Black Thunder

by Max Brand

I couldn’t help admiring his attitude. I couldn’t help wondering, too, if his brains had not deserted him for once in his life.

  “The her,” said Drayton, “is the Thomas Drayton.”

  He laughed again as he said this, and everyone else laughed. There was a mob feeling in the air, and that mob wanted to make a fool of Larry. Therefore, a fool he had to be in spite of the facts.

  I said at Larry’s ear: “Let’s get out of here. There’s trouble in the air.”

  “Sure, there’s trouble,” said Larry Decatur. “That’s why I’m going to stay. I like trouble. I haven’t had a good dish of it for months.”

  In the face of all their laughter, he laughed a bit himself.

  “If she is named the Thomas Drayton,” said Larry, “she sounds more and more interesting. What can she do?”

  “She?” answered Drayton. “Oh, she can swim white water, and she will swim it for her boss. She never says no, and she works like a demon, day and night. She’s big and she’s kind, take it from me.”

  “She sounds better and better, this Thomas Drayton,” said Larry. “Is she a dog?”

  How they howled with laughter as he said this.

  I barked at him: “She’s a big river boat, lying out there on the lake. Don’t be a fool!”

  He merely winked at me. “I’ll take her for the thousand,” he said.

  “I’ll shake with you on that and have the money,” said Drayton. “It’ll take me home, safe and sound. In comfort, too, without spending any capital . . . and you can stay here and live comfortable with the Thomas Drayton.”

  Everyone whooped and howled again. Then, as Drayton came striding up, I heard the sneering, snarling voice of Ed Graem saying something about born fools never getting any sense, no matter how long they lived.

  Larry took that, and pretended not to hear it. No one was surprised that he took it. It was the fashion to take things from Ed Graem, just as if he were a madman.

  Another voice cut in, cool and unhurried. It was the girl, Nelly Bridgeman, who was saying: “You won’t cheat a stranger, Tom, will you? You’ll let him know that the big boat’s of no use, won’t you?”

  There was a lot of concern in her gentle face and those kindly, big, green eyes.

  Tom Drayton was irritated, rather naturally, to be interrupted in the midst of a good bargain. And a good bargain it was for him. I don’t suppose that there was another man in the Northwest who would have paid down a penny for the Thomas Drayton, fine boat that she was.

  He was taking a sheaf of greenbacks from the willing hands of Larry and shaking hands on the bargain at the same time, while he barked over his shoulder at the girl: “And why ain’t the Thomas Drayton worth something? All that’s gotta be done with her is to run her through the rapids, and she’ll be out on the lower river, where she’ll be worth a hundred thousand, I’d say, at this season, with half a dozen new strikes going on, and men willing to pay their weight in gold to get themselves taken to the new diggings. Why ain’t she worth a measly thousand dollars? By Jiminy, I’ve got a mind to take her back myself. I would, too, except that I’m tired of the transport business. But don’t you go horning into a man’s business affairs, Nelly!”

  “Shut up, Tom,” said half a dozen voices all at once. “Shut up and back down. You know who you’re talking to?”

  He did know, too, and he turned a bright red, realized that he had made a fool of himself. Afterward, he went as pale as he had been red, for he saw the giant form of Big Ed Graem towering above him.

  There might have been trouble here, again; the air was becoming surcharged, when an unexpected voice broke in. The instant it began, it stopped all other talk.

  “And why not run a steamer through Miles Cañon and the rest? Why not?”

  It was Bridgeman, poor old White-Water Sam, standing there behind the bar, long and lean, with his bent shoulders and his starved, hollow chest. His hair was silver—pale, untarnished silver—but over his eyes the brows remained as black as jet. They, and a peculiar way he had of looking down and smiling, gave him a diabolical look, although we all knew that there was no evil in old Sam. It was simply that he had been too deep and too long in torment.

  He was looking down in the old way now, smiling and nodding his head a little.

  I knew what was likely to come; so did everyone. So, most of all, did poor Nelly. She gave a wild look around for help, and then she went to her father, put her hand on his arm and looked up at him with such gentleness, pity, and fear for him, that I wondered how even a man who was two thirds mad could meet that look without being braced up a little by it.

  She said: “Daddy, I wish that you’d get some wood up for the stove, will you? I’ve got to have a hot fire for baking bread, you know, and. . .”

  “Why, Nelly darling,” says Bridgeman, “I’ve got the place heapin’ with wood. Don’t you worry about there being enough to bake the bread. There’s wood heaped around like there was wood heaped on the Denver Belle, that time that she ran Miles Cañon.”

  He laughed. Nelly drew away from him, as though knowing that nothing could stop him, now that he had started. I felt sick, and, glancing about me, I saw that the others in the room looked white and strained, too. A couple of fellows went sidling out through the door. But the rest of us all stayed to face the music, not because we wanted to listen, but because at the end of that story there was always the mischief to pay, and we wanted to stand by and help Nelly.

  I remember that Big Ed stood there by the bar with his head dropped and resting on one hand, while he set his jaw and endured until the end what had to be heard.

  There was only Larry in the entire room, who did not seem moved. Of course, he could not tell the thing that was to come. He never had heard it.

  Then old Sam Bridgeman went on: “You boys must have heard about the way the Denver Belle ran Miles Cañon? No?”

  He seemed to take the silence in exactly the wrong way, as one of questioning excitement, and now he looked up with a happy laugh of exultation.

  “Well, it’s a pretty good story,” he said. “You boys may’ve heard her name, even if you didn’t hear her greatest voyage. The Belle wasn’t much. She was a little one-stack scow, but she was worth money . . . and she’d be worth twenty times as much below the rapids as above it, as stands to reason. So, by thunder, they decided to run her through the chute. And the first thing that they wanted was a first-rate, bang-crack pilot, d’ye see? So they fetched around a compass, and they come on a pilot named White-Water . . . White-Water . . . let me see, what was the rest of his name? I disrecollect. Some of you boys may know. Eh? Well, I’m getting old, and the first sign is that I can’t recollect nothing right.”

  I moistened my lips and took a breath. I wanted liquor badly. There was poor Sam, poor old White-Water Sam unable to remember his own name. But that was the way he always started that cursed story.

  Nelly Bridgeman had turned away and was standing there with her head bowed, holding herself hard. And I could see the shudders run across her shoulders and all through her body, poor girl.

  “Anyway,” said Bridgeman, “this pilot I’m telling you about, he went and took a look at the Denver Belle, and he saw that she was a flimsy wreck, and, if ever she so much as touched the wall of Miles Cañon, either side, she was no better than done for. So whatcha think he done? He took and strung bales of hay all around her!”

  As he said this, Bridgeman lifted his head once more and looked about triumphantly, as though to win applause for the hero of his story. He was so rapt that he failed to notice the sick, pale faces of the men who were listening to him. Oh, it was a bad moment for us.

  “And then,” said Bridgeman, “when he had the old boat ready, he got up plenty of steam in her. He had for a crew only five men that were old friends of his . . . that would’ve trusted old White-Water to the infernal regions and back. And he turned her loose, and he shot her into Miles Cañon, where the water was churned white as milk, and the force of it heaping the curren
t high in the middle. Right on the middle of that ridge, like a circus rider on the back of a galloping hoss, that was where White-Water rode, because he had a touch on the wheel more delicater than the touch of a girl threadin’ a needle.”

  As he spoke, he held out his hands before him, as though they grasped the wheel in the pilot house once more, and, as his head went back, the long white hair fell away from his face, and we could see the glory in it and the smile that must have always been there when he had fought his way through a thousand rushing cataracts.

  “And White-Water felt the current take hold of the old Denver Belle like a hand takes hold of a stone, and then throws it, and he knew, if he let the prow slide a yard or two from the center of the piled-up ridge, the old boat was gone. But he knew that he wouldn’t let it slide. He laughed in his heart, I tell you, and knew that he would bring the Denver Belle through with the five men that trusted him enough to follow him to Hades and back.”

  I had to take hold of something, and what I gripped was the arm of Larry. His face hadn’t changed color and it still wore the faint, good-humored smile, but his arm was tense and as hard as a rock.

  “Well,” said Bridgeman, “White-Water balanced that old tub on the middle of the ridge of water like a man walking on the edges of swords and a chasm under him. And then . . . then . . . then. . .”

  His voice shot up into the note that we had all been waiting for, taut and hardened, and for that very reason it hit us all the harder and broke us, because we were brittle with the expectation. It was a sort of scream and a strangling, together, and the joy went out of his eyes and left a staring horror in them.

  “She slipped! The prow slipped. A demon pushed it off the ridge, and the Denver Belle jammed straight across the channel, filling it, and the current bashed in the sides of her like a matchbox. As she went, I was screaming in the pilot house . . . ‘Take me, and leave them five go free!’”

  He got that far, when Nelly turned about, white but steady, and made a sign. I leaped over the bar with a fellow named Dan Winton, and we caught hold of old Bridgeman. But poor old White-Water Sam wasn’t violent at all this time. He just wilted into our arms, and we got him out of the barroom and into his bedroom, and we stretched him out on the bed and left Nelly with him. She could handle him, now, and nobody half so well, as he lay there turning his poor, crazy face from side to side and saying over and over: “They followed me to torment, but I couldn’t bring ’em back! I couldn’t bring ’em back!”

  The two of us, we soft-footed out of the room.

  IV

  As we turned at the door, I remember that Nelly Bridgeman was sitting on the bed close to her father, putting a hand on each side of his mad face and saying to him, over and over again, that it was only a dream he’d been having, and that there never had been a Denver Belle. Well, as I looked back at the pain and the courage in her face, I realized why all of us respected her so much.

  Then we went out into the barroom.

  I heard Big Ed roaring at Tom Drayton: “Who began all of this chattering about a boat, anyway? Who began talking about running a boat through Miles Cañon? You all know what that does to the old man.”

  Drayton was scared to death. He wasn’t the size and he wasn’t the age to be one of Graem’s victims, but one never could tell when the giant would lose all control and get his horrible hands on a mere child, even.

  It was no wonder to me that Drayton was scared, and I was amazed to hear Larry break in with: “I started talking about the boat, Graem.”

  Graem turned around and almost shouted with joy, when he saw a man of about his own size, if you can call thirty pounds’ difference anything like an equality. He came striding over toward Larry Decatur, calling out: “I just wanted to know where the blame ought to be put! I’d rather put it on you, you. . .”

  Of course, the way he strode along was enough to scatter the crowd before him, and leave Larry naked to the wrath of Big Ed. That wrath had been gathered and stacked up, so that it was quite ready to break on the head of someone.

  His anger was so apparent that the trained dog, Docile, slipped out before his master and lowered his head and growled, soft and low, after the way that bull terriers have. From the looks of ’em, the very moment they are ready to fight, they seem most ready to turn and run away.

  That must have been what the great Mackenzie Husky thought, also. At any rate, he came rushing around the knees of his master and took a dive at the white dog, and Docile knew perfectly well that he needed room. At any rate, he whipped about and ducked through the door of the saloon into the street.

  We all wedged our way out after him, and there we saw the Husky—what a magnificent brute that dog was!—cleaving the air and baring his teeth to get them into Docile.

  He looked business, and business was what he meant, and business was what he knew. Docile ran to meet him, and then dropped to the ground and took a long, shallow slash down his back as the wolf dog sailed over him.

  Docile reached up for the throat, but he only tore out a big mouthful of wool.

  Then the terrier stood up. He spat out the fur and waited, blinking his eyes for the next rush.

  “Stop! Stop it!” yelled somebody. “This is just murder.”

  “The white rat needs killing!” shouts Big Ed. “I’ll use my hands on the gent that tries to interfere!”

  That was enough to keep anyone from intervening. And the Husky, turning about, dived at the dog again. You know how a Husky fights? It’s like a wolf—a flash of the teeth and a slash as he comes in, then an attempt to give his shoulder to the enemy and bowl him over on his back. Once that happens, the teeth can get freely at the throat, and one rip is enough to finish the fight. In a sense, it’s fencing. The teeth are used as the sword. It’s not a matter of taking hold and locking the teeth in a grip; it’s rather a matter of cutting for the life and getting away again, before there can be a return stroke. Well, the Mackenzie came in like that.

  I glanced over at big Larry Decatur, to see how he would take the murder of his dog, but I was surprised to notice that he was as cool as a cucumber. He merely yawned a little and shrugged his shoulders.

  The Mackenzie, rushing in, tried the old dodge, a shoulder stroke and slash of the teeth combined. The terrier paid no attention to anything else. He was bleeding along the back, and he seemed to realize, after the first attempt, that it was useless to try to trip up a wind-footed creature like this. I suppose, many a time, he had tangled up big dogs and brought them down with that old device, but now he discarded it after a single trial and did a new thing. He played for the head.

  That’s the bull terrier instinct. They keep working at the head. Most of their own scars will be around the head, too, not so many on the body.

  Now Docile played his teeth at the great, flashing fangs of the Husky, and there was a clash that sounded like metal on metal.

  The Husky bounded away with nothing accomplished, and stood shaking his head, his tongue lolling. I don’t suppose that he liked the feeling of the teeth that had clashed against his, but this was an old story with the bull terrier. He didn’t shake his head. He just pricked his ears, wagged his snaky tail, and trotted in for more.

  We yelled when we saw that.

  “Your Husky’s got a handful!” somebody bawled across at Ed Graem, but Ed merely sneered and tried to laugh.

  There was the Husky jumping again in a fury, and again the clash of teeth, as the smooth, hard head of the terrier played straight for the teeth of the other.

  The Mackenzie backed away in three long bounds, sat down on the ground, and howled.

  It was a strange thing to see. We all laughed a little, although I don’t think that any of us felt exactly like laughing. But it was odd to notice the way that wolfish demon, that had probably murdered twenty dogs in his time, took this failure of the age-old tactics.

  Docile had brains, you see. He had brains, and he’d been trained to use them. The wilderness is a mysterious and a great thing,
and the creatures in it know a lot. But suddenly I remembered what Larry Decatur had said not long before—that he was not afraid of anyone who didn’t fight with brains.

  The Husky was ready to stop and think a bit. But Doc was not for stopping. He just wagged his tail and dashed in again. The Mackenzie, with a roar, bristled, and they were off once more. This time the teeth met, but they did not part. As the dogs swung around, I thought that each of ’em had a cheek hold, locking them together.

  Then I saw what had really happened. The upper part of Docile’s muzzle was fairly between the jaw of the wolf!

  It was a horrible thing to see. I remembered what a Husky could do with his jaws, and I half expected to see the upper jaw and the whole foreface of the terrier bitten away.

  Then I noticed that it was the Husky that was backing away, and trying to tail off. Docile seemed as happy as could be.

  Gradually, in the midst of the excited yelling of the men, I saw what had happened. I have said that Docile weighed fifty-five or sixty pounds, and now all of that weight was hanging onto the lower jaw of the Mackenzie.

  There, his grip was locked, and on that lower jaw his own teeth were closing and grinding.

  If the Husky tried to bite in turn, he had sixty wriggling and athletic pounds to lift before he could make an impression on the skull of the dog. And even the steel-trap muscles of a Husky’s jaw will begin to give way, after a time. These were giving away, at any rate. They were failing. The mouth of the Mackenzie sagged open, and he was trying to get away, struggling with all his might, until he stumbled or tripped and fell flat on his back.

  Docile let go, then. He let go and grabbed hold again, on the throat, exactly beneath the roots of the jaw. Such was his strength, as he fitted his teeth into a hold and shook his head, he lifted the whole ponderous body of the Husky.

  The fight was over and the Husky as good as dead. He could only claw. His mouth gaped, and his tongue thrust out.

  Then Larry Decatur stepped and said: “I guess that Husky has enough. Let him go, Docile.”