Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 744
“Didn’t I go and tell you?” said Swede. “Poker-face was too good for Bert. He’ll be too good for anybody else, excepting me! I’m the one that’ll finish him. You wait and see, if any of you are left to look!”
And he laughed, his bawling, brutal laughter again!
They took the body of Bert away. Their lips were tight, all of them except that beast, Swede.
In the meantime, I was thinking of various device. I might run for the horses, for instance, and try to break away. I might step behind the trunk of the tree and use it as a fort.
No, I saw that both of those ideas were worthless. There were too many of them, and the rest could not all have the bad luck of the first to fall.
Bad luck was what it was, too. I knew that. My turn, I thought, had been figured out perfectly. But I knew that the head was not what I had aimed for. I had intended that shot to fly for the center of the body, the only sure target in snap shooting. Instead of that, the slug had gone home almost three feet higher. They thought it was wonderful marksmanship, wonderful steadiness of nerve. It wasn’t, though. And I knew it, and was cold with the knowledge.
I had to try something else. I wondered what it would be, as I saw them drawing the lots again. I was a little sick, too, thinking of the way that Bert had fallen — the sound of it, I mean. My mind was confused. And I remembered looking with a scowl at the lanterns and wishing that they would burn brighter.
Then I saw Chuck take his place opposite me!
Well, of course I would have to face him, sooner or later. But somehow it was a shock to see him there, cool, steady, purposeful. There was a look on his face not savage, but deeply and quietly contented. He meant business; his business was my death.
Swede stood by to give the signal. The other two were shadows. They hardly mattered.
“Bill,” said Chuck, very calmly, “if he drops me, don’t forget to send my watch to the girl. You know her address. Write her a note along with it. Tell her I was thinking about her at the finish. Are you ready, Poker-face?”
I was not ready, I never would be ready to face that calmly determined gunman. But I nodded.
I had made a new plan, this time. Somehow, I told myself that in shooting for the head lay my luck. I would shoot for it this time, but not a chance shot. No, this time I would take my time and draw a bead. I would be prepared to have one, two, even three bullets tear through my body, while I drew my bead, and then finished off my man. I set my jaw and told myself that this was the only way. I must banish all feeling from my body. Whatever agony I felt, I must not let it shake my gun hand.
Now I stood with back turned to Chuck. People say that all their past flowed before them, at such a time. None of my past flowed before me. I saw nothing but the dark of the night, the loom of a mountain, the glistening of wet leaves in the lantern light.
Then— “Start!” roared Swede.
I turned to the right, just as I had turned before, but swinging my arm straight out, shoulder-high, to sight down the barrel, and by the grace of fortune, I got the head of Chuck right in line!
At the same instant, I saw the muzzle of his gun jerk upwards. In fact, he was standing there as though he had not had to turn at all. He seemed to be taking his deliberate time.
The gun jerked in his hand, which was held hardly more than hip-high, and at the same time a bullet struck me a violent blow on the hip and then glanced up through my entire body.
Some lucky devils are numbed all over by a bullet wound. So they say, at least. But I felt, or thought I felt, the terrible crunching of bones. My flesh was one compact of nerves, ripping before the lead. The agony threw a red sheet of flame across my brain. But through that red I saw my mark, and fired.
I knew that I was falling as I pulled the trigger, but still I watched, and saw my bullet knock Chuck flat!
Then I was lying gasping. I remember feeling that the thing was unfair, that the pain alone was enough, but that I ought to be able to catch my breath. No, I could not breathe. Then I was sure that I would never again draw that breath I prayed for.
This was death! This was the end!
My legs were drawing up and kicking out slowly. One foot struck against the trunk of the tree, and the pressure that resulted sent a twisting, tearing spasm of agony through me. I screamed in the throes of it!
Well, I hate to think of that yell of pain that was torn from my lips. But the truth has to come out. I screeched like a hurt boy.
Then I heard a roaring, furious, and yet exultant voice that was bellowing at me, in the familiar accents of Swede:
“Fill your hand, Poker-face! Fill your hand, you sneaking varmint, because now you’re goin’ to fight your last fight!”
I looked across at him. He was standing erect, a gun in either hand, poised, his feet spread, a look of fiendish, animal joy on his wide face. Chuck was gone; fair play had ended; murder remained.
CHAPTER XXXIX. A PAIR OF RIDERS
THE GUN LAY close to my hand. I grasped it, but I felt that there was hardly strength in my shaking hand to raise it.
I looked down. The ground was red; my left hand, as I tried to push myself up, slipped in mud.
“Hurry up!” roared Swede. “You got your gun. Hurry up, and fight like a man, will you? Count him out, Bill! Count to ten on him!”
I heard the voice begin.
It flung me back into the old ring days. That fourth round, and I down, and the voice booming distantly in my ears.
So it boomed now: “One, two, three, four, five, six—”
My wits leaped off to the garden of the Parker Cole house, and Betty Cole, in the garden, under the dappling of the shadows.
“Eight,” the voice was saying, “nine, and—”
“Drop that gun!” yelled a voice behind Swede.
He leaped into the air, and whirled.
I, still half prone, my weight in my hands, could look across and see beyond Swede a figure rising out of the ground, as it were. It was Chuck, and the lantern light showed his face bathed in crimson, and glinted upon the gun he had recovered.
Was it only a glancing blow of the bullet that had knocked him prone?
“Drop that gun!” shouted Chuck again, now coming from his knees toward his feet. “You hound, you murdering swine!”
“Murder?” snarled Swede. “I’ll finish him first, and you second! You been comin’ pretty big, over me, Chuck. It’s the last time. You got your hand filled, and now”
There was a crashing through the brush at the side of the hollow, the beating of hoofs.
“They’re here! Piegan!” screeched Bill, and bolted toward the horses.
Swede did not wait. He let out a similar howl of fear, and bounded after his confederates.
Onto their horses they bounded, and away they went into the night.
But it was not a group of Piegan men that poured onto us. It was only a pair of riders. One was Sidney Maker, and the other was none other than Richardson, the detective, whom I never expected to see again. Glad enough to see him this night, you may be sure!
“Your work, Chuck, and you’ll pay me for it!” I heard Maker saying.
Then he was on his knees beside me. I looked up at him through darkening eyes.
“I’m going to die, Sid,” said I, “but Chuck was fair and square. Fair stand-up fight. But Swede — murder”
I got out no more. I wanted to speak more words. But the breath went out of me; a spasm choked my throat. I saw the lanterns spin, and the cold of death seemed to be freezing my brain. Then that horror was shut away.
When I got back my wits, I thought that somebody was driving a red-hot knife through my body, with a monotonously regular rhythm. It was only the throb of the pulse against my wound.
I put my hand down to it, and found that my body was gripped hard by an immense bandage. I put my hand out farther, and touched blankets, then the cold of a sheet. I opened my eyes, and I was looking up through the branches of the lantern-lighted tree.
They had brought a mattress and springs, and fixed me a bed under that tree. If they had moved me, I should not be scratching these words on paper, now. It was a close enough shave as the thing finally worked out.
But now, when I turned my head a little, I saw the circle, and counted them over, one by one — Sid Maker, and his bulldog face, first of all; and Richardson, the detective, looking sullen and bored; Chuck, with a white bandage around his head, making his face seem unusually dark; Colonel Riggs; Tracy Dixon, drawing lines on the ground; big-shouldered Harry; Charlie Butcher, just then drinking from a flask; Parker Cole, patting the hand of Betty; Steve standing in the background, his arms folded, his face twisted; the auctioneer; the hotel clerk; the stage driver biting off a chew of tobacco.
“This is quite a show, boys,” said I, and regretted speaking, such a pang stabbed me.
“Shut your mouth!” said a rough voice.
A man whom I had not seen before stood over me. His sleeves were rolled up. His hands were stained with red. Suddenly I knew that this fellow who looked like a butcher was the doctor who might save my life.
I gazed at him with mild surrender.
“You got a breath and a half left in you,” said he. “You ought to die. You probably won’t. A man who’s lucky enough to have as many friends as you have, is too lucky to be killed by one bullet.”
He was right.
For two weeks, it was nip and tuck. Two weeks of consummate hell, I tell you. Every time I breathed, it was agony. All that saved me was the purity of that cold, clear, mountain air, I know. I did not have to get much of that into my lungs in order to sustain life.
Then, at the end of two weeks, I was carried down to Piegan. They made a ceremony of the thing. That was the colonel’s fault, of course, and confound him for it.
He had the litter prepared, and he picked out two relays of men, who carried me down bit by bit, as gently as though they were carrying nitroglycerine. And finally they bore me up the main street, because that was really the shortest way to the hotel. And the people lined he street and took off their hats. The colonel had arranged that, too! He was a showman to the finish. That silence ate in on me. I began to pity myself, and the only way I could possibly keep the tears from flowing down my face was to start cursing.
That was the only sound that broke the silence, my steady cursing, as they went on toward the hotel.
Charlie Butcher swore to me afterwards that I said things that made him blush, even him, as he walked beside me, carrying a portion of my weight.
But I dare say that Charlie was stretching things a little. However, that litter ride is one of the things that I least care to remember out of my life.
It ended in the hotel, at last. Going up the stairs was a torment, because the litter tipped down a good deal, but finally I was in a room, and being slipped between a pair of cold sheets.
I was only about half conscious, by that time, but I could hear the rough voice of the doctor saying:
“He’s pulling through. I told you he would. If the mean streak in a man is wide enough and deep enough, one bullet simply can’t kill him. I remember a fellow who put the muzzle of a gun against his temple and”
I did not hear the rest of it, because I was sinking into a profound sleep.
When I wakened, all was right. There was still a considerable distance for me to go, but that day I cared nothing about distances because Parker Cole stood at my bedside and said:
“I have to return to my business. But Steve and Betty are staying on, Steve for a month or so, and Betty, it appears, is going to remain almost indefinitely, if that meets with your wishes, young man!”
I said faintly: “A man with a criminal record, Mr. Cole, is—”
He raised a hand and stopped me.
“There is no criminal record,” he declared. “That has been expunged from the books. And I dare say that it will never be written in again on the blank pages. There’s no law court in the world that wants to pass on you just now, Jerry.”
So he went away, and left me climbing, climbing, climbing toward a blue zenith of joy. Even when Betty came in, I hardly looked at her, but upwards and wondered how God could give so much happiness to one poor human.
Well, there have been ups and downs in the years between, but as I write this, I can look from my window across the rolling acres of my land, dotted with cattle, red, white-splashed, their fat sides gleaming in the sun. And I can look far down into the valley, where the windows of Piegan blink in the glittering light of the day. It is only a small town. Even the railroad could not bring to it enough of the vital blood to turn it into a city, Makerville has grown big. It flourishes. It throws a black cloud from the stacks of its furnaces. But I would not trade Piegan for ten such rich cities. For Betty agrees with me that Piegan is just big enough to fit into my heart.
THE END
Sixteen in Nome (1930)
CONTENTS
I. NOME
II. TROUBLE COMES ON FOURS
III. MASSEY, MASTER OF ALEC
IV. FOR A STAKE
V. BETWEEN DOG AND MASTER
VI. ELEVEN THOUSAND BID
VII. A CHANGE OF MIND
VIII. TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
IX. MASSEY TAKES A HAND
X. ADVENTURE STARTS
XI. BATTLE OF THE DOGS
XII. BAD LUCK ON THE JOB
XIII. BLIND LEADERS
XIV. UP AND STIRRING
XV. MARJORIE’S STORY
XVI. ALEC GONE!
XVII. WHAT THE DOCTOR THINKS
XVIII. HOW REPAY?
XIX. WELCOME TO DAWSON
XX. SAM BURR
XXI. ON THE TRAIL
XXII. WHEN TWO MEN MEET
XIII. A BARGAIN IS MADE
XXIV. HONORS ARE EVEN
XXV. THE MOOSE
XXVI. ALEC, THE FIGHTER
XXVII. WILD BLOOD
XXVIII. MORE OF ALEC’S WORK
XXIX. WITH TEETH BARED
XXX. FOR LIFE AND DEATH
XXXI. ONWARD, AND FAST!
XXXII. KING OF THE ROAD
I. NOME
ONCE A HARDY old-timer in a mangy parka said to me: “I’d rather be barefoot in the desert than sixteen in Nome.” The point was that I was sixteen, and in Nome at that moment, and without needing the slightest time for consideration, I agreed with him.
Sixteen is a bad age for a boy. It is too full of growing and not full enough of strength. I looked big enough but I was pretty soft. My hands and feet would not do what I wanted them to. My body, my mind, my spirits had not settled down enough.
Take a lad who’s been raised in a fishing smack or ridden the Montana range in winter as a regular thing, and he would have done pretty well, even in Nome. But I had done none of those things. I had worked with cows a little in Arizona. I could daub on a rope, and even use a branding iron, but I did not excel in anything. With a rifle, for instance, I was a pretty good hand — every boy on the Arizona range is. With a revolver I was no good at all. The mere feel of a horse arching its back frightened me numb and, as for wrestling, boxing, and such things, I knew very little about them. I was simply an overgrown youth with a skinny neck and a large Adam’s apple and, in Nome, a perpetual shudder at the cold.
Nome would have been a depressing place for older and stronger people than I. The ugly beach, spotted with the holes of the mines, the rocks, the high tundra edge, the sod houses, the unwashed crowds of men, the snarling, howling dogs by day and night, the cold, the wind, the storms, the brawlers in the streets, the bitter hardness of the work, and the scant amount of it that I found to do used to make me sit down and beat my knuckles against my face sometimes, and wonder how I could have been so foolish. There was that good, comfortable, little Arizona shack, and the good hot sun, and the sounds of cattle lowing and coyotes yipping on the edge of the sky — a medley that seemed to me like heaven on this morning when I crawled out of my bunk in the Tucker Lodging House. There were half a dozen people getting up at the same time in the same room. The air was foul and close; men were groaning as they got into their shoes. Their eyes were swollen with sleep and the aftereffects of cheap whisky which they had had the night before. And everyone in that wretched room seemed almost as miserable as I.
But I knew that they were not what they seemed. In a few minutes their strong bodies would be warmed by speeding blood, their heads would be high, and their shoulders back; and they would be heartened, also, by the knowledge that they had money in their pockets, or, at least, jobs to go to. I had neither.
In the last three days, I had eaten once, and it was thirty-six hours since I had tasted a morsel. Thirty-six hours is not much to a man, but to a growing boy it is thirty-six hours of anguish. I had suffered, and suffered badly. I expected to suffer still more, but pride kept me from going in the evening to The Joint, where “Doctor” Borg never failed to hand out at least a dollar to every mendicant.
As I dressed, my depression grew. The fingers with which I buttoned my shirt were grimy. I told myself that I had sunk so low that even personal cleanliness no longer was attractive or necessary to me. I said to myself that I was slipping into the out tide and would soon be lost.
The lodging house of Mr. Tucker seemed more disagreeable than ever this morning. It was built by him according to a plan of his own, of which he was so proud that he was never done talking of it. It seemed a very good plan, too, and neat. He got a number of ten-by-twelve tents and put them side by side. Over each tent he nailed boards, so that it turned into a sort of box. Over the outside of the boards he stacked up thick walls of sod. The result was a house with a number of rooms, and enough weight of walls to make it seem secure against the cold. But the sods had been put on when they were frozen. They never had a good chance to thaw and compact, and the result was that the arctic cold was able to work its skinny fingers through and get at every living thing in the Tucker House.
