Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 745
Tucker himself would not admit that he felt the cold. He was so proud of the new scheme of building he had invented, and he was so delighted with himself for having had such a grand idea that I’ve actually seen him going around in his shirt sleeves, with only a light sweater, through these rooms. The couple inches of fat which he wore under his hide could not insulate him against the cold of the Far North; his skin used to turn blue and his eyes bulged, but he insisted that his was the warmest house in Nome.
By the time I had dressed, this morning, my spirits were at zero. My fingers were numb. My stomach was as empty as that of any soaring vulture. As I started for the door, I heard one of the men say: “That kid is broke and about starved.”
This made me walk more slowly, and my mouth fairly watered with hope; but the man’s partner said to him: “Don’t be a fool. The kid’s a bum, and we ain’t any too flush.”
“Yeah. You’ve said it right,” said the first man, and I walked on into the hallway.
I went by a doorway inside which a pair of men were cursing each other in voices that reached up the scale and told that blows were coming, but I had seen so much fighting in Nome that I was not interested enough to stop and inquire about it or wait to hear the scrap begin. Fist fights were a drug on the market in the Nome streets, where five thousand wastrels and unemployed tumbled and fought like sea gulls for the scraps that fell from the fat tables of the land.
A few steps farther, I heard a woman crying on a deep, moaning note and, through the flimsy door, distinctly, I could hear the sound of blows against flesh. Either some brute of a man was beating her, or else she was striking her own breast.
Now, weakened as I was, and in that horrible atmosphere, it made me a little sick. I stopped and leaned against the wall, with my head spinning. A couple of men pressed by me, heard the sounds inside the room, and went by, grinning to one another.
This beastliness in human nature then took me by the throat and gave me a shake, as it were. My circulation picked up, and I got so strong that I tapped on that door, and then pushed it open. If there were a man inside, I would be beaten to a pulp, but I had a curious, starved desire to tell him what I thought of his brutality.
There was no man inside.
There was only a red-headed girl sitting on the side of her bunk and swaying backward and forward, with her head thrown back, and her hands whacking against her chest, now and then. From a husky, deep pitch of her voice, I had taken her to be a woman of middle age. But she was only a girl of twenty or nineteen.
This made a tremendous difference. The horror went a pair of octaves up the scale. I closed the door behind me, and the squeak of the hinges, this time, made her start up.
She asked me what I wanted, while I stared at her, for a moment, through the wretched gloom of that half light. This red-headed girl was not a beauty, but she was good looking. Even through that twilight I was struck by the deep blue of her eyes. She had a bit too much mouth and not quite enough chin, but she was decidedly what one would call a pretty girl.
I told her that I wanted nothing, except to stop her crying, if I could.
“You’re going to stop it, are you?” asked the girl in a dry way — but with a sob or two bubbling up.
“I will if I’m able to be any good for you,” I told her.
She came up to me and took me by the shoulders — she was just my height — and backed me around until what light there was came bang into my face.
“You’re going to help me!” she said.
The sneer in her voice did not bother me. I had had too many of the same sort of sneers thrown my way since I came North, and now I took them for granted.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “I know that I’m no Calmont or Massey.”
Calmont, do you see, was the strongest man in Nome, people said. And Massey was a bouncer down at The Joint, and said to be the slickest gunman around those parts, where everybody packed a Colt.
“Sonny,” said the redhead, “if you were Calmont and Massey rolled into one, you wouldn’t be able to help me. Run along now and forget me. It looks as though you’ve something of your own to think about.”
She said that and put her hand right on my stomach. I mean, where my stomach should have been, but it was gone, and the sharp edges of my ribs stood out like the tops of a corral fence all around that cave in the middle of me.
“That ought to be full,” she observed to me. “Who stole your insides, mister?”
I felt like a fool. I’d been talking rather big, the moment before, and now she was asking me why I was starved.
“Aw, I’m all right,” I told her. “If you’re dead sure that I can’t do you any good—”
I got back to the door.
“Wait a minute, Sammy—”
“My name’s not Sammy,” I said.
“What is it, then? Joe?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised. “It’s Joe. How did you guess that? Do you know that I’m Joe May?”
She laughed a little at me. She seemed to forget a part of her troubles.
“I know it now, anyway, Joe May,” she said. “Look. Here’s something that will round you out a little—”
She held out ten dollars in gold to me. And my hand jumped for it like a hungry dog for a bone. I had the tips of my fingers on it before I got hold of myself and snatched my hand back. I had been worn down to such a point that I would have taken charity from a man, I think, but to take it from a girl whose eyes were still red with crying was too much for me.
She came after me, offering the money again.
“You take it, Joe,” she said. “It’ll be between the two of us. You can depend on me not to talk about it, and you’re as welcome to it as the flowers in — May!”
She laughed again, but there was a choked note in her laughter that about finished me. I did not dare to stay there before her. The two five-dollar pieces looked to me like two glorious suns. Twenty meals lay in the hollow of her hand, and I felt as though I could eat them at one sitting. So I did the only thing that occurred to me. I jerked the door open and got into the hall away from temptation.
II. TROUBLE COMES ON FOURS
WHEN I GOT outside of the lodging house, I found that a wind was blowing. It came off the tundra. That is to say, it was full of teeth and fingers of ice, and those fingers were poked between my ribs and into my vitals in a way that made me blink and bite my lip.
I dodged back into the doorway to catch my breath, but I knew that if I remained there for long, I would slink off to my bunk once more and lie in a stupor of misery all day long, as I had done most of the day before. So I got myself together, what there was of me, and turned the corner into the full stroke of the wind.
It was early in the day, there was little light, and what there was of it was smudged away to dusk by a thick sheeting of clouds that lay solidly across the sky. There were few people on that street and, when I turned down into the next one — hardly knowing where I went and hardly caring — I saw not a human soul, only half a dozen big huskies which were roaming to find any scraps of food or trouble that would come their way.
They had that big-shouldered, wolfish look which told me they were inside dogs, the kind that dog-punchers like to have in a team and, by the way they packed together, I could see that they were all from one team. It meant something, if six fine fellows like these were loose in a town where dogs were worth a good deal of money. I wondered how they had come adrift, but there were a good many possible explanations for that. A knife stroke or a bullet might have tipped their master on his face in the snow. Such things happened every day in Nome, at that happy time in its history.
There was a reward in the offing, no matter what had happened, if I could get hold of that half dozen and keep them until called for, which was sure to be before long. However, they were as wolfish in nature as in looks. They showed me their teeth as they went by, and hardly turned out of their tracks to give me room.
I saw that I was helpless, and groaned. More meals were walking away from me. I began to feel that bad luck was represented in everything that was around me, and that I had been led to Nome to enjoy a first installment of it.
Another dog, just then, climbed over a fence and jumped down into the snow. He was a beautiful fellow, very tall and with promising points, though he had not yet quite filled out. He was completely white except that the tip of his tail, his ears, and his muzzle had been rubbed with soot, as it were. He was dazzling bright, otherwise, but the odd markings gave him a rather queer look. Of course, I knew him at a glance. Everybody in Nome knew him. That was Alexander the Great, Massey’s dog, on account of which Massey and Calmont, every one said, had dissolved their old partnership and now hated each other with a flaming and inextinguishable rage. That was one of the talking points in Nome, that season, and particularly how Doctor Borg had sworn the two men to a truce at the very time when Massey managed to get the dog for him.
The reason that my heart jumped so high was because I knew that that trick dog had been rated as high as five or even seven thousand dollars in value. He performed to a crowd every day in The Joint, like a high-grade vaudevillian, and men used to throw him money and cheer him and fight to get close and pat his clever head.
Well — if I could manage to get a hold of Alec the Great without having my hand bitten off, Massey would give me anything that I asked. Yes, or more than I had the nerve to ask! I looked up and down the street again, shuddering for fear any one else might be in sight to rob me of that golden opportunity, but I could see no one.
The next moment there was a terrific yowling and snarling.
I jumped around and, with a start I saw that I was very unlikely to get my hands on Alexander the Great. Neither was Massey, for that matter. And the crowd at The Joint would look for Alec the Great in vain, unless something strange happened.
For the six huskies of that errant dog team just then had come up with the dog and decided, apparently, that they were hungry, and that this was a good meal for them all. There was no hanging back among them. They got into a flying wedge faster than any football team, and then made for Alec in a single lump. They ran low. They ran hard. They were only worried about one thing, and that was how they were going to get all their teeth into him at once.
My blood stopped running and I forgot the cold as I saw Alec look back at that fence and decide that it was too high to be jumped.
What could he do?
He was fairly cornered, and he knew it, but he made a little jump to one side and then to the other. I saw that wave of dog flesh close on him — no, not quite! It was at the very last moment that he tried a most surprising thing. I don’t suppose that anything but a man-educated trick dog would have dreamed of such a thing, but Alec thought of it. At the final instant, when the eyes of the huskies were probably blind with the foretaste of a good dinner, Alec left the snow like a bird and sailed high into the air.
He left the leaders so fast that they did not even lift their heads, but a couple of old stagers in the rear reached for him. He was too high and traveling too fast. His jump fairly carried him over the dogs.
His momentum was gone as he landed. He scratched to get footing, and found, that treacherous instant, that he was standing on smoothest ice! A partial thaw, there in the middle of the street, had turned the surface to glass, and Alec floundered like a fish out of water.
The huskies had not stopped against the fence. They did not stop to shake their heads and call themselves fools, as men would have done. They simply hit that fence with all four feet and rebounded halfway across the street, and almost on top of Alec.
I thought that he would do some other clever trick, but it jumped smack into my mind then that there were no more tricks up his sleeve. He had nothing but his four legs under him to save him now, and he tried to use them; but the treacherous surface was much harder on him than it was on the dog team, practiced as they constantly were in going over even worse stuff than this.
I thought that he might get across the street and jump the board fence behind me. But no. That was too high for him, even higher than the opposite one!
As I looked at that fence, I saw that one of the boards was a little broken, and wrenched at it. The major portion of it did not give at all, but I pulled away a sizable club! That gave me an idea and a tenth part of a hope.
Alec seemed to know what was in my mind. He came straight in for me and got behind my legs, while I whirled up that club and gave the leader of the pack a good slam with it across the head. He was coming in so hard that his weight shot ahead after the blow, and he crashed me back against the fence. I thought I was going down. Prickles of ice shot all through me. Once down before a gang like these half-wolves, and they would have an easier throat than Alec’s to cut.
However, the swing of that stick and the splintering sound of the blow split the charge in two sections that sheered off from me to either side, and Alec woke up the stunned leader at my feet with a slash that opened the whole side of his shoulder. No mustang ever jumped faster and further than that dog did under the spur of Alec’s stroke.
I looked down and saw Alec grinning back to me, a red-stained smile. I swung the club, and shouted, but when the other dogs jumped away, the injured leader simply snarled and came in a slinking pace toward me.
There is a good deal of evil in most huskies. The wolf strain is strong in them and, though on the whole they are willing to admit that a man with a club or a whip in his hands is the master, still they’re liable to play mean tricks. I did not know their language, either, or the proper way to curse them out with a choice sprinkling of Eskimo words, say.
That big warrior seemed to guess at once that I was not the sort of iron he had found in men before me. I think about the worst thing I ever saw in my life was the long, gliding step that he made at me as I swung that club and shouted.
The rest of the team needed no better hint than this. In one jump they were back on each flank of him, eyeing me, pressing in close to the fence. One of them was snarling softly. The rest of them were silent, however, and that hungry silence meant a good deal more than growls at me.
I forgot about reclaiming dogs, rewards, and all that sort of thing. I began to yell at the top of my lungs for help. Not far away — in the next street, perhaps, I heard a number of men begin to laugh. Suddenly I realized that people did not turn out of their way in Nome to pay attention to the first yelping they heard, whether it came from dogs or men. The social instincts of a pack of wolves were almost kind compared to the instincts of that crowd, taking it by and large.
A frightful feeling of helplessness came over me. I got faint, and my breath would not come. I waved the club and whirled it in the air again.
The big leader slid forward on his belly like a stalking cat, and curled his lips away from his teeth. I decided it would have to be then or never. The whole of that horrible semicircle had drawn suddenly in around me and I knew, that unless I made some move, it would most likely be the end of me. So I feinted. He dodged his head a little, and then I let him have it alongside the head.
The club broke off short in my hand. The crackling and the stroke itself made the younger dogs of the team wince away a trifle; but, as for that leader, it was as though I had hit him with a feather duster. He simply showed me his teeth and the darkness inside his throat as he came excitedly off the ground at me.
Now, as that big brute began to rise, I told myself that it was the end. The horror and the fear weakened my arms to nothing at all. I could not have dodged and I could not have struck a single worthwhile blow with the truncheon of the stick.
It was young Alec the Great who saved me. He went past my legs in a flash. The leader had been thinking only of the human enemy and, as a result, just as he came off the ground Alec’s shoulder hit him and tumbled him head over heels with a rip down the side that spurted red.
There was a clear field for Alec, through that gap, and he could have bolted, but that did not seem to occur to him. Instead, he flashed back to my side instantly.
There was one bad moment when I thought that the team would rush me from either side but, like well-trained workers, they waited for orders from that ugly gray brute; and he had something new to think about.
The second blow, the second ripping stroke, apparently had brought him to his senses. Perhaps the battle had only started as a frolic. Perhaps he had gone blindly on from chasing a mere dog to attacking a man, and now he suddenly realized that he had been trying to pull down a human, and that man’s medicine is usually strong. At any rate, he gave us one wicked side glance, and then went off down the street. The rest of his crew tailed along after him like privates after a corporal. I never was so glad to see dogs going the other way.
III. MASSEY, MASTER OF ALEC
LOOKING AFTER THEM, with my eyes fairly popping, and the reeling dizziness only gradually working out of my head, I kept reaching down and patting Alec the Great, for as the huskies jogged away, I could think again about Alec.
Rewards were not in my mind, however. You don’t think of rewards from any creature that has been through the fear of death with you. It was reasonably true that I had saved him from being mobbed — as I thought then — but it seemed equally true that he had saved me from a pretty pickle.
I made another pat for the head of Alec and found that he was not there. He had run off a little way down the street and was fawning around a man who was in the act of putting away a revolver inside his coat.
You can imagine that I stared at him. For suddenly I realized that I had not been alone and helpless during this fracas. That fellow must have been there a good part of it. He had pulled out a revolver to intervene if necessary. But he had not fired.
