by Max Brand
He folded back one arm to lift his head and look at her. “I thought that I came here to sleep, but the fact is that all I needed was to see Dolores.”
“The poor eyes … the poor eyes,” murmured Dolores. “Can you see me at all?”
“I can,” said Liddell, “from your slippers to the beautiful shawl.”
“Mother of heaven!” cried Dolores. “It is a mantilla of the sheerest lace … you are blind. My poor little old one.”
She sat down beside him on the box spring and began to wash his eyes with a small daub of cloth, uttering tender murmurings.
Armando Pinelli, who was a man of an intensely practical nature, appeared for an instant at the door to say, “That is good, my sweet. Be kind to him, but not too kind.”
A moment later, Dolores was explaining to Liddell, “My little father has no brains except in his hands and he uses all their wits on his silver. But what a day for me. To see you again when you are more than half blind and when I have on my new fiesta dress!”
“Tell me about it,” suggested Liddell. “It’s red, isn’t it?”
“It is red,” she agreed, “with little workings of gold through the pattern so that it shines and shadows in folds as the light runs over it.”
“Dolores, it must be as lovely as an altar cloth.”
“No, if you are going to open your eyes and stare, stare at me and not at a worthless dress. Now close your poor eyes again, and tell me what you saw. No, don’t tell me.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you will tell me the truth. And the truth is a terrible thing for a girl. I don’t even dare to look into my mirror without smiling and fixing my eyes a certain way and tipping my silly head to one side or the other.”
“I’ll sing you a song,” said Liddell.
“I’ll get the mandolin, then,” Dolores said.
“No. Give me your hand instead.”
“So,” murmured the girl. “Ah, my crazy heart. It’s doing a dance, Señor Jimmy.”
He sang one of those old Mexican songs that are hard to translate because there are so many idioms in them. He sang it softly, and the words made a sense somehow like this:
The waterfall sings night and day
It throws up its white hands, rejoicing;
The currents are like wild horses
But after running a little way they stand still;
Their windy manes fall down;
The waters grow as quiet as ice
Because they wish to take, deeply, an image
Of a tree whose feet are close to the pool.
They take the whole of that slender image to the top
And show also the stars toward which it is pointing.
When he had ended, the girl still swayed a little with the rhythm of the music. At last she began to bathe the closed eyes once more.
“When you sing …” she said.
“Well?”
“When you sing, it is not a very good voice.”
“No. I’m only a campfire howler.”
“It is not a very good voice, but it is as though you took my heart in your hands, Señor Jimmy.”
“Dolores?”
“If my mother were not so big and fat, would you marry me?”
“Dolores!”
“If it were not for that black, horrible mustache, would you marry me?”
“Sweetheart …” said Liddell.
“No,” said the girl. “Don’t answer. But you can feel with the tips of your fingers that my lip is smooth.”
She leaned so close that he did not need to use the tips of his fingers.
“Dolores,” he said, “you are more to me than …”
“Hush,” she broke in. “Everything is so beautiful inside me, just now, that one lie would break my heart. Now … let the big yawn come … and now you are comforted and ready for sleep. Ah, you men … there is not much priest in you.” She put small wet pads over his eyes and arranged a bandage around them. “When will you be hungry?” she asked.
“When I wake up,” answered Liddell.
“When will you wake up?”
“When you leave me,” said Liddell.
But as a matter of fact he slept on through the end of the day, through the twilight and the night, and into the crisp chill of the dawn.
IV
At the end of the day there is a change in the Royal Saloon of San Jacinto. During the sunlight hours there rarely are any in the place except Americans, but in the evening Mexicans of the upper classes and even a few vaqueros come into the Royal to sit down to a poker game or play the roulette wheel. For the first time during the day, wine appears. Chuck Sladin keeps good French wine in his cellar and he always has a supply of California, red and white; he even can produce champagne for great celebrations. With his grim, tired old eyes, like the eyes of an ancient eagle, he discourages arm waving and loud noises so that the games at the rear of the saloon will not be too annoyed.
In the evening, also, the bar service is enlarged by Mexican waiters in clean whites who go softly about among the tables. An oddity is the way the Mexicans and the Americans keep apart and aloof even when they are rubbing elbows. The Spanish and the English language gather in separate pools; Spanish and English eyes forget one another and seek only faces of the same blood.
The Royal did a good business on this night, with Mark Heath at a table against the wall talking with Pudge McArthur and Soapy Jones. It was 3:00 a.m., the hour when the tongue begins to stumble and repeat itself as alcohol commences to anesthetize the brain. It was the time when maudlin good will enlarges the hearts of the drinkers, unbuttons pocketbooks and mouths, and pours mist into every eye. An inward, spiritual struggle was troubling the soul of Heath. At last he had his chin resting in both hands, his face almost covered by the fingers as he said, “This is what eats me … he makes poor old Frank love him, and then he shoots him in the back.”
“How do you know he shot Pollard in the back?” asked Pudge, opening his eyes and his mouth to express his astonishment.
“Why else would he have rolled the body down into the river?”
“I don’t foller that,” Pudge said, shaking his head.
“Listen, dummy,” broke in Soapy Jones, who was the brains of the pair, “if he hadn’t shot him through the back, why didn’t he leave the body lie and let the sheriff go out and identify his dead man?”
“He says it was because he didn’t want the coyotes and the buzzards to get at the body,” protested Pudge.
“Sure he says,” sneered Heath. “Go on, Soapy, and make it straight for Pudge.”
“Look, flathead,” pursued Soapy. “He comes up to Frank out there by the San Jacinto and he shakes hands and talks to him, and tells Frank about things, and pretty soon Frank turns his back, and then this Liddell, this Slip Liddell, he sinks a bullet through the back of Frank’s head.”
“What a skunk this Liddell turned out to be. And me looking up to him all this time like he was something extra,” complained Pudge. “Sure, if he shot Frank through the back, he wouldn’t want people to see it. He’d have that much shame.”
“Yeah, he’d have that much,” sighed Heath. “But will I ever have shame enough to do anything about it? Frank was swell to me. He took me in. He loaned me money. He set me up when I was flat. But I let him be murdered, and then I let the murderer walk around and collect blood money for the dirty job.”
“It ain’t your job to butt in,” advised Soapy. “Me and Pudge have known Frank three times as long as you. The question is … what should we do about it?”
“Pull a gun and shoot Liddell,” suggested Pudge. The violent idea shocked him, and he showed the shock in his eyes. Their chance to develop this theme was interrupted, however.
The same couple who had followed Liddell down the street—the ol
d fellow with the long, pulled-out face and the ragged youngster who accompanied him—had entered the saloon and gone up to the bar. The old fellow carried an accordion under one arm.
“We don’t want no free music in here,” Chuck Sladin announced sternly. “And how old are you, kid? I don’t serve anyone under eighteen.”
This brown-faced youngster, obscured by a cap that looked much too big for his head, turned to the old man and said quietly, “Well, Pop?”
“Go ahead. Show ’em how old you are,” directed Pop.
In a moment, coat and trousers of blue denim were tossed to Pop. The heavy shoes were kicked off the feet and replaced with dancing slippers. Finally the big cap followed the rest of the outfit, and let a bright bob of hair tumble out around her ears. She had on loose blue trousers and a blue silk shirt and around her middle she wore a red sash that took all the boy out of her and left only woman.
“Yeah, and what is it? A circus turn?”
Old Pop unlimbered the accordion at the same moment. He rocked it into a rippling, crazy, swinging jig time and the girl began a tap dance.
Chuck Sladin leaned over the bar to watch her feet with critical eyes. He was not fool enough to turn a real attraction out of doors, but he wanted no cheap panhandling in his place. It took him a long moment to decide, then he leaned back and began to clap his hands softly together to keep the beat of the music.
She really was good. She had no great weight to shift about and she was as supple as a blacksnake. Besides, she had imagination in her feet.
In the bar that night there were a couple of lads from the Truxton Ranch up in the hills. A radio gave them music on the long winter nights and when the range didn’t leave them too tired, they used to knock the frost out of their toes by tap dancing, and when they heard the clatter of the girl’s slippers it was too much for them. They came out with a couple of Indian yells and raised a good rattling thunder on each side of her.
“Go it, Skeeter!” yelled Pop. “Hop onto a table where they can see your feet!”
Instead of that, the Truxton lads pitched her up onto the bar and she began to sway and skip and ripple her feet up and down the bar, her slippers seeing their own way among the glasses and the bottles. Chuck Sladin only made sure that those light slippers failed to scar his varnish, and then he let the show go on. A thing like that was good for business. The Truxton boys got out of breath, but Skeeter was as tireless as a hawk on the wing.
She was not beautiful. When her face was still, she looked as grim as any boy, but she took care to be smiling and she knew how to let her teeth and her eyes flash. She knew how to put in the old appeal, too, and a hermit would have come right out of his cave to see Skeeter weaving into some of her warmer numbers. And all the while the cool little devil was taking stock of the men in the place and reading the minds of their pocketbooks.
She wound up with a bit that old Pop announced as “Saturday Night.” The music for it was only a soft humpty-thumpty on the accordion, but the feet of Skeeter brought a galloping horse right into town, walked a cowpuncher into a drunken party, staggered him through a fight, gave a couple of pistol-shot stamps for his death, and finally followed his body to church the next morning with a demure piety that made even the Mexicans laugh till they cried.
After that, she hopped off the bar and went around with Pop while he passed the hat. When they came to Mark Heath, he put in a $10 bill. The brown claw of Pop tried to close over that tidbit, but the girl’s hand flashed in and got the money away. She stuffed it back in Mark’s pocket and said, “Thanks, but I don’t know you that well.”
In spite of that they made a good haul of almost $15 because the men in the place were heeled for fiesta spending. They then went over to a corner table with a couple of tall beers and Pop undid a package of lunch while Skeeter slid back into blue jeans and tucked the brightness of her hair under the big cap again. Nobody bothered her, either, because she had a way of taking an admiring glance out of the air and handing it back well frosted.
Only Mark Heath came over and tried to sit at her table. Old Pop was thinking of that $10 bill and he pulled back a chair, but the girl said to Mark, “Don’t you go and try to get yourself dizzy about me, handsome, because I am not getting dizzy about anybody these days.”
“Will you have a drink on me, then?”
“I won’t have that, either,” answered Skeeter. “You can’t give me anything but love, baby, and I don’t want that today.”
So Heath went back to his table and people laughed at his lack of success, but the clumsy blue jeans and the cap swallowed her up so completely that she was almost forgotten, as she sat with her back to the crowd, digging her small, white teeth into a tough slice of yesterday’s bread with a slab of bologna laid over it. She took big bites and chewed hard, and helped mastication along with a good swallow of beer from time to time.
She was the hardy one for you. She could turn her hand into a fist that meant something. She looked as light and strong as a jockey, and she was still stronger than her looks. Ten minutes before, half the men in that room were giddy and grinning about her, but now she was nobody’s business except her own.
Old Pop had his yellow fangs in a sandwich and said through the bread, “Ten dollars. Ten dollars … You keep us in the gutter. You keep us in the dirt.”
“Listen, Pop,” she answered, “I’d rather heist the dough than glom it off a kid like that when he’s dizzy about me.”
“Let them be dizzy, you fool!” directed Pop. “God made you … and you make men dizzy … and that’s that. Use the gifts that God gave you, Skeeter.” And he frowned at her.
“If I had a drop of your blood in me,” said Skeeter, “I’d cut my throat and hang myself up by the heels to get rid of it. But shut up and listen to the talk that’s going around. They’re all talking about Slip Liddell. That was Slip that we followed today, then.”
“Yeah,” agreed Pop. “He shot a pal out in the hills and came back to town to grab the blood money. That’s what your hero done, and the boys don’t seem to like it.”
“I don’t believe it,” said the girl.
“Who cares what you believe?” demanded Pop. “I’m talking about the facts.”
“You can’t talk facts, Poison Face,” answered Skeeter. “You hate everything too much to tell the truth about it. Slip Liddell …”
“He shot his partner in the back. The whole town knows about it.”
“He never shot a man in the back in his life.”
“Yeah. You ought to know. You were raised in the same house with him,” sneered Pop.
“I know what I’ve heard of him,” she said. “I’ve seen the faces of some shacks that he’d worked on. I’ve heard the line they pull about him all the way from ’Frisco to the Big Noise. Listen, Poison, he won’t even play a sucker. He saves himself for the professional crooks and beats them at their own stuff.”
“He shot Frank Pollard in the back for five grand,” said Pop, and grinned till his teeth showed and his eyes disappeared. “What made him Galahad to you, anyway?”
She replied, “Who do they still talk about up and down the line? He lived where he wanted to and never hit the stem … he never battered privates. He was tramp royal when he wanted to travel. His hand was heavier than the other guy’s blackjack. The cops and the shacks had chills and fever when they turned him up. He always had a limit and he always had it while the day was young. He never pulled a job … he never gave a pal the red lights … he shelled out to every sucker that was on the fritz … he never passed up a gal that was on the street without giving her a handout. And now you try to cross him up with me by saying that he shot somebody in the back? Listen, Pop, one of these days when you try to pull the poison on me like this, I’m going to take it on the lam, and then you can try to walk the cash out of the pockets without Skeeter.”
“You’re dopey about a guy you n
ever saw,” commented Pop, totally undisturbed by this outburst.
“I have seen him,” said the girl. “I saw him today. I knew him by his picture.”
“When did you ever see a picture of him?”
“Four, five years back I saw it in a daily rag, somewhere. But I wouldn’t’ve had to see his picture. I would have known him by the way he walked.”
“How did he walk?” Pop asked.
“Like he was going somewhere,” said Skeeter.
“You’re nuts,” said Pop.
The voice of Pudge McArthur suddenly dominated the saloon. He was standing on a chair at the bar, ordering a round of drinks and making a speech as the liquor went down.
“We’re not gonna take it!” roared Pudge. “We’re not gonna lie down and take it!”
“We ain’t gonna lie down and take it!” shouted an answering voice from the crowd.
That was Soapy Jones. The girl spotted him at once. Then she glanced over at the wall and saw Mark Heath still at his table with his chin on his fist and his eyes bright with calculation. She studied him with a bright curiosity for an instant.
“Nobody is gonna bamboozle San Jacinto!” bellowed Pudge. “Not even if his name is a big name. Nobody is gonna shoot a friend through the back and come in to get blood money. They can’t put it over in San Jacinto. Not while we got so many good ropes in this town!”
“We got trees to hang the ropes on, too!” shouted Soapy Jones.
“Who you talking about?” demanded old Chuck Sladin.
“You know who I’m talking about,” answered Pudge. “And I wanna tell you that the dead man was a friend of mine. He was the kind of a man that would give you his last ten cents, and he smiled when he done it. He was the kind of a man that he couldn’t say no to a friend. He was more’n a brother to me. He was more’n a brother to the rat that shot him through the back.”
