by Max Brand
I looked before me and seen that the pointed roofs of the town was just beginning to show above the trees. I looked behind me, and there was a rider sashaying down the road as fast as his bronco could lift him.
In another minute, I seen that it was Shorty Thomas, with the rim of his sombrero flared back from his forehead, so that I could make out his features very clear. It give me a terrible chill. The first thing that I noticed after that was that the flanks of his horse was all polished with sweat, and I figgered that maybe I could ride away and get to the town before him.
But a fine thing it would be to get to the ears of Jessica—I mean, how I had rode away full speed with Jack Thomas chasing me. It would make her laugh at me. And I couldn’t stand for that.
No, my horse could possibly get me away from him, but I couldn’t leave the trouble to my horse. I had to keep it for myself. And I didn’t like the idea.
I was a fair shot with a rifle or with a revolver. Yes, I was a good deal better than a fair shot. And I don’t mind saying that I could stand up to most men well enough with fists. But I never was any hand at making it a point of honor to be able to flash a revolver out of the holster like a streak of lightning. And I knew that was what Shorty could do.
I loosened up my revolver in its housing. And then I done the same by the rifle in the case that ran down under my right leg. And now, with the beats of that horse’s hoofs rattling right in my ear, I seen that whatever I was to do, I had better do it right there and now.
I snaked that rifle out of the case, and, whirling my bronco around, I quickly jerked the rifle up to my shoulder.
Shorty Thomas, not twenty yards away, yelled to his horse, as he seen me halt mine, and he called out: “Hold on, Rankin, you low hound! I’m gonna….”
And then the next thing he knew, I was tucking that rifle right under his chin. He hadn’t expected anything like that, of course. He was a revolver man. That was his specialty. That was the specialty of all of those killers, you see? But this Thomas didn’t lose his nerve because I had the drop on him, and his face, it was all wrinkled up with rage, something queer to see, and his eyes snapped and flashed at me. And he said: “You know why I’m here?”
“I can guess why you’re here,” I said.
“Because you stabbed me in the back!” he sang out.
“Because I’ve queered your game with a decent girl whose money you wanted. Is that it?” I suggested to him.
He snarled at me and got purple in the face. “Blast your heart,” he said, “and put down that rifle, and we’ll start on an even break.”
“With Colts?”
“With anything that you want,” he said. “I don’t care what you use … but are you sure you have got the guts to make a fair and square stand-up fight of it?”
“No,” I said, “I ain’t. The fact is that I ain’t a killer. I haven’t spent six hours a day practicing with guns, the way that you have.”
“You lie,” Shorty said. “I never done that more’n half a dozen times in my life.”
I almost laughed in his face. “But if you’re just plain hankering after my life,” I said, “I’ll let you get out your own rifle, and I’ll let you bring it up to the ready … and, when you’ve got your gun at the ready, I’ll bring mine back to that same position. And then you can try to drop me whenever you want, Shorty, because I’ll be more than ready for you.”
He stared at me very fixed and mean for a moment. “I think that you mean that,” he said.
“You can place all your bets that I do,” I said, and I looked him back in the eyes. Because, though I wasn’t any blood hunter, still I was keen to hold up my end of this business, and, besides, I was getting a little hot under the collar myself.
Well, he looked at me for another minute, and then he said to me: “Rankin, it’d be no more’n a mutual murder.”
“I don’t mind dying,” I said, “but I always have hated the idea of dying alone. You feel the same way, maybe?”
He showed me his teeth. He was like a bull terrier. Crazy to fight, but really with enough sense not to want to die. He twitched and fidgeted in the saddle, and half a dozen times I thought that he was going to take me up on my offer. But he didn’t.
After a while, he said: “This ain’t the only time that we’re apt to meet, kid.”
“I think it is,” I said. “The gents in this part of the world know me, but they don’t know you. They know that I’m not a bloodsucker, and they’re beginning to guess that you’re a scalp collector. And the fact is, partner, that, when I leave here, I’m gonna go straight to the sheriff’s office and tell him that you’re threatening my life. I think that maybe he’ll ride you out of the county, after that.”
“You yaller hound,” he hissed. “You coward!”
“Drop all your guns and climb down to the ground, and I’ll talk to you about that, too,” I said.
Well, he sized me up, and working in a lumber camp most of my life hadn’t made me exactly like an invalid. So the idea didn’t look good to him.
“You better vamoose,” I said to him. “We don’t want your kind around here. You’ve missed your act with the girl and her money. And it’ll be better all around for you to be carried down the drains before long. The world don’t need you.”
His nostrils flared and his eyes shot fire at me. And then he turned his horse around and rode off with no more talking.
Me, it left me pretty weak, and, when I got to town, I did go to the sheriff. Maybe that wasn’t manly. But it looked safer. And I never hankered to be considered a hero. No, not particularly.
Reporting to the sheriff too, took some more time, and it had got terrible late before I headed me for the camp again.
XIII
I got to tell you now what happened while I was away from the camp, settling things with Shorty and Rosita Alvarado. You’ll admit before I’m through that it was sort of queer that I couldn’t have done things in time. It looked like hard luck all around. Fate, I would say.
Well, back from his job of woodcutting comes Jimmy Clarges with his pair of double axes on his shoulder, singing a song very gaily as he walked along. And there’s a considerable snow blowing across the tops of the trees and settling pretty thick in the clearing around the camp, so that there was no chance of having lunch in the open air. The boys had gathered in the cook shack, where two long tables was laid out for them, and they come in stamping the snow off their shoes, and breathing steam out of their nostrils, and raring for chuck.
Things was going along fine in the bunkhouse, when in comes big Soapy and sits him down at the end of the table. “When do we stop getting beans every day in the week?” he shouted.
I have got to stop here to say that they was good beans, though sort of frequent. They was done Mexican style by the cook, and some said that they was more Mexican than style to them. But I don’t mind hot stuff.
However, nobody had ever heard Soapy—or Jimmy Clarges—growl about food in the camp before. Quantity, and not quality, was always what they was after.
The cook, he stands sort of petrified for a time, and then he sang out: “Him that don’t like my cooking, let him step up and try to do better. Do I hear any answers? I don’t! So shut up and feed your faces, and don’t bother the only real working man in this here layout!”
You would figger that was talking up large and handsome to a gent like Soapy. And Soapy, he raised up on his hind legs and give the cook a mean look. But the cook was about fifty, and not much bigger than a minute, and so Soapy sagged back into his chair, too mad to eat and too mad to talk, and his eye roamed around the table like the eye of a mad bull.
And so his glance come to every man, and every man was looking down at his plate, very discreet. Because everybody knows that when a gent is mad, everything that everybody else does makes him just that much madder. Nobody stirred and nobody spoke, except one man, and he said: “I never ate after no better cook than ours. Take it easy, Soapy.”
Soapy jerked up hi
s head as though he couldn’t believe his ears. And right down opposite him, at the far end of the table, he seen the head of Jimmy Clarges raise, and Jimmy looking straight at him.
“Them that ain’t had no experience in decent food and cooking,” said Soapy, “hadn’t ought to criticize the complaints of them that have.”
It wasn’t much to say. Take it among rough gents like we all was in that camp, you might feel that it was hardly anything to say. But then, on the other hand, you got to consider who it was said to. Jimmy Clarges wasn’t no ordinary man.
And now there was two general flashes of faces. One as all heads turned to Soapy, to wonder what had gotten into him, and the other, as all heads turned back to Jimmy Clarges, to wonder how he would take a paste in the face like this.
There wasn’t long to doubt. Clarges shoved away his plate, and he bellowed: “I ain’t had no experience? I was raised by a good Christian family, which is more’n you can brag about, Soapy Almayer!”
“There is some that has to brag to keep from bein’ unnoticed,” Soapy said very cutting. And he leaned back in his chair and smiled a little at the ceiling.
At that, Soapy could be plumb irritating when he wanted to.
“From bein’ noticed by who?” Jimmy asked, sweating with meanness and bad temper.
“Whoever you please,” Almayer replied.
“Not by girls, I hope you don’t mean?” Clarges said.
“Hey, what’s that?” bellowed Soapy.
“What I said! Some gets a minute of attention, but the longest stayer is the winner. The early bird catches the worm. You ain’t the worm, by any chance, Soapy?”
It made Soapy turn purple. He knew that Clarges was bragging about having taken Rosita away from him the other night and taken her home after the dance was all over. And Soapy didn’t like to think about that side of the affair.
“I have known gents,” he said, “that never could get no attention at all, except from the folks that pitied them.”
“Pitied who?” yelled Jimmy, getting hotter and hotter.
“If you ain’t got no imagination,” Soapy said, “why, kid, don’t blame me for your lack of it. I ain’t responsible for your brains. Go home and complain to your mamma and your papa.”
It was getting sort of rough. Yes, even for a lumber camp. Particularly considering who Clarges and Soapy was.
Lunch was dying out. I mean, there was no particular attention being paid to the loading and the unloading of plates. The folks, they just sat around and stared at one another, and wondered when the lightning would strike.
Somehow the lunch, it come to an end, and after lunch, on these here cold days, the boys used to loaf around the fire and sort of steam out and take things easy, y’understand?
They did that today. Partly because they was in the habit, but more because they was bent on seeing what happened in this here quarrel. It was like a prize fight, but a terrible lot more exciting. Charley Fisher told me afterward that his heart begun racing and tearing, and his eyes swam. He near fainted before anything really happened—it was the terrible strain of waiting for the first jump of trouble.
“Where’s the poker, somebody?” squeaked the cook.
“Here,” Soapy Almayer said, and he took up the poker.
It was a big heavy iron bar, and the boys used to say that the little cook kept it more as a club than as a mere poker. Almayer took that poker, and he bent it double between his hands.
“There you are,” he said. And he passed it to the cook.
“Hey, what’s the main idea?” chirped the cook. “How can I really use a …?”
“Wait a minute,” Clarges said, and he took that poker, and just as easy as pie he unbent the folded iron again.
They say that you could hear the iron break in the terrible hands of Jimmy Clarges, and I believe it. Because I got that same poker hanging above my sitting room fireplace, right now, and there’s the effect of the two bends in it, and the wrinkles of the fracture marks. It’s hard to believe. I’ve seen two strong men try to do what both Clarges and Soapy managed, and the two strong men couldn’t do a thing with that iron.
Then along comes the big boss. He had wind of everything in camp pretty quick, and somebody had told him that there was danger of something happening in the cook house. So he came over, remembering my warning and carrying his old riot gun tucked under his arm. And he come in muttering to somebody: “Where’s Jim? Where’s Jim Rankin? He’s never around when I need him.”
He used to leave most of these snarls among the men to me, to untangle them, and I used to have pretty good luck. Well, I wish that I had been there then, but I wasn’t. The things had to happen that I could have stopped with two words, by showing that pair of great idiots that the girl and Shorty had simply been making fools of them.
I had no luck, and the big boss, he didn’t know what to do. He looked at his watch. There was still ten minutes to go to 1:00 P.M., and he couldn’t cut the lunch hour short by getting the boys out to work early. He thought of something else, and it was a good dodge.
“I haven’t had a game of seven-up for a long time,” he announced. “Who’ll sit in with me for a little game? The whole gang of you, if you want. Soapy, sit here with me, will you? Chuck, start up a game over there. Take Clarges with you….”
He had the boys in two parts, right away, and with something to think about besides the fight that was in the air.
“Hello, cook!” the boss shouted. “Got no better cards than these? These are no good!” He pushed back the first greasy pack, and the cook fumbled in his chest for some more.
“Maybe this pack’ll do for the other table,” Soapy said, slow and careful. And he picked up the pack of cards and drummed down the edges with his fingers until it was snug and fitted tight together, and then he picked it up and ripped that pack across.
Have you ever seen a man tear a pack of cards across? You try it with only a half of a pack and you’ll see how hard it is.
He took that mangled pack and reached around him and laid it on the table in front of Jimmy Clarges. “Maybe that pack would be good enough for you and your gang, Clarges,” he declared.
It was kind of a nasty remark, you’ll admit.
“Pay attention to the game, boys!” the boss yipped, getting more and more nervous. “Hey, Soapy, it’s your deal!”
He passed a fine, new pack to Soapy, but just then we saw Clarges take the torn halves of that pack and put them together, neat and snug, and then tear the two halves across, just as easy as Soapy had torn it when it lay single.
No, you would have to see if you would believe. But I got some of those cards. There was a great scramble for them, afterward. But I got a few in my possession now, and you can see where they was ripped across in quarters.
He turned around, and he said: “Here’s four packs in exchange for your two, Soapy.” And he laid the fragments on the table right before Soapy.
Almayer stared at them for a moment. He couldn’t do anything better than this trick. He must have guessed at the full strength of Jimmy for the first time, and it made his face black as he stared. Then he jumped up and threw the cards in the face of Jimmy.
“You got no brains even in your insults, Clarges!” he shouted.
XIV
Of course, that was a lot more than enough. That room was instantly filled with diving men—some plunging for the door, and some for the walls, and some making the mistake of crawling under the tables. Because, though those tables were huge, heavy affairs, with the tops made of half logs, the inside surface planed down smooth and scrubbed white, they were knocked here and there and turned over as Clarges and Soapy got to each other and began to wrestle around.
Clarges had swung around from the bench he was sitting on and rushed Soapy, head down, and his forearms curled up over his face to protect him from a punch.
It must have been that he had long planned just what he would do if ever he had to fight Soapy Almayer. And it was a good thing for
him that he had, because the very first punch that Soapy used was hard enough to have killed a bull. It whipped straight as a dye for its mark, but, instead of the face of Jimmy, it reached the huge, thick cushioning muscles of his forearms.
Clarges wasn’t hurt, but the terrible weight of that blow stopped him and straightened him. However, before Soapy could hit again, Clarges had fallen in on him and grappled him with his hands.
And after that it was another story.
Just as Clarges had said to me before, that same day, Soapy could really hit harder than any man in the world. But as for wrestling and rough-housing there was nobody like Jimmy Clarges.
The minute he got his grip, the gents, who was cowering under the tables and against the walls, heard a groan of surprise and fear and pain from the throat of Almayer. I suppose it was as though a bear had tackled him by surprise.
They began to thrash around here and there. Once, Almayer was wrestled down to his knees, but he come up again, lifting Jimmy with him, and turning both the tables upside down as he staggered back and forth.
There was plenty of noise, the gents shouting and hollering for fear they’d be stamped to death, as though by a pair of great buffalo bulls, and the big boss shouting for the two to stop fighting.
Might as well have called to the thunder and lightning for which they’d been nicknamed.
And then there was a whirl, and a gasp, and Almayer crashed down to the floor with Clarges clinging to him, and crushing the life out of him with his long gorilla arms.
But still Soapy wasn’t done.
The gents heard Clarges hiss: “Give up! Say you got enough, or … I’ll kill you, Soapy!”
“Kill … and be … cursed!” gasped Soapy. And then his voice ended in a gurgle, because one of those hands of Clarges had fastened on Almayer’s throat.
