Delphi Collected Works of Max Brand US, page 799
“I just wanted to say a few words to you,” Cobalt told him.
“I’m going to kill you!” said the boy.
“There’ll be time for that later on, but you’re going to begin by talking to me a little.”
“I’ll have the heart out of you before long!”
“Not until you get a new pair of hands!”
The Rawhide Kid gasped. His head jerked back and rapped against the wall as he felt the pressure increase. There is little else so painful as having the hand gripped so hard that the knucklebones grate together. The Rawhide Kid was enduring his share of the torment and something more. No one moved to interfere with the procedure. The men looked on with keen interest, but they kept at a distance. It was simply known that the Rawhide Kid had pulled a gun. It was not the first time that he had flashed a weapon in Skagway, it developed. Being a killer, he got only that sympathy which a killer may expect. No one could hear what Cobalt was saying to the boy except Baird and me.
“Now,” said Cobalt, “I want the name of the man who set you trailing me.”
“Nobody. I ain’t trailing you.”
“I want the name of the man who started you on my trail,” insisted Cobalt.
Suddenly there was a dull, cracking sound. I knew that one of the boy’s metacarpal bones must have snapped. His head jerked over on his shoulder, pulled by the twinge of agony, but he did not cry out. He had his share of manhood and more than his share.
“The name!”
The twisting lips of the boy whispered: “Soapy!”
Cobalt released him instantly, picked the gun off the top of the table, and offered it to him, but the hands of the lad were stiff and white from the frightful pressure they had endured. There was only the ugly stain of red about the fingertips. He could not take the weapon. So Cobalt dropped it into the pocket of his coat, and Rawhide stumbled blindly away and was lost behind the shoulders of the crowd.
Cobalt came back and sat down with us. His calm outwardly was entirely restored. He lifted his half-finished drink of whiskey with a hand which did not tremble and drank it off slowly, as before.
“It’s Soapy Jones,” he said softly, as he replaced the glass upon the table.
The crowd was already busied about its former occupations. Only now and again some head turned and a glance went to Cobalt, but he did not seem to notice these looks. I could not help saying: “If it’s Soapy Jones, you’d better get out of Skagway, Cobalt.”
He grinned at me. “That’s good sympathetic advice, brother, but I’m not getting out of Skagway.”
I said: “You ought to know the power Soapy has here. The man owns the town. You’ve just seen today what he can do with it.”
“Yes, I saw. I saw plenty of what he can do, but I’m not leaving Skagway.”
“You think,” I said, aroused by a real concern for him, “that it’s only a question of one man. He may be a hardcase, but no doubt you could handle him alone. It isn’t that. He has a mob behind him. Half these fellows would kill you for the sake of getting one smile from Soapy. That’s the fact. I’ve heard the talk.”
Cobalt shook his head. “D’you think that I’d leave town before I’ve finished my business here? You wouldn’t think that of me, Tom, would you?”
I had to shake my head. As well think of a bulldog loosing its grip at a word of good advice. “No,” I said, “I don’t suppose you will.”
“I’d like to know just what your business is,” prompted Baird.
“Why, it’s Sylvia, of course,” Cobalt replied. “Sylvia alone. That is to say, it was Sylvia before Soapy Jones mixed into the affair. Now I’ll have to have an interview with Soapy. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt about that.” Suddenly he made a gesture with both hands, palms up. “It looks to me as if I’m going to have a real party in Skagway, as if I’m going to be able to fill both hands in this town.”
I understood, with a chilly touch of insight, just what he meant. He would have his fill of fighting, and battle was what he lived for. His lips were compressing in hardly visible twitches.
“Tell me, Cobalt,” I said, “did you never have both hands full before?”
He half closed his eyes in thought. “No,” he conceded finally. “I never had both of them full.” He looked down. You would have thought he was pitying the bad luck of those hands. “When I was ripping away on Birch Creek last summer, I just about filled them — thinking of Sylvia, I mean, and working for her.”
He had worked twenty hours out of the twenty-four, men said, and one hour of his labor was worth five hours of another man. He worked in a frenzy, as a dog pulls at a sled when it has hydrophobia of the peculiar variety which appears in arctic sled teams. I remember thinking how foolish we’d been Baird and I to dream we could escape from this man when his heart was really set on finding the girl. He had worked hard enough to show that he would never give her up. It hardly needed his frantic rush from Circle City to the coast to prove that to us. We had argued like children, and like children we had obeyed a blind impulse.
I stared at Baird helplessly, and he likewise stared back at me. What could the solution be? Nothing except the will of this giant of mind and body.
“What’s the next step, Cobalt?” I asked him, expressing our despair in the foolish question.
“Soapy Jones is the next step,” he answered.
I saw Baird change color.
XXV. AN INCIDENT
I THINK COBALT would have gone straight to find Soapy at that moment if an odd event hadn’t intervened and filled our attention for a little. Otherwise, it would hardly deserve a place in this narrative, but the thing was so diabolical, and it has been repeated so often by old-timers who only heard of it, that I’ve deemed it fitting to set the thing down in black and white exactly as it happened.
This was the way of it. A man with a wide, good-natured looking face came into the saloon and asked in a loud voice: “Where’s Jess Fair?”
It seemed a strange question, seeing that Fair was actually standing there behind the bar. At the moment he was polishing up the bar and giving some directions over his shoulder to an assistant. He was wearing a white coat and a blue bow tie with a fancy figure in it. He was always dressed just like a dandy.
When the stranger asked for him, he continued to polish the bar and to speak to his assistant without turning his head. No one answered the man’s question, but I heard Cobalt murmur: “There’s going to be trouble.”
Well, I could feel it too. The air became suddenly electric. Danger will prickle like a current through the skin of a man.
“Where’s Jess Fair?” repeated the stranger.
There was still no answer. People looked at him, some of them smiling a little and expectant. So he addressed a man standing close to our table.
“I’ve got a warrant for a man named Jess Fair who works for Soapy Jones,” he said. “Can you tell me where I can find him?”
“I can’t tell you,” said the other. “What’s the warrant for?”
“Oh, just a little thing. Just a couple or three murders and some little things like that down in the States.”
“Well, you look around for Jess,” said the man he’d addressed. “I don’t recollect having heard the name before.”
He turned and winked at us as the stranger went away. Then we heard him say to a companion. “That’s the new deputy sheriff. The fool don’t know what he’s about, coming in this place to make an arrest.”
“He’s drunk,” suggested the other.
“No, he’s just a fool,” said the first man.
Perhaps he was right. At any rate we now heard Jess Fair saying from behind the bar: “Step over here, Sheriff, will you?”
The deputy sheriff walked over to the bar. “Well?” he said.
“You’re looking for Jess Fair?”
“Yes. I want him, and I want him quick.”
“Jess is a friend of mine,” said the bartender.
“Is he?” answered the man of the law. “Then I dunno that you keep very good company, brother. Where’s this friend of yours hang out?”
“Why, he’s right here, most of the time.”
Broad grins appeared on the faces of all the men except those nearest. They continued to wear masks of iron self-control.
“Is he?” asked the deputy, looking suddenly around him. “But he ain’t here now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask.” He actually called to the men and asked them: “Have any of you seen Jess Fair today?”
“Why,” said one man, “I’ve been looking right at him, here in the barroom.”
There was a chuckle from one man, instantly suppressed, for fear that the game might be spoiled. The deputy sheriff had turned to the last speaker.
“What does Fair look like?” he asked.
“Why, ain’t you ever seen him?”
“No. They just told me that pretty nearly everybody would be able to spot Jess Fair to me. He works here in this place. He works for Soapy Jones, whoever he is.”
“You don’t know Soapy, either?”
“No, I’ve barely heard of him. I’ve only been in town for three days.”
Three days in town and already a deputy sheriff! Well, the law moved in mysterious ways and with strange agents in Skagway. This fellow had the look of a professional bouncer or thug. He had simply gone looking for trouble in asking for the job of law enforcement, and trouble was what he found, the poor boob.
“Soapy’s quite a fellow,” said one of the bystanders to the sheriff.
“I guess he is. But I’m only looking for Jess Fair,” said the deputy.
“Well, I’d talk to that bartender,” was the suggestion he got.
He turned back to Fair. “This fellow, Fair, what’s the look of him?”
“Why,” said the barkeep after a moment of pretended reflection, “he looks a great deal like me.”
“Now, how do you mean that?” asked the deputy in an irritated tone. “Is he your height, your complexion, got a mouth like yours?”
The bartender looked calmly upon him. “Kind of like me in all those ways. But I think that he’s a good deal better looking than most people do.”
“Do you?” said the deputy. “I ain’t asking what you think of him. I’m only asking where I can find him.”
“Hunting for him would be the best way, I suppose.”
“Hullo!” exclaimed the man of the law. “Are you handing me some lip?”
“No, I’ve hardly got enough lip to cover my own teeth. I couldn’t spare any.”
The deputy swelled like a toad with anger. He strode up to the bar and dropped his fist on the edge of it.
“I wouldn’t be doing that,” cautioned Fair. “You look pretty good natured already.”
Someone in the crowd broke into a roar of laughter. This was the end of self-restraint, and the whole room exploded and rocked with mirth. The deputy was so angry that he glared about him, as though looking for the first man he could strike in the face. There were too many and all equal offenders. He decided to concentrate on the barkeep whose remark had excited all the mirth.
“That last crack of yours was too fresh,” he said.
“It got a laugh, though. That’s what I’m hired for. It ain’t the booze we peddle that keeps the boys contented at this bar. It’s the jokes that their bartender is always cracking.”
This caused another burst of laughter, and the deputy turned purple. “Come here to me!”
Jess actually leaned closer across the bar. “Yes, sir?” His appearance of humility tickled the bystanders still more.
“Somebody ought to warn that fool,” said Cobalt. “I’m afraid that something will happen.”
“Not here. Not before all this crowd,” said Baird.
I agreed with him, but Cobalt merely shook his head gloomily.
“You been shooting off your face a lot,” said the deputy to Fair. “Now I wanta know something. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m a barkeep in the employ of the Honorable S. Jones of New York, Paris, Chicago, and points farther west. He’ll tell you more about me.”
“Why, you thundering fool! I’ve got half a mind to take you in!”
“Where?”
“To jail, you fool young puppy. That’s where I got a mind to take you.”
“What for?” asked Jess.
“For contempt of the law!” roared the deputy.
“Are you the law?” Fair wondered innocently.
The deputy gaped, grew still more purple, and actually gagged with his own fury, unable to speak.
“But I’ll direct you to Jess Fair,” continued the barkeep, “if you’ll promise not to take me to jail.”
That fool of a sheriff actually answered: “I’ll make that a bargain. You ain’t worth my while, only that I’m gonna teach you the right kind of manners.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now tell me where this Jess Fair is.”
“Standing in my boots.”
“Hey?”
A wild burst of laughter filled in the pause. The deputy, looking wildly about him, suddenly realized how completely he had been made sport of, and he stuck out his under jaw like a bulldog.
“It’s amusin’, is it?” he asked defiantly. “You come with me. I hereby arrest you in the name—”
I hardly saw the gun flash into the hand of the bartender. I don’t know whether he pulled it from within his neat white coat or snatched it from the shelf beneath the bar. But I heard the report, saw the muzzle of the gun jerked on high by the explosion, and saw the deputy go staggering backward, beating at the air like a man swimming. He fell flat on his back, twisted over on his face, kicked out his legs, and lay still. No one moved except Jess Fair. He jumped over the bar as light as a bird and leaned over the deputy.
When he straightened up after a moment of examination, he merely said: “It looks as though Skagway is short of a brand new deputy sheriff, and that’s too bad. Here, boys. Lay hold of this and chuck it outside, will you?”
That was exactly what was done. The body of the dead man was lifted by two of the hangers-on of the place and thrown out into the street. Who removed it from the spot where it fell, I don’t know. Perhaps another section of the gang did the work. What I do know is that no one inside of that saloon made any protest on account of the cold-blooded murder, not even Cobalt. In another few minutes, when the blood had been mopped up from the floor, men were walking about, talking and drinking, as cheerful as ever.
XXVI. THE YEGGS
THE BODY OF the deputy sheriff had hardly been carried out of doors when Baird thrust back his chair from the table, exclaiming: “What’s become of me, that I can sit still while outrages like this are carried through? What’s happened to the rest of the men here? Are we all wild beasts?”
He stood up. He was very excited, quivering from head to foot with his emotion. He said directly to Cobalt: “If there’s justice in heaven, I’ll balk you in the thing you wish to do. I’ll keep my girl from you if you are Satan himself, with wings and all!”
He turned on his heel and walked out from the saloon, while Cobalt looked after him without the slightest display of emotion. It was one of the upsetting features of Cobalt’s behavior that you never could tell what would start the lion in him roaring. I preferred noise in him rather than silence.
I was anxious enough to get out of that saloon, and I’m ashamed to confess that the reason I did not get up was simply that for a moment I could not. I felt sick and weak about the knees after what I had seen. It was Cobalt who stood up first. Immediately after he had left, I pulled myself together and managed to get out into the street. It was a dismal day. There was a light, variable wind blowing, and the snow descended in thin, light flakes that whirled and danced like white leaves from a shrub whose branches filled the sky. But at least I did not find the limp, dead body of the sheriff lying there in the street. As I said before, he had been disposed of, no one knew where.
I turned toward the hotel, walking slowly at first, but with increasing speed as the freshness of the air and the cool touch of the snowflakes cleared my brain of the sense of faintness. Several men were walking in the same direction ahead of me and one of them, I saw, was Cobalt, sauntering along. I decided not to pass him, and it turned out a lucky thing for me that I made this decision. Lucky for Cobalt, too.
He came to a corner and paused a moment, looking up and down the narrow alley which bisected the main way. While he stood there, a man stepped up and accosted him. He spoke rapidly, making wide gesticulations, like someone arguing a point, and I saw Cobalt nod once or twice, apparently agreeing with what he heard.
I came up very close now, so that I could hear the murmur of the voices, and next I saw a man approach Cobalt from behind. The manner of his approach alarmed me. His step was the unmistakable glide of a stalking animal.
I hurried. I thought of shouting to Cobalt, but something stopped me from doing that until I saw the second man’s hand come out from his coat pocket with a revolver in it. He had the weapon by the barrel, and he swung the butt back over his head, straining arm and body so as to give full force to the blow he was about to deal. By the grace of luck I was just near enough. I grabbed the armed hand of the scoundrel with both of mine and shouted: “Cobalt! Cobalt! Look out!”
The fellow I had hindered turned around, cursing. He struck me on the side of the head with knuckles that felt like steel, heavily weighted. I was half stunned and could only stumble in blindly and grapple with him. Suddenly he dropped. I lurched dizzily over his limp body and almost dropped into the snow-flecked mud. Then I saw that another form lay loosely spilled in the street, and here was Cobalt holding me under the pit of one arm.
“Are you all right?” he asked me.
“Yes, I’m all right.” My movements denied it, because I kept wavering back and forth like a gate in a wind, an old gate that dangles from one hinge.
