Acres of Unrest (12 page)

That instant, the hold of the cripple relaxed and he said: “Now, Soapy, I think that you and I shall understand each other very well. We shall get on, Soapy, like old friends, eh?”

These words were, only partially heard by the mulatto. He was staring down at his hand as though it were a diseased part of him or as though, like a traitor, it had refused its duty to its master. It lay upon the table, crushed and weakened and numbed, a fiery red except where four snowy-white bands crossed it—in symbol of the four fingers of Peter Hale that had done their work so well. Soapy had been beaten, although he would never have suspected it, not by a superior might, but simply by the fear of something supernatural.

The force that, it had seemed to him, had crushed his hand as though it were that of a child or a woman had not been the might of the cripple, but the crumbling weakness in Soapy himself. Now, as he dragged that hand from the table, he moistened his shapeless white lips and looked at Peter like a poor martyr being thrown to the lions.

“Yet,” Peter said again, “I don’t wish for an instant to force you into a service which may be unpleasant to you. The fact is, Soapy, that I need a strong and brave and clever man to help me in this work. And it seems to me that you are the fellow for me. Am I wrong?”

Soapy pushed himself back in his chair and rose. “You got any need of me right now, boss?” he asked.

“No,” said Peter, “no need of you at all.”

Soapy slunk sidewise toward the door.

“But I’ll expect you back here before dark, say?” called Peter.

Soapy marked that fact by rolling the yellow of his eye toward his new-found master, and then issued from the house. Those who still lingered on the outside looked with wonder as they saw him pass with staring eyes and drawn face. Soapy had aged by ten years, so it seemed. He skulked across the open part of the circle like one who glides away from a beating, inflicted by a superior force.

“He’s killed Hale!” cried Jarvin. “Curse him, he’s throttled Hale!”

He tore the door open. But there was Peter in the act of swinging himself lightly to his feet.

“You’re safe, Pete?”

“I’m safe, Mike.”

“Curse it…then what did you do to Soapy? It’s all right, boys!”

It was something more than all right. The point of the matter was that, from the bearing of the mulatto, they had felt that some desperate deed had Just been done—if not by Soapy, then by the cripple. Those who wandered after Mike, filled with grinning, yet breathless curiosity, were just in time to see the great shining body of the stallion, Larribee, flash down the back trail from the camp, with the mulatto stooped low on his back, as though to avoid any random bullets that might be sent in pursuit.

That news was brought back to Jarvin at once, and it threw big Mike into a fury. He went storming to Peter Hale. “Now what in the devil d’you mean by that?” he shouted. “Have you throwed a scare into Soapy that’ll make him run and never stop? Have you throwed away with your cursed college-made, thick-headed…?”

There was a chair of formidable weight standing close to the wall. It suddenly lurched up and whirled over the shoulder of the cripple, darting straight at the head of Mike Jarvin, who leaped backward with a scream from the path of the flying danger. It would be death if that heavy weight struck his head, he knew, and Mike loved life most desperately. As he leaped, he hurled the door shut with a slam.

It mattered not to Jarvin that he tripped and fell backward down the short flight of steps. It mattered not to him that half a dozen of his startled and grinning men saw this sudden fall of his. All that was of importance was to find out whether or not the sudden devil that had transformed the face of the cripple was now sending him in grim pursuit.

So he scrambled to hands and knees and made sure that the door was still shut. It was. But so terrible was the violence and the true aim with which that chair had been flung, that one leg had splintered the solid panel, and another, in the center, had thrust itself bodily through the door. Mike shuddered to imagine that, instead of the tough and senseless wood, his own tender, mortal flesh had been opposed to that thunderbolt.

Mr. Jarvin sat down on a distant tree stump and fanned his hot face for some time, until the tremor
departed from his limbs. He considered various ideas, in the beginning. What seemed to him, at first, the only sensible proceeding was to touch a match to the shack and let it go up in a mass of flames, bearing the soul of Peter Hale to heaven along with its smoke.

Later on, he felt that it could be an excellent thing if he called in some of his men to tackle this big fellow and give him a thorough disciplining. Jarvin decided that he would make an example of Peter Hale—an example that would be remembered through the rest of Jarvin’s life. However, even this had to be paused upon. He recalled that most of his own men were only waiting for a good opportunity to stick a knife in his back. And as soon as the shadows closed upon this day, would they not set about gratifying their wills on him?

The Buttricks were gone. Had not his own men welcomed the dissension that had begun between their boss and his new defender? Heartily did Mike Jarvin curse the day when he had had the Burtricks discharged. Most violently did he groan when he remembered the day on which it had come to him as an inspiration to replace the two hopeless scoundrels with one fairly honest man.

However, in the meantime, the sun was riding down the western sky. If he were to make his peace with the cripple, it must be soon. If he did not make his peace with big Peter Hale, what would happen? A murder before the sun of the next day rose over the cold eastern mountains? Jarvin had no doubt of that. He saw himself fallen, and none to lament him. Who would inherit his mine and all of its riches? Mr. Jarvin began to perspire. He decided that the thing for him to do
was to saddle a horse and flee from the camp at once. Yet, if he went to the stable, would he not be placing himself in the hands of those fellows to whom he paid wages, and who hated him with such a cordial might?

Jarvin rose. He walked to the verandah of his house, cleared his throat, and then ventured a polite tap at the door. “Well, Hale?” he called gently.

A most cheerful voice responded: “Come in, Mike!”

He opened the door by inches until there was revealed to him the Herculean torso of Peter Hale reclining upon the Morris chair, the one luxurious article in the furnishing of that room.

“Come in, Jarvin! I’m glad that chair missed you, really.”

Mike gasped as he looked down at the shapeless mass of wreckage that was all that remained of the chair upon the floor. Peter, apparently, did not intend to stir himself to clear up the mess.

“Well, Hale,” said Jarvin, “the main thing is for us to see that we both been sort of foolish, eh?”

“Not a bit,” said Peter. “Little things like this will always be apt to happen, unless we know just how to treat each other, eh?”

Jarvin stared. There was something about this speech that he did not like. He ventured cautiously: “Matter of fact, Peter, that temper of mine, it sure does run away with me. I never know where it’s gonna take me. You’ll get used to that, won’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “The fact is, Mike, that when people talk roughly to me, my hands begin to do things without asking my permission.
I really didn’t know that I was going to throw that chair at you, however. And I’m sure that I won’t do such a thing again…unless your tongue runs away with you, once more.”

That seemed to the mine owner a rather lopsided bargain—if he continued to talk with a flawless politeness to this young man, the young man would refrain from murdering him. However, he took a great breath, beginning to feel that there was in Peter even a greater value than he had at first attached to him. But it was most patent that the youth was an edged tool, to be handled with the utmost caution. Otherwise the master would himself be injured. Certainly it would be foolish to throw away the services of this terrible fellow, until it were first known whether or not he could be thoroughly controlled.

He said: “Now, Peter, I ain’t aiming to bother you none. But I got to say that Soapy was about the best man that I had working for me. Matter of fact, Pete, it would be a bad blow to me to know that he’s sneaked away. Besides that…he’s taken along that hoss of yours with him.”

“Why,” said Peter, “that’s nothing at all. I sent him away on a little errand, but he’ll be back by sunset, you can depend upon it.”

“Why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me that before?” shouted Jarvin.

At that roar in his voice, the big hand of Peter stole out and wrapped itself around the back of a chair—but Jarvin leaped through the door with a grunt of
fear and went off to sit in the sun, once more, and consider what was good and what was bad in life. What was of account as a good to Jarvin was that which gave him profit and pleasure; what was bad, in his world, was all that gave him personal danger or discomfort.

He felt that this universe was a place where sweets and sours were oddly commingled. For instance, yonder was the black and gaping maw of the mine, swallowing the labor of toiling scores of men. In return for the bitterness of that painful exertion, it rendered up rich are that was trundled down the long incline by the rails which he, Jarvin, had built, until it came to a low road from which it could be hauled to the nearest shipping point. From the mine, therefore, came the shining jewel of wealth that increased and increased with such a steadiness that Mike Jarvin began to think not in terms of his present hundreds of thousands but in the scope of future millions.

On the other hand, the toiling scores who tore the gold for him out of the bowels of the earth were, one and all, his enemies. Was it because he had occasionally beat them at a game of cards? It seemed hard to Mike that they should take it so bitterly. Anyone who sat down to a gaming table should have his wits about him. It was a deadly encounter, and if he were not trained for this sort of battle, he was a fool ever to undertake it, and he should be grateful for having his money taken away from him as painlessly and swiftly as Jarvin usually extracted it. But there was no reason in them; they hated him profoundly and ceaselessly. When a new man was brought up to the mine, it was not twenty-four hours before he had heard the stories of the
others and loathed the big boss as cordially as any of the rest.

Mr. Jarvin, reflecting upon this, felt that the men who laid the treasure at his feet deposited gold with one hand, and with the other clutched a dagger behind his back. When would they have a chance to use it?

At this, fat Mike, in some tension, drew forth his revolver and blew a shining bit of quartz to bits. Then he saw the glimmer of a face at the dark door of the cook house. But no one moved suddenly at the sound of a gun near the mine. If a murderer, for instance, were to creep up and plant a bullet in the small of Jarvin’s back, who would hurry to see him fall?

Indeed, at this moment, might not that dark-faced rat of a fellow who worked in the stables—might not he be worming his way up the slope, from rock to rock, ready to polish off his boss?

Jarvin whirled about and balanced the gun in his fat palm. The slope was still. But a little gust of wind shook a bush suddenly. Jarvin fired that instant. If there were a man there, let the fool take the result.

A thin scream came back to the ears of Jarvin. He listened to it with a savage satisfaction. Hereafter he would never distrust his premonitions; he would lean upon them, as a woman upon her instinct.

But no man’s inert body rolled down the slope from behind the bush—only the light form of a jack rabbit that had been cruelly mangled by his bullet.

“Jarvin luck,” said Mike. “That’s Jarvin luck, by heaven.”

He carried the rabbit to the cook. “Nailed it with a snap shot at forty yards, cook.”

“Like the devil you did,” said the cook with a broad grin.

He took the rabbit and turned his back upon his boss without another word. So much for human sympathy. Mike sighed as he turned away from the shack. Not that he turned his back upon it; he never actually turned his back upon any of his men, unless he had a guard along with him. But he moved in a circuitous route away from the cook house and back to his own shack.

The work of cleaning out the Buttrick shack and making it ready for the occupancy of the new tenant was already under way.

An ex-sailor and a polack miner were busily scrubbing down and sweeping out.

“Hello, Pete!” Mike called. “That Soapy ain’t showed up yet!”

“He’ll be here in time,” said Peter Hale.

“In time for what?” asked Mr. Jarvin.

“For all I need of him,” Peter said, “and I suppose that’s enough, since he’s working for me now.”

Jarvin heaved a great sigh. “I’m giving up the most valuable rat of a man that I ever had, if I give up Soapy,” he declared with much feeling. “But if you want him, I suppose that you’ll have your own way about it and take him, eh?”

Now all of this time, the machinelike stride of the big stallion had been sweeping Soapy away from the mining camp with wonderful speed, and, when a mile or two had intervened, the chills no longer chased themselves up and down his back. He felt sufficiently secure to ease the horse into a walk. But while he rolled a cigarette, he still paused and looked behind him from time to time. Why? There was nothing in the way of horseflesh, in those mountains, that could overtake the stallion, after
the pace that Soapy had established; yet he felt that there was a pressing danger just behind him—just around the edge of the next curve.

He knew that he feared the power of the mysterious other world, which lies outside of the ken of most people. What hands might reach toward him from that unknown abyss? Poor Soapy strove to shake from his memory the recollection of all that had happened in the shack when he had sat at the table opposite to Peter Hale. Yet the more he tried to drive the thought into an obscure corner of his mind, the bigger proportions it assumed.

The fact that he had become a horse thief, on this day, and given up his old job at the Jarvin Mine was no matter. He was glad to be clear of the place. And he looked down with a shudder to the bruised and aching hand that trembled even now as it held a cigarette.

Twice he reined in the big stallion with a sudden resolve to turn back, compelled by a fear of he knew not what. The third time, seeing the sun roll softly through the trees on the edge of a western mountain, he remembered the time that Peter Hale had appointed for his return. The mulatto whirled the stallion around and sent him swiftly on the back trail, not pausing to reason, only knowing that he wanted most desperately to reach the camp at the correct hour.

Just as the sun, seen from this elevated plateau, dipped behind the lower hills, covering the sky with rich reds and purples, he came to the mine. Vastly relieved, he reached the stable and stripped the saddle from his big horse. The stableman growled at him: “What were you sent for, Soapy?”

“Sent for?” echoed the mulatto.

“Sure,” said the other. “We thought that you’d beat it, but this Hale, he said that he’d just sent you off on an errand, that you’d be sure to come back. And here you are.”

Poor Soapy, standing with the bridle in one hand and the saddle in the other, gaped into the gathering dusk and wondered what was happening in this strange world. As to what had brought him back to the mine, he had no doubts now. It was the silent will of the white man, which covered the distance of miles and reached at his soul with an invisible hand. He felt that he had been helpless all the while, and, when Peter Hale had wished, he had brought the truant back.

“Hypnotism!” gasped Soapy. “I’m gone already. How did he do it?”

There was no answer for this last question. He was only sure that he was utterly done for, and that no matter what Peter Hale willed to do with him, he would be helpless to resist.

He went into the shack. A bed stood in one corner of the room; there was a bunk in the other. The mulatto found that all his possessions, which he had left behind him in his hasty flight from the devil, had been distributed on pegs near the bunk. Around the bed were the belongings of the white man, and near the head of the bed a long rifle leaned against the wall of the house.

Soapy took it up with rather frightened hands, noting how well worn the stock was, and how the barrel showed the effect of frequent polishing. The mechanism slipped frictionlessly beneath his touch. All was clean and neat as a pin in the lock of the weapon. Soapy told himself that this was the gun of one who knew well how to manage it,
although it seemed to him that guns were hardly needed by such a formidable person as this same Peter Hale.

A metallic clattering on the narrow verandah of the little house, and here was big Peter Hale at the doorway, with his crutches under his arms. He nodded most cheerfully to Soapy.

“There is news already, Soapy,” he said. “We are going on a trip tomorrow, all three of us. You, Jarvin, and I. Will you be ready for that?”

“A trip where?” asked Soapy, grown sullen.

“A trip away from the mine, to gather any sort of deviltry that looks comfortable and pleasant to Mike Jarvin. Have you ever been out with him when he was harvesting that sort of grain, Soapy?”

Soapy, in spite of himself, grinned broadly, showing two semicircles of flashing teeth. Those excursions were an old story to him. He began to wonder if the hypnotist might not, after all, prove a not altogether deadly burden to him.