Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US

by Max Brand

  “We’ve got to find him!” she said. “He’s gone somewhere. We’ve got to find out where he’s gone. I’m going to find him if I have to crawl on my knees around the world!”

  We started making inquiries. It was a long, hard job. At the name of Cobalt everyone was willing to break out into exclamations and encomiums, but no one could give us any practical hints about where we could find him. That is, no one could for a long time. Then we came across the man who kept the rooming place where Cobalt had stayed, and he told us Cobalt had come straight home from the scene of the fight and had dressed his hand the proprietor holding two lanterns close to it in order to give him light for the work.

  “And the hand?” asked Sylvia in a breaking voice. “What had happened to it?”

  He looked down at her. “If you’re a friend of his,” he said, “well, I’ll leave a doctor or himself to do the telling of it. It ain’t a job I want.”

  I felt sick. Cobalt was ruined. Was the destruction of Soapy Jones worth it? No, not the destruction or the salvation of all of Skagway!

  “Where is Cobalt now?” asked Baird in a husky voice.

  “Oh, he’s gone,” said the man. “He hitched up his dogs quite a while ago, five big Huskies, and he hit for the inland trail. I asked him if he was going inside.”

  “What did he say?” cried Sylvia.

  “He said he was going inside and would never come out,” answered the man.

  XL. INLAND

  BAIRD EXPRESSED WHAT I’m ashamed to say was in my own mind. “He’s gone back to his own kind. That’s the place for him. He doesn’t belong out here! He’ll be happier inside.”

  I remember that the girl looked fixedly at me and said: “What do you think, Tommy?”

  What did I think? Well, it barely mattered, with her glance telling me I had better start thinking all over again, and at last I managed to say miserably: “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. They say his hand is gone.”

  “This is the point,” she said. “Why did he start inland again?”

  “Because he’s hankering after his kind,” said Baird. “That’s it, of course.”

  “What do you think?” Sylvia addressed me.

  The Lightning Warrior, who had been following her like a ghost, stepped forward, and she rested her head absently on his head. He glared at me with an undying hatred.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I suppose, perhaps, you had something to do with it, Sylvia.”

  “Then there’s only one thing for us,” she answered. “We’ve got to go after him. Do you agree?”

  “To go after him?” exclaimed Baird. “My dear, do you think we could ever catch up? Do you remember how he came up with us and passed like the wind when we were trying to beat him out with a huge head start and couldn’t manage it? What could we do now he has the start?”

  “You’re speaking of a time when he had two hands,” said Sylvia coldly. “Besides, his heart was up then. It’s down now, I imagine.”

  “You’re not serious, dear,” said her father. “You don’t mean we’ll actually chuck everything and go after him?”

  “Chuck everything? Chuck what?” asked Sylvia. “What are you? What’s Tommy? What am I, compared with Cobalt? We’re going after him. I’m going after him, at least, if I have to go to the North Pole!”

  That settled the thing on the spur of the moment. There was no argument, no discussion. Baird simply looked at me, and I looked back at him. Each of us gave up. I had a keen picture of her trekking alone through the wilderness. I knew she would do it, too, and so did her father.

  From that point on, we simply spoke of getting ready as soon as possible. Then there was the question about the trail he might have taken. It was Sylvia, again, who suggested that he might have gone around the point and started in from Dyea. While Baird was getting the dogs ready, along with the sleds and packs, I hurried down to the waterfront and there, after a time, I found a pair of Indians who had seen Cobalt. They had helped him paddle around the point. He had gone to Dyea, to shift the pursuit, in case anyone decided to go after him.

  I asked one of the Indians in broken English if the white man helped with the paddling. He said that he had, but he bad used his left hand only as the oarlock, driving from the heel of his right hand. He never shifted the paddle.

  “This hand no good!” said the Indian, and he grasped his right hand with his left.

  I went back to Sylvia and her father with the news, and we went down to the waterfront. There we got two good-size boats and made the trip around the point, though the water was kicking up a good deal, and we got pretty wet before we ever managed to make the other landing.

  We camped in Dyea. Plenty of people there knew about the smashing of Soapy Jones and his gang, and we were bombarded with questions, but no one seemed to have seen Cobalt go through. I wondered if he had dodged like a fox, merely landing in order to take fresh boating and double back to the point from which he had started? I would not have put it past him, and I wondered at his state of mind. Who could have wished to pursue him? He would not have dodged the vengeance of the Soapy Jones gang, not even with his right hand useless. Then what pursuit could he fear, except from Sylvia and us? And why should he fear that?

  The three of us never talked of Cobalt. We kept his name for the questions that must be asked of strangers, but I could guess that all of us felt and thought about the same way. In that time Sylvia never smiled, never laughed. She did not seem depressed, either; she was simply set like iron.

  After that one rest in Dyea, we started the march inland. The climb seemed worse than ever. We had to relay the packs to the top of course and, after that labor was completed, we skidded down the steep of the farther side. There we sorted and repacked the sleds, and we began to forge ahead.

  We had seven good dogs rather, we had seven not counting the white King. He stayed with Sylvia. Sometimes she went up to the lead and harnessed him as the first dog of the string, and then it seemed to me that we doubled our rate of travel. Sometimes she trailed behind with him, his great head always just under her hand and his pale, strange eyes fixed ahead like a thing that hungered to be farther north, as I suppose in all his blood he hungered.

  That was the worst march I had ever made. There was something depressing about turning back from the outside after we were safely there. My heart sank in my boots. There was something also about the quest which we were following. What would happen, what could happen, when we overtook Cobalt if we did?

  I think it was three days from the crest when we came upon the first outfit on the trail, a pair of partners who’d already quarreled and decided to split. Poor fellows, they walked about with the expression of sulky dogs and didn’t speak to each other. They were dividing their supplies. They had only one rifle, one axe, and one tent cloth. One took the handle of the axe. They smashed the rifle and threw it away. They cut the tent cloth exactly in two, and each took a part. They had two sleds and five dogs. Each of them took a sled and two dogs. They offered to sell us the extra dog, but we didn’t want it, so they butchered it instead of turning it loose. Each of them tried to prove that it was only the villainy of the other that was responsible for their break-up.

  We asked if they had seen an outfit that might have been Cobalt’s. They were very polite. One of them, a big Swede with a mouth large enough to swallow a veal pie at a gulp, said he thought he’d seen an outfit go by, just as they were getting ready for their start the day before five dogs, one man, and two sleds. The man walked with an easy rise in his step. It might have been Cobalt.

  That cinched the matter for all three of us. That springing step we all remembered keenly enough, and from that moment we pushed ahead, assured we were traveling in the right direction. An odd group we made. Baird and I agonized throughout that march, but Sylvia scorned delays, and we pushed ahead with speed for her sake. Or was it so much for her sake as because her stronger spirit had mastered ours and forced us on?

  At the end of the next
march, when we were making camp, a chill, misty, unseasonable rain began to fall. I was out at a little distance from the camp foraging for wood of a size that would make decent cutting. As I came to the edge of the heavy brush, with a clear swale of shining snow before me, I saw a four-dog outfit go by. It was pulling one sled, and the man with it was out ahead breaking trail.

  He was a smallish figure, hardly larger than a boy. He walked like a snowshoe expert, however, with short, rapid, tireless steps. And he made exceedingly good time. I did not step out to greet him, I hardly know why. Perhaps it was because I’d gathered my firewood and was about to turn back to the camp. At any rate there I stood, almost entirely screened by the brush. As I waited, the driver drew nearer and nearer, never altering his pace, never changing his quick, untiring step. I admired him. I was about to shout out a greeting and a congratulation to him, when he turned his face a little and I recognized him. It was the buck-toothed smile of Jess Fair.

  The moment I spotted him, you can be sure I choked back my greeting. I only wished for a thicker screen of shrubbery between me and the other fellow. There I stood, forgetting the freezing of my feet, while he tracked on and on and gradually the misty rain closed in and shut his retreating figure from view. A welcome riddance!

  But, on my way back to camp, my thoughts were not pleasant, I can assure you. I knew that Jess Fair had loved Soapy Jones. It seemed to me that I could follow the train of his thoughts. First, he had delayed long enough to see the cremation of his strange master. Then he had gone on the trail of his destroyer.

  Well, he was ahead of us, and what would happen if he came up with Cobalt first Cobalt with only one hand and that hand his left? It was not the mere matter of strength. If Cobalt ever got to grips with him, that terrible left hand alone would be enough to settle the business in a few seconds, but he would never get to grips with Jess Fair. The fight would be from a distance, where guns would settle it. What chance would Cobalt have, great as he was, great even with a single hand? No, he would have no chance at all.

  I trudged back to camp in low spirits, I can tell you, and Baird said to me: “Well, I thought you’d likely bring in some venison as well as the wood. You’ve been gone long enough to stalk a deer.”

  I threw down the wood and said: “Baird, we’ll have to break camp. I’ve seen something more than a deer, and it’s on our trail, heading us.”

  “What have you seen?” asked Sylvia, coming toward me slowly, staring.

  “I’ve seen Jess Fair with four dogs, traveling fast. And he’s headed us already.”

  Baird exclaimed and struck a hand against his forehead. “Fate itself is against us,” he said.

  “There’s no fate,” said Sylvia, in a strange, rapid monotone. “It’s too far north for fate to bother. We’ve got to break camp, Daddy. Hurry, hurry! We’ve got to make a double march this time!”

  XLI. FATIGUE

  THERE ARE TWO kinds of weariness. There is that which the body feels and which the mind submits to willingly, the kind a man feels grateful for when he’s in bed and knows he will not have to wait for sleep. The second kind is a different matter. It’s the fatigue which the body feels and the brain denies. The body begins to call out from all its members. All of its muscles, nerves, limbs, its very bones begin to groan and ask for rest, and the brain has to scorn this appeal and declare it is nothing.

  It is not so hard, at first. The will wells up in you. The heart swells, as it were, and becomes greater. The body is a pitiful, contemptible, complaining crew that mans a great vessel, incapable of halting. After a while the matter is altered, greatly altered. You can force the legs ahead. You can think of old songs and sing them. Then, finally, the words of the tune change and begin to sing silently in the innermost ear: You’ve done enough. You can’t do more. You have to stop. You have to give up. All things must die, and death is no sweeter at the end of the longest trail.

  The mind resists. Once the vast labor is ended, it says, life will be sweet again, sweeter than ever. Someday there will again be a soft bed, and the body will stretch its weary bones in such a sleep as gold cannot buy for the kings of the earth. But the promises of the brain grow dimmer and dimmer. And the outcry of the tormented muscles begins to predominate. At last, the traveler knows that he cannot go any farther. Still he goes.

  He picks out the crest of the next hill and vows that there he will pause. From that hill he sees a bush in the valley and declares that this will be the outermost edge of his voyage. There he will sink down, let come what may. When he reaches the bush, however, there is still another object before him, and he fastens his mind on its nearness, scorns his conquered body, and marches on with a staggering step.

  All of this we went through on that forced march which was killing us, but we dared not pause. I speak of Baird and of myself, for we had a spur in our sides the girl. She never faltered. Once in fact I heard her moan, and I turned sharply toward her, about to say: “Sylvia, we have to camp! This is madness! We can’t win. They have too long a lead over us!” But as I turned to her, she lifted her dauntless head and smiled at me in such a way that the weariness left my body, and for a moment I was strong and fresh again.

  What a spirit was in her, fresh and free and noble as the spirit of some matchless Thoroughbred, some queen of the desert, for which tribes fight because of herself as well as her flawless lineage. Who would think of mere goodness, gentleness, when looking at her? For she was more. She was something in which one could see only the great heart, the great soul, the matchless strength of will, all locked up as priceless jewels are in a casket of a still greater price.

  So she was to us on that grisly march which was to bring us to the end of it all. She was a light shining, pouring out not radiance but infinite beauty. She talked to us, when there was no breath left in her to sustain her own body. She laughed joyously, when all her soul was wrapped in pain. She walked with a light step, when her knees were leaden and her heart was bowed.

  All during that march, I said to myself: She has fought against it. She has denied it. She has struggled to keep herself from him, but she is overcome by a greater love than any woman ever felt for a man. It is out of that love that she is able to pour forth for us these drafts of strong wine, buoying our courage.

  I had no jealousy of Cobalt. I felt toward him and toward the girl, as men in the street feel when they look at the shining, obscured windows of the palace and hear inside the music of the dancers, for I knew that both of these were spirits from a realm above mine. And so we slogged on, Baird and I, setting our teeth, shifting our glances from the trail only to let them rest on the girl.

  Once I thought she was about to fail actually to fall on the trail. She was walking behind the sled at that moment with both her hands on a line which the Lightning Warrior pulled against, and she leaned heavily back, and finally her head fell limply and dangled back on her shoulders, her face turned up to the sky.

  “Sylvia,” I cried to her. “How is it with you?”

  “Oh, I was star-gazing. I forgot for a moment,” she said. “I’m as fit as a fiddle. I’m going to break trail for a while.”

  And she did it! I tried to stop her, but my poor spirit was too weak for her. She went on ahead, and she broke trail, stepping gallantly with the Lightning Warrior as gaunt and great and powerful as a polar bear. When I think back to it, I see it with the same whirling of the senses that I felt then, half overcome, half stupefied with deadening fatigue. There was an unearthly something about it. I used to look at the slender body of that girl and tell myself how little her strength was compared with mine. Then I could only say this was a miracle which I was seeing.

  It was about the latter quarter of that march when we found the first significant thing on the trail, a moccasin. The thing was picked up by Baird. It was small enough almost for Sylvia to have worn it. Had some poor child come across this trail then? Or was there another woman before us? It had not fallen in the snow very long before. It was not even thoroughly fro
zen and bent in the hand without cracking.

  “Do you know what it is?” said Baird to me.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Sylvia seems to know, however,” he said.

  She was acting very oddly. She called the Lightning Warrior to her and showed him the thing. Then she threw it down into the snow and stamped on it. The beast began to growl. When she picked it up, he tried to snatch it from her hand with his needle-sharp teeth, but she kept it and, holding it high, she spoke angrily, turned and twisted it, and seemed trying to tear it. Then she struck it with her hands until the Lightning Warrior went into a frenzy. He would leap up high, whining in his frantic eagerness. He bounded all about her and seemed ready to knock her down with a blow of his massive shoulder and so get the thing from her.

  Finally she gave him a half of it, which she tore from the rest, and that wolf slashed it to bits as though it were a living thing. She rewarded him for this show of foolish ferocity until I had to ask her: “Sylvia, what under heaven are you about?”

  “Who owns the moccasin, Tommy?” she asked.

  “How in the world should I know?”

  “There aren’t many men with feet as small as that, are there?”

  “No, there aren’t, of course, and it must be — say, a child.”

  She showed me the remnant remaining to her. “See the way it’s worn under the toes. No woman or child has so much strength in the toes, such a foot grip. That’s a man’s moccasin, Tommy, and haven’t I heard that the great Jess Fair is a very small man?”

  The thing clapped together like two parts of the same apple and made a whole again. I could understand her well enough. We all were enemies of Jess, and it might be as well to have the Lightning Warrior as an extra foe to him. Baird saw and heard all this, but he was too sick from fatigue to make any comment.

  So we slogged on again in the remorseless march, the memory of which is etched with all the acid of pain in my mind so that the latter part of it I can recall almost step by step. It was two or three hours after the episode of the moccasin that we heard the first shot of the battle. The sound came clanging to our ears from a distance, and we all three looked at one another. Sylvia nodded.