Legend of the Golden Coyote

by Max Brand

  I kept a straight face, and I told him to go ahead and try his hand. Then I started looking for Jessica, feeling a lot better, because I allowed to myself that I had fixed things up pretty fine, and that there couldn’t be no real trouble happen in the hall that evening. Which shows that I was a plain fool and didn’t realize that the worst kind of tragedies start in with smiles, and not with guns talking.

  Before I could get to my place, I was stopped by Jimmy Clarges. He said to me: “Hello, kid … wait a minute.”

  I stopped, kind of nervous, because I could see a whole flock of gents coming around Jessica.

  He said: “I’ve got an idea for getting level with that kid, Shorty. I want to hear what you think of it.”

  “Fire away,” I said, wondering what could be in the head of Jimmy. Because ordinarily he never bothered about thinking. He let Soapy do all of that hard work for him.

  Jimmy said: “What put the hunch into my head was this. I seen what a fine, all-around looker the girl with Shorty is. And I says to myself … is he worthy of her? No, he ain’t. Then why should he have her? He shouldn’t. Then why shouldn’t somebody else pry him away from her? Why, there ain’t any good reason against that, is there? No, no good sense at all. And who’s the man to be? Why, the first come, the first served. And opportunity, she never comes more’n once a day. Y’understand? Why shouldn’t I go in there and try to cut him out?”

  He wasn’t quite as sure of himself as Soapy. But it amazed me to see that both of them had worked things out in the same way. No, it didn’t amaze me none. Matter of fact, if you had one good look at the face of Rosita, you would have wanted to try just the same thing, and I suppose that there was a hundred men in that hall that would have liked to cut loose at her. But, when a girl gets to be just so pretty, she holds a gent back. Because you figger that some other gent must surely have the inside track—somebody a lot better and smarter and richer than you are. Y’understand how it is? It was that way with Rosita. There was nobody that bothered her much. Chiefly just Shorty that was always around her. And all the rest of the boys held right back. So Jimmy and big Soapy had both got the same idea.

  “The finest chance in the world,” I said. “You go ahead and win.”

  I might have said something better than that. I might have tried to persuade him not to make a fool of himself. But the fact was that I wanted to get rid of him quick, so that I could have a good laugh at him. I couldn’t hold in no longer. So I sent Jimmy away to try his hand, and I sashayed on up to Jessica, who was just standing up on the floor with a gent, and the music was beginning with a bang and a whanging on the traps.

  “Hey, Jessica,” I said, “are you going to quit me on this here dance?”

  “Oh,” she said, blushing real hard, “that terrible program. I’ve just mixed everything up by losing it. Is this really your dance?”

  “It ain’t nothing else but,” I said.

  VII

  There was a trail of black looks that followed me from the rest of those gents as I danced away with her.

  “I’ll tell you what,” said the girl, “I don’t think that this dance belonged to you at all.”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “it sure does to the best of my memory, and a man can’t do no better than that.”

  She looked straight and steady at me. “I think you have a bad memory,” she said.

  “I got one of the worst in the world, except about you,” I said, “and I got such a good memory about you that I couldn’t forget a single thing.”

  “You think that I’ll believe that?” she queried, frowning. But she didn’t mean the blackness of her look.

  “I’ve got you all wrote down,” I said, “from the color of your hair and your dimple to the size of your slippers.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what … a girl can’t believe a single thing that you say.”

  “Hello!” I said. “And why not?”

  “Because a girl hears you telling fibs to other men.”

  “Men don’t count,” I stated.

  “Only the girl, I suppose?” she suggested.

  “Not them, either. You’re pretty near the first one that I ever talked to, Jessica.”

  “Kind of a wild and lonely life you’ve led, maybe?”

  “Terrible,” I said.

  “In a wilderness,” she said.

  “Just about.”

  “And what did you learn to dance with?”

  She nearly had me there, but that blessed drummer, he whanged the bass drum just then, and when the booming of it died away, I said: “You see, I was raised up with a mother and a lot of aunts, and such.”

  “Ah,” says Jessica, “I’ll believe that.”

  “Thanks,” I stated.

  “I’ve seen a lot of the boys learning to dance with their mothers and their aunts.”

  And she grinned up at me, and I grinned back at her. It was easy to see that she understood, and that I understood, and everything was pretty fine and happy. I couldn’t help laughing. We swung around that floor like we was on skates.

  “Look,” said Jessica, all at once.

  I looked. There was big Soapy stepping out with Rosita. Yes, sir, there he was as big as life, and with his fine red boots flashing, and his long sash tail flaring out behind him while he stepped away with Rosita.

  I couldn’t help staring. I really hadn’t figured that he would be able to get a single dance with her, because somehow from a girl like that, you didn’t think that she would let herself be made to look sort of funny dancing with a big lummox like that. But there she was, looking as contented as you could wish.

  Then I took notice that Soapy didn’t look so foolish, neither. I mean to say, he was wonderful light on his feet. You wouldn’t expect that he would take such big strides around that he could hardly keep time. But he didn’t. He come in with a click on every beat.

  Rosita Alvarado was tall, too, which made the pair of them look all the better. And take it by and large, Soapy looked pretty gaudy, but not bad at all.

  Well, I nearly twisted my head off my neck, looking at them. And so did everybody else in the room.

  And then I said: “Where’s Shorty?”

  “Who do you mean?” said Jessica.

  “I mean the gent that was dancing with her before.”

  “Jack Thomas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t know where. Gracious, I hope that he hasn’t left the hall.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? Why, if he’s left the hall, it means that he’s angry because she’s dancing with Soapy Almayer.”

  “What of that?” I asked her.

  “Don’t you know anything about Jack Thomas?” she asked me, leaning back in my arms, and frowning up at me.

  “Not much,” I told her.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s a lot to know. If you was to go down into Arizona, maybe they would tell you quite a lot.” I said: “Thomas is a gunfighter?”

  “Nothing but,” said Jessica.

  “How many has he got?” I asked.

  “I’ve only heard of five men that he’s killed,” she responded. “Is Soapy Almayer a friend of yours?”

  “He is,” I said. “He sure is, and a white man, at that.”

  “Mostly,” said Jessica, “I think that Jack Thomas has left the white men alone. He’s done a lot of terrible things among Mexicans and Indians, but the white men … well, he’s only killed five of them. But I don’t suppose that there’s anyone in this room foolish enough to want to make Thomas hostile.” She added: “You look dizzy, Jim.”

  I took her over to a corner, and we sat down together.

  “Tell me,” I said, “is this Thomas really a bad one?”

  “I don’t know,” she told me. “He’s new on the range and in this part of the world, and we haven’t heard very much about him….”

  “Just about the number of men that he says he’s killed?”

  “
Oh, no,” she said. “But there was a man who came through here from Arizona, and he saw Shorty Thomas, and he told what he knew about him. That’s all.”

  Well, it made me pretty sick, as you maybe can imagine. I sat there and held my head in both my hands. And I thought that I could see the finish of the whole miserable business. I could understand why it was that Shorty had got into a rage when he’d been picked off his place on the bench that day in the camp. You couldn’t expect a bang-up gunfighter that didn’t fear anything in the world to take water even from a pair of giants like Soapy and Jimmy. What was size to him? The bigger the man, the bigger the target!

  “What’s wrong?” Jessica asked, and touched my arm.

  Just then a gent came up and asked her for a dance. She only stared at me, very cut up.

  “Go ahead and dance, Jessica,” I told her. “I got trouble on my hands.”

  Well, off she sailed with that cowpuncher, but her glance was fixed back at me, and at any other time it would have pleased me a whole lot, the attention that she was paying to me, y’understand? Just then, I was too worried to pay much heed to her and her nice ways.

  Well, up comes Jimmy Clarges, just then, and he said to me, very black: “Say, d’you see what’s happening?”

  “Hello, Jimmy,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “Soapy!” he said.

  “Well?”

  “He’s double-crossed me.”

  “How come?”

  “How come?” Jimmy asked, getting madder and madder. “Well, ain’t he stepped in and cut me out with that girl?”

  “Hello!” I said. “Is that the way of it? Look here, old-timer, what’s he done?”

  “He’s dancing with her.”

  “Did you tell him that you wanted to stake her out?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then how d’you expect him to know what’s going on in your mind?”

  “ He always knows everything that I’m thinking about,” said Clarges, with a sigh. “He always knows. And he knows now.”

  “I wouldn’t say so,” I said. “You wait and think this over and give yourself a chance to cool off, old-timer, will you? You’ll find out that Soapy didn’t really mean no harm to you.”

  “I hope so,” he replied. “I would take it pretty hard, to think that he would really have it in for me like that. Think of it, kid. In all these here years, we’ve never had no trouble with each other … not so much as one word of trouble.”

  “You won’t have any now,” I told him. “Why, old-timer, all that he means is just what you mean … to cut out Shorty with his girl.”

  Well, Jimmy was a pretty slow-headed fellow, as you can see for yourself. But now his face cleared.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Sure you’re right. Old Soapy, he wouldn’t try any tricks on me. But … wait a minute, kid, and tell me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think it out for me. Now that he’s danced with the girl first, have I got any right to ask her to dance with me afterward?”

  Well, sir, it struck me all in a heap … it was so stupid, and so good-natured, and so faithful. More like the way that you would expect a favorite horse or a dog to think. I couldn’t help liking Jimmy Clarges for it, even while it was hard to keep from busting out laughing at him.

  “You go ahead and dance with her, if you can,” I said to him. “I wouldn’t worry about anything. Soapy, he’s got a lot of sense. He wouldn’t care. And if he did, you could smooth it out with him in two seconds.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Dead certain. Only … you won’t be offended and make a lot of trouble if the girl can’t dance with you? Because she’s apt to have her program plumb full.”

  He said that he wouldn’t, and that he would just take his chance on her liking him well enough to dance with him, and crowd him into a place on her program.

  Well, sir, off he went, and I forgot the trouble that I was in about them long enough to see him rambling across the floor in the general direction of the place where Soapy was bringing the girl back, after the dance.

  When I seen that, I ducked out of the dance room, and laughed all the way down the stairs. But, while I was laughing, I was looking, and I didn’t see no sign of Shorty.

  I went on outside, and there I looked up and down where the gents was standing around the horses, but there was still no sign of Jack Thomas.

  “Partner,” I said to an iron-faced cowpuncher that was leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette. “Partner, tell me, did you ever hear of a gent by name of Jack Thomas?”

  He gave me a side look. He was one of them slow kind that think before they speak, and then think again. “Some,” he responded at last.

  “You know him?”

  “Some,” he said.

  “Have you seen him around here?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then where is he? Around the side of the courthouse?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe he’s stepped across the street to where that hot dog stand is?” I suggested.

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, where the devil can he be?” I insisted.

  “Home,” the iron-faced gent responded.

  “Home?” I echoed.

  He didn’t say nothing.

  “You seen him ride away from here?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Thanks for the information,” I said, a little peeved.

  And I turned back into the courthouse again, more worried than ever by a whole pile. If he’d gone home that meant something, and it might mean something important.

  I said to someone: “Did Thomas’s boss send him home?”

  “Thomas? Old man Alvarado ain’t here.”

  “The foreman, then?”

  “Foreman! Why, Thomas is the foreman, old-timer. Maybe he sent himself home.”

  And he busted out into a horse laugh.

  VIII

  Me, you can bet that I didn’t laugh none. Not me! It turned out that Thomas was the foreman of the Alvarado place. Well, that meant that he was somebody of some importance, and not just a mere gunfighter, and that made things all the worse. You take a fellow with brains and get him mad at you, and it’s twice as bad as if you was to get a mere ordinary fighter sore. Jack Thomas was mad. There was no sign of a doubt about that. He had gone home himself, and nobody had had the authority to send him. He had gone off and left somebody else to have the pleasure of taking Rosita home to her father’s ranch.

  Well, it made me feel pretty miserable. I didn’t have the least doubt that Thomas had had a fight with Rosita, and that it was on account of big Soapy. And I didn’t have the least doubt but that he’d gone off to plan how he could have revenge on Soapy.

  And then, as I stepped into the dance hall again, I wondered to myself why it was that I had to do all of the worrying, and why couldn’t somebody else take the affairs of Soapy and Clarges on their own shoulders? And wasn’t Soapy and Clarges themselves men enough to handle their own things in their own way?

  So, with the music blaring at me, and the slide trombones working overtime, I walked into the hall, and right away quick I found Jessica. And she found me, and smiled at me, like an electric light turned on in a dark room.

  It wasn’t no trouble at all to take her away from her crowd of gents and get the next dance.

  “I’ve been terribly worried,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About you! Is there anything wrong?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “There is, though. And don’t tell me that you’re going to have any trouble with that awful Jack Thomas.”

  I told her that I wasn’t. And then we forgot ourselves and had just a plain, fine time dancing. But, as we pulled into the middle of the dance, I seen something more to give a man the staggers. Yes, sir, right out there in the middle of the floor was Jimmy Clarges, dancing with his head throwed way back, and a grin on his face, and his e
yes half closed, like he was so happy that he was drunk. And all around him there was a big empty space coming from folks having collided with Jimmy two or three times and getting wrecked, and realizing that it was foolish to let him jostle them. Nudging Jimmy was like nudging the shoulder of a granite boulder, he was that solid, and his idea of dancing was to go where his feet took him, regardless absolutely of how many other folks was standing in his way.

  It was a scream to watch old Jimmy Clarges dancing, but that wasn’t all. The girl he was dancing with was something. Yes, sir, maybe you have guessed it already, but the fact is that he was up there dancing with the queen of the mountains—Rosita Alvarado!

  I looked at Jessica, and I asked her: “How come this, Jessica? How does it come that Rosita Alvarado is dancing with a big ham like Clarges?”

  “Why,” Jessica said, “a girl always likes to dance with a famous man, and Thunder and Lightning are both famous, aren’t they?”

  “I suppose they are,” I agreed, but still I didn’t think that it was enough of an answer.

  “I’d dance with either of them myself,” Jessica declared.

  Well, she would, too, being a happy-go-lucky, free-swinging sort of a girl. But then she wasn’t like that Rosita Alvarado. There wasn’t anything queenly about her.

  I finished off that dance, and hardly had a chance to get my girl seated when Soapy came up to me in a white heat.

  “I guess you seen that? I guess you seen that?” he stammered at me, wild with rage.

  “What in the world have I done to you, Soapy?” I asked.

  “You? Who said that you had done nothing to me? It ain’t you, it’s him.”

  “What him?”

  “The low-life, wall-eyed, flat-footed skunk,” Soapy hissed.

  “Who you talking about?” I asked.

  “I’ll turn him inside out and see what makes him tick! I’ll bust him in two!” Soapy stated angrily.

  “You’ll bust who?”

  “He’s double-crossed me.”

  “Who in the world do you mean, Soapy? Nobody would dare to double-cross you.”

  “You’d think he wouldn’t dare,” said Soapy, “him that I’ve taken care of like a baby all of these years, and worked over, and done his thinking for him, and slaved over him, and took care of him like he was a baby. But he ain’t no baby, either. He’s just a snake in the grass, I tell you.”