by Max Brand
“Not even Soapy,” I said.
He didn’t say a word. He just got up and followed me. Pretty soon, as we swung along through the trees, listening to the powdery fall of the snow from the branches now and then, he up and said: “A funny thing, kid, but….”
“What?”
“You take Soapy, he’s pretty big and grand, ain’t he?”
“Sure he is,” I said.
“Kind of a bull.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
“A bull moose, I mean,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“But there’s some things that he couldn’t manage.”
“I got no doubt of that,” I said.
“For instance … he’s strong. Got a grand arm. Got fine hitting strength, y’understand? You ever see Soapy hit out?”
“Not really.”
“You won’t, either,” he said, grinning and gaining in excitement. “Because, when Soapy hits, the other gent dies! He just dies!”
He made a pause. I thought it over, and I could believe it. I had seen the effect of a half-arm punch from Soapy on a strong man, a hardened, professional fighter. That little tap had flattened the pug as though a cart had driven over him.
“But I tell you what, kid,” Clarges continued. “Maybe there’s just one man in the world that could take one of Soapy’s punches without being killed by it.”
“Maybe,” I said, sort of absent-minded and not exactly following what was being said.
“It would have to be a solid sort of a man,” said Jimmy. “Somebody with plenty of underpinning, and built heavy and close to the ground, I should say. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I would,” I agreed.
“But,” he said, “d’you know anybody better fitted than me to fill just that part?”
“No, Jimmy, I sure don’t. Did you ever take a punch from him?”
He shook his head. “Why, kid,” he said, “we’re both alive, ain’t we?”
“Well, but men don’t have to kill each other when they fight.”
He stared at me, as though he couldn’t understand why I didn’t understand. “Him and me?” he said. “Soapy and me? Oh, if we ever fought, it would be killing. For both, most likely. Though maybe for only one. I’ll tell you what … when we first seen each other, we both knew that, and we’ve never dared to touch each other ever since.”
That was pretty frank talk. I had never heard Jimmy talk like that before, and gradually I began to wake up and see that he was hitting out in earnest and getting at something important. So I began to really listen and pay attention.
“I see,” I said. “When I come to think of it, I suppose that if the two of you ever got smashing and crashing away at each other, there’d be two dead men.”
“Maybe, maybe,” he said.
He begun to whistle to himself, as he went along. It was just a thoughtful whistle from Jimmy Clarges, but from that pair of lungs and out of those lips of iron that whistling was like the screeching of a factory siren.
It was the right sort of a setting for the hearing of important talk, and I was getting it.
Jimmy said to me pretty soon: “I’ll tell you what, kid….”
“Well?”
“Speaking about how strong Soapy is … there’s some ways where he’s weak.”
“It don’t seem likely at all,” I couldn’t help replying to that idea.
“No, not to you, it don’t seem likely at all, I got no doubt,” he said.
“But it is?”
“It is.”
“What way?”
“Here!” He held out his hands. His feet was no bigger than the feet of Soapy Almayer. But his hands, they was tremendous things.
“This is where he’s weak,” he said.
“I’ve seen him do a lot of queer things with his hands,” I said. “I seen him break between his hands a board that couldn’t break over my knee.” And, mind you, though I ain’t a giant, I’m not exactly any man’s weakling.
Jimmy just grinned at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Yes,” he said finally, “he might be able to do that, too.” But he didn’t seem to be budged from his conviction. “I’ll tell you the difference from his hands and mine,” he went on. “He ain’t got the size. And that means that he can’t get the leverage. He just can’t get it. He can bruise things. He can tear things. But I’ll tell you, kid, that he can’t slow and sure smash a thing, and turn it to pulp, and squash it gradual, and make the juice just sort of begin to leak and then to run and then to spurt out of it….”
He was closing one of those big hands of his as he spoke, and I could see a man in that grip, I thought, fighting, getting weaker, sagging, and then his heart’s blood spurting out. It wasn’t a pleasant daydream, you take it from me.
“And suppose,” said Jimmy Clarges, “that I was able to take one wallop from the big boy … and live through it … and get in close … and fasten a grip on him.” He stopped. He stopped talking. He stopped walking. He stood and stared at his own idea. “Just suppose!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Just suppose!” And he licked his dry lips.
XI
Well, by this time I was scared, plenty. I knew something about the ways of fighting men, and I said to myself that if this wasn’t a clear case of murder coming up, I would gladly eat the hats of the whole assembled crowd. I give Jimmy Clarges a hard, straight look in the eye, and he give me a hard, straight look back.
“Now, what’s up, Jimmy?” I asked.
“What’s up? Nothing,” he said.
I asked him to look me in the eye. Well, he done it with the most surprising ease.
“Jimmy Clarges,” I stated.
“Well, kid, what’s biting you?” he asked.
“You’re planning to murder Almayer.”
“Murder? My God, no! All that I want to do is to beat him.”
“Beat Almayer!” I shouted at him. “You’re crazy!”
“Am I? Am I crazy when I say that?” he said. “Well, you wait and see, kid, and maybe you’ll learn something.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I will … but why fight it out with Almayer, when you know that a fight with him is apt to mean a killing for one of you?”
“When things happen, they happen, and that’s all that there is to it, kid,” Jimmy Clarges pronounced.
“You’ve got to fight Soapy?”
“I got to.” And he added suddenly: “Hand to hand, or knife, or … or axes, maybe.” And he suddenly whirled his axe and turned it huge, double-size head into a streak of flashing light.
What a wrist he had! No, it wasn’t a wrist. It was just a bar of steel. I thought that I might as well get some of his energy out of him. And I pointed out a big tree, and I told him to start.
He began with a shower of blows that ate into the rim of that tree wonderfully fast. But it was a big fellow, with a great, hard heart, and I guessed that it would take even Jimmy half a day to bring it down, because he never kept his axe sharp, and, in spite of all his strength, he didn’t know where to place his blows to the best advantage.
I left him smashing away at that tree, and I turned back to camp.
The mail had just come up, and yonder was big Soapy sitting on a log and reading a letter. I remember that his sleeves was turned up to the elbow, and the big muscles rippled and bulged, and yet there didn’t seem to be strength enough in him to keep that thin bit of paper from trembling up and down.
I went over to him quick, and, when he seen me coming, he grinned up at me, sort of foolish, and put the paper away. But not before I had a chance to see that it had feminine handwriting on it.
Soapy was getting a letter from a girl!
“Hello, Soapy,” I said, “have you been busting the heart of some girl, you big ham?”
“Shut up, kid, you don’t know nothing,” he replied.
“All right,” I said. “I don’t know nothing, then. What do you know, Soapy?”
“Sit down, kid,” he said.
I sat down on t
he log.
“Have you seen Jimmy around?”
“Jimmy’s off somewhere in the woods working. I don’t know where. Are you taking a day off, maybe?”
He didn’t answer that. He just said: “Well, it’s a funny thing about Jimmy. He’s kind of deceiving.”
“How?” I asked.
“You would think that he was too simple to double-cross anybody, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, and I think that he is.”
“Well, that’s what I thought. But I was wrong.”
“I’d have to have that proved before I could believe what you say, Almayer.”
“You would? I got the proof right here in this letter,” Almayer said.
“Hey, Soapy,” I said, “have you let some skirt get you all tangled up? Some rattle-headed, thick-witted, grinning fool….”
“Hold on,” Soapy said. “Is Rosita Alvarado any of all those things?”
Rosita Alvarado! And writing to big Soapy!
“What did she say?” I asked him.
“Say, kid, don’t you think that I got no sense of honor?” he asked. “You think that I would go around and show her letter all over the world?”
“Maybe not. Maybe not,” I responded.
I got up and went away. I was pretty thoughtful. It looked a cinch that Almayer and Clarges was gonna make trouble for one another, and the terrible idea come to me that maybe Rosita Alvarado had let herself get tangled up in this affair. I say it was a terrible idea, because what could she have to do with them, really, and what could they have to do with her? They was folks out of two different worlds. Even death and birth could hardly have separated them further, y’understand?
It didn’t seem no ways possible, but all at once I decided that I would get at the truth under this here thing. I told the big boss that I wanted to go down to the town for the sake of clearing up something that had to do with Almayer and Clarges, and right away he told me to go ahead.
Ahead I went, and down to the town, as fast as a horse could gallop I got there. I got a change of horses at the hotel and burned up the road to the Alvarado house.
She wasn’t home. No, sir, that beat all the luck in the world— for me to make as long a ride as that, and not to reach her in time at her house. Just plain, mean, ornery bad luck that was to have consequences later on, as you’ll learn.
Rosita was over to the house of a neighbor.
I jumped for the saddle, and hitched the horse around and smashed away for the neighbor’s house, and got there, and pretty soon I was saying to a Mexican servant all kinds of reasons why I had to see Miss Alvarado.
Then a tall, distinguished, old gent come along, and he asked what can he do for me, because he was the father of the friend of Miss Alvarado, and that talking with him would be just the same as talking with Miss Alvarado.
I listened to that bunk, and I thought that I would go mad.
Just how badly time was needed I didn’t know, or how close Jimmy and Soapy was drawing together up there in the camp, but what I did guess was that every minute I really wasted might be fatal for somebody.
So I turned around when I heard the voice of a couple of girls in the patio beyond the room where I was standing. They didn’t sound like the voices of servants, even though they was talking Spanish. They was light and gay and bubbling voices, and there was an easy sort of a something about them that made me feel that maybe this was what I wanted.
I said to the old gent that was chaperoning Miss Alvarado so careful that I thanked him very much, but that I thought that I could manage to help myself. Then I side-stepped through the doorway and glided right on out into the patio before the Mexican knew what I was about to do.
Well, he didn’t have a fair chance to get heated up, because right there before me I seen girls walking arm in arm and chattering and nodding and laughing and bubbling like a pair of birds on the bough of a bush. It was a pretty sight to see, if you had any time at all, and I turned around, and I said to Miss Alvarado—sure, she was one of them—I said to her: “Ma’am, I got to take five minutes of your time.”
Well, sir, that girl just passed a frosty eye over me and said to her friend—“This is very strange.”—and turned her back on me and started to walk off.
She didn’t walk far, though—because with one jump, I was in front of her.
They started back from me with a cry, the pair of them.
“Heavens, Rosita!” said the girl of the house. “What are we to do? Carlos! Miguel!”
“Lady,” I said to her, “I’m sorry that I ain’t got the time to be polite, but, if you start calling in a lot of your house mozos, this here place is all gonna get heated up and splashed with blood, I’m sorry to tell you. Y’understand? I got a reason for being here, or I wouldn’t be bothering you at all, ladies.”
They drew closer together and eyed me, but they didn’t yap no more. A pair of sure-enough beauties they was, with eyes worth seeing, and their mouths more redder than you would believe of anything but paint.
I looked ‘em over, and then I said: “Señorita Alvarado, I’m sorry to bother you, but I sure would take it kind if you was to give me a couple of minutes alone with you.”
Her friend gasped and grabbed her arm, and Rosita Alvarado had plenty of nerve. I got to say that for her in the beginning and right away quick. She was as cool as you please.
She said: “Go over to the side of the garden, my dear. And I’ll talk to this man.”
Her friend hesitated a minute, and then she left and went over out of earshot.
“Now, what is it?” asked Rosita Alvarado. “And you do not know, I suppose, that it is dangerous to break into a house in this fashion?”
“Listen,” I said, “I understand what your meaning is. You mean to give me a fair warning. But it don’t bother me none. I’ve come down here to tell you about your dead men.”
Well, it fair knocked her dizzy. She put a hand to her breast and closed her eyes.
“Not dead!” she gasped at once. “God forbid that they should be dead.”
“What had they done to you,” I said, “that you should want ‘em to murder one another? What have they done to you? Answer me that!”
You see, I was fumbling in the dark, but it seemed that I had hit the truth nearer than I could have hoped. For now she cried out: “Nothing! Nothing! What were they to me? I was only to play the wretched joke for the sake of Jack Thomas!”
XII
There it was out of the bag. Jack Thomas—he’d used her to tangle up the pair of men that he hated. The little hound! The murdering little hound! I could hardly believe my ears. And yet there was an obvious reason for it. He couldn’t use his guns on a pair of men who never carried weapons. And he couldn’t be expected to stand up to them hand to hand. So what was he to do? Well, in a way it was a clever thing that he had managed. To make the pair of them fight one another.
“Joke?” I said to the girl. “It’s a joke that you might have to answer for. D’you mind telling me what the joke was?”
“Why … it was only a little thing.” She had to stop. She was trembling and almost crying. “I’ll never let Jack Thomas come into my house again!” she cried.
“That won’t bring dead man back to life,” I told her, very stern.
Perhaps I was scaring her too much, but, after all, it was about time that she learned that the jokes a woman plays on men have to be of a certain kind. And better none at all.
“Dead men!” she sobbed. “Oh, oh, oh! But I tell you how it was. Jack Thomas had told me that the pair of them had bullied him in the camp, and that he wanted to get even with them … if only I would dance with them both and let one of them take me home. And then afterward, I would write a letter to the second one … but how could I dream that …?”
“What did you say in that letter?”
“Oh, nothing worth repeating. Except that I was sorry that I had not seen more of him the other night, and that I hoped some other time he would come to see me and�
�.”
“And you asked Jimmy Clarges to come to see you, too?”
“Was that very wrong?”
“Was it wrong? Well,” I couldn’t help adding, “the fact is that neither of them is dead just yet, but, before I get back to the camp, one of them may be dead, or perhaps both of them. I don’t know. I don’t know! But if either of them starts a fight, the other one will finish it, and then you’ll be to blame.”
“But they’re not dead … not either of them?”
“No,” I admitted. “They’re not.”
“I thank heaven!”
“I’m sorry that I talked so mean to you,” I said, by way of apologizing.
“It was a due punishment,” she said. “And I don’t complain to you. It was just and fair. I have no right to say that it was not. But, ah, how sick it makes me at heart to think … and they both seemed so simple and harmless and silly … how could they have killed anyone?”
I left her to think that problem out for herself, and tolerable, comfortable, because I knew that it would be a long time before she did any flirting with another man.
I wasn’t in such a hurry to get back to the town. At least I was at the bottom of the affair by now. And it really didn’t seem possible that those two big hulks would get to fighting just for the sake of a letter and an invitation to call. Well, that comes later.
As I was saying, I was drifting down the trail, easy, letting the pony take his time, and I remember whistling at a fool blackbird that would fly along and light on the fence posts ahead of me, from time to time, and, when he heard me whistle, he would flap his wings and skim over my head and land again farther up the fence line.
Altogether, I felt sort of relieved, though I couldn’t tell why. Now that I had the clue to the whole thing, I’d simply go up to camp and tell the truth to the two big men. It was better for them to start in hating Shorty again than it was to have them hating one another. You can see that I had a pretty good reason for feeling comfortable about the thing. And I couldn’t have dreamed of what was really going to happen between them.
Anyway, there I was sauntering along, and taking it easy, and everything seemed hunky-dory, so far as I was concerned, and turning over in my mind the beauty of Rosita, and then harking away from her to what I felt was the cleaner face and the cleaner heart of Jessica. That was the girl for me! And while I was dreaming like that, I heard a clattering of hoofs.
