The care the Soapy gave to orders was never unreasonably great. For he felt that if something was due to his master, still more was due to himself. So, when he had put up the saddle horses, he did not wait long before making a selection of horses. He merely rubbed down the tired mustangs, and, having freshened them with a swallow of water and a mouthful of crushed barley, he started out to make the trade. It was easily done. The town was filled with men eager for buying or trading. In a few minutes he found a buckboard with a serviceable pair attached to it. He found the owner and offered Mike Jarvin’s span in exchange. There was not much delay. The stranger liked trim-cut nags, and those of Jarvin were far neater about the heads than his own. $100 in boot had been permitted by Jarvin; Soapy got the new pair for a $40 bonus, and he went back with fresh horses and $60 profit in his pocket.
But money to possess was only money to spend, to the mulatto. He harnessed the team to the buckboard and gave their heads to a youngster to hold. Straight across the street from the hotel stable, there was the lighted front of a lunch counter, newly erected and glowing with bunting for this grand occasion. The stools in front of the counter looked like so many thrones to Soapy. And although. the order had been specifically that he should remain in
person at the heads of the team, his hunger spoke in a loud voice.
He crossed to the eating place and slipped onto the first vacant stool. Three cooks worked vigorously at a range of oil stoves. Clouds of steam from hot milk and fragrant, boiling coffee rolled out to bathe the soul of Soapy. There were columns of smoke, ascending from hissing griddles, where hamburger steaks were sizzling and turning black and brown. French-fried potatoes, too, bubbled in little tubs of fat and were drawn out, dripping hot grease and exuding a delicate aroma to the nostrils of the quivering Soapy.
“And you?” asked the waiter as he swept the dishes of the last customer from the oilcloth before Soapy.
“Me?” asked Soapy, half closing his eyes to consult his sense of smell.
At that moment a gruff voice said at his side: “White folks before colored, man. Gimme a pie!”
Soapy rolled his eyes. It was almost the first time in his life that he had failed to snatch up the opportunity to make trouble with his fists. But now his brain and his senses, all save one, were benumbed with delight. There was all of $60 in his pocket. What with the recent gain on the big horse, and now this second profit, he felt like a millionaire. So he let the insult pass.
The words merely brought a suggestion to his mind. “Pie for me, too,” said Soapy.
“Apple, blackberry, peach…,” began the waiter.
“Apple,” said the stranger.
“Apple,” echoed Soapy.
Two plates, with a generous wedge of pie upon each, were rattled upon the counter.
The deep voice of the man beside Soapy said: “Ain’t there no hope of more’n this? Is this what you call a piece of pie, waiter?”
“Leave it be!” snapped another man with a sharply rising nasal twang. “How can you expect to fight in the ring in another hour if you got a whole pie in your…”
“Leave me be,” snarled the first, seizing the piece. Soapy was growling at the waiter. “This’ll do to start. Now…a pie. A
whole
pie!”
He had gobbled up the piece in a gulp or two and now he extended his great hand and gripped the big apple pie as it was brought toward him. As he ate, he rolled his little eyes upward and to the side. He saw a dark-browned giant sitting beside him, glowering down.
“Now curse my heart,” said the big man, “but I think that Negro is eating that pie just to get a rise out of me, Bill.”
Bill, flaming in a crimson necktie, set off with a sparkling diamond stick-pin, gripped the bulging shoulder of his charge.
“Now, you come on, Bud, will you? You come on, will you? They’ll be hankering for a’sight of you before the fight. Then let ’em see you.”
“Oh,” said Bud, “I would like to take one pass at the Neg…”
But he let himself be dragged from the stool, while Bill frantically growled: “Would you be busting up your hands on that head? Like hitting a marble dome. You come on along with me.”
So they disappeared, and Soapy, as the last of the pie flowed down his throat, cast yearning eyes after them. He wanted to take big Bud apart and examine his interior. Rarely in his life had his passion for
fighting waxed so hot and high in him, but on the other hand the pie had merely awakened his appetite, and the leading aspiration of his life was consuming the mulatto. From the corner of his well-occupied mouth he had been bellowing for hamburger. A great portion of it was brought for him. He reached for the nearest loaf of bread, hurling the contents of a pitcher of water into the street, then extended the pitcher to be filled with coffee and hot milk for his use. And that was only the beginning.
At the end of some thirty or forty minutes, he wiped his pale-purple lips and sighed.
“If this here was a restaurant,” Soapy stated regretfully, “I might be able to make sort of a meal out of it. Hand me that lemon pie.”
It was handed. Cooks and waiters stood before him in an awed but grinning circle.
“Where’s the folks gone?” murmured Soapy around the disappearing pie.
“The fight,” said the waiter, mopping the counter with an anxious hand, in hopes of a tip.
“Oh,” Soapy said as his mind traveled back to an earlier incident in the evening. “The fight, eh?” His recollection surmounted fried potatoes, jam, two kinds of pie, hamburger steak, strings of luscious sausages, and other minor incidentals in this light lunch. His thoughts arrived at the departed form of big Bud. “That sap…that one that they call Bud…he fights, I guess?” asked Soapy.
“Sure, he fights with Canuck Pete. And a darn good licking he’ll get.”
“From Canuck, eh?”
“Yep.”
“Well,” said Soapy, “maybe I’ll go and see that fight.”
“I dunno that you got time to get to it. You hear ’em hollering now?”
The noise of the shouting guided Soapy through the night. He arrived at a high board fence with a flare of light and a dense fragrance of tobacco smoke inside. Parting from $1 at the gate, he stepped inside the fence in time to see his recent acquaintance, Bud, climb through the ropes of the ring that had been arranged on a rough platform in the center of the field. And the crowd roared again.
It was easy to see that Bud was the county champion. When he stood up in the flare of the great gasoline lamps, he looked worthy of their betting. Thick muscles padded his hairy chest, and his dark arms swept down almost to his knees, rippling with ponderous strength from the shoulders down. His black hair bristled above that cramped forehead, and his mouth was stretched in a grin of confidence.
But still the hope of seeing him licked swelled high in the mulatto when he saw the other warrior rising and shaking off his bathrobe. Canuck possessed every whit as much bulk as Bud. In addition there was a taper finish to his limbs that promised speed as well as power. He stepped forth into the light, showing a lean, cadaverous face, shadowed with unshaven beard, and furnished with a great bony jaw, built to defy battering. What chiefly interested the mulatto was the eye of this man, thoughtful, deep-sunk, and filled with a keen fire. It reminded Soapy of another eye that he knew well—the eye of big Peter Hale, the worker of mysteries.
What mysteries, then, would this warrior enact in the ring? He was a man of some fame, was
Canuck. He had already risen some distance up the ladder of ring fame, and perhaps he would rise still further. That natural fighting heart and fighting instinct that had made him celebrated through the hardy Canadian lumber camps had, for some months, been directed and polished by a clever manager. This manager was of the old school, letting his proteges fight their way into the acquisition of greater skill. What he taught five days a week, he liked to see his man show in the ring on the sixth evening. So the Canadian was taken touring through the countryside, taking on all comers, and winning usually with consummate ease. There would be plenty of time to take him East after the big purses and the famous fighters, when he had acquired a trifle more skill with that long left arm, and a bit more snap in his deadly right.
It was plain to every man in the field that the battle would not be long, as Bud, with all his brute strength and confidence, squared off before the fiery eye and the well-poised body of the other.
The cries were only: “I bet on you to stay three rounds with him, Bud! You stick to him! Don’t you let him spank you with that right, Bud! Hang on and get my money for me, kid!”
But no one was prepared for what actually happened. Bud, scowling with a tense battle fury, rushed from his corner as the bell sounded. He swung with either hand. The other slipped beneath those flailing hands, and then dipped up and smote from beneath with his left hand.
Perhaps he had not intended to strike quite so hard. Perhaps he was not able to gauge the power of his own punching any too accurately. At any
rate, the terrible Bud flung his hands high above his head, reeled blindly, and dropped, stunned, upon the floor of the ring.
The crash of his fall sent a wide echo over the field.
There was no question of counting, on the part of the referee. He took the head and shoulders of Bud, and the timekeeper took his feet. After he was dragged to his corner and a bucket of water poured over his head, the crowd realized that their dollars had been paid for no more of a show than this. And then a grumble began in the rearmost ranks—where crowd commotions always start—and it spread to a mumbling in front and then to a whisper of discontent toward the ring. Another wave of sound immediately recommenced from the rear of the host. It was a snarling that brought an ugly murmur toward the center of the field. Then, as at a universal signal, a great howl of rage and disgust went up.
The deputy sheriff left in haste—to try to find his chief, he said. The promoter of the match started to find the gate, but, before he had gone half a dozen steps, he was recognized, and violent hands were laid upon him. He was carried in a forward wave and deposited with a heave in the ring, while two or three sturdy cattlemen clambered in beside him.
“Now you tell the boys what the main idea might be,” they said to him.
The promoter was a shifty-eyed gentleman. He may have wanted to talk, but his mind was diverted by two distractions. One was the furious noise of the crowd, and the other was the heavy holsters
adorning the hips of his new companions in the ring.
“Why, gems,” he whined, “you all know that Bud is a husky sort. He’s never been licked, and heaven knows that he’s had fights enough. He said that he’d eat Canuck.”
“Leave off what he said,” growled one. “The boys want to know why they shouldn’t get their money back. That’s all. They’re plumb anxious to find out why Bud thought that this here was a swimming pool and why he tried to do a high dive so quick. You call that a fight?”
The promoter perspired more profusely than ever, but convincing words failed him. At this moment, by the grace of good fortune, he was rescued by help from an unexpected quarter. The mighty form of Canuck stepped forward, waving a gloved hand. At once silence fell over the assemblage.
“Say, fellows,” Canuck said in a voice ridiculously high and thin, contrasted with his imposing bulk, “I’m sorry that the show ended so quick and that I happened to hit Bud so soon.”
There was a wail of laughter and derision. It ended at once, and Canuck went on: “I ain’t here to rob you. I see a lot of husky gents out yonder. Maybe some of them would like to come in here with me. There’s a pair of gloves handy for the first gent that wants to try them on. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’ll keep on fighting till you say that you got your money’s worth.”
On the whole, this was a good sporting proposition. But who would be apt to select himself to stand within the circle of the ropes and confront this swarthy monster who carried poison in the tip of either glove?
There was a sudden backward movement through the crowd. Faces were turned, searching for a hero. There was a figure moving toward the ring, leaving a narrow wake of confusion behind him—a short, heavily built man, whose hat was brushed from his head as he struggled forward. His long, ponderous arms swept men from before him.
“Lemme get in there at him,” said the stranger.
The crowd parted before his voice and gave him a clear path to the ringside. In another moment he had laid his hold upon the ropes and hoisted himself with a swing of the body into the ring.
“Gimme them gloves,” he ordered. “I’ll take on this here fighting man.”
It was Soapy.
A wild whoop followed. Every voice in that crowd was raised with joy as, with cunning eyes, they calculated the bulk of Soapy’s body and the length of his arms. He looked very much like business. Perhaps, after all, this would be a double show and very much worthwhile.
The promoter seized opportunity by the forelock. “There’s fifty dollars in this for you, kid, if you stick out four rounds with him. Here’s the togs and Bud’s shoes.”
Soapy drew the shapeless boots from his feet and contrasted the unshod bulk of his foot with one of the tennis shoes that had been drawn from Bud—poor Bud, who was now beginning to sit up and take a sick sort of interest in the proceedings.
“I don’t want no togs,” said Soapy. “And how’m I gonna get even my toes into them shoes? Stockings is good enough for me. I got clothes enough on my back right now.”
He stripped himself of coat and shirt and was
revealed in flaming red flannel. Two men on either side were now tugging onto his hands the largest gloves that could be produced. They had to be sliced open at the sides, and still they cramped the formidable knuckles of the mulatto.
In the meantime, there was a time of earnest and low-voiced conversation in the farther corner of the ring, where Canuck had lost some of his martial ardor. “Who is this bloke?” he asked his manager. “He looks to me like Sam Langford, multiplied by two.”
“It’s fat, kid,” said the manager, peering anxiously at the mulatto’s vast bulk.
“Fat nothing,” said the Canuck. “That’s muscle…all of it. A ton of it…inside of that red shirt. What’ve you led me up to here?”
“Aw, look at him,” said the manager. “He knows nothing. Look at that.”
Soapy, equipped for the combat, tried a few practice swings that whistled in roundabout fashion through the air.
Canuck looked and then grinned suddenly. “All right,” he said. “It ain’t old Sam, after all. You tell them that I’m ready.”
The ring was cleared. The groaning Bud was half led and half carried to the ground. Silence succeeded the excited murmurs of the spectators.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” asked the referee, yanking his cap lower over his eyes.
“Ready,” said Canuck.
“Start the music,” said Soapy. “I’m ready for dancing.”
“Are you ready, Mister Timekeeper?”
“Ready, doc.”
“Then swat that bell.”
The bell
clanged
, and Canuck slipped gracefully to the center of the ring. He extended his open gloves to shake hands. But Soapy saw the wide opening and swung mightily for the jaw. There was a roar of mingled laughter and hisses. Soapy had missed by a yard or more as Canuck danced back.
And now—how beautifully Canuck was working. His arms flashed forward—twice with either hand he smote and stepped back, to let the colossus have room to pitch forward on his yellow face, stunned.
The colossus did not pitch forward. Neither was he stunned. For Soapy did not even shake his head at these punches, but started blithely in at his enemy with both ponderous hands ready for action. The crowd shrieked again. Certainly the mulatto was not made of tender stuff, for the sharp, spatting sound of those blows had been heard throughout the gathering.
The general plan of Soapy was to crowd his foe into a corner of the ring and there hit him—only once. But how strike a floating feather with a sledge-hammer? He rushed with might and main, but suddenly the poised form of Canuck dissolved into a blur, and from the side a pile-driving glove landed upon Soapy’s ear.
This was different. That blow, which might have felled a bullock, did not daze him, but it split the rim of his ear and hurt like a hornet’s sting. He wheeled with a growl and smote with the full sweep of his right arm. Surely that blow drove straight through the glistening body of the phantom. Or had he, indeed, been able to slip deftly back and avoid the whistling ruin?
The solid
crack
of a heavy glove lodged against his jaw, at the point called the button, and a dim mist
scattered not unpleasantly over the brain of Soapy. He smiled, and, reaching out with his great left arm, he gathered in his opponent. This was no phantom, after all. No, it consisted of 230-odd pounds of magnificent muscle, writhing and struggling and snapping short-arm punches against the body and head of Soapy.
Well, these love taps were no matter. He drew his foe closer to his breast. With half the power in his left arm he crushed the other to a suddenly gasping feebleness. And then he poised his terrible right hand to smite Canuck senseless.
But a voice, piercing as a sword of fire, stabbed at his ear. “Leave go! Leave go of him, kid, or the mob’ll kill you! There ain’t any hitting in the clinches. I told you that!”
“Is this here a clinch?” Soapy asked sadly. He flung the other from him. “This ain’t a fight. It’s only a dance,” Soapy cried in disgust. And he started to rush, just as the bell clanged the end of the round. The heavens rang with the cheering of that joyous throng.
Kindly hands drew Soapy backward. “Kid, ain’t you dazed from the way he soaked you? This’ll freshen you up. You hurt him when you hugged him. Man, man, you got a fortune waiting for you in the ring. Here…”
They doused him with water.
“Leave that water be,” sputtered Soapy, “or I’ll break a couple of you in two, I say. Leave it be, and gimme a nip of gin…will you?”