perfect farce. The moment they found out that the two we had with us were accused of being employed by Soapy Jones, the police would have nothing to do with the case. I don’t think they were originally honest fellows whom he had corrupted. They were thugs themselves, members of Soapy’s gang wearing uniforms.

  They asked me what I had to prove what had happened to me and anything that had been done against me by the men who worked for Soapy. I showed them my wrists, which the ropes had chafed, and Cobalt told how he had found me sitting with my hands tied together and under guard in the dingy room. They merely shrugged their shoulders. The two crooks we had taken in with us began to feel at home and to make a loud, violent defense of themselves.

  I shall never forget the scene. The storm had covered Skagway with a twilight dimness. Two greasy lanterns flickered on the walls of the little room. By the stove sat one deputy, his feet wrapped in a quantity of sacking. At the desk was another, a desk spotted with many ink stains, though I don’t think that it was much used for writing purposes. The fellow at the desk had a protruding chin and a protruding forehead. When he smiled, he seemed embarrassed.

  When we saw that nothing could be done, Cobalt stood for a time with his eyes half closed, the old, familiar demon beginning to glisten in them. I knew that something was about to happen, as surely as when one sees the powder trail burning and the open powder cask to which the fired trail leads.

  The thugs and the crooked deputies were beginning to grin at one another and enjoy themselves when Cobalt said: “The whole pack of you are a lot of thieves and crooks. You’re all working for Soapy. I’ve known it for some minutes. But I’ll tell you what, boys, I’m going to give him a message. I’m going to give him a letter, and you can tell him how I punctuated it, and where I made the underlinings. It won’t be a long letter, but it will say something.”

  With that he leaned over and picked up the writing desk. The deputy behind it was knocked out of his chair and fell sprawling with a yell, while Cobalt poised that heavy mass above his head and hurled it at the stove. It knocked that stove to smithereens. It knocked over the second deputy as well, and it covered the floor of the shack with rolling coals and flaming brands of wood.

  What a screeching and a yelling went up from that pair. The thugs tried to get out, but Cobalt threw them back into the place and bolted the door from the outside. What a yelling that started then! They were sure that they were going to be burned alive, and I suggested the same thing to Cobalt.

  “Don’t make much difference,” he said, “but they won’t burn alive. They’ll be smoked meat before they get those embers out. They’ll be singed meat, too.”

  That they were. We stood across the street and heard the four screeching for help and battering at the wall of the shack for ten minutes. No one came to their aid. Well, that was Skagway in the palmy days of its youth.

  Finally they broke open, not the door, but a section of the wall of the shack. Three of them pitched out into the mud of the street and wallowed in it as if they loved the sty. Then one fellow got up and reeled into the thick white smoke that poured out of the shack. He came back dragging the fourth and last of the quartet, who had been overcome with the fumes.

  “There’s about half a man in that one,” commented Cobalt.

  I could agree with this, but a moment later the whole four spotted us, where we stood howling with laughter across the street. I thought they would go mad. They danced and raved and tore, and the two deputies started on the run to arrest us. The other thugs held them back. What they said to them did not take long, but it was enough. Those deputies stopped short, like dogs when they run out of a village to chase coyotes and find a wolf instead.

  Cobalt and I went on together unharmed, and I was very thankful to heaven and to Cobalt for the dangers he had put behind me this day. We went to the hotel, and there he turned in with me.

  “They’ve had time to think things over. It won’t hurt if I go in and talk to them a little now?” he suggested.

  I insisted that it was high time that he should do so, but I’m afraid that there was not much heartiness in my voice. When we walked in, the proprietor stared at us with open mouth. How much did he know? I never could tell. I could only guess that he was a complete scoundrel.

  “Out again, you see,” I said with mock cheerfulness to him.

  He did not reply. He gaped only wider, and his face grew more pouchy, I thought, as we walked by him.

  “He’s one of them, all right,” said Cobalt. “You’re in a snake’s den here.”

  I felt that we were, but how was it possible to get a better place in Skagway? I could hear the excited voice of Baird before we got to the room and, when we knocked on the door and he saw us standing there, it warmed my heart to hear the way he shouted out his pleasure and dragged me in, thumped me on the shoulder, and swore even then he had been mourning for me.

  “That fiend of a Soapy Jones hates you. He’s withdrawn all his promises. He swears that he’ll start with you and finish by making hash of Cobalt. Cobalt, why have you crossed him so often?”

  “Because he’s been in my way,” said Cobalt, and it was a characteristic answer.

  Sylvia was eating ham and hot cakes with plum jam, a frightful combination, but one gets peculiar hankerings after the diet on the inside. She had a great pot of steaming coffee beside her and a stack of pancakes a foot high. Now she stood up and told us to finish off for her.

  So we sat down. Up there in the North it seems as though everyone is always hungry. Food is as welcome a sight as bank notes in milder climates. Sylvia stood by, simply passing things to us. It was her father who did the questioning.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Where did they take you? Did Soapy change his mind at last?”

  “Cobalt pried me loose from Soapy’s gang,” I answered. “He came into the house, and he got me loose from them. He says it was simple.”

  We all took a turn looking at Cobalt, but his face was hidden behind a tilted mug of coffee. “They’ve got a lot of chicory in this coffee,” he commented. “Hand me another slab of those hot cakes, Sylvia.”

  He heaped his plate again. That furnace of his needed continual stoking.

  “You can’t pass it off like this, Cobalt,” said Baird. “It was a grand thing. I think that I’d rather knock at Satan’s gate than go near that place again. Soapy is a madman now. Some of his best men have been manhandled. You’ve done him a great deal of harm. His gang takes it to heart that they haven’t been sent on your trail from the first in numbers, not to take you but to murder you. That would be safer. They say that they might as well be sent to bait a grizzly bear. I think they’re right. I was a witness of a half riot that started in Soapy’s office, if that’s what one can call it. They want your blood, Cobalt, and my solemn advice to you, son, is to clear out of Skagway and get as far inside as you can, as fast as you can. There’s nothing but poison waiting for you here.”


  Cobalt nodded cheerfully at him. “Do you think I’ll back down? Not I! Not for fifty like Soapy. The bartender, though, is a different matter. I think if there were only two like him, I’d give him plenty of room. It’s good advice. It’s kind advice, Baird, but I’ll stay on here and try my hand with Soapy first.”

  When he had said this, he turned and looked deliberately at the girl. One could tell what he meant. It would be Soapy and the gang first. Afterward came Sylvia.

  XXXII. THE RIGHT CLUB

  I WAS SORRY that Cobalt had to ring in his unfortunate attitude toward Sylvia at the very moment when we were all looking up to him as a sort of demigod. Silence fell upon us, but out of the silence came something of the old sharp hostility. I could see the eyes of Sylvia turn bright and cold, and the jaw of her father was set.

  Sylvia went on serving until the edge of that vast appetite of his had been dulled. Then she said: “Make yourself a smoke, Cobalt?”

  He had no makings. So she took mine and manufactured a cigarette for him. I wondered why she had learned the rather difficult and delicate little art of making cigarettes when she herself never smoked them. At any rate she made the cigarette, presented it to him for moistening, finished it off, gave it into his hand, then lighted and held the match for him. As the first big exhalations of smoke went upward, she stood there beside him and looked down at him through the smoke.

  “Listen to me, Cobalt.”

  “Aye,” said Cobalt. “Now that you’ve soothed me, you can use the club on the poor beast.”

  She brushed the smoke apart a little with her hand. “I’m only going to tell you the truth, Cobalt.”

  “Let me hear it then.”

  “It’s this. It’s the reason why you won’t want me any longer.”

  “Go on,” he urged. He actually smiled at her.

  “It’s because I care for another man.”

  This struck me, I know, with a great shock. It seemed to strike her father also, hard enough to bring him out of his chair, but Cobalt merely shrugged his shoulders.