by Max Brand
“What!”
“I mean it.”
“Get my money away from those men?”
“I’ll get your money for you, or I’ll die trying.”
That was enough. That old-timer thought of his hundred ounces, he told me afterward, and he thought of nothing else. He turned right around, and down the storm-swept street he went with Cobalt. They came to the door of Soapy’s place, pushed it open, and entered.
Of course it was packed. Weather like that would have sent people to any hole, for the sake of the warmth alone. Besides, as I have said before, the people of Skagway never got tired of gratifying their curiosity and showing their courage by going into Soapy’s den. I said it was packed. As a matter of fact the majority of the people were in the gaming rooms. The bar was not at all crowded. Jess Fair was not attending it. He was enjoying a rest, a thing he allowed himself for only a few hours every day. Men said that he loved nothing in life except to stand there behind the long bar, peddle the drinks, and look into the faces of the customers with his pale, expressionless eyes. It was another matter, after the new pair entered the big fellow and Cobalt. They got at a corner table with a couple of chairs, and there they sat.
“We’ll warm up a little before we start talking,” said Cobalt. “What’s your name?”
“Joe Porter.”
“All right, Joe. We’ll warm up a little, and then we’ll begin to argue with them.”
“If there’s any talk to be done,” said Joe Porter, “why shouldn’t we do it now, before the place gets crowded?”
“It’s crowded now.” Cobalt was cool as you please. “That fellow with the yellow face in the corner — that half-breed, or whatever he is — he’s one of the bouncers. He’s a crowd in himself, if I’m any judge of some of the bulges under his clothes. There’s another bouncer at the bar and two more beside the door. They’re all full of guns. Do you pack a gun yourself, brother?”
“I’ve got an old bull-nosed Forty-Four, but I ain’t much with it, and I don’t aim to use it unless I have to. Self-defense or something like that.”
“Well, seventeen hundred dollars is part of yourself. You’d be defending that.”
Joe Porter rubbed his knuckles through his beard. “Are you gonna make a fight out of this, Cobalt?”
“There may be a little fighting.”
“Then I dive for the floor,” said Porter. “I ain’t no hero. I’m for the safest place, and the floor’s the safest.”
Cobalt laughed. “You’re all right, Joe. I like a man who speaks his mind.”
“The crowd’s thickening up a good deal.” Poor Porter was not relishing his position a bit.
The word had gone instantly through the place that Cobalt was there and, of course, that was enough to bring people with a rush. They came swarming in from the gaming rooms. They thronged before the bar, and every one of them had his eye upon Cobalt and Cobalt’s rough-looking companion. I suppose that crowd was as hard a looking lot as ever gathered into one room.
“Do you see the fellow who rolled you?” asked Cobalt of his companion.
Porter took off his hat and rubbed his head. There was a great lump on the top of it, where he had been slugged. “Over there,” he said. “That fellow with the Stetson hat on, the pale-gray hat and the skinny face. He’s the one, I guess, that done it.”
“Are you only guessing?”
“Well, I had a drink or two on board.”
“We’ll try to find out,” stated Cobalt. “Hello, friend!” He signaled to the man in the Stetson, and the latter turned slowly toward the table.
He was a man of middle height with a wizened, evil face. I have seen him myself, and his hands, his mouth, the very whites of his eyes were tobacco- stained.
“Yes?” he said to Cobalt.
“Partner,” said Cobalt pleasantly, “sit down with us and have a drink, will you?”
The yellow-stained man hesitated a moment. I have often wondered whether fear or courage made him accept the invitation, since he must have seen Porter sitting there as big as life, ready to accuse him. But up he came and down he sat, signaling to a boy to bring on the drinks. They had a round of them. Cobalt turned his drink around and around. He did not taste it. The other turned down his glass in a moment.
He coughed. “The stuff’s wildfire!” he said.
“Yes. It gets into the brain, all right,” said Cobalt. “What’s your name, partner?”
“Name of Louis Trainor,” said the thug.
“Let me introduce a friend of mine. This is Joe Porter. Porter, Mister Louis Trainor.”
The two looked at one another without shaking hands.
“I guess we’ve met,” said Porter.
“I guess I’ve seen you somewhere,” said the thug.
“It wasn’t my hand you shook,” said Porter.
“No?”
“No, it was my head that you knocked on and my poke you entered,” said Porter.
Cobalt laughed. The thug followed his lead and laughed in turn. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he explained to Cobalt.
“That’s a pity,” said Cobalt. “Maybe your pockets will remember, though.”
“What?” asked Louis Trainor.
“Maybe your pockets will remember,” said Cobalt again. “Turn them out and let’s see what’s in them.”
Louis Trainor was not a fool, and he was not a coward. His hands twitched once, and then they remained still on the edge of the table. His eye shrank from the steady gaze of Cobalt and wandered, first to the right and then to the left with significant glances.
“You help him,” Cobalt said to Porter. “You see that he is feeling pretty tired and doesn’t want to budge his hands from the edge of the table. One would think that he even felt it was dangerous to move those hands. So you just dip into his pockets for him, will you?” Porter, grinning, half frightened, surveyed the crowd around them. Everyone was interested, but no one seemed inclined to interfere. The whole thing had been so soft-voiced that no one of the spectators could be actually sure of what was taking place. But they began to suspect when they saw Porter go through the pockets and up the sleeves of Trainor. He pulled out of them a queer heap of things.
From a breast pocket of the coat he took a handkerchief with a moistened corner and a red-and-blue chemical crayon for marking cards. From a side coat pocket he took a slingshot with an elastic wristband. From the belt of Louis Trainor he removed two knives, one a regular Bowie, the other a slender sailor’s dirk. He also got from Trainor a deck of cards, probably already prepared to be slipped in the place of an honest deck. He took out a good revolver, .32 caliber. Trainor, in his shooting, apparently did not wish to strike heavy blows but deadly ones. Porter found, finally, a gold belt strapped about the waist of the thug. In it there was a considerable quantity of dust. Cobalt weighed it with his hand.
“About forty ounces in this,” he said. “Where’s the other sixty, Trainor? Did the house take all that for a commission, or did you split a part of it with your pals?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Trainor.
He looked wildly about him and savagely. The crowd was half laughing and half growling. The pile of crooked implements on the table was a sufficient comment upon the character of Trainor, and even a complete thug has some scruples of conscience about seeing himself exposed.
“You go up and invite me to sit down here,” said Trainor, “and you order up drinks, and then—”
“And then I take a look at you,” said Cobalt, “and I think your lining will be more interesting than your exterior. I seem to be right.”
“I’ll get your—”
“If you stir those hands,” said Cobalt, almost under his breath, “I’ll take you and break you in two. Now listen to me. I want to learn what you did with the other sixty ounces. You got those forty from this fellow, didn’t you? You’re the one who rapped him over the head and rolled him for his wad, aren’t you?”
He was so quiet that Train
or looked at him twice before he understood that there was a tiger, and not a man, sitting there before him at the table.
He moistened his stained lips, and then he said: “I rapped him. I wish I’d smashed his skull in for him. I slugged the fool, and I rolled him. And—” He hesitated, and then he went on, seeing the danger in Cobalt’s face: “I got twenty ounces. Twenty went to my side-kicker. Sixty went to the house. It’s a hog.”
XXXV. A SHOWDOWN IN SIGHT
“WE’LL TAKE THE forty ounces for security,” said Cobalt, after he had heard the confession of the yegg. “We’ll back the house for the rest. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”
Trainor said nothing for the good reason that there was nothing to say. He got up suddenly and walked off into the crowd, leaving his crooked implements behind him on the table. Men sneered at him and shouldered him as he passed, for his villainy had been too clearly exposed. He would never again be a useful member of any gaming house in the Northland.
He pressed through, regardless of the looks and hard words that he got from all sides. In the farthest corner he found a bouncer and said to him: “What’s your job? To stand around and watch holdups in the shop?”
“You dirty crook,” said the bouncer pleasantly, “I wish that I’d had the picking of your pockets myself. What do I care what happens to you in this shop? It’s happening to you and not to the shop. It’s just another act to keep the show running good and smooth. Don’t stick out your jaw at me, or I’ll bust it for you.”
“You know that chief wants us to pull together,” Trainor reminded him.
“The best thing that the chief could do,” replied the bouncer, “would be to slam you out into the street. You’re no good. You’re a spoiled egg in this house from now on.”
Trainor regarded him wickedly but seemed to see that there was something of truth in what he had heard. Therefore he walked on. He tried another bouncer with the same results.
Finally he saw that there was nothing to be gained directly from others. He said to a third of these fighting men: “Bill, lemme have the loan of a gun, will you?”
“So you can use it, or so you can hock it?” queried Bill.
“So I can use it.”
“Well, all right,” agreed Bill. “It ain’t natural for me to keep a man out of a fight if I see a good way of getting him into it. Here’s a gat. Go and use it, but use it good. That gun has told the truth to four men in its day.”
“I’ll use it like an angel, and no mistake,” swore Trainor, and he turned to make good his promise.
He was the cornered rat now ready to show his teeth but, as he turned toward the table at which big Joe Porter and Cobalt had been sitting, other things were happening in the room. I have often wondered and often asked how it was that Cobalt was able to sit in that room so long before an attack was made upon him? I have often asked, but the answer was always a mere conjecture. Probably, in a case of such importance, the bouncers wanted an order directly from Soapy or from his lieutenant, Jess Fair.
As soon as Trainor left the table, Cobalt singled out a lanky fellow with a sour, dignified look. You could not tell whether his pride was mostly his nature or simply a stiff neck. Cobalt called him over, and the fellow came suspiciously. He was not one to let himself be trapped, as Trainor had been trapped, by getting within the reach of those famous and terrible hands of Cobalt.
Instead, he paused at a little distance. The crowd gave back suddenly to a good distance. For this looked like a gun play. They got so completely out of the way that Cobalt could talk to this ruffian without much danger of being over-heard.
“You’re Booze Gabriel, aren’t you?” asked Cobalt.
“Yeah. There’s some that call me that.”
“You’re the finest fighting man that Soapy has, they tell me. The finest fighting man in Skagway. Is that right?”
“Are you aiming to kid me? D’you think that I rate myself along with Jess Fair?”
“Oh, Jess is in a class all by himself,” conceded Cobalt with a wave of his hand, indicating the exception. “I was meaning among the regular run. They tell me that you’re one of the best.”
“I ain’t here to brag,” said Booze Gabriel. “What are you driving at, Cobalt? Is it me that you want to break up next?”
What a curious thing it must have been to see Cobalt there in that saloon surrounded by enough guns to blow him off the earth and out of all recognition. Yet he could pick a man out of the crowd and make even the hired ruffians come to his call.
“Will you sit down and liquor with us?” invited Cobalt.
“No. This is my day for standing,” countered Gabriel with a grand, stretching grin that suddenly made him look like a wolf. “I ain’t sitting down today.”
“All right,” nodded Cobalt, “maybe you can make a better speech standing up. A lot of the greatest orators like to be standing, I suppose.”
“What kind of a speech am I going to make?”
“You’re going to tell me what’s what about Soapy Jones.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” drawled Gabriel.
“You are,” went on Cobalt. “I’ve heard a lot of rot about him, since I came to Skagway. A lot of people say that you boys throw in with him partly because you’re afraid to stay out and partly because of the money that you make working for him.”
“And what’s your idea about that?” asked Booze, cautiously trying out his man.
“My idea is that you all know down in your boots that Soapy is one man in a million.”
“You’re right. He’s one man in ten million,” agreed Booze Gabriel emphatically.
“That’s why you stay on with him. Thuggery isn’t all the truth about him. What is the truth, Booze?”
“Why, this here talk is takin’ a kind of a strange turn, where I would like to say that Soapy Jones ain’t wearin’ his right moniker. I ain’t tellin’ nothing. I’m only saying that Soapy ain’t wearin’ the true moniker that belongs to him.”
“Of course, he’s not,” agreed Cobalt. “He wouldn’t hurt his family. He wouldn’t drag them down by letting the weight of his reputation fall on their necks.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” Booze Gabriel straightened a little. “The fact is that Soapy’s a gentleman and don’t you make no mistake.”
“That’s not the mistake that I’m making.” Suddenly Cobalt laughed. The whole crowd could hear him say: “Great Scott, Booze, would I be here if I didn’t know that Soapy’s a gentleman?”
That was a poser for them. They looked at Cobalt then at one another. Soapy Jones, a gentleman? That was a new conception, to be sure. Cobalt went on developing his theme: “The fact is, Booze, that a gentleman once is a gentleman always. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“You bet it’s the point,” said Booze Gabriel. “And I’ve known Soapy—” He stopped himself.
“All right,” said Cobalt, “you’ve known him for years, haven’t you? And you’ve always known what he is at heart. That’s why you’re with him. Am I right?”
“Of course, you’re right!”
“And that’s why I’m sitting here in his saloon,” Cobalt asserted. “Because I trust him.”
That was about as odd a speech as ever was heard in Skagway. It stunned the crowd that listened. A stir and a murmur passed though the listeners, hearing, as they thought, that Cobalt was making overtures to the master criminal of the town. For I think that most of the law-abiding men had begun to hope that Cobalt, out of the greatness of his strength, might provide the rock on which Soapy was at last to split.
“You’re here because you trust him,” echoed Booze Gabriel, not comprehending at all.
“Of course, I am. It’s because I know a gentleman’s reactions. He may tap a few fools on the head, here and there — not referring to you, Porter — and he may slip a knife into somebody’s gizzard from time to time. He may mark a card, and he may put a brake on a roulette wheel. But his instincts are right when it comes to a pinch. So I came in here with my friend
, Porter. I want to talk to Mister Jones. I know he will realize that the time has come for him to step out in person. Another day he might send one of his agents, to speak to another man. But the time has come when I have to see him face to face, and he has to see me. We both know it.”
He pointed. People suddenly turned their heads toward the farther doorway, expecting something to appear at once. “I know,” Cobalt resumed, “that he won’t even come into the room behind me. He’ll come through that doorway, so that we can face one another as gentlemen should.”
Booze Gabriel straightened even more, and his color brightened as well. I believe it was a fact that he had long been devoted to Soapy. He was the same as others of the gang like Jess Fair who had followed Soapy for years with a strange fascination. “I’ll tell you what,” Gabriel assured Cobalt, “my boss will meet anyone, any time, on his own level. Are you asking to meet Soapy now?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Cobalt stated.
“All right,” said Gabriel. “I’m gonna go and tell him so.” He turned on his heel briskly, smartly like a soldier, and marched out of the room, the crowd making way for him.
Joe Porter said softly: “You ain’t gonna do it, Cobalt?”
“No? Why not?”
“If you do, you’re a dead man.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re dead on two counts. One is that Soapy himself is a regular wizard with guns. They say that he’s as slick, almost, as Jess Fair when it comes to pulling a Colt and using it, front end or back. And the second count is, even if you drop Soapy, his boys will load you full of lead afterward. You can’t get past those two counts.”
“Perhaps I can’t, but I’m going to try.”
“You ain’t. You’re going to get out of here, and you’re going to get quick!”
Cobalt merely smiled at him.
“You’re a dead man otherwise.” Porter repeated. “I’ll have you on my conscience all the rest of my days.”
“I’m nothing to have on your conscience. If I live, or if I die, there’s nothing much to have on your conscience, Porter. Life’s not a song to me. The taste has gone from it.”