Trail Partners E-Book

Max Brand

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The plot revolves around a simple but noble man who inherited the mine. And, of course, there are some dark characters who try to steal it all in various ways. A young thief becomes the brain of an operation.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 1

WHAT’S the grandest thing you ever clamped eyes on? Some of you may pick out a mountain, or an iceberg sailing green and blue through somebody’s midnight, or a river turning loose in the spring with everything that it had forgotten all winter. To others it will be a fine bull terrier, or a great horse that seems the smashingest thing, or perhaps a hawk against the wind, or a tall ship, but of all the great things that I ever saw, that stops my heart beating and makes my eyes jump, remembering, there’s nothing in a class with “Slope” Dugan.

I had been seeing men enough, for that matter. The hobos on the Southern Pacific, in those days, were men, all right. They printed their thumb marks and their toe marks, too, all over me, and they used indelible ink, blue and purple, for the job. I was a fairish size for a kid, but those shacks, they kicked me all over the map because I was trying to ride the rods or the blind baggage on the fast trains. Where the tramps left off, the station and the yard cops came in and carried right on. Any station cop could kill three hooligans with one hand, and one brakeman could handle any three tramps. That gives you a sort of idea of the measuring rod that was in my mind for the judging of men, but still Slope Dugan beat everything that ever came my way.

For one thing, I could see him stripped for action, and in action, too. That makes the difference. The shirt had been torn off him, and the electric light in front of the station house flashed on the sweat that ran on him as though he were covered with grease.

Then he was up against a man that would’ve made a background for a whole mountain, six feet anything you please, and over three hundred pounds, maybe, with a short, curling black beard and the look of a fellow that would hit a thunderbolt on the point of the chin and bounce it back into the sky harder than it came.

That Slovak, he was a man, all right. But he was nothing, compared with Dugan.

I can’t go describing Slope to you. You gotta use your imagination some when I’m talking about him. I mean to say, there was six feet of him–he wasn’t so awfully big, but inches had nothing to do with Slope. Bit by bit, he looked heavy, sluggish, and muscle bound, but take him all together and he swept into the picture like a race horse moving. When Slope got into action, he was like a terrible machine. Something had to give way. I mean, if you ever seen a hydraulic jack working on a big scale, lifting half a mountain, maybe, then you know what I’m talking about when I say machine.

There was a chance for Slope to move this evening that I’m talking about. The Slovak, when he makes his first rush, beats down Slope’s guard and dodges his first pass. Then he leans on Dugan and laughs down at him, like he was just about to enjoy himself and swaller the feller whole.

Dugan didn’t seem very mad, either. He had the same bothered, thinking-of-something-else expression that was on his map most of the time. I mean, with wrinkles wiggling across his forehead, and his eyes a little dull, like the eyes of a statue that’s only half come to life.

No, he didn’t seem very mad, but when the big Blackbeard laughed, Slope picked up that quarter ton of meanness and threw it right through the station-house door. As he did this, Blackbeard grabbed hold of Slope’s shirt to anchor himself to the ground. So the shirt went along with him, and he landed on his back.

He thought it was magic, I guess, and he got up and charged out of the blackness with a roar. But when he clamped his eyes on Slope again, he understood. The whole crowd that was gasping and enjoying this free fight, it could understand, too, because there was Slope with his shirt off, and if you could see his muscles working, you didn’t have to see the working of his mind.

Blackbeard saw that he had started trouble with a combination of Texas mule, mountain lion, and grizzly bear. That’s the best I can think of for meanness, and the mule comes first.

But that Slovak, or whatever he was, was game, all right. He stuck out his jaw, his teeth showing through the black mist, and he came at Slope. But Slope wasn’t where Blackie expected to find him. Blackbeard slammed at the air with both fists, from a good stance that showed he knew a lot about boxing, but Dugan was just nacherally faster than an electric timer could catch. A cat’s-paw was slow compared with him. He steps around and winds up behind Blackbeard, lifts him up, and heaves him back through the doorway again.

I kind of laughed and kind of groaned, and so did the whole crowd, because we all of us seen that Slope didn’t know nothing about boxing. His idea of putting the other fellow out was to pick him up and sling him out of bounds. Only, there wasn’t any bounds here, and Slope was too clean-hearted to rush in and take advantage of a man that was down. He just stood around and waited for Blackie to get up and mix again.

Well, it made me laugh, but it made me mad, too. I mean, you can’t take and juggle a whole piano crate full of exploding Slovak through an entire evening. You just give out or the floor gives way under you!

Back came the Russian revolution with its eyes red and blood spouting out of its nose, that had bumped on the floor.

And Slope stood there, thoughtful, but not working out a solution of the problem. There were two parts to that problem. The first was what to do with Russia; the second was how to keep his pants up. Slope had a length of machine belting or something around his hips by way of a belt, and when he lifted Poland the second time that belt busted with a pop.

Now Slope lingered around, using one hand to hold up the trousers, and the other hand to stop the landslide.

We howled. We all howled, because we didn’t see how the thing could be done.

But Slope stopped the next rush, all right. He just stepped between Blackbeard’s driving fists and put the flat of his hand on Lithuania, and pushed Russia, staggering, back into the Pacific Ocean, if you know what the map of the world looks like.

Well, you can’t keep a grizzly off with caresses, I guess. And Blackbeard came back. He was beginning to roar, and he was blowing the blood out of his beard in showers.

This time he landed a punch. It was a good, solid sock, and it whacked on the side of Slope’s jaw. I kinder squinted. Then I opened my eyes to catch a sight of the big fellow as he sailed right through the air.

But he wasn’t sailing. No, sir; he was just standing there, a little bit puzzled, still holding up his pants and brushing aside Russia’s two sledge hammers with his one hand–just heading off the punches up in the air, the way that a cat bats a ball of cotton around above his head.

Well, you can’t catch a whole shower of brickbats, and one of those punches slipped through again and banged Slope on the same side of the same jaw, a little nearer the point.

This time he sat down, and Blackbeard rushes in, yelling blue murder, to finish things off.

He oughtn’t to ‘a’ done that, not considering how far west it was. And a little guy, with a rod of blue revolver in his hand, steps out and says: “Back up, beautiful. You ain’t hittin’ a gent that’s down.”

Russia backed up and stood still, waved his elbows, and roared some more. I didn’t understand his language, but there was a lot of it. I guessed that he was telling Slope to stand up and get killed.

And Slope stood up, all right. Maybe you’ve seen people nacherally get up on their feet, not touching the ground with either hand. People do things like that to show off in gymnasiums, but Slope done it nacheral and easy.

He stood there, and still he kept one hand for his pants and the other in the air for a guard; just the flat of that second hand.

“Darn your pants! Fight in your B.V.D.’s!” yells a big cowpuncher that looked half crazy, he was so mad and excited.

“The trouble is that I haven’t any,” says Slope, and turns toward the puncher.

While the big fool’s head was still turned, of course, Russia takes a run, a jump, and a half turn, and slams Slope right on the button again.

I thought that even India rubber would break in two then, but I give you my word that the fist of Russia bounced more than the head of Slope did. He didn’t fall; he just sank slowly and sat on his heels.

It was a lot too much for me. I dived between two pairs of legs and dropped on my knees beside Slope, while the gent with the revolver starts counting to ten, keeping time with his gun.

I cupped my hands at my mouth and yelled: “You big stiff, hit him with your fist!”

“What?” says Slope, quiet and concerned, looking hard at me.

“Hit him with your fist!” I screamed.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” says Slope.

The whole crowd heard him say that. And it knocked the spots out of everybody; they just stood flabbergasted.

But I shrieked into the feller’s ear:

“Do what I tell you, bozo!”

“Oh, all right, then,” said Slope with a sigh, and he stood up.

He did, too. It wasn’t much of a punch. It only traveled half a foot, maybe, but it knocked the head of Russia against the small of Russia’s back. He turned a fast somersault and tried to balance himself on his face, failed, and rolled over with a flop.

They got two trucks and about ten men to freight that half ton of jelly out of the way of the trains.

CHAPTER 2

NOW that the fight was ended, I watched to see Slope stand around and receive a lot of admiration, but he didn’t do that. He just picked up the spoiled rags that had been his coat and shirt, and dragged them onto his shoulder, then slipped away into the darkness.

That impressed me a whole lot. I’ve tried to be modest, but I can’t manage it. Every time that I do something that calls for extra attention, I’ve gotta stand around and wait, and if it don’t come my way, I’m mighty sore. But Slope, he just faded away into the night while the fellows were still flocking around to congratulate him and offer him drinks. They wanted to find out his name, too.

I went after Slope. When he turned into the lunch counter, I stood in the doorway and sized things up. Just then I was flush. I mean, a week or so before, I’d sneaked two nice new bicycles out of the stand they were in and I rode one and steered the other to the next town. There I sold ’em both and raked in twenty-nine dollars in hard cash. I was still flush, but there was only one way into or out of that eating room, and I hate to get in that sort of a pocket. I was still peeling my eye for a railroad cop that might come into the lunch counter, or an elbow that might’ve shadowed me for the stealing.

But I couldn’t see nothing. Down in the smoke cloud that kept boiling up around the big, black face of the stove, where hamburgers and such things were frying, I saw a couple of stiffs drinking coffee. That was about all there were in the dump.

Only Slope was sitting at the counter.

He pulled a nickel out of his pocket and spoke to the waiter: “Do you mind telling me what I can buy, and how much, for five cents?”

The waiter, he picked up a cleaver–just in case. But when he seen the dull, polite eye of Slope and the nickel in his hand, he says: “Sure, brother! You can buy a whole loaf of stale bread and a glass of water for that nickel, if it’s honest.”

“Thank you very much,” says Slope.

The waiter was a tough bird, and he gave Slope another look, but when he made out that the dummy was in earnest, he fishes out the loaf and he planks a dripping glass of water on the counter.

Slope thanked him again and takes a sip of that water like it was wine, half closing his eyes on it, if you know what I mean. Then he breaks off a wad of that bread and feeds it into his face, and my jaws, they fair ached to see him work on it. He was patient. He didn’t ask for nothing. He just took the socks as they came.

Says the waiter with a snarl: “There’s more water behind this, brother, if you want it. There’s a whole barrelful.”

“You’re very kind,” says Slope, and douses that glass of water down his throat in one wallop.

The waiter gives him a long, hard look. Then he fetches up a quart dipperful from the barrel and puts the dipper in front of Slope. Slope lays his lips on that water and pours it down in eight seconds flat.

“Delicious, really,” says Slope, and smiles like a baby at the waiter.

That hash slinger gives him another look and plants another dipperful in front of Slope.

“When did you drink last?” says he.

“Yesterday evening,” says Slope, “I found a spring. But the water was very alkaline. I could only drink a little of it.”

“Holy smoke!” says the waiter.

Then he busts out: “Where was you yesterday evening?”

“Between here and a town named Coleman. Do you know the place?” says Slope.

“A hell hole!” says the waiter. “How long was you on the way?”

“Three days,” says Slope.

“You had a fast hoss, brother,” says the waiter with doubt in his eyes.

“No,” smiled Slope, beginning on the bread again, and acting like it was tenderloin steak. “I didn’t have a horse.”

“Rode the rods, eh?”

“I walked,” says Slope.

“Brother,” says the waiter, resting his knuckles on the edge of the counter, “that’s two hundred and forty miles of anybody’s feet.”

“It was quite a long walk,” says Slope. “It just about wore out my shoes.”

The waiter said nothing. He started to swab up behind the counter, and after a minute he growls: “Well, I’m darned!”

I was digesting the same sort of ideas. Two hundred and forty miles, and likely on one drink of water!

“Look,” says the waiter, “they’s two houses spotted along the last hundred miles. Didn’t you see ’em?”

“Oh, yes,” says Slope.

“Then why the devil didn’t you ask for water, will you tell me?”

Slope got red to the eyebrows and above ’em. And he says: “I couldn’t very well do that. If I asked for water, I might have been offered something more, you see.”

“What? A slam in the eye?” says the waiter. “Oh, I see what you mean,” he goes on, and gapes at Slope like a fish out of water.

I was gaping, too, as I came into the joint.

The waiter saw me and shook his head at me.

“It’s got everything stopped,” says he.

“It sure has,” says I.

Slope sees me and smiles at me.

“I’m glad to see you again,” says he.

“That goes two ways,” says I.

“Two ways?” says he, without a flash in that dull eye of his.

“It’s an even split,” says I.

“Ah, yes,” says he, blanker than ever.

I gave a look at the waiter, and the waiter gave a look at me. Then I went back to the cook. “Lemme have a look at a chunk of beef in your cooler,” says I.

He batted a few tons of smoke out of the way and looked through the hole at me.

“You’re a fresh kid,” he told me. “Get out of here before you’re kicked out.”

“I’m paying my way,” said I, jingling the coins in my pocket. “You ashamed to show me that you only got dog meat in your cooler?”

He was a big, tattooed bloke, looking like a sailor, and he reached over the counter before I knew what he was about, and dragged me by the neck to the far side of it, shoved me down a short hall, and opened the door of the cooler. It was a little room, with the sound of water dripping all around it.

“Does that look like dog meat?” says he. There was about half a steer in there. It looked right, and it smelled right.

“Brother,” says I, “carve off two slabs of that tenderloin about a foot thick and get it onto the stove; serve up ten pounds of french-fried potatoes and any other little fixings that you got around. Boil up a gallon or two of coffee. I’m gonna eat.”

He gave me a look, fingering my neck like he wanted to twist it. So I remarked, with a hook of my thumb over my shoulder: “I got a friend out there at the counter.”

“The bum that walks a thousand miles a day?” asks he with a grin.

“I just been seeing him chew up a ton of corrugated Russian iron over at the station,” said I.

“Did he slam that Polack over there?” says the cook, letting go of me.

“He threw that freight car around for a while,” I answered, “then he poked him just once, and Blackie, he dissolved like sugar in coffee.”

The cook laughed. “That big ham has been looking for trouble,” said he, “but I thought it would take a few sticks of dynamite to break him up to pick-and-shovel size. I’m gonna fix a couple of steaks that’d crowd the jaws of a grizzly bear. Go on out of here and spread the word to bread and water out there.”

I went out and took a seat on the left flank of Slope, where I could see the button that Russia had slammed three times with all his might. But all I could see was a little pale-purple patch, with hardly no lump at all rising.

I looked real careful, but I made sure that I was right. India rubber, that was what he was made of, and iron inside the padding.

“Friend of yours, Red?” says the waiter to me.

“Yeah,” says I.

Slope already had half of that dry loaf down his throat, and he turns and smiles at me, not pretty, but pleasant.

“Certainly,” says he, when he can speak again.

“And what’s your moniker?” I asked.

“Moniker?” repeats Slope.

I looked at his lifted eyebrows and the dull eyes under them. “Yeah,” said I, “what’s your tag, handle–name, if that’s the word you’re waiting for?”

“Oh, my name?” said the dumbbell. “It is really Edward Dugan, but since you seem to use nicknames a great deal here in the west, I suppose I should say that I was recently called Slope.”

“You were?”

“Yes.”

“How come?” said I.

“By a man who passed me on the train the first day out from town; the second day I passed him, and it was then that he referred to me as Slope. I don’t know why.”

I looked at the waiter, and the waiter looked at me.

“Maybe he thought that you were walking pretty fast?” said the hash slinger.

“Could that be it?” says Slope. “Ah, well, perhaps.”

“Ah, yes, I think so,” said I.

The waiter grinned, but Slope didn’t get me at all.

Just then the cook walks out of his own cloud of smoke and brings along a pair of platters loaded to the top deck. I never seen such a pair of steaks; there was an ox in each platter, you might say.

Slope looked at him with a puzzled frown.

“It’s all right, chief,” said I. “It’s on me, that one.”

“On you?” said Slope.

“I’m paying,” said I.

Confound it, I forgot about his fool pride.

He got as red as a beet again.

“Thank you very much,” said he. “I really couldn’t eat it. The bread is quite enough for me.

I got into a sweat. I looked at that idiot of a waiter, but he couldn’t help me out.

Then I had an idea.

I said: “Look here, Slope. Do me a favor. The crazy cook down there, he made a mistake. He thought I ordered two steaks instead of one. If I don’t pay for these two steaks the boss will fire that cook. You wouldn’t wanta be the cause of a man’s losing his job, would you? You see that I can’t eat more’n half of one of these slabs, don’t you?”

He looked at me, and then he looked at the steak. He bit his lip and then stared at me again, with a plea for honesty in his eye.

“Is it really so?” said he.

“Sure,” said I. “I’m only thinking about that blockhead of a cook. He don’t know very much, but I don’t want him to lose his job.”

The cook heard every word, and I thought that he’d throw a pan at me. But he held himself in, because Slope had been persuaded and was starting a frontal attack on that chunk of beef.

CHAPTER 3

I’VE seen a lot of hungry men eat and some that prided themselves on the poundage that they could get around. But I never seen none that could hold a candle to Slope.

He walked right through that steak of his, and I carved off half of mine and passed it onto his plate while his eyes were hidden by his coffee cup. And he didn’t notice any difference. He went right on, drank coffee, ate meat, and stoked up with potatoes. Then all but one thin wedge of an apple pie went down that throat of his.

When the thing was over, I asked for the bill, and I found that it was only twenty-five cents.

I didn’t dare to make a fuss in front of Slope, but I went down the counter and said to the cook: “What’s the main idea? I can pay for those steers you’ve just cooked for us.”

“Shut up,” says the cook. “You can’t pay for nothin’. I would’ve bought tickets to see that show.”

“The boss’ll kick you out on your red face,” says I.

“You wall-eyed little lump of poison,” says the cook, “I’m the boss my own self. I own this joint.”

So I paid him twenty-five cents and tipped the waiter another twenty-five cents, but he chucked the quarter after me, and I had to catch it out of the air.

That’s the way in the West, if you know how to take people. The latch is left outside the wallet, and you can help yourself most of the time.

I stepped out on the street with Mr. Edward Dugan.

“Good night,” says he, “and thank you for the cook’s mistake. I’ve rarely enjoyed a meal so much.”

“You ain’t been overworking a knife and fork lately, I guess,” I says.

“Eating, do you mean?” said he.

I almost laughed in his face. “Yes, that’s the general idea,” said I.

“No,” he admitted. “Not for the last three days.”

“Nothing–for three days?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Good night again, Red. A very choice bit of fortune for me that I happened to meet you. I should thank you, too, for the advice you gave me earlier in the evening. But I hope that the other man was not hurt.”

“He was only kind of generally dislocated all over,” said I. “I hope that they have to put him in a plaster cast from his head to his toes.”

I looked at Slope and tried to swallow the idea of him, but I couldn’t. A man that goes for three days with one drink of water and then ties five hundred pounds of Sandow in knots–well, what are you to think about that?

I saw the champion heavyweight fighter of the world standing there alongside of me–I seen him in a kind of electric light of glory; and me not able to say no word to him.

He held out his hand. I took hold of it and didn’t let go.

“Where you bound, Slope?” said I.

“Yonder,” said he.

“Meaning where? One of them stars?”

He smiled in his childlike way.

“I’m walking through that pass between the two big mountains,” said he.

That was about eighty miles off–just a step for him!

“You don’t stop to sleep?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” answers he. “I stop and curl up somewhere. The nights are very warm at this time of year.”

“Look here,” said I, “why don’t you come up to my room in the hotel and bunk there?”

“Sleep there?” said he. “I couldn’t pay my half of the expense, and I really couldn’t dream of–”

“The way of it is this,” said I; “my partner ain’t in town just now. And there’s his bed not working at all. Besides, I’m mighty lonely.”

“Oh?” said he, biting his lip and trying to think, but not getting very far along the trail with his ideas.

“Yes,” says I. “I’m afraid of the dark, in fact.”

I waited for him to laugh, but he didn’t.

“I remember,” said he, “that my brother was troubled that way when he was about your age. Of course, if that’s the way of it, I’ll be very glad to go along. The very thought of a real bed, in fact–”

He did laugh, in a foolish, apologetic way, this time, and so I walked up the street with him to the hotel.

I didn’t even know that there was a hotel, but pretty soon I seen the sign around a turn in the street, and I says to Slope at the door: “Wait here a minute and look at that sign there, over the blacksmith’s shop across the street. I’ll tell you a story about that.”

I went inside and up to the desk, where I asked the clerk for a room with two beds.

“For who?” asks he.

“For a friend and me,” says I.

“What kind of a room?” he again asks.

“A bedroom, you ham!” says I, a little peeved by the way he looked over my clothes.

He leaned across the counter, but I back-stepped too fast for him.

“I got a mind–” he began.

“How much is the room?” says I.

“Only a dollar and seventy-five cents,” says he.

That was a pretty fairish price in those days. But I slid the money over the counter, scrawled William Vance in the ledger, and then went out and found Slope standing obediently just where I had left him.

A kind of pity came over me as I looked up at his handsome face, his thick shoulders, his dull, patient eyes. I wanted to take care of him somehow. I dunno how to put it. My heart kind of ached for him.

“I’ve been studying the sign, Red,” said he.

“Well,” said I, “tomorrow, when it’s light, if you look at that sign, you’ll see a half inch hole bored right through the middle of one of the letters, the top half of the letter B. That bullet was fired a whole block away, from the hip, out of a Colt revolver, and there was a five-hundred-dollar bet won on it!”

“Well, well!” says he. “How extraordinary. I must note that down in my diary.”

He swallowed that stuff of mine without any trouble at all.

“You keep a diary, eh?” I asked, as we turned into the lobby.

“Yes,” said he, “so that I can have everything up to date to tell mother and father in my letters home.”

He went up to register, me beside him; while that fool of a clerk sneered at the rags of big Slope, I wondered what the Dugan folks must be thinking about this fellow who walked two hundred and fifty miles in three days on one drink of water. What a pile there must be in his letters home!

Well, I got up to the room with Slope, and it was a good enough place, with two beds, a washstand, and such things.

Slope undressed and gives himself a sponge bath and a scrub that pretty near took the skin off his body. Then he gets himself dried off, sits down, and says that he must make his entries for the day.

So he squats cross-legged in his bed, and I crawl in mine and look him over. He frowns, puts his head on one side, and spells out the words he writes down, one by one, moving his lips like a kid studying his lessons.

Now and then, while he thinks, he stares blankly across at me, and once he actually sees me through the mist of his thoughts, and he says:

“Delightfully comfortable, Red, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I think,” said I.

He went on pushing his pencil over the paper of his notebook, and then I saw his head beginning to nod. Pretty soon he slumped quietly over and went to sleep.

I got up to put out the light, but first I looked over his shoulder to see the account of the terrible march across the desert and the fight at the station. This is what I read:

Arrived in the town. Found the rabbits extremely tame along the way. One hopped some distance, keeping just ahead of me. How did they know that I carried no gun?

Accident to coat in station. The tear can be sewed up.

Met William Vance, and heard extraordinary dialect of the country.

Alert blue eyes. Red hair, sticking up at the crown. Brisk but friendly manner. Delightful–

There he had stopped writing.

Where was the desert? Where was the fight? Where was the starvation?

CHAPTER 4

BEFORE I went to bed I looked at Slope’s shoes. They were worn to shreds. And he couldn’t go barefooted. I wondered how I could get him into decent shoes that would fit him and went to sleep on that problem.

I dreamed about a fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, and my man was Slope Dugan. I was in the newspapers as the boy manager, and I wore a diamond stickpin with a rock in it as big as your thumb nail. I stood close to Slope’s corner, and opposite him was “Demon” somebody or other–I couldn’t get the last name in my dream. I stood close to big Slope before the gong, and I said: “Go out there and let the big stiff sock you a couple of times!”

“Sock?” says Slope, blinking.

“Hit!” said I, stamping with impatience. “Go out there and let him hit you a couple of times, and it’ll break his dirty heart when he sees that he can’t put a dent in you. Then go in weaving, like I taught you to do, and let his punches glance off that cast-steel dome of yours. Get in close, and then you’ll tear him apart!”

That’s what I said in the dream, and it came out that way. About two minutes later the Demon sailed over the ropes and draped himself over a silk hat and a mean reporter, and there was Slope standing in the middle of the ring with his hands full of nothing but the championship of the world and not knowing what to do with it.

Pretty soon I made up my mind that while I was managing the world’s champion I’d salt away some dough, go back to school, and make something out of myself. Just about the time I hit those good resolutions I woke up, with the pink morning light glimmering outside of the window, and I looked across and saw that old Slope still lay in a heap just where he had sunk, writing his diary. He couldn’t budge.

I judged that he would be out for about a couple of hours, and so I dressed, hopped downstairs, and found a Negro cleaning up the lobby.

I asked him where there was a secondhand shop for clothes, something that might be open at this time of day. He said nothing was open, but that Ben Sill’s second-hand store was right down the street, that Ben slept in the second story, and that he would get up at midnight to bargain about the sale of a paper of pins.

I found the place, all right. When I banged on the door, I found Ben Sill already up.

I showed him one of Slope’s shoes. He said that he could match it, and he did.

He had about a hundred pairs of shoes and boots in rows along some shelves, and it beat me to see how little worn all of those shoes were. I never knew where secondhand shoes came from. Nobody ever gives away his shoes or sells them, but somehow or other there’s second-hand shoes to be had!

I got a good strong pair, with hobnails sunk in the heels, and soles about half an inch thick, because the way that foot cavalry slid across the country, he had to have something that would stand the rub.

Then I went back. The sun was just up, and when I stepped into the room I was carrying the shoes, and big Slope was sitting up in bed, stretching his arms.

What an arm he had! It was a cross between a cat’s forearm and a walking beam!

I busted in in a rush, and yelled out: “Hey, Slope! Look what they’ve done!”

I showed him the shoes.

“Well, well?” says he, a little startled.

“They’ve gone and mixed up your shoes with some of another gent that left on the early train; and he’s gone off with yours in his bag, I guess. You better kill that fool of a porter for mixin’ ’em up!”

“That’s too bad,” says Slope. “My shoes, you know, were not in very good condition. We’ll have to find out the name of the other man and–”

“You can’t find out his name,” said I. “He’s some thug that give a faked name. When the proprietor found out about it, he asked him to move on, so he left this morning early.”

“That complicates things!” says Slope.

“Yeah, it knots ’em all up,” said I.

“I don’t know what can be done about it,” says Slope. “We’ll have to leave the shoes here for him to claim when he returns.”

“He’ll never return,” says I, thinking about the two dollars and fourteen cents that I had paid for those shoes. “And you can’t go barefooted. The porter’ll be fired if you walk out in your socks, and the proprietor begins to ask questions.”

Slope shook his head.

“I seem to be thoroughly entangled,” says he.

“You are,” said I. “There’s only one thing to do.”

“What is that?” says he.

“Put those shoes on and wear them, and when you’re flush, one of these days, give away a good pair of shoes to somebody that needs ’em.”

He thought a moment, and then his face brightened. “That’s a very far sighted idea, Red,” said he. “Or should I call you William?”

“Why William?” said I.

“That’s your name in the hotel register,” said he.

I choked a little. “Oh,” said I, “I’ve been called Red so long that I wouldn’t know how to answer to William.”

“At any rate,” says he, “I don’t see what I can do except to follow your advice.”

“Hurry up,” says I. “We’re pretty nearly late for breakfast, and I’ll bet you’ve got an appetite.”

“I have,” he nodded, and then his smile went out.