Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  Porter argued no longer. He sank back in his chair and sat there, rigidly waiting. When he looked around the room, he saw that everybody else in the place was waiting in the same manner and that all realized, like him, that the showdown between Cobalt and Soapy Jones was about to follow.

  XXXVI. A NECKTIE PARTY

  WHAT DID OCCUR at this particular point was a blank for many years. It was never filled in until a party of Wyoming cowpunchers got on the trail of a man suspected of being a horse thief. Wyoming men ride hard. They don’t fear dim trails, and they don’t spare their mounts. So they caught that fellow on the second day of the ride, up near the state border, and they examined him under the shade of a spruce. The examination did not last long, for he was riding on a good gray mare which belonged to one of the members of the party. He was a horse thief and, when he was pressed, admitted that he had “borrowed” the mare. Horse thieves are not popular anywhere in the West but, it is said, they are least of all popular in Wyoming. At any rate the thief in this case was told to commend his soul to the infinite mercy of a better world, for he was about to be started toward it within the next few seconds.

  At this it is said that he merely blinked once or twice and then admitted the justice of the sentence. He even said that he had once helped at the execution of a horse thief himself. Having thus opened the conversation, while they were preparing the rope and going through other formalities, such as the selection of a limb, the posse talked with their condemned man and asked his name. He said that his name was Gabriel, and that most people called him Booze. At this, one of those present cried out that he had seen this fellow before on a certain day in the saloon of Soapy Jones in Skagway, and that he had always wondered how Soapy had been worked on to come out to the fight that followed instead of simply sending a few of his henchmen to murder Cobalt.

  “I’ll tell you about that,” said Booze Gabriel. “I’ll tell it to you short, and I’ll tell it to you true.”

  The leader of the posse sat down on a rock and laid the noosed rope aside.

  “Go on, Booze,” he said. “The better you tell it, the higher we’ll hoist you, and the quicker you’ll finish. We’ll snuff you out just like a shot.”

  “That’s good,” said Booze, “because it’s not the dying but the choking that kind of bothers me.” Then he proceeded with his story as follows:

  When he left the barroom, he went straight back to the office of his chief, but there was no answer to the code rap which he gave upon the door. This did not trouble him, since Soapy was often out of the place. Then he went upstairs and tried Soapy’s bedroom door. After he had knocked twice here, using the same code tap, he heard the creak of a bed, and Soapy presently unbarred the door to him. His face was puffed, and his eyes were wrinkled with sleep, which he began to rub out of them as he asked Booze, with several oaths, what the matter was.

  “Soapy,” answered Gabriel, “there’s a gentleman downstairs asking for Mister Jones.”

  Soapy laughed in his face. “For ‘Mister’ Jones he’s asking, is he?”

  “Yes, that’s the word.”

  “And who is he?”

  “Cobalt.”

  Soapy got him by the arm and jerked him into the room. Gabriel said that the face of his chief was twisted into knots. “You’re lying to me. No man and no demon would dare to come back into my place after what he’s done to me, not even Cobalt!”

  “Cobalt’s not a fool, and yet Cobalt’s down there,” insisted Gabriel.

  “If Cobalt’s down there, then he’s a fool.”

  “Not a fool,” objected Gabriel, “because he knows that he’s as safe there as he would be in his own house.”

  Soapy only stared at him. Then, retreating to a table in the corner of his room, he lighted the lamp and held it above his head so that, in a brighter light, he could look at Booze.

  “No, I’m not drunk,” said Gabriel. “I’m cold sober. Thank goodness for it! I can tell you that the time’s come, and you’ll have to believe me.”

  “The time has come for what? If the cur is down there, the time has come to rouse up some of the boys and send Jess along with them. It’s Cobalt’s last day.” Soapy ended up this speech by roundly cursing Cobalt, but he found that Booze Gabriel was only smiling. “What’s the matter with you? I think that you’re half out of your wits today.”

  “No, I’m not out of my wits, but you’ve got to go down there and face him man to man, single-handed, like one gentleman faces another.”

  “Hold on! As one gentleman faces another? Is that what you said?” Then he began to laugh.

  At this moment Booze simply quoted a better man than himself — Cobalt. “Once a gentleman, always a gentleman.”

  “What?” cried Soapy. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know right well what I mean. And I know, too, that nothin’ that a man does can rub out his blood. There’s right blood in you, Soapy, and you know it.”

  Soapy Jones actually smoothed his long curling beard and stared at the floor, silenced.

  Booze went on: “I’ll tell you, Soapy, that what you’re thinkin’ of right now is the Negroes singing in the cotton field, the hounds baying the ‘possum of a night, and the look of the bayou with the swans slidin’ across it, their white shadows beside them. That’s what you’re thinkin’ of, and of pictures hung along a wall in a big white house with columns in front of it.”

  “Ah!” said Soapy Jones through his teeth. “What if I am?”

  “Only I was recollecting you. Cobalt, down there, he knows mighty well what kind of a man you are under the skin. He’s guessed what there is that makes me and Jess love you, Soapy. And that’s why he’s as safe as if he was in his own house, until you come down there and face him yourself.”

  Soapy looked at his follower patiently, thoughtfully. Then he said: “I think you’re right, Gabriel. The day’s come. I’m going down to do as he asks. Only I feel that my luck has run out, and I’m as dry as a squeezed lemon. Here, man, you give me a hand with my clothes, will you?”

  Booze Gabriel stayed there and helped his chief to dress. He felt no shame in this menial employment. Instead he spoke with pleasure and with pride about the clean linen of his chief, the silken socks which he drew on, and the fine quality of the suit with its long-tailed coat. He spoke of how Soapy shrugged his heavy shoulders until the coat sat on him in exactly the way he chose to have it and how critically Soapy regarded himself from every angle in his mirror, and then got Booze Gabriel to give his boots another rub.

  “What boots they were!” said Gabriel, “as soft as velvet and as bright as moonlight in water.” Then Soapy drew on gloves of a fabric so light and thin and soft that they did not in the least impede the freedom of the fingers. He pulled both of them on but on second thought, just as he was about to leave the room, he drew off the one from the right hand and carried it in his left.

  Next, he took from a doorway a short-bodied revolver of a make which Booze Gabriel did not know, although he knew that it was his master’s favorite weapon. This gun he unloaded and loaded again, after he was sure that it was in perfect order. Finally, he fixed a spring holster under the pit of his left arm and placed the gun in this. Having done so, he made two or three turns through his room, drawing the gun like a flash and then returning it to its hiding place.

  He washed his hands. He gloved his left hand again and carried the other glove in the same hand. Then he took down from a bureau drawer a handkerchief of the finest linen, folded it precisely, and thrust it into his outer breast coat pocket. He allowed just a trim corner of it to appear above the lip of the pocket.

  “Look at me, Booze, and tell me how I seem.” He stood up for inspection.

  “There ain’t a breath of dust on you,” said Gabriel, “and you look like the walkin’ image of the old major himself.”

  At this Soapy turned on him, cursed him, and called him a rotten fool.

  “But he did look like the major,” Booze Gabriel told his listene
rs in the posse as they sat that day under the shade of the spruce tree. “He looked as like him as two peas out of the same pod, except that the major had a pile more stomach on him and not quite so muscular in the shoulders, if you foller me. But that was the way that Soapy was dressed when he left his room and marched down toward the saloon with me behind him.”

  “What happened then?” asked one of the posse.

  Booze grew suddenly dark of brow. “You know what happened. And it ain’t for me to tell you what happened. Get your rope ready.”

  After his talk some of the men found their blood cooler, and they would have left the rope behind them and taken Booze into town for a regular trial and legal punishment. But the leader of the posse declared that he was sure Booze didn’t much care what happened to him, and that it would cost the county a lot of useless extra expense.

  With both of these points Booze at once agreed and made no protest whatever. So they asked him for his last wishes, his last message, and his last prayer.

  “I got one message for Satan, and one prayer to him, and one wish. The message and the prayer and the wish is for one of the shady spots in Hades. Good bye, boys!”

  He stood up on the back of his stolen mare. They led it out from under him. He dropped heavily until his toes actually touched the dust. Mercifully, the shock snapped the spinal column, and poor Booze Gabriel died as quickly as though a bullet had passed through his brain. Thus the posse redeemed its promise, having heard the strange story of how Booze persuaded Soapy Jones to descend from his room and meet Cobalt on equal terms in a duel.

  XXXVII. THEY MEET

  WHEN I THINK of what happened in that room, I groan, remembering that I was not present. But, again, I assure you that I have heard the story so many times, from so many points of view, that sometimes I forget that I was not actually inside the doors. The whole scene is so vividly spread before my eyes.

  Red Loftus, Champ Evens, and Harry Gay were tending bar at this time, and they had to work like fury to keep the drinkers supplied with the red-eye. The clash of the glasses and the dull, bumping sound as a spun bottle went whirring down the bar and rocked into place mixed with the murmurs of the drinkers. The mirror behind the bar was spotted and blurred with the many faces that it reflected. It was a great business stroke, when that ingenious Soapy decided to place a mirror along the back of the bar. For it gave his place an air of elegance that almost amounted to decency.

  The suspense by this time had grown nerve-wracking. Joe Porter said afterward that every man in the place from time to time would mop his forehead or loosen his shirt collar a trifle. Joe’s own big, hairy hands were sweating profusely, but he said that Cobalt’s were cool enough apparently, and the face of Cobalt was perfectly calm also.

  The crowd understood this thing that was to come as perfectly as though it were a rehearsed performance. They left a long lane from one door leading directly toward the table at which Cobalt was sitting. That lane was astonishingly narrow as though everyone took it for granted that, when such men as Cobalt and the great Soapy Jones met, no bullets were likely to fly astray from the mark.

  Just then there came a strange interruption, a most unexpected thing. Trainor, who had been so thoroughly subdued before with his borrowed gun ready in his hand, now rushed to the front of the crowd and screamed hysterically at Cobalt: “You don’t have to wait for Soapy Jones. I’ll meet you now! I’ll take you down!”

  Cobalt did not stir a hand to reach his gun. He merely said: “Some of you take the fool away.”

  Imagine that in the saloon of Soapy Jones where the other fellow was a trusted crook. More amazing than the order was the fact that it was obeyed, not by mere members of the crowd but by a pair of Soapy’s own bouncers. They actually mastered Trainor, jerked the gun out of his hand and, taking him to the door of the saloon, hurled him into the mud and told him they would break his neck if he ever came back again.

  This brought loud applause, hand clapping, feet stamping, and yells of laughter from the crowd. There was a hasty round of drinks, and the atmosphere seemed to lighten at once. The incident could not be explained by Joe Porter, but I think that I understand it. Everyone was so bent on seeing the meeting between Cobalt and Soapy that practically no attention was paid to Trainor. He was not even exciting he was a mere nuisance.

  The remarkable thing to me is that Cobalt was able, so accurately, to see into the minds of the crowd. That drink was hardly down, and the bustle subdued into its former murmuring, when even that murmur died out. Through the doorway came, not Soapy Jones but the lofty, emaciated form of Booze Gabriel. He was dead white, his eyes glittering like the eyes of a drug fiend. He halted near the table of Cobalt.

  “Mister Jones is about to join you, sir,” he said.

  It sounds silly, but it was not silly, according to Joe Porter who said that he could feel an electrical prickling running up and down his scalp at this moment. Then Soapy himself stepped into the doorway and sauntered slowly toward Cobalt.

  Cobalt stood up. “Mister Jones, I believe.”

  “The same, sir,” replied Soapy. “Mister Cobalt, sir?”

  “Carney is my name, sir,” said Cobalt. It was the first time anyone in the North had heard the true name of the strong man. “James Carney,” repeated Cobalt.

  “Mister Carney,” Soapy said and bowed a little.

  “I have come in here, Mister Jones,” explained Cobalt, “to represent a friend of mine who has lost a little money in your gaming rooms.”

  “Is that why you have come?” asked Soapy. “But you must realize that games of chance are games of chance.”

  “Yes, even when there are brakes on the wheel. Of course, there’s always a chance, but as a matter of fact the game of chance that beat him was simply coming into your saloon. He was thumped over the head and thrown into the street. They took a hundred ounces from him.”

  “Are you a lawyer, Mister Carney?”

  “No.”

  “Then may I ask you what brings you to the support of Mister — your friend, yonder?”

  “A sense of decency and a liking for fair play.”

  “And just what can you do for him?”

  “I can persuade you to return him sixty ounces. I took forty away from one of the thieves.”

  “Persuasion,” philosophized Soapy Jones, “is a gentle art.”

  “It depends upon the kind that’s needed. I’ll tell you what, Mister Jones. It occurs to me that here I am, occupying a seat at one of your best tables and not spending much money. So perhaps you’ll see your way clear to paying down sixty ounces to Mister Porter, my friend here. Then I’ll promise you that I’ll walk out and leave you to better company.”

  “What could be better company?” asked Jones. “No, no, my dear sir, I wouldn’t dream of buying you out. You’re welcome to sit in that chair forever. A man so well known will draw trade for me. I would be glad to give you a bonus on the amount that you bring in for me above my average, if you’ll appear there every day.”

  I have always thought that this was a fairly clever way of turning the thing off. Joe Porter said that he began to yearn for something to happen, for this stiff verbal duel excited him almost to a madness of suspense.

  “I see that you’re a true Southerner,” observed Cobalt, “for you perfectly understand all forms of hospitality.”

  “Thank you, but really all that people complain about is that I am apt to entertain them a little too much.”

  “There is only one good way to entertain my friend, Porter, here.”

  “And what is that?” The chief appeared as pleased as he could be.

  “By giving him sixty ounces.”

  “I saw no theft,” replied that smooth fellow. I suppose that he got his nickname from some such source.

  “Do you see this?” asked Cobalt. He lifted the hat off Porter and showed the rising bump.

  “If you feel that there’s a cause for complaint, there is always the law.”

  It appeared
that Soapy Jones felt this last point with a peculiar force, for he actually bowed to Cobalt and then smiled at him. With his gloved left hand he parted his black beard and still smiled at him. Porter told me that this smiling of the arch-villain made a great impression on him. Suddenly he realized that even a scoundrel may be flattered and, if not flattered, he may be amused sufficiently to have his mind turned from his purpose.

  “A great many things are above the law,” continued Soapy Jones. “The law is made for those who go along the road, not for those who cut across country where there’s no need for traffic regulations. As for your friend, you ought to remember that even the fly has no right to complain to the spider, and yet the fly loses a good deal more than money.”

  “We claim sixty ounces, duly paid over,” said Cobalt. “If the money is not paid, we will appeal to the court.”

  “To what court?” asked Soapy with an evil grin.

  “The court of arms,” said Cobalt, as ceremonious as ever.

  Then, Porter said, Soapy gave one swift, malignant glance around him, as though he were regretting his fine first display. Now he would be neither civil nor courtly but simply put his heel on the stranger’s neck. However, that moment did not last very long. He was still half infuriated and half amused by the attitude of Cobalt.

  “A good fight,” he said, “will end almost any argument, so long as the fight lasts long enough and comes to a complete end.”

  “I agree with you,” said Cobalt. “That’s the sort of a fight I suggest.”

  “But, even if you win, you’re not out of the web.”

  “I take my chance.”

  “I’ll give you something better than a chance.” Soapy raised his gloved hand to draw attention. “Friends, Mister Carney and I have a few little differences of opinion, mostly it appears, about a big bohunk who claims he was rolled in my place. Perhaps there are some other things into the bargain, but let that go. We are going to have the matter out between ourselves, as gentlemen ought to do. We won’t crowd the law courts, and we won’t fatten the lawyers. I think it’s a good example that we’re setting.