Acres of Unrest (11 page)

There was a moan from the mulatto, a moan of pain, as twin gods fell from their pedestal in his mind and crashed into nether limbo.

“All the time,” Soapy asked, straightening upon his feet, “was the pair of them yaller hounds only lucky in getting the drop on me?”

He received no answer, for the very good reason that among all those fairly hardy onlookers he was the only one really capable of speech at the moment.

They watched the Buttricks trail their luggage toward the stables, and then they watched the Buttricks appear again, riding their best saddle horses, and leading their spares. It was noted with an increasing wonder that the great Buttricks, the men of blood, did not take the straight way, which led past the face of the house of the boss. Instead, they chose to circle around the shacks, close to the mouth of the mine, and, in this fashion, they made their exit from the camp and started down into the valley.

“What does it mean?” asked the mulatto, sighing. “Well, ain’t we all been kind of blind and stupid? I tell you, boys, that this here is nothin’ more or less than hypnotism. That cripple, he got the two Buttricks hypnotized. Can anybody else give a better way of explaining the things that we just been seeing?”

No one could. That was apparent. They looked back from one to the other and shook their heads.

“Wait a minute,” said the cook in a whisper. “Here he comes again. And now you take another look at him, he’s pretty big. He looks kind of mean, even for a cripple.”

Soapy shook his head. Vigor of no mere physical dimension was capable of explaining the miracle that he had just seen. He needed more than that.

They saw Jarvin and his companion move slowly across the clearing and toward the stables behind the shack. In the distance they saw the monster stallion led forth. The cripple raised himself to the saddle with a singular dexterity.

The cook exclaimed: “What awful arms he must have! What awful arms, mates. Don’t he sling himself around just as though he was stuffed out with feathers instead of flesh?”

There was no doubt that was the case. They saw him fix his steel-braced feet in the stirrups, and then they watched him guide the stallion back and forth in front of the stables. There was a raking big fence, crowned with a heavy beam nearby, and suddenly the cripple put his mount at that fence. The big horse cleared it flying, and landed with a wonderful rolling stride in the inside of the corral. In the next moment he had been turned and had jumped out again.

“Look,” said the cook. “Suppose that hoss had fallen. No help for that cripple. He couldn’t’ve moved himself. He would’ve been done. And that’s what I call nerve, old sons.”

“Cook,” broke in Soapy, “you don’t know nothing. You think that that horse could fail, even if it wanted to? No, sir, it couldn’t, and the reason
why is what I’m gonna tell you plain and true, old-timer. There was something in the head of that gent that kept the hoss from falling. There was the power of something in his head.”

“What power?” asked someone.

“What power took the nerve away from the Buttricks?” Soapy asked with a harsh violence. “Ask me, will you, what power it was that sent the Buttricks away like beaten dogs. Well, it was the same thing, just.”

“Spooks?” said the cook.

“You talk, son,” Soapy said darkly. “I’ve said enough. I’m ready to listen to the rest of you giving good explanations of the things that we been seeing with our own eyes.”

There was such a world of conviction in the voice and in the manner of Soapy that the others banished their smiles at once and grew sober. There were few of them of sufficient education to be above the grade of low superstitions, and, indeed, there had been something miraculous in the thing that they had seen, for they knew the Buttricks, and they had too often seen those hardy men in action in their midst. Many and many a one of them, indeed, had stood in front of the yawning revolvers held by the steady hands of the Buttrick brothers. That was an experience to be remembered with chills through all of a long life. And here was the pair of them, ushered forth like frightened children. Mere words could hardly explain such a thing as this.

After a time they could see the cripple dismount and go back with Jarvin toward the shack of the boss.

“That’s it,” whispered Soapy. “That’s it, sons. There he goes along with old Jarvin. Didn’t I tell
you that Jarvin was playing for something higher and bigger than ordinary? Didn’t I tell you that he was getting ready to pluck something that was bigger than anything that he had ever taken before? And there’s the proof of it. He gets afraid of the Buttricks. He brings in this gent to fire them. Then he uses that big hoss to bribe the gent. Why, you ask me?”

No one had asked, but Soapy had a way of conducting a dialogue in this fashion, filling in with his own mouth the little interstices in his talk.

“Why, you ask me?” went on Soapy, while the others watched him askance as they listened. “It’s because he knows that there’s something in this here world that’s a lot stronger than guns can ever be. A lot stronger. And this here stranger, he’s got it. He showed it on the Buttricks, and he’s gonna show it again. The cook, here, he was right. He knowed that some strange things was about to happen here, and we ain’t seen the end of them yet.”

Undoubtedly the others agreed with this idea, and, although they made no comments, there was a good deal of frowning and biting of the lip among them as they strove to work out the puzzle. The pause that followed had a suspense of its own, as though they all expected that something more must happen immediately.

They did not have very long to wait. Mike Jarvin came to the door of his shack and shouted: “Soapy!”

Soapy obediently, but with a snarl, raised himself and went forward.

“Soapy, you round up the boys. Everybody that ain’t working in the mine. I want ’em here.”

“Except the cook?” asked Soapy, as though knowing that dignitary had special rights.

“Curse the cook,” said Mr. Jarvin. “You do what I told you and bring ’em in.”

So Soapy turned away, scratching his closely curled poll. He carried a terse message wherever he went through the camp. “Show up at the boss’s house, and show up
pronto
. Something queer is happening, boys.”

He gathered in the men who tended the horses at the stables, the chore boys who idled near the mouth of the mine at this time of day, and the half dozen others who had odd jobs about the camp. A considerable crowd was presently arranged, when Soapy rapped at the door of Jarvin with enough force to make the door shudder from top to bottom.

The door opened. Inside, Soapy saw Jarvin and the cripple sitting on opposite sides of a table, as though in the midst of serious converse.

The gents is here,” said Soapy. “What you want me to do with ’em now?”

“I’ll do the doing,” said Jarvin. “Go back with the rest of ’em.”

So, presently, Jarvin stood at the door of the shack and turned his eyes back and forth over the group.

“Come here, Hale,” he said. “I want you to look ’em over. Hand-picked, hard-boiled eggs is what you can see here for your own self. Nothing to come over this lot, old-timer. You could hunt a thousand miles north and south and east and west, and you would never rake in a worse lot than this here gang, I tell you.”

He stepped aside. In the doorway appeared the
big cripple. He had a mild but a steady eye as he turned it from face to face while Jarvin said:

“Now, boys, my friend, Hale, is gonna stay here with us for a while. I want to make him comfortable and at home. The way that I’m gonna do that is to have one of you to take care of him. You can see that he ain’t got all the control over himself that a man would like to have. Enough to herd gents like the Buttricks, you seen. But not enough to be without the need of somebody to fetch and carry and to run errands for him. Y’understand?”

There was a breathless pause. They had not objected to the beginning of the speech of Jarvin. They had not objected when he inferred that they were a choice lot of rascals, for most of them were so far advanced in rascality that they were proud of that bad eminence and were glad to be classed so generously.

“Now,” went on Jarvin, “what I want you to do. Hale, is to look over this lot and see which one of the bunch you would like to have as your man, to help you and make you comfortable, as I was saying before, because I want things to be dead easy and smooth for you in this here camp.”

The cripple thanked him with a nod and a smile. “Does it make any difference who I choose?” he asked.

“Not a bit,” said Jarvin. “They’re my men and they do what I tell them to do. And the pay that they get comes high. You pick.”

“Very well,” said the cripple. “I think that I’ve made up my mind. There’s the man who will suit me exactly.”

Soapy looked behind him. No one was there, but the cook was a little to one side.

“Must be you, cook.” He grinned maliciously.

“No,” said Peter Hale. “It’s you, my big friend.”

Soapy whirled with a snarl. “Me?” he yelled. “Me to be sort of a cursed valet?”

The others in the crew were thunderstruck. Such a thought had apparently never entered their heads—the mere idea that any man could wish to have around him such a wild bear of a creature as Soapy. Even Jarvin was staggered.

He caught the shoulder of Hale and murmured hastily: “You don’t mean that mulatto, Hale. Change your mind and change it fast. I’d rather have a wild horse to wait on my table than Soapy around me. Change your mind, I say.”

But Peter shook his head. He said calmly and aloud so that all could hear: “I’ll have you, Soapy, if that’s your name. I need somebody strong enough to handle me, and you look fit for the job. Will you try it?”

“I’ll see you cursed!” shouted Soapy, reaching for his gun as though he expected that he would have instant need of it.

But Peter Hale made no gesture toward his own hip. He merely said in the same calm tones: “Come inside with me, Soapy. I want to give you a few reasons. This isn’t to be the sort of a job that would shame you. An easy bit of work and a respectable life, I hope, is what I can offer you. Will you come inside for a minute?” He turned his back and swung himself into the house on his crutches.

Soapy remained glaring at the retreating back
of the cripple. “He can bulldoze the white folks,” snarled Soapy, “but he ain’t gonna manhandle this Negro. Go inside? Who says that I ain’t gonna go inside of the house with him? Who says that I’m scared of him?” He glared wildly around him. Fear of the unknown and wild rage made his face almost too terrible to be watched.

There was no answer from those around him, who saw that he was only looking for a chance to find trouble closer at his hand.

He went on in the same savage murmur: “I’m gonna go inside with him, and, if I don’t like the way that he talks, I’m gonna break him wide open, boys, and I’m gonna see what it is that makes him tick.” So saying, he advanced upon the house with his enormous stride. He passed the door, closed it with an echoing
crash
, and left Jarvin walking nervously up and down on the porch, always with his eyes fastened upon the crowd, but with his thoughts obviously busy with the two men who were inside the room.

All that could be heard was the loud tone of the mulatto declaring as he entered the room: “I’m here. An’ I want to know what in the devil you got to say to me that you can’t say in the open, with other folks to watch?”

The reply of the stranger was as smooth as the current of slow water by night. They could not distinguish his words.

But inside the house Soapy was finding himself confronting a peril that, he felt, was more vital and certainly stranger than anything that he had yet encountered in his roving life. The cripple sat on the farther side of the table, nearest the wall, and, with that table in front of him, his useless legs
were screened from view. Soapy was aware only of the erect body and the squared shoulders of the other—the most supple and formidable torso, he felt, that he had ever seen in his life—aside from his own swelling bulk. It seemed to Soapy, also, as he faced this stranger, that he had been most foolish in his recent way of living. He should take more care of himself; he should make it a point to do a bit of sledge-hammer work every day and so strip the loose fat away from his body and harden himself for a test, as this stranger seemed to be hardened.

For the face of Peter Hale was as cleanly drawn as that of an athlete about to step into a prize ring. Perhaps the labor of swinging himself along on his clutches was enough to keep him fit. Yet Soapy felt rightly that was not all. To be sure, the legs were nothing. They were worse than useless. But now all that Soapy saw were the long, muscular arms, with the swelling cords of strength bulging against the sleeves; at the points of the shoulders were hard lumps. Above all this might of hand and shoulder there were thinking eyes buried beneath a deep brow.

From the shadow the eyes watched the mulatto, and Soapy felt more and more ill at ease. He wanted to bring this matter to a quick test, to have the battle over in one crucial struggle—and be out and away in the fresh, open air, because inside this house he felt that the breathing was not easy.

Said Peter Hale: “Now, sit down, Soapy, and tell me why you’re so angry, will you?”

“Ain’t it enough to make any self-respecting man mad?” Soapy asked, making his teeth grit in fury. “Me to be a sort of a body servant. What d’you take me for?”

Said Peter: “Sit down, Soapy.”

“Cursed if I will!” roared Soapy. “You hear me say it?”

“I hear you say it.”

“Then what are you gonna do about it?”

“Are you afraid to sit down?” asked that quiet voice of Peter.

It was a new way of putting the matter. Soapy had only one religion, and that was that he was unafraid of anything that walked the earth—except the two Buttricks. His religion made him sink into the chair opposite to Peter. He regretted it the instant he was in that position—for he was much shorter than was Peter. The latter seemed to tower above him on the farther side of the table. No, Soapy wanted to be up and on his feet but he did not see, at once, how he could scramble out of the chair and still retain any of his dignity.

In the meantime, there was a constant pressure being exerted upon him. He could never have defined that strain upon his nerves. But he only knew that those restless, working eyes of Peter were constantly prying at his own. He forced himself to meet that gaze; yet he could only manage the thing with a savage stare—while the white man was at ease.

The calm eyes of Peter passed through the burly roughness of Soapy and made his very heart quake. Hypnotism—did it not begin in such a fashion, with the commanding pressure of eye upon eye? The thought brought cold perspiration out, beading the glistening forehead of Soapy.

“Now here I am,” said Soapy, “and what is it that you want out of me, and will you snap it out quick? Because I ain’t one that can be worked upon the
way that the Buttricks was. I’m up to your tricks, stranger. I tell you that I’m up to your tricks.”

He said it with a savage leer of cunning, jabbing his rigid forefinger at Peter, as much as to say that he had discerned the fiend behind the human guise. He half expected that Peter, when he heard these words, would tremble and turn pale. To his amazement, Peter did nothing of the kind. There was and instant flash through his shadowed eyes, then a faint smile appeared and disappeared on the corners if his mouth. Soapy felt that he was being laughed at by the superior might of the spirit of evil that certainly resided in the heart of this white man.

Bitterly Soapy regretted that he had entered that house; terribly did he regret that he had settled himself at that table. For now it seemed to him that invisible hands encircled him, and his strength was running out of him. Where not his great hands already shaking so that he could hardly held a gun? Did not even the accusing finger that he had pointed at Peter quiver more uncertainly?

He turned still paler, and watched with fascination the smile of the big white man. He had quite forgotten that Peter was a cripple, now. The idea had melted from his brain. He was sitting in the presence of a giant of might and of cunning, also. And Soapy felt that he was lost—but not lost without a struggle. No, he was still prepared to fight for the honor of his manhood.

“Listen to me,” said Peter. “I want you to understand that I mean you no harm. I offer you this work because I need someone with arms and shoulders like yours around me. In return for that, Soapy, I think that I can raise your position in the world a few degrees. I don’t intend that you should
have disagreeable or disgusting duties. Rather, like a friend on whom I can rely. Someone to watch my back, since in this camp it seems that a man’s back needs watching. And on that understanding, I wonder if you wouldn’t shake hands with me, Soapy?”

The fear of Soapy increased. He stiffened in his chair. “No, curse me if I will!”

“What?” said the other, with that same flashing hint of a smile. “You’re not afraid, Soapy?”

“Afraid? I’m afraid of no man!”

And Soapy thrust out his long arm and his great hand was closed upon by the smaller fingers of Peter Hale. They were so much smaller that a sudden feeling came to Soapy that in one instant, now, he would crush the pride and the strength of this weird monster. He closed the vise of his grip—a famous grip that had done prodigious things in the matter of crushing porous pine wood and other matters. He closed it now with all his might and he felt the grip of Peter relax slowly under the mighty pressure—relax and give and give, but always with an increasing slowness, until the point suddenly came when Soapy could crush no more. The thinner fingers of Peter bit into his very flesh like narrow rods of iron. Although the jaw of Soapy set and his monstrous arc quivered with effort, he could not make the other yield.

Magic
, thought the mulatto. For no mere human hand, so much smaller than his, could have withstood that grip.
Magic!

The instant that that idea came home to him the strength seemed to pass from his fingers. Or was it that the other with marvelous suddenness increased his own pressure?

The smaller, bony fingers bit hard into the flesh of the mulatto’s hand—and suddenly his grip gave way; his great hand straightened and folded under the power of Peter Hale.