The Buttricks were found, of course, with much ease. They came forth the instant that the rumor began, but too late to see the stranger disappear into the house of Jarvin himself. But they made their inquiries, and it was observed that they changed color when they heard the size of the stranger and the breadth of his shoulders. And, most of all, the mention of his crutches seemed to have an odd effect upon them.
They retreated to their own shack, next to Mike Jarvin’s, and there they remained, although someone, who had a glimpse of them through the window, declared that they were busy furbishing their guns as though in a time of most desperate need.
“They know him,” declared the mulatto, logically enough. “And then why ain’t nobody here ever heard of him? He ain’t the sort of a gent to be forgot, once heard of.”
Said the cook: “What do any of us know, except the mine, and the crooked work of old Jarvin? What do any of us know, I say? We keep tight by the mine. He keeps us too broke to do much traveling, and that’s why we know him so much better than the rest of the folks in the world does. If they knowed what we know, wouldn’t there be a law passed by Congress, or something, to put him in jail, and hang him by his thumbs and toes for an hour a day,
as long as he lives the rest of his life? Sure there would.”
It was felt that this remark had not wandered far from the point. But presently all occasion for thought was dismissed. It was a time for observation, pure and simple, for the big cripple was observed emerging from the house of Mike Jarvin.
Mike himself stood in the doorway, smiling upon the back of the newcomer. Then he glanced apprehensively aside to the house where the Buttricks had their quarters.
“It’s got something to do with the Buttricks, the coming of this gent,” said the cook. “And maybe now we’ll find out.”
The cripple was seen going toward the door of the next cottage. He managed himself, now, with only one crutch and yet he swung himself along with wonderful dexterity. Nothing could have been more painfully clumsy than the idea of such a movement, but, as a matter of fact the big fellow handled himself with such smoothness that he seemed to be covering the ground with perfect ease.
“An acrobat, that’s what he is,” said the cook, who usually pronounced an opinion upon all difficult matters. “You can see by the way that he handles himself that he’s been trained all his life to the doing of stunts. I’ll tell you what he’s been…he’s been one of those trapeze artists…you know, in a circus. And he’s had a fall that’s knocked out his legs. But you see how plumb easy that he handles himself.”
They could see and they could wonder at what they saw. Then they observed that the big man had his right hand free from a crutch, free to swing at his side, near the hip, and at that hip there was a well-worn holster of a revolver.
He tapped at the door of the Buttricks.
“Who’s there?” called Lefty Buttrick, after a pause.
“It’s Peter Hale,” said the big stranger. “I’ve come to bring you word that Jarvin doesn’t need you any longer. He expects you to leave at once and he says that you’re paid ahead of time, already. Is that right?”
There was a torrent of oaths from both the Buttricks. They heard what Jarvin had said. But they would not leave. There was an agreement that Mike would give them a month’s notice. They’d had no time to look around, and finally they did not care what message he brought. It was from Mike alone that they would take their orders.
“Sweet, ain’t it?” asked the cook breathlessly. “You might say that for a cripple he’s got himself into a pot of boiling water. How’ll he come out?”
Said the deep, quiet voice of the cripple: “From now on it’s to be understood here that what I say is the wish of Jarvin. There’ll be no going behind my back and waiting for him to give his commands over again. And I’m starting with you two, Lefty and Dan. Do you hear me?”
A fresh current of lurid oaths was listened to in the utmost patience by the big fellow, but when it had ended he remarked: “I’ve heard you, and I think that you’ve nothing fresh to say. Also, if you wish to speak to me face to face, I’m waiting here on the verandah of your house. I won’t run away, my friends.”
“Hark at him sing,” whispered the cook. “He’s the representative of the boss around here, is he? And he’s gonna begin by giving the Buttricks the run? Well, more power to him, I say…but is the world coming to an end?”
“Shut up,” muttered the mulatto. “I want to hear what Lefty Buttrick is gonna say to that.”
It was amazingly apparent that Lefty had needed a moment of thought before replying to this latest sentence—Lefty, who had ever been as a roaring lion in the camp, Lefty, whose strong right hand and ready gun had flashed terror into so many eyes since the moment of his first coming into the employ of Jarvin. They expected to see him leap through the doorway and tear the cripple limb from limb. They expected to see Dan Buttrick come shooting from either hand beside or behind his brother.
Instead, they heard Lefty saying: “Come through the door and get shot down one by one as we come? We ain’t fools, Hale!”
It was the crown upon the climax!
No, there was another thing to come, for they heard the cripple say: “I don’t want to make any trouble with you fellows. I’m going back to Jarvin’s house, and I’m going to wait there for half an hour. That ought to give you a chance to move your things out of your place. At the end of the half hour I’m coming back, and, if you haven’t started, I’ll throw you out. This is Jarvin’s property. He orders you off. You stay after a half hour at your own risk.”
He left the verandah and walked back to the house of Jarvin—not straight away, but with a peculiar side-long hitch, his face turned back toward the window that watched him from the Buttrick place, and his right hand swinging steadily beside the holster on his hip.
There was no burst of shots from that window. There was only silence. Then Jarvin’s door closed and the cripple was gone to safety.
“What’ll happen?” asked the cook in an agony of delighted anticipation.
“Lefty’ll cut him to pieces,” the mulatto declared through his teeth. “Don’t I know what Lefty is?”
“We got to wait,” said the cook. “We got to wait and see. I told you that queer things was gonna start happening around this here camp.”
Of all those breathless watchers of this odd scene there was not one so interested as burly Soapy. He knew the Buttricks just a shade better than any other man in the camp. As a matter of fact, they had caused him to spend more than five months in bed. That enforced rest had been divided into two periods of almost equal length. Because after he had tackled them the first time and been literally shot to pieces, he was no sooner patched up and on his feet again than he tried his hand with the Buttricks for a second set-to. It was most strange that he was not killed in that second battle royal. The doctor who came to see him gave him an hour to live, at the most. But he lived out the day. The appalling vitality that was living in the deeps of his vast body kept him still alive at the end of forty-eight hours, and the doctor said, shaking his head: “This fellow has used up a dozen lives already, but since he refuses to die, let’s treat him as though he were going to get well. Give him some food. Give him what would be a comfortable meal for an ordinary mucker.”
That food worked like magic upon the mulatto. No matter how many bullets had pierced his body, there was no wound in his stomach, and in a week he was out of all danger. In a month those dreadful furrows in his flesh had closed, leaving only purple scars to mark them. He was quickly back on his feet
and robed in his full strength. The doctor stopped marveling. He declared that Soapy was simply a step back toward the primeval man.
But after his second encounter with the Buttricks, and his second long stay in bed, Soapy had learned discretion. He hated them both with an unabated rage. But still he knew that it would not do to presume upon his emotions. It would be infinitely safer to treat them with a distant toleration. They seemed to him like a two-faced god of war, watching in both directions at once, and so guarded from attack from the front or from the rear.
Either of them, alone, he would not have feared. He felt that he was just as quick in his use of a gun as either of them. He felt that he was just as straight in his shooting. If the fight ever came to closer quarters than bullets, he would willingly have taken a dozen men like the Buttricks and beaten their heads together, in perfect serenity as to the outcome of the battle. For the belief of Soapy in himself was an almost godlike confidence.
However, with all the faith that he had in himself, he regarded the Buttricks with a superstitious awe. They were not like the other men who he had encountered. He felt that they were invincible. It was a part of their pride that they rarely or never fought alone. They moved together; they thought together; they worked together. Whenever one scanned the horizon that lay in front, the other was sure to have his head turned in order to observe any dangers that might drift into ken from the rear.
Yet here was a man who had dared to walk up to the door of the Buttrick shack, from which, like threatening deities, they had so often rushed forth and worked havoc in the camp among the enemies
of big Jarvin. Here was a man who dared to walk up to that door and challenge them to step out and face him—only his lone, crippled self. Yet they did not come.
Said Soapy: “Killing with guns ain’t good enough for him. That’s the idea of the Buttricks.”
The cook regarded him askance. Then he said: “Now look here, Soapy, might it be that the two somehow is afraid of that gent?”
Soapy turned his round head. It wheeled upon his thick neck like the head of a bird, turning with a strange absence of effort, until he seemed to be looking almost squarely behind him.
“Tell me this, will you? Was they afraid of me?” The cook was silent, but the remorseless Soapy continued: “And ain’t I as good as any other one man in the world?” Again the cook was silent. “Is there anybody,” Soapy asked with the slow earnestness of one who must be clearly understood, “that has ever stood up to me for one minute?”
“No,” said the cook. “Not with the hands, anyway. I remember what happened to the big polack that come up here special to bust you into bits.”
At this, Soapy allowed himself to smile. The grimace sliced his face veritably in two and exposed a double row of huge, pointed fangs. “Hands is one thing,” said Soapy, “but did you ever know of a gent, either, that ever stood up to me with rifle or revolver or knife, or any other weapon that you can name down to a blacksmith hammer?”
The cook frowned reflectively. “’Specially with the blacksmith hammer,” he said in thought. “No, Soapy, I dunno that anybody has ever had better than an even break with you, except the Buttricks.”
“No matter how they come, one, two, three, or
four,” said the mulatto, “there was never enough gents together in one group to lick me. I was too much for anyone man. I was too much for any two. And why wouldn’t the boss give me the job as his guard, I ask?”
“Because that you snored too loud, maybe?”
“No, but it was only because that he hates a Negro. And I’m a Negro, cook. Know that?”
“Are you?” replied the cook in polite surprise.
“Yes, by heaven,” Soapy said with great vehemence. “I’m a Negro, and I’m proud of it. I’m a Negro and I want the whole world to know that I am, in spite of this here white face of mine.” And he pointed a thick forefinger at his yellow hide.
The cook did not smile. He would not have smiled at a ghost, or at a tiger, within the reach of whose paw he stood. He merely nodded with the utmost gravity.
“Well, Soapy,” he said, “I would never have guessed it.”
Only when Soapy had looked away to have another glance at the door of the shack of the Buttricks and make sure that it had not opened did the cook permit himself to wink broadly at a neighbor.
The wink was not returned by so much as a knowing glance, because that neighbor stood within the edge of the range of the mulatto’s vision, and it would have been rash to take even the slightest chance, because the temper of Soapy was just a trifle more uncertain than nitroglycerin in cold weather in a closely stoppered bottle.
“No,” said Soapy, turning back to the cook again, “the fact is the boss hates all Negroes. Why? Because why, I ask you? Because they’re too good for him, that’s why! Yes, sir, I tell you that’s the reason. Too
good for him. Why, when I think how he hates me, for instance, I wonder that you don’t see me choke him one of these days.”
“What’s made you so sure that he hates you?”
“I can tell by the way he treats me. What does he want me here for? To do dirty work. He pays me big. Sure he pays me big. I take his money, and then he’s got the fun of seeing me do this dirty work, and, while I do it, he says to himself…‘Ha, now I’m making a Negro suffer.’”
“What sort of dirty work do you mean?” asked the cook.
“If he wants something and he wants it cheap, who does he send out to get it? I buy it if I can, but, if I can’t buy it, I got to steal it. Because I don’t dare to come back and face him without it. His tongue would sure start working on oiled hinges if I was to do a thing like that.”
“Look here, Soapy, why don’t you up and leave him, then?”
“Because I’m waiting for my chance at him, and that’s the only thing under the sky that keeps me here, honey, and you can lay to that.”
“All right, Soapy, I can understand you feeling that way, only, what is there that keeps you from doing what you want with him? You’re pretty near to him, most of the time.”
The mulatto cast an ugly glance over his shoulder. “You tell me, then, why don’t some of the others take a chance at him…and they’s plenty of others right here in the same camp that would sure like to take a fall out of him so’s he would never get up again, I guess?”
“Sure,” agreed the cook instantly. “I’m one, curse his heart!”
“And what keeps you back? What’s been keeping you back all of these here months?”
“The Buttricks,” admitted the cook.
“And me,” Soapy said, rubbing his great hands together. “But now it looks as though the old man had gone crazy, and he’s trying to get rid of the Buttricks. For why? For to be chopped up by the rest of us? Would you tell me that?”
The cook shook his head. “We’re all wondering,” he said. “But it don’t look likely, does it, Soapy?”
“Likely?” said Soapy. “Son, the Buttricks’ll come out and you’ll see ’em
eat
that fool.”
“Will you?” queried the cook. “Then you tell me how you’re gonna explain the thing that we’re seeing now, if you can.”
For the door of the Buttrick house had opened, and yonder stood the terrible Lefty, but not girt for battle. Instead of that, his bag of dunnage was slung heavily over his shoulder, and under his other arm he carried a bristling canvas bag that contained Lefty’s gun. He stepped out onto the verandah.
“Well?” said the cook.
“It’s a fake,” gasped the mulatto. “Lefty comes out this way so’s to draw the other sucker out of his house, and then Dan will whirl in and eat him…no, by heaven.”
For directly behind Lefty appeared the form of the second brother, Dan, equipped much like Lefty with a burden of luggage.