Black Thunder

by Max Brand

  You know what a dog is in the middle of a fight, especially a bull terrier or a bulldog. But I give you my word that the instant that white beast heard his master’s voice, he let go and turned the big fellow loose.

  It was almost startling.

  The Husky, his throat streaming red, got up, staggering, hanging down his head, and Docile came back to his master, smiling as only a bull terrier can smile, and licking his chops.

  V

  Right here, I want to ask charity for Big Ed. You see, he’d had his way for years. No man ever had dared to cross him. If he were checked by a crowd, it was always the worse for the crowd.

  Tonight, he had seen his girl upset, and attributed the trouble to Larry Decatur. Also, he had seen his favorite dog humbled, and a man can stand almost anything sooner than see his dog licked—such a dog, too, with brains and fighting talents, to be thrashed by a white rat!

  At any rate, remember that Ed Graem had other qualities of the heart besides an impulse toward brutality and his own way. But now the good in him was down, and the bad was up with a vengeance.

  He came with his great strides toward Larry, and the dog skulked at his heels, until it saw that the direction led toward the same mysterious brute that had almost sapped his life. Then he stopped and backed up.

  I wish that Graem had backed up, too.

  “Sorry your dog was hurt,” said Larry Decatur, “but it seemed to want trouble.”

  “You’ve got a trained dog,” said Big Ed, almost frothing. “You’ve got a vicious sneak of a poison-trained trick dog, and I dunno that you’re any better than a dog yourself. You’ve done enough harm around here for one day. It’s time you had a lesson.”

  “Lessons are what I’m always looking for,” said Larry, as mild as you please. “Sometimes I give ‘em, and sometimes I take ’em. How are you going to teach, brother? With a knife, or a gun, or your hands?”

  Big Ed paused in his stride.

  “A gunman!” he roared.

  “Take this gat, Joe,” said Larry, handing a revolver to me. He seemed to have picked it out of the air. “And now, I’m not a gunman, Mister Graem.”

  “I’m going to trim you down to a better size,” said Graem, balling his fists.

  “Now, between you and me,” said Larry, “how much would you bet that you’ll trim me?”

  “I’ll bet you, ten to one, if you wanna bet on your dirty hide,” said Graem, trying to laugh, and only strangling himself.

  “I always pick up the easiest kinds of money when they come my way,” declared Larry. “I have five hundred here. Joe, hold this, too. I’m stacking up five hundred, Mister Graem. Let me see the color of your coin, will you?”

  “My word’s better than your money around here,” said Graem, which was true enough. “Put up your hands, you hound!”

  Then, speech failing him, he rushed in at Larry with both his hands out, ready to grab him.

  He looked formidable enough, as he charged in, although anybody could have told that he was making a clumsy rush. But everything formidable about him was divided in half when Larry made a half step forward and slammed him with a beautiful, long, powerful straight left, right on the chin.

  You know, there’s this about a straight left, it’s no knock-out punch, but it’s like running into a wall. And Big Ed was running as hard as he could, when he met that lunge, and the spat of the fist against his face was like the clapping of your two hands together.

  He stopped and went back on his heel.

  Larry made a perfect shift—that is to say, he moved his right foot a whole step forward, and, as that foot hit the ground, his right fist cracked the side of Ed Graem’s jaw with a thud five times harder than the first punch.

  A shift is a clumsy punch and a hard one to land, but when it connects it generally brings home the bacon.

  Stanley Ketchel, of unlucky memory, was the great artist with that wallop. He would walk in, using his feet and hands together, like a pacing horse, and the way he socked was something to write home about. He didn’t care for size. The bigger the man, the more punching surface.

  When Larry Decatur slammed Ed Graem with that right shift and nailed him on the button, we all saw a thing that had been looked for but never hoped for in the Arctic for years—Graem staggering back from a blow, with his hands hanging down.

  We yelled, not exactly with pleasure, but in sheer astonishment, to see it happen. A couple of the fellows who had felt the weight of Graem’s hands in other days, here and there, simply howled at the sky, like wolves.

  “He’s met his master!” screeched one of them.

  I didn’t believe that. No one could believe it, looking at the bulk and the iron-hardness of Graem and the soft-looking exterior of Larry Decatur. I knew that in the Southwest, Larry was considered a terrible fighting man, but I didn’t know what his weapons might be.

  However, the fight was not over, and I looked to see the next move of Graem not half so clumsy as the first. I was right. He got himself together with a shrug of the shoulders, shook the mist of darkness out of his head, and merely grunted: “Prize-ring stuff, eh? I’ll show you how far that goes up here.”

  Then, in he came at Decatur again. Larry stood off with his hands on his hips, laughing a little. “I hate to collect five thousand dollars on this,” he said. “This is too easy.”

  Then Graem came in with a bound and a roar. He’d heard that remark, and it simply maddened him. It put out his brain, like a shot between the eyes.

  “I’ll show you how to collect,” he said.

  He came in with the proper stance, this time, with a long left held out before him like a great beam, the right poised, ready for a punch—and any punch he landed was likely to be the finishing one, we all knew.

  A frightful thing, it was to see so much manhood in such fast action, I can tell you. It made my heart cold, and yet it made my heart beat fast with a sort of crazy joy in the excitement of the thing.

  I didn’t see how Larry, or any other man, could get past that long, monstrous left, but he managed it in the way you would least expect. He simply ducked under and came up inside as fast and as light as a sparrow bobbing at a seed of grain.

  When he was inside, he slammed Big Ed Graem half a dozen times, so fast you could hardly see them.

  You could hear them, though. They thudded home like hammer strokes. You could see, moreover, the effect of ’em on Graem.

  He was a mountain, all right, but even a mountain can be blasted off its base, if sufficient powder is used. He staggered, he reeled, and then he went back before that storm.

  Only at the last, he flung out his left hand with a sort of desperate, defensive gesture, and happened to click Larry alongside the head.

  I give you my word that it was almost an accidental punch, but, to show you the terrible power of that man, the mere glance of that casual blow knocked Larry into a whirl and a stagger. And there was Graem, standing back, shaking the mist out of his head, scowling, but ready to fight till he died.

  We? Well, we were yelling our heads off.

  Then I looked to Larry, and saw that he was badly hurt, indeed. There was on his face the strained look of a fellow about ready to cash in, and his knees were sagging. It was as though not a human hand, but a steel-shod beam had grazed his head.

  But by thunder he cried out: “Come on, Graem! Come on, you man-eater, and let me show you up? Or do you want me to come for you, eh?”

  Graem parted his lips for a snarl and, still snarling, he came in, smashing out furiously, but half blindly.

  Larry ducked under the thrust of that blow, and, with a swinging overhand right, he turned the snarl of Graem into a crimson smear. It was a pretty punch and a terribly hard one. It put Graem back on his heels, and, while he was back there, Larry smashed both fists into the pit of his stomach.

  Those blows would have killed most men. They would have torn out my heart for one. But from the whalebone and India rubber of Graem, they merely rebounded. He grunted onc
e for each blow, and, rocking forward again from his heels, he whanged Larry on top of the head.

  To hear the thud of those blows, you would have said that every one of Graem’s knuckles had been driven halfway up the back of his hand, but nothing like that had happened, as a matter of fact.

  His hand wasn’t hurt at all, and Larry made a reeling step back and sank on one knee.

  He was gone. He was done for, I knew.

  But he had put in enough punishment to make Graem square off in the wrong direction, still shaking his head to get rid of the mental fog that would not disappear.

  I heard some of the fellows, and it made me mad to hear them, screeching at Graem that he had his man, and to come on in and finish him off.

  But what did Larry do? Well, waiting there on one knee, his face as white as death, he called out: “Hey, Graem? What’s the matter? Why don’t you make a fight out of it? Do I have to wait here sitting down all day for you, you big yellow-livered hound? You four-flushing quitter?”

  A sort of moan of wildest rage choked the throat of Graem, and he came in with a rush that was totally blind. He could not see. Partly the blows he had received had addled his brain, and partly fury blinded him.

  He came in, and Larry, rising, struck with the rise of his body and the spring of his legs, a long, updriving straight right, with all the weight of his body behind it.

  I could see that; I could see it hit the button of the side of Graem’s jaw, and I could see Graem’s knees sag and his hands drop.

  He was out on his feet.

  Larry drew back, collected himself, poised his right, and stepped in to strike that blank and awful face.

  Then he stopped himself, and turned away.

  “Somebody give him a drink,” he said. “He needs one, I think.”

  VI

  I turned just then in time to see something that I wish that I had never seen—Nelly Bridgeman, as white as stone, at the door of the saloon. She must have seen the whole thing or, at least, she had seen the critical part of it.

  Then I watched Graem being led away by a couple of the boys. He was still all out, his head rolling on his shoulders from the effects of that terrible last blow, but all the same his legs held him up, his legs that had mushed so many thousands of miles with racing dog teams.

  They took him, the fools, straight toward the door of the saloon. When he got there, he saw the girl and suddenly the sight of her jerked him back to his full senses.

  He realized what had happened. He realized that he’d been beaten in the presence of the girl he loved and in the presence of a crowd of gaping witnesses. And he threw up his hands and went staggering off into the woods.

  Larry Decatur, breathing hard, his fists still clenched, looked after him. His own face was gray and drawn. He had been near the finish; there was reason for him to be thinking it over, because only his quickness of mind had saved him. Those timely taunts, I mean, with which he had blinded and maddened the big man and turned Graem from a human being into a wild bull. What Larry had said had turned out to be true—mere brute force could not down him.

  “Joe,” he said to me, muttering.

  I went with him and took his arm, and, under that pretense, I managed to steady him so that he could walk without a stagger. When I got him well inside the screen of the brush and the trees, he dropped to his knees and was violently sick at his stomach.

  I got water for him and bathed his face and his head, on which two big lumps were rising. I give you my word that I worked over him for a whole hour before he was able to sit up. It was still another hour before he was able to stand, and then he walked on, with the bull terrier before him, always looking back as though to read the master’s mind.

  At the end of the two hours, Larry did his first talking.

  “What a man!” he said.

  “Yeah, what a man,” I said. “Only, he didn’t have the brains, just as you said.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” said Larry, and he repeated: “What a man!”

  “He’s a man, all right, and so are you,” I said. “You fought like a demon.”

  “Shut up, Joe,” said Decatur. “I hate to hear you talk like this. He almost broke my neck . . . and with what? An overhead blunderbuss, and a short hook that I thought had so little in it, it didn’t need a block. And it almost broke my neck!”

  He put his hands up to the side of his throat and stood still, then moved his head gingerly from side to side.

  “Where did you learn to punch like that?” I asked.

  He turned and glared at me. There was no smiling left in him now, for once in his life. “I spent two years in the ring,” he snapped. “I thought it would be an easy way of making money, but I got tired of the training. I thought I could go on and lick ’em all, if I worked . . . but that brute, if he knew enough to hold up his hands, could break me into bits in half a minute.”

  He still massaged his sore neck. I was beginning to appreciate the terrific impact of the blows that Graem had managed to send home, only two punches in the whole brief encounter.

  “I had to talk him into an opening,” said Larry Decatur. “I tell you what, Joe, I’ve had some starch and pride taken out of me today. If I go back there, I’ll have to face that man-eater, and I’d rather face Satan himself.”

  “You won’t have to face him again,” I said.

  “I can’t face him,” said Larry. “If I do, he’ll kill me, the next time. One punch of his, if it landed squarely, would smash in a man’s ribs and drive the edges of ’em through his heart. What a beast. Tell me about him, Joe.”

  “He’s the straightest shooter, the best fellow, the truest friend, the most generous giver in Alaska,” I said. “He’s the greatest dog musher and the luckiest miner in the world, too. But he’s got one flaw. He’s got a bad temper. Sometimes he acts as though he were cracked, just the way he did today.”

  About this, Larry Decatur thought for some time, then he said: “It was the girl. He’s crazy about her. And I don’t blame him. If it weren’t for the girl, I’d know that I’d never have any trouble with him again.”

  “The girl won’t talk to him,” I said. “You don’t know her. She saw the fight, but she won’t talk to him about it. She’s not that kind. She’s a peacemaker. She’s the finest cut in the world.”

  “Hush, Joe,” he said. “Any fool with half a brain could see that.”

  “Well,” I said, “then how’ll she make trouble between the pair of you?”

  “I’ll wager,” said Larry, “that nobody in Alaska has a word to say against her.”

  “If anybody had a word ever to say against Nelly Bridgeman,” I said, “he ain’t alive now to repeat it. He died right after he said it, and what he said was buried with him.”

  Larry Decatur nodded.

  “She’s that way. A fellow could see that. There’s a light that shines out of a good woman . . . if her face is pretty enough to let the light through.” He laughed a little at this smart remark of his. “I’m the owner of a boat, now, Joe,” he said. “Let’s go and have a look at it.”

  “Before you do that,” I said, “suppose that you tell me how you think that the girl could make any trouble between you and Graem?”

  “Well, he’s crazy about her, isn’t he?” he said.

  “Yes. Everybody knows that.”

  “And doesn’t everybody know that he wants to marry her?”

  “Yes, I suppose that everybody knows that, too, because it’s true.”

  “Well, then, look at it this way . . . today she saw him turned into a ravening brute,” said Larry. “And you tell me if any girl with a half-mad father will ever want to marry a man with an insane temper like Graem’s?”

  “There may be something in what you say,” I said, “but I’d hate to think so, Larry, because she’s one of the finest girls in the world, and he’s one of the finest men. Once she married him, she’d soon know how to manage him. He worships her. She could handle him with a silk thread, in no time at a
ll.”

  “Is that the fact?” he asked me, with a growl.

  “What of it?” I said.

  “Well,” he muttered, “I’ll tell you what . . . before he has her, he’ll have to fight me again.”

  “Hold on, Larry,” I said. “You mean to say that you . . . you mean to say that she . . .?”

  “I’m going to have her,” he said, scowling down at the ground. “I’m going to go straight . . . I want her . . . and I’m going to have her.” He looked fiercely up at me. “She likes you, Joe. Will you help me?”

  I couldn’t help breaking out at him, when I heard Laughing Larry make such a remark.

  “I’ll see you in torment first,” I said.

  His right hand twitched into a fist. His scowl blackened.

  “Why?” he said.

  “You’ve been a tramp all your life,” I said. “You’ve been a lucky tramp, but you’ve just been a tramp.”

  I thought he’d hit me, and I didn’t want to be hit by Larry Decatur, after I’d seen him handle Graem. The bull terrier snarled at my feet, looking ready to jump for my throat.

  “Steady, Doc,” said the master.

  He continued to glare at me.

  “All right,” he said. “You’d be a big help, but I’ll make it alone, for that matter. I’ll make it all alone.” He nodded to himself, as he said this. Then he cleared his brow with a visible effort. He said: “Come on out and we’ll look at that boat you were speaking of.”

  “What will you do with a boat?” I asked him.

  “What would I do with Big Ed Graem?” he snapped back. “I’ll manage when the time comes, and I’ve looked it over. I’m walking in luck, this trick. That’s what I’m walking in. Don’t talk back to me and keep doubting. A little faith is all I need.”

  I walked on slowly through the woods with him. He was not quite himself. The shock of the blows he had received seemed to have strung him by a finely drawn wire. I sympathized with him, and yet, at the same time, I was afraid of that cunning brain of his almost more than I ever had been afraid of the prodigious strength and the brutal temper of Ed Graem.