Acres of Unrest (9 page)

When big Mike Jarvin saw the answering sign from the deep and distant darkness, he rubbed his fat hands together for a moment and laughed to himself. Then he went back to the shack and kicked at a door. There was no answer.

“Soapy!” he roared.

Still there was no response. So he entered the room and lighted a lantern that hung on the wall. By that light he saw a great mound of a man lying on the bunk beneath the window, as though fallen into a trance, or dead with liquor.

He gripped the sleeper by the shoulder. “Soapy!”

Even the thunder of that rough voice could not wake the other.

“Soapy! Gin!” he shouted again.

Suddenly the other groaned, wakened, and sat bolt upright on the edge of the bunk, gripping the sides of it with his hands, and swaying a little with utter exhaustion and the torpor of long sleep.

“Gimme,” he said, stretching out a hand.

How he had got his name it would have been hard to guess, and certainly it could hardly have been from the too-frequent use of soap. Or perhaps it was because his skin was the color of cheap yellow-brown laundry soap. He had a face almost perfectly rounded, above a broad, flat, outthrust
chin. Slice the lower part off a globe and you would have a fairly accurate idea of the formation of the head of Soapy. The jaw seemed the widest portion. Everything above it pinched gradually in, and the vast ears thrust out at the angle where the skull began to diminish most rapidly.

Seen from the side view, the same curve was apparent. At the base, that head was still much larger than any other portion of it. The nose was a negligible feature, hardly prominent enough to interrupt the sweep of the contour, except when some emotion made the big, depressed nostrils flare out. The eyes were sunken inside a huge rim of bone, and above the eyes the forehead rounded swiftly back, unconcerned in making space for that region where the brain is usually lodged.

It was a marvelous defensive arrangement. A pugilist would have envied that magnificently built sconce. Where could a blow strike and find lodgment? Only on the jaw itself, and that jaw was so heavily fortified that to strike Soapy there was almost like striking him on the top of his dense skull. To set off these attractive features, there was a dense, close-curling cap of black hair fitting close to his head. It looked like a ridiculously diminutive wig, set on a brown, bald man’s head.

The rest of Soapy was made after this same unusual pattern. The arm that he stretched forth in the hope of the expected gin was as bulky as a man’s thigh. The hand, which was big enough to have served for two, was furnished with long, thick fingers, square clipped at the ends.

He was not tall; he was even some inches under six feet. But the number twelve shoe into which his foot had been crowded had not furnished enough
room, and therefore it had been cut away at the toes, and the foot bulged through.

“No gin, you blockhead,” Mike Jarvin declared, eying the monster with quiet appreciation. “You’ve slept twenty-two hours, Soapy. Ain’t it time for you to wake up?”

“The devil,” said Soapy. “No gin?” He fell back sidewise upon the bunk, his legs still trailing over the side of it, his body twisted out of shape, but his eyes instantly closed in slumber.

Jarvin raised his foot and ground the heel cruelIy into the ribs of the other. “Soapy! It’s a horse!”

The eyes of Soapy opened again, and he sat up once more, wearily groaning. “Well?” he said.

“A horse, Soapy.”

“Ah-h-h?”
growled the mulatto. “Is that it? D’you aim to get a horse that can pack me around?”

“I aim at that, you scoundrel.”

Soapy stood up, seized a basin of water, and poured it over his head. A careless wipe with a towel removed some of the water, and he now stood up more erect, regardless of the numerous trickles that dripped down his back and chest.

“Lemme know where,” he said, “and gimme the coin to get it.” He added savagely: “A hoss to pack
me!
”

“It’ll do that,” said Mike Jarvin. “But ain’t you really slept out?”

“I went three days without dosing an eye,” said Soapy. “How could I be slept out now? Where do I get the horse?”

Jarvin retreated toward the door. “There’s a horse that can carry you,” he said, “but you ain’t the friend that I want it for.”

“I ain’t?” Soapy said, and caught up a heavy chair as lightly as though it had been a straw.

Jarvin dodged into the doorway, but Soapy dropped the chair again with a sigh. “All right,” he said. “I’ll ride that horse back, though. Where is he to be got?”

“He’s a chestnut by name of Larribee, and Wisner has him. You can ride across to the Wisner place inside of two hours.”

“Well?” said Soapy. “It’s a mean ride. What do I get out of it?”

“Here’s two thousand, Soapy. You bring back the horse and you can keep the change.” He laid a sheaf of bills on the table and stepped quickly back into the night. Then he called: “Soapy!”

“Umph?”
grunted the other.

“Is that enough to be worth running away with?”

“About five hundred short,” said Soapy.

He came out rubbing the weariness from his eyes. There was a loosely arranged circle of shacks, one very much like the other. The miners lived in the inner ones, toward the mouth of the mine. Jarvin’s was hardly distinguishable from the rest, but it stood in the most favorable position on the edge of the valley. It was situated in this look-out position, so said the talk of the miners, so that Jarvin could see the devil on the way to catch him. They said this with a certain amount of good humor, for the enormities of Jarvin were too gross and terrible to admit of real anger. One had either to disbelieve or smile. And except for the occasions when they rose, singly or in groups, and tried to murder him, the miners preferred to smile.

Beyond the shacks, again, there were the stables—the mules and the burros for the mine work were kept here at a minimum of expense by Mike Jarvin.
Here, also, were the horses. It was one of the mules that Soapy took. He had tried his 250 pounds with unlucky results upon the back of more than one horse, but this mouse-colored mule with the stout legs and the shortcoupled back could carry him along at a back-breaking trot for hours on end.

So Soapy rode away through the night. He was so intent that he did not turn back to resent the half-heard remark that drifted after him from a group of the idling miners:

“There goes Jarvin’s pet gorilla.”

Soapy heard. He even marked down the voice in his memory with all the care that he could manage. But for the time being he could not turn aside for any smaller pleasures such as thrashing the impertinent. He was bent on seeing a horse actually capable of carrying his own weight, even though the horse was destined to the use of another man.

He passed down a valley, where all that he had to guide him through the thick blackness was the glimmer of a little stream that ran down among the rocks. That was enough for the mule and Soapy. They descended into the plain beyond, and in far less than the two hours his hand was knocking at the door of Mr. Wisner’s house.

When Wisner came out to answer the inquiry, Soapy said: “I hear that you got a five-hundred-dollar horse down here?”

“I got a five-thousand-dollar horse,” said the rancher. “What about it?”

“I might buy it,” said Soapy.

“You might?” asked the other, eying the face and the form of the grotesque.

“Sure,” Soapy said. “I got a kid that’s fond of pretty horses. Lemme have a look at it, will you?”

Mr. Wisner led the way to a little pasture, and in answer to his whistle a shadowy monster heaved against the stars. Now it stood on the inner side of the fence, reaching its curious head over the bars.

“There’s close to eighteen hands of that horse,” said Wisner. “Wait till I get this lantern lighted.”

In the flare of the light, Larribee tossed his head, but he did not retreat.

“He’s a pet, eh?” Soapy said.

“He’s a pet. Five years old. Sound as iron. Now you’ve seen him. What about it?”

“He’s too big for the mountains,” said Soapy, shaking his head.

“He’s been running in the mountains every day,” answered the rancher. “He’s like a big cat in them. Better than a mule for sure feet. And that’s why five thousand ain’t too much.”

“I got a thousand dollars in cash right here in my hand for you,” said Soapy. “What do you say? Take it or leave it?”

“I leave it, and you be…” But Wisner checked the oath.

Another glance at the grotesque face of the mulatto frightened him into a momentary silence, out of which his voice roared again: “A thousand for that?”

“Is he fast enough to run races on a track?” growled the mulatto. “Or can he do tricks on a stage? Or is he handy enough and trained enough for a cutting horse? What is he good for?”

“Good to carry two hundred pounds all day long, uphill and down, like it was a feather. Good to never peg out on you. Gentle as a lamb. Afraid of nothing. And you talk a thousand dollars.”

“It’s more,” ventured Soapy, “than anybody ever
offered you for the horse before…more cash, I mean!”

“That’s a lie,” replied the rancher hotly. “The fat man…Jarvin…offered me twelve hundred the other day. I laughed at him. The same way that I laugh at you. It’s five thousand or nothing for Larribee.”

“It’s nothing, then,” murmured Soapy. “But I ain’t going to be cheap. If somebody else offered you twelve hundred, I’ll offer you twelve hundred and fifty. But there’s where I stick. You go into the house and talk it over with your old woman, will you? You’ll never get more. Who’d give it?”

Mr. Wisner swore under his breath. But he went to the house and came back again at the close of a quarter of an hour.

“Me and the wife have settled it,” he said. “We sell him for two thousand, and not a cent less.”

“Two thousand,” Soapy said. “Am I a millionaire?”

“You can’t talk me down.”

“I’ll give you one last boost,” said the mulatto. “Fifteen hundred. That’s my last.”

“It ain’t gonna do.”

“So long, then,” Soapy announced, turning his mule abruptly away, toward the road.

He did not ride fast, however. So slowly did he go that a moment later, when a voice rang through the night behind him, he could turn and holler in answer. And he knew that Larribee was bought.

Five hundred dollars was a very neat profit, all things considered, and Soapy was in a fairly blithe humor when he strapped the saddle upon the back of the big stallion. Well above his head rose the withers of, the monster. Certainly he was not an inch short of eighteen hands, and, as he tossed his head, he looked like a dreadful monster in the night.

But all that Wisner had said of the gentleness of the horse was true enough. It went away up the road at a long, stretching canter that made the mule pull back strenuously against the lead rope. Far behind, from the house of the rancher, Soapy heard the broken-hearted wailing of a child.

Well, the stallion might have been a pet in the farmer’s household, but he was going toward an unpetted life at this moment, Soapy could swear. For he knew Jarvin, and he knew the friends of the fat man. Only one thing puzzled him immensely, and that was to learn what person in the world was so dear to Jarvin as to be worth the gift of a $2,000 horse.

He reached the mine again not long after midnight, stabled the giant, and returned to his bunk where, without food or drink having passed through his throat in the last twenty-four hours, he was instantly asleep. For Soapy was so strangely gifted that he could take the necessities of Nature in
great drafts, instead of from time to time. He could abandon himself to delicious idleness for days and weeks at a time. But during that interval he was simply building up in himself an electric store of power, to be drawn forth and used at will. Perhaps that immense force would be expended in one huge labor, and then he would be ready to rest again.

Soapy had been known to go for five days with no more sleep than he could get while nodding and swaying in the saddle in the hot middle of the day. That five days’ ride of the mulatto’s had not so much exhausted him, however, that he was unable to prove himself a man of many devices at the end of it. He had trailed two enemies through 300 miles of mountains, and at the close of the fifth day he killed them both, slept beside their bodies while the clock went around—turned to the mountains, and slept again.

It was known, too, that during the five-day ride he had had not enough really to nourish a single small man through a single day of such labor. But at the end of the great ride the mulatto was not weakened. He was merely made thinner. And the layers of fat that ordinarily coated his body were consumed away as in a fire. It was the fuel by which he lived through such a time of stress.

When the time came for eating, no three men could sit at the board and devour pound for pound with Soapy. He ate as a wolf eats and, like a wolf, he slept and was ready to eat again. The flesh seemed to appear sleekly upon his body, again, almost as swiftly as huge exertions had been able to whip the surplus away.

So Soapy slept until the dawn peered down upon the camp. Then he rose and went to the cook house.
All others were forbidden such privileges. But Soapy was different. Of all the strange charms that this mining camp could hold forth to the mulatto, there was only one, Jarvin knew, that had potency enough to retain the yellow man there. That was his simple privilege of going to the cook house whenever he chose and eating until his raging hunger was satisfied.

It had worked havoc, at first. The despairing cook had seen two or three dinners thrown away down the gullet of the monster, and an outraged gang of miners threatening to strike for better chuck. But after that the cook learned wisdom. On the back of his stove, or simmering in the oven, there was always a vast iron pot filled with beans. A few rough lumps of fat pork—the fatter the better—were thrown into the pot. The mess was seasoned and sweetened with a quart of the cheapest molasses. This was fare that Soapy preferred to almost any other food.

On this morning, when Soapy entered the cook house, he reached for the first provisions that he happened to see before him. That, by unlucky chance, was a great apple pie, intended to make a dozen men rejoice at the noon of that day. But it was in the clutches of Soapy before the poor cook could snatch it from ,the path of danger.

By the time the pie was gone, however, the cook was prepared. He wasted no time in offering plate and knife and fork. He set out the huge iron pot itself and thrust into it a formidable iron spoon whose ponderous weight had ended more than one incipient kitchen brawl.

Before that yawning and cavernous pot Soapy sat down with a brief-drawn sigh of pleasure, and then the work of destruction began. Twice and again the
belt of Soapy, first drawn as tight as the belt about a monkey’s waist, was loosened. Still Soapy devoured and found room for more. The spoon had grated upon the bottom of the pot before he made the first pause, and the cook with a sigh of relief rubbed his hands together and smiled upon his guest.

“More, Soapy?” he asked.

Soapy looked about the kitchen with a wandering eye, but the light of interest had fled from it. “Look here,” he said, lolling back in his chair, “the next time I tell you what you do…you throw in a handful of lard, will you? These here beans, they’re kind of edgy, you understand?”

Lard was cheap. Far cheaper than apple pies in both cost and labor, and the cook grinned as he nodded assent.

“What’s the news, Soapy?” he asked.

The giant stretched forth his vast hand. “Gimme smoke,” he said.

The cook obediently produced a sack of the inevitable tobacco. It was accepted, a cigarette made from its contents, and then the sack was dropped into the pocket of Soapy. But the cook made no protest. There was apparently news forthcoming that would be worth a greater sacrifice than this.

In two or three whiffs the cigarette was consumed to a butt. The long, red-hot ash was dropped to the floor and ground under the heel of the yellow man. He made himself another smoke, and already the process of digestion was far enough advanced to permit speech.

“The boss is bringing up a prize boob to trim,” said Soapy.

“A prize?” echoed the cook politely, jotting down mental notes.

“Something pretty sweet,” said Soapy. “He’s got somebody that can be squeezed for forty or fifty thousand, maybe.”

“What’ll be the gag this time?” asked the cook.

“How can I tell?” asked the mulatto. “Maybe a fake mine. That’s one of the deals that he likes best. Maybe just poker. He’s been practicing stacking the deck a good deal lately. Getting his hand in, you might say. Or maybe he’ll just tap the sucker on the head and let it go at that.”

“Aye,” said the cook, “that’s pretty likely, too. Who might it be?”

“I dunno,” Soapy said, “but I’ll tell you that he’s due today. The boss rushed me out last night to get him a two-thousand-dollar horse for a present to this friend of his.”

“Two thousand bones,” the cook groaned. “All that blowed in on a horse?”

“You go out to the stable and you’ll see why. This here is a horse that’s a horse. The rest, they’re only imitations of the real thing.” He heaved himself to his feet. “So long!”

A large cake of gingerbread, freshly steaming from the oven, lay cooling on the windowsill. The great hand of the mulatto gathered it in as he rose to his feet, and half of it had disappeared into his maw before he crossed the threshold.

So it was that expectancy was raised to the fever point at the mine. All of his men were more or less familiar with the scoundrel activities of the boss. They knew that nothing was too small and that nothing was too great to interest his rapacity. They knew that the world was fairly paved with his enemies, but still they had never yet known him to use a $2,000 bait upon his hook. Great was the
excitement to see what the nature of the fish might be for which this bait had been prepared.

Then, in the midmorning, a horseman labored up the steep. Soapy, stretched upon his back on his bunk, drawing sleepily at a blackened pipe, filled with soggy tobacco, liberally seasoned with perique, had this information brought to him in haste.

“What sort of a looking gent?” said Soapy.

“I put the glasses on him. Looks a biggish sort. And heavy.”

“That’s him,” said Soapy. He heaved himself onto his feet. The lethargy disappeared. And he, with a dozen others, watched the stranger ride into the circle of the shacks.

“What’s he got on his legs?” asked someone in a muttering whisper.

“Hello,” called the stranger, “where is the house of Mike Jarvin?”

Soapy, for an answer, hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the proper direction. They watched the stranger swing rather clumsily down from the saddle. His legs appeared of little use to him. Leaning against the horse, he unshipped a pair of long, strong crutches, then he swung himself across the ground with a wonderful dexterity.

“A cripple by heaven,” whispered Soapy. “Damn me if the boss ain’t throwing away two thousand on a cripple. Boys, are we seeing straight? Or who might this here gent be?”

“It’s something queer,” said the cook. “I got a sort of ticklish feeling in the stomach that we’re going to have some surprises sprung on us around here before long. Where’s the Buttricks?”