Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  “Well, by Jupiter!” said Smoky, with the sneer he always wore. “What do you know about this? Costigan and Hoolihan! How come these gorillas to land on this island?”

  I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t work, and I sunk back into the sand. Hoolihan groaned and cussed groggily somewhere near me. Harrigan stooped and picked up something which I seen was my map which had fell into the sand.

  He showed it to the others and they laughed loud and jeeringly, which dully surprised me. My brain was still too numb from Hoolihan’s punching and that awful sun to hardly know what it was all about.

  “Put that map down before I rises and busts you in half,” I mumbled through pulped lips.

  “Oh, is it yours?” asked Smoky, sardonically.

  “I bought it offa Miss Laura Hopkins,” I said groggily. “It’s mine, and so is the dough. Gimme it before I lays you like a carpet.”

  “Laura Hopkins!” he sneered. “That was Suez Kit, the slickest girl-crook that ever rolled a drunk for his wad. She worked the same gyp on that big ox Hoolihan. I saw her take him as he left the fight club.”

  “What d’you mean?” I demanded, struggling up to a sitting posture. I still couldn’t get on my feet, and Hoolihan was in even worse shape. “She sold the same map to Hoolihan? Is that where he got his’n?”

  “Why, you poor sucker!” sneered Harrigan. “Can’t you understand nothing? Them maps was fakes. I dunno what you’re doin’ here, but if you’d followed ‘em, you’d been miles away to the north of the harbor, instead of the south.”

  “And there ain’t no treasure of Li Yang?” I moaned.

  “Sure there is,” he said. “What’s more, it’s hid right here on this island. And this is the right map.” He waved a strip of parchment all covered with lines and Chinese writing. “There’s treasure here. Li Yang didn’t hide it here hisself, but it was left here for him by a smuggler. Li Yang got bumped off before he could come for it. An old Chinee fence named Yao Shan had the map. Suez Kit bought it off him with the hundred bucks she gypped out of you and Hoolihan. He must have been crazy to sell it, but you can’t never tell about them Chineses.”

  “But the Whang Yis?” I gasped wildly.

  “Horseradish!” sneered Smoky. “A artistic touch to put the story over. But if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll tell you that Suez Kit lost the map after all. I’d been follerin’ her for days, knowin’ she was up to something, though I didn’t know just what. When she got the map from old Yao Shan, I tapped her on the head and took it. And here we are!”

  “The treasure’s as much our’n as it is your’n,” I protested.

  “Heh! heh! heh!” he replied. “Try and get it. Gwan, boys, get to work. These big chumps has fought each other to a frazzle, and we got nothin’ to fear from ‘em.”

  So I laid there and et my soul out whilst they set about stealing our loot right under our noses. Smoky paid no attention to the palm tree. Studying the map closely, he located a big rock jutting up amongst some bushes, and he stepped off ten paces to the west. “Dig here,” he said.

  They pitched in digging a lot harder’n I had any idee them rats could work, and the sand flew. Purty soon Bat Schimmerling’s pick crunched on something solid, and they all yelled.

  “Look here!” yelled Tom Storley. “A lacquered chest, bound with iron bands!”

  They all yelled with joy, and Hoolihan groaned dismally. He’d come to in time to get what it was all about.

  “Gypped!” he moaned. “Cheated! Swindled! Framed! And now them thieves is robbin’ us right before us!”

  I hauled myself painfully across the sands, and stared down into the hole, and my heart leaped as I seen the top of a iron-bound chest at the bottom. A wave of red swept all the weakness and soreness outa my frame.

  Smoky turned and yelled at me, “See what you’ve missed, you dumb chump? See that chest? I dunno what’s in it, but whatever it is, it’s worth millions! ‘More precious than gold,’ old Yao Shan said. And it’s our’n! While you and that other gorilla are workin’ out your lives haulin’ ropes and eatin’ resin dust, we’ll be rollin’ in luxury!”

  “You’ll roll in somethin’ else first!” I yelled, heaving up amongst ’em like a typhoon. Harrigan swung up a pick, but before he couldst bring it down on my head, I spread his nose all over his face with a left hook which likewise deprived him of all his front teeth and rendered him horse-de-combat. At this moment Bat Schimmerling broke a shovel over my head, and Tom Storley run in and grappled with me. This was about the least sensible thing he could of done, as he instantly realized, and just before he lapsed into unconsciousness he hollered for Donovan to get a gun.

  Donovan took the hint and run for the launch, where he procured a shotgun and come back on the jump. He hesitated to fire at long range, because I was so mixed up with Storley and Schimmerling that he couldn’t hit me without riddling them. But about that time I untangled myself from Storley’s senseless carcass and caressed Schimmerling’s chin with a right uppercut which stood him on his head in the hole on top of the chest.

  Donovan then give a yelp of triumph and throwed the gun to his shoulder — but Hoolihan had crawled up behind him on all-fours, and as Joe pulled the trigger, Red swept his legs out from under him. The charge combed my hair, it missed me that close, and Donovan crashed down on top of Hoolihan, who stroked his whiskers with a right that nearly tore his useless head off.

  Hoolihan then crawled to the edge of the hole and looked down.

  “It’s your’n,” he gulped. “You licked me. But it busts my heart to think of the dough I’ve lost.”

  “Aw, shut up,” I growled, grabbing Schimmerling by the hind laig and dragging him out of the hole. “Help me get this chest outa here. Whatever’s in it, you get half.”

  Hoolihan gaped at me.

  “You mean that?” he gasped.

  “He may, but I don’t!” broke in a hard, femernine voice, and we whirled to behold Miss Laura Hopkins standing before us. But they was considerable change in her appearance. She wore a man’s shirt, for one thing, and khaki pants and boots, and her face was a lot harder’n I remembered it. Moreover, they was a bandage on her head under her sun-helmet, and she had a pistol in her hand, p’inting at us. She looked like Suez Kit now, all right.

  She give a sneer at Smoky and his minions, which was beginning to show signs of life.

  “That fool thought he’d finished me, eh? Pah! I don’t kill that easy,” she said. “Stole my map, the rat! How did you two gorillas get here? Those maps I sold you were for an island half a day from here.”

  “It was my mistake,” I said, and I added, limping disconsolately towards her, “I believed you. I thought you was in distress.”

  “The more fool you,” she sneered. “I had to have a hundred dollars to buy Yao Shan’s map. That gyp I worked on you and Hoolihan was the best one I could think of, at the spur of the moment. Now get to work and hoist that chest out, and load it in my boat. You’re a sap to trust anybody — ow!”

  I’d slapped the gun out of her hand so quick she didn’t have time to pull the trigger. It went spinning into the water and sunk.

  “Just because you’re smart, you think everybody else is a sap,” I snorted. “C’mon, Red, le’s get our chest out.”

  Suez Kit stood staring wildly at us. “But it’s mine!” she hollered. “I gave Yao Shan a hundred dollars—”

  “You give him our hundred,” I snorted. “You make me sick.”

  Me and Red bent down and got hold of the chest and rassled it out of the hole. Suez Kit was doing a war-dance all over the beach.

  “You dirty, double-crossing rats!” she wept. “I might have known I couldn’t trust any man! Robbers! Bandits! Oh, this is too much!”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said wearily. “We’ll give you some of the loot — gimme that rock, Red. The lock is plumb rotten.”

  I took the stone and hit the lock a few licks, and it come all to pieces. Smoky and his gang had come to, and they watch
ed us wanly. Suez Kit fidgeted around behind us, and I heard her breath coming in pants. Red throwed open the lid. They was a second of painful silence, and then Suez Kit let out an awful scream and staggered back, her hands to her head. Hanigan and his mob lifted up their voices in lamentation.

  That chest wasn’t full of silver, nor platinum, nor jewels. It was full of machine-gun cartridges!

  “Bullets!” said Hoolihan, kinda numbly. “No wonder Yao Shan was willing to sell the map. ‘More precious than gold,’ he said. Of course, this ammunition was more precious than gold to a bandit chief. Steve, I’m sick!”

  So was Smoky and his gang. And Suez Kit wept like she’d sot on a hornet.

  “Steve,” said Red, as him and me limped towards our boat whilst the sounds of weeping and wailing riz behind us, “was it because I kept Donovan from blowin’ your head off that you decided to split the treasure with me?”

  “Do I look like a cheapskate?” I snapped. “I knowed from the first that I was going to split with you.”

  “Then why in the name of thunderation,” he bellered, turning purple in the face, “did you have to beat me up like you done, when you was intendin’ to split anyway? What was we fightin’ about, anyway?”

  “You might of been fightin’ for the loot,” I roared, brandishing my fists in his face, “but I was merely convincin’ you who was the best man.”

  “Well, I ain’t convinced,” he bellered, waving his fists. “It was the sand and the sun which licked me, not you. We’ll settle this in the ring tonight, at the Amusement Palace.”

  “Let’s go!” I yelled, leaping into the launch. “I’m itchin’ to prove to the customers that you’re as big a flop as a fighter as you were as a referee.”

  THE END

  OTHER BOXING STORIES

  CONTENTS

  CUPID VS. POLLUX

  THE APPARITION IN THE PRIZE RING

  CUPID VS. POLLUX

  First published in Yellow Jacket; February 10, 1927

  AS I am coming up the steps of the fraternity house, I meet Tarantula Soons, a soph with an ingrown disposition and a goggle eye.

  “You’re lookin’ for Spike, I take it?” said he, and upon me admittin’ the fact, he gives me a curious look and remarks that Spike is in his room.

  I go up, and all the way up the stairs, I hear somebody chanting a love song in a voice that is incitement to justifiable homicide. Strange as it seems, this atrocity is emanating from Spike’s room, and as I enter, I see Spike himself, seated on a divan, and singing somethin’ about lovers’ moons and soft, red lips. His eyes are turned soulfully toward the ceiling and he is putting great feeling in the outrageous bellow which he imagines is the height on melody. To say I am surprized is putting it mildly and as Spike turns and says “Steve, ain’t love wonderful?” you could have knocked me over with a pile-driver. Besides standing six feet and seven inches and scaling upwards of 270 pounds, Spike has a map that makes Firpo look like and ad for the fashionable man, and is neitherto about as sentimental as a rhinoceros.

  “Yeh? And who is he?” I ask sarcastically, but he only sighs amorously and quotes poetry. At that I fizz over.

  “So that’s why you ain’t to the gym training!” I yawp. “You big chunka nothin’, the tournament for the intercollegiate boxin’ title comes off tomorrow and here you are, you overgrown walrus, sentimentaliin’ around like a three year old yearlin’ calf.”

  “G’wan,” says he, tossin’ a haymakin’ right to my jaw in an absentminded manner, “I can put over any them palukas without no trainin’.”

  “Yes,” I sneers, climbin’ to my wobbling’ feet, “and when you stack up against Monk Gallranan you won’t need any trainin’. That’s a cinch.”

  “Boxin’,” says the infatuated boob, “is degradin’. I bet she thinks so. I don’t know whether I’ll even enter the tourneyment or not.”

  “Hey!” I yells. “After all the work I’ve done getting’ you in shape. You figurin’ on throwin’ the college down?”

  “Aw, go take a run around the block,” says Spike, drawing back his lip in an ugly manner.

  “G’wan, you boneheaded elephant!” says I, drivin’ my left to the wrist in his solar plexus and the battle was on. Anyway, at the conclusion, I yelled up to him from the foot of the stairs “where the college will be too small for you.”

  His sole answer was to slam the door so hard that he shook the house but the next day when I was lookin’ for a substitute for the heavyweight entries, the big yam appears, with a smug and self satisfied look on his map.

  “I’ve decided to fight, Steve,” he says grandly. “She will have a ringside seat and women adore physical strength and power allied to manly beauty.”

  “All right,” says I, “get into your ring togs. Your bout is the main event of the day and will come last.”

  This managing a college boxing a show is no cinch. If things go wrong, the manager gets the blame and if things don’t, the fighters get the hand. I remember once I even substituted for a welterweight entry who didn’t show up. Just to give the fans a run for their money, I lowered my guard the third round and invited my antagonist to hit me — he did — they were four hours bringing me to and the fact that it was discovered he had a horseshoe concealed inn his glove didn’t increase my regard for the game. They’ve got the horseshoe in the museum now, but it isn’t much to look at as a horseshoe, being bent all out of shape where it came in contact with my jaw.

  But to get back to the tournament. The college Spike and I represented had indifferent fortune in the first bouts; our featherweight entry won the decision on points and our flyweight tied with a fellow from St. Janice’s. As usual, heavyweights being scarce, Spike and Monk Gallranan from Burke’s University were the only entries. This gorilla is nearly as tall and heavy as Spike, and didn’t make the football team on account of his habit of breaking the arms and legs of the team in practice scrimmage. He is even more prehistoric looking than Spike, so you can imagine what those two cavemen looked like when they squared off together. Spike was jubilant, however, at the chance of distinguishing himself in an athletic way, he having always been too lazy to come out for football and the like. And this girl was there in a seat on the front row. The bout didn’t last long so I don’t know a better way than to give it round by round. What those two saps didn’t know about the finer points of boxin’ would fill several encyclopedias, but I’d had a second rate for giving Spike some secret instructions on infightin’, and I expected him to win by close range work, infightin’ bein’ a lost art to the average amateur.

  ROUND 1

  Spike missed a left for the head and Monk sent a left to the body. Spike put a right to the face and got three left jabs to the nose in return. They traded rights to the body, and Monk staggered Spike with a sizzlin’ left to the wind. Monk missed with a right and they clinched. Spike nailed Monk with a straight right to the jaw at the break. Monk whipped a left to the head and a right to the body and Spike rocked him back on his heels with a straight left to the face.

  ROUND 2

  Monk missed a right but slammed a left to the jaw. They clinched and Spike roughed in close. Monk staggered Spike on the break with a right to the jaw. Monk drove Spike across the ring with lefts and rights to head and body. Spike covered up, then kicked through with a right uppercut to the jaw that nearly tore Monk’s head off. Monk clinched and Spike punished him with short straight rights to the body. Just at the gong Spike staggered Monk with a left hook to the jaw.

  ROUND 3

  Monk blocked Spike’s left lead and uppercut him three times to the jaw. Spike swung wild and Monk staggered him with a straight right to the jaw. Another straight right started him bleeding at the lips. Spike came out of it with a fierce rally and drove Monk to the ropes with a series of short left hooks to the wind and head. Monk launched an attack of his own and battered Spike to the middle of the ring where they stood toe to toe, trading smashes to head and body. Monk started a fierce rush and a straight lef
t for the jaw. Spike ducked, let the punch slide over his shoulder, and crossed his right to Monk’s jaw, and Monk hit the mat. Just as the referee reached “Nine” the gong sounded.

  Monk’s seconds worked over him but he was still groggy as he came out for the fourth round. I shouted for Spike to finish him quick, but be careful.

  Spike stepped up, warily; they sparred for a second, then Spike stepped in and sank his left to the wrist in Monk’s solar plexus, following up with a right to the button that would have knocked down a house. Monk hit the mat and lay still.

  Then Spike, the boob, turns his back on his fallen foeman and walks over to the ropes smilin’ and bowin’. He opens his mouth to say somethin’ to his girl-and Monk, who has risen meanwhile, beating the count, lifts his right from the floor and places it squarely beneath Spike’s sagging jaw. The referee could have counted a million.

  But afterwards Spike says to me, sitting on the ring floor, still in his ring togs, he says, “Steve, girls is a lotta hokum. I’m offa ‘em,” he says.

  Says I, “Then if you’ve found that out, it’s worth the soakin’ you got,” I says.

  THE APPARITION IN THE PRIZE RING

  First published in Ghost Stories, April 1929

  READERS of this magazine will probably remember Ace Jessel, the big negro boxer whom I managed a few years ago. He was an ebony giant, four inches over six feet tall, with a fighting weight of 230 pounds. He moved with the smooth ease of a gigantic leopard and his pliant steel muscles rippled under his shiny skin. A clever boxer for so large a man, he carried the smashing jolt of a trip-hammer in each huge fist.

  It was my belief that he was the equal of any man in the ring at that time — except for one fatal defect. He lacked the killer instinct. He had courage in plenty, as he proved on more than one occasion — but he was content to box mostly, outpointing his opponents and piling up just enough lead to keep from losing.