Brown Wolf and Other Stories

BROWN WOLF AND OTHER STORIES

He looked at her, startled, remembering the wreckage of womanhood he had encountered on the sunken ways of life. She was no fairy. She was flesh and blood, and the possibilities of wreckage were in her as they had been in him even when he lay at his mother’s breast. And there was in her eagerness to know.

“Nope,” he said lightly, “this man from the bad, wicked world ain’t going to tell you nothing of the kind. He’s going to tell you of the good things in that world. He’s going to tell you how he loved hosses when he was a shaver, and about the first hoss he straddled, and the first hoss he owned. Hosses ain’t like men. They’re better. They’re clean – clean all the way through and back again. And, little fairy, I want to tell you one thing – there sure ain’t nothing in the world like when you’re settin’ a tired hoss at the end of a long day, and when you just speak, and that tired animal lifts under you willing and hustles along. Hosses! They’re my long suit. I sure dote on hosses. Yep. I used to be a cowboy once.”

She clapped her hands in the way that tore so delightfully to his heart, and her eyes were dancing, as she exclaimed:

“A Texas cowboy! I always wanted to see one! I heard papa say once that cowboys are bow-legged. Are you?”

“I sure was a Texas cowboy,” he answered. “But it was a long time ago. And I’m sure bow-legged. You see, you can’t ride much when you’re young and soft without getting the legs bent some. Why, I was only a three-year-old when I begun. He was a three-year-old, too, fresh-broken. I led him up alongside the fence, dumb to the top rail, and dropped on. He was a pinto, and a real devil at bucking, but I could do anything with him. I reckon he knowed I was only a little shaver. Some hosses knows lots more ‘n’ you think.”

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JACK LONDON

For half an hour Ross Shanklin rambled on with his horse reminiscences, never unconscious for a moment of the supreme joy that was his through the touch of his hand on the hem of her dress. The sun dropped slowly into the cloud bank, the quail called more insistently, and empty wagon after empty wagon rumbled back across the bridge. Then came a woman’s voice.

“Joan! Joan!” it called. “Where are you, dear?”

The little girl answered, and Ross Shanklin saw a woman, clad in a soft, clinging gown, come through the gate from the bungalow. She was a slender, graceful woman, and to his charmed eyes she seemed rather to float along than walk like ordinary flesh and blood.

“What have you been doing all afternoon?” the woman asked, as she came up.

“Talking, mamma,” the little girl replied. “I’ve had a very interesting time.”

Ross Shanklin scrambled to his feet and stood watchfully and awkwardly. The little girl took the mother’s hand, and she, in turn, looked at him frankly and pleasantly, with a recognition of his humanness that was a new thing to him. In his mind ran the thought: the woman who ain’t afraid. Not a hint was there of the timidity he was accustomed to seeing in women’s eyes. And he was quite aware, and never more so, of his bleary-eyed, forbidding appearance.

“How do you do?” she greeted him sweetly and naturally. “How do you do, ma’am,” he responded, unpleasantly con-

scious of the huskiness and rawness of his voice.

“And did you have an interesting time, too!” she smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I sure did. I was just telling your little girl

about hosses.”

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“He was a cowboy, once, mamma,” she cried.

The mother smiled her acknowledgment to him, and looked fondly down at the little girl. The thought that came into Ross Shanklin’s mind was the awfulness of the crime if any one should harm either of the wonderful pair. This was followed by the wish that some terrible danger should threaten, so that he could fight, as he well knew how, with all his strength and life, to defend them.

“You’ll have to come along, dear,” the mother said. “It’s growing late.” She looked at Ross Shanklin hesitantly. “Would you care to have something to eat?”

“No, ma’am, thanking you kindly just the same. I … I ain’t hungry.”

“Then say good-bye, Joan,” she counselled.

“Good-bye.” The little girl held out her hand, and her eyes lighted roguishly. “Good-bye, Mr. Man from the bad, wicked world.”

To him, the touch of her hand as he pressed it in his was the capstone of the whole adventure.

“Good-bye, little fairy,” he mumbled. “I reckon I got to be pullin’ along.”

But he did not pull along. He stood staring after his vision until it vanished through the gate. The day seemed suddenly empty. He looked about him irresolutely, then climbed the fence, crossed the bridge, and slouched along the road. He was in a dream. He did not note his feet nor the way they led him. At times he stumbled in the dust-filled ruts.

A mile farther on, he aroused at the crossroads. Before him stood the saloon. He came to a stop and stared at it, licking his lips. He sank his hand into his pants pocket and fumbled

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“JUST MEAT”

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the successive crossings. Then he strolled back the way he had come. He was a shadow of a man sliding noiselessly and without undue movement through the semi darkness. Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive. The movement of another in the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to have escaped him.

In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a feel, of the atmosphere around him. He knew that the house in front of which he paused for a moment, contained children. Yet by no willed effort of perception did he have this knowledge. For that matter, he was not even aware that he knew, so occult was the impression. Yet, did a moment arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he would have acted on the assumption that it contained children. He was not aware of all that he knew about the neighborhood.

In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in the footfalls that came up the cross street. Before he saw the walker, he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home. The walker came into view at the crossing and dis-

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JACK LONDON

appeared on up the street. The man that watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match. This was conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind flitted the thought, “Wanted to know what time.” In another house one room was lighted. The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the feel that it was a sick room.

He was especially interested in a house across the street in the middle of the block. To this house he paid most attention. No matter what way he looked, nor what way he walked, his looks and his steps always returned to it. Except for an open window above the porch, there was nothing unusual about the house. Nothing came in nor out. Nothing happened. There were no lighted windows, nor had lights appeared and disappeared in any of the windows. Yet it was the central point of his consideration. He rallied to it each time after a divination of the state of the neighborhood.

Despite his feel of things, he was not confident. He was supremely conscious of the precariousness of his situation. Though unperturbed by the footfalls of the chance pedestrian, he was as keyed up and sensitive and ready to be startled as any timorous deer. He was aware of the possibility of other intelligences prowling about in the darkness – intelligences similar to his own in movement, perception, and divination.

Far down the street he caught a glimpse of something that moved. And he knew it was no late home-goer, but menace and danger. He whistled twice to the house across the street, then faded away shadow-like to the corner and around the corner. Here he paused and looked about him carefully. Reassured, he peered back around the corner and studied the object that

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BROWN WOLF AND OTHER STORIES

moved and that was coming nearer. He had divined aright. It was a policeman.

The man went down the cross street to the next corner, from the shelter of which he watched the corner he had just left. He saw the policeman pass by, going straight on up the street. He paralleled the policeman’s course, and from the next corner again watched him go by; then he returned the way he had come. He whistled once to the house across the street, and after a time whistled once again. There was reassurance in the whistle, just as there had been warning in the previous double whistle.

He saw a dark bulk outline itself on the roof of the porch and slowly descend a pillar. Then it came down the steps, passed through the small iron gate, and went down the sidewalk, taking on the form of a man. He that watched kept on his own side the street and moved on abreast to the corner, where he crossed over and joined the other. He was quite small alongside the man he accosted.

“How’d you make out, Matt?” he asked.

The other grunted indistinctly, and walked on in silence a few steps.

“I reckon I landed the goods,” he said.

Jim chuckled in the darkness, and waited for further information. The blocks passed by; under their feet, and he grew impatient.

“Well, how about them goods?” he asked. “What kind of a haul did you make, anyway?”

“I was too busy to figger it out, but it’s fat. I can tell you that much, Jim, it’s fat. I don’t dast to think how fat it is. Wait till we get to the room.”

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JACK LONDON

Jim looked at him keenly under the street lamp of the next crossing, and saw that his face was a trifle grim and that he carried his left arm peculiarly.

“What’s the matter with your arm?” he demanded.

“The little cuss bit me. Hope I don’t get hydrophoby. Folks gets hydrophoby from man-bite sometimes, don’t they?”

“Gave you a fight, eh!” Jim asked encouragingly. The other grunted.

“You’re certainly hard to get information from,” Jim burst out irritably. “Tell us about it. You ain’t goin’ to lose money just a-tellin’ a guy.”

“I guess I choked him some,” came the answer. Then, by way of explanation, “He woke up on me.”

“You did it neat. I never heard a sound.”

“Jim,” the other said with seriousness, “it’s a hangin’ matter. I fixed ‘m. I had to. He woke up on me. You an’ me’s got to do some layin’ low for a spell.”

Jim gave a low whistle of comprehension. “Did you hear me whistle!” he asked suddenly. “Sure. I was all done. I was just comin’ out.”

“It was a bull. But he wasn’t on a little bit. Went right by an’ kept a-paddin’ the hoof outa sight. Then I came back an’ gave you the whistle. What made you take so long after that?”

“I was waitin’ to make sure,” Matt explained.

“I was mighty glad when I heard you whistle again. It’s hard work waitin’. I just sat there an’ thought an’ thought … oh, all kinds of things. It’s remarkable what a fellow’ll think about. And then there was a darn cat that kept movin’ around the house an’ botherin’ me with its noises.”

“An’ it’s fat!” Jim exclaimed irrelevantly and with joy.

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BROWN WOLF AND OTHER STORIES

“I’m sure tellin’ you, Jim, it’s fat. I’m plum’ anxious for another look at ‘em.”

Unconsciously the two men quickened their pace. Yet they did not relax from their caution. Twice they changed their course in order to avoid policemen, and they made very sure that they were not observed when they dived into the dark hallway of a cheap rooming house down town.

Not until they had gained their own room on the top floor, did they scratch a match. While Jim lighted a lamp, Matt locked the door and threw the bolts into place. As he turned, he noticed that his partner was waiting expectantly. Matt smiled to himself at the other’s eagerness.

“Them search-lights is all right,” he said, drawing forth a small pocket electric lamp and examining it. “But we got to get a new battery. It’s runnin’ pretty weak. I thought once or twice it’d leave me in the dark. Funny arrangements in that house. I near got lost. His room was on the left, an’ that fooled me some.”

“I told you it was on the left,” Jim interrupted.

“You told me it was on the right,” Matt went on. “I guess I know what you told me, an’ there’s the map you drew.”

Fumbling in his vest pocket, he drew out a folded slip of paper. As he unfolded it, Jim bent over and looked.

“I did make a mistake,” he confessed.

“You sure did. It got me guessin’ some for a while.”

“But it don’t matter now,” Jim cried. “Let’s see what you got.” “It does matter,” Matt retorted. “It matters a lot … to me.

I’ve got to run all the risk. I put my head in the trap while you stay on the street. You got to get on to yourself an’ be more careful. All right, I’ll show you.”

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JACK LONDON

He dipped loosely into his trousers pocket and brought out a handful of small diamonds. He spilled them out in a blazing stream on the greasy table. Jim let out a great oath.

“That’s nothing,” Matt said with triumphant complacence. “I ain’t begun yet.”

From one pocket after another he continued bringing forth the spoil. There were many diamonds wrapped in chamois skin that were larger than those in the first handful. From one pocket he brought out a handful of very small cut gems.

“Sun dust,” he remarked, as he spilled them on the table in a space by themselves.

Jim examined them.

“Just the same, they retail for a couple of dollars each,” he said. “Is that all?”

“Ain’t it enough?” the other demanded in an aggrieved tone.

“Sure it is,” Jim answered with unqualified approval. “Better’n I expected. I wouldn’t take a cent less than ten thousan’ for the bunch.”

“Ten thousan’,” Matt sneered. “They’re worth twic’t that, an’ I don’t know anything about joolery, either. Look at that big boy!”

He picked it out from the sparkling heap and held it near to the lamp with the air of an expert, weighing and judging.

“Worth a thousan’ all by its lonely,” was Jim’s quicker judgment.

“A thousan’ your grandmother,” was Matt’s scornful rejoinder. “You couldn’t buy it for three.”

“Wake me up! I’m dreamin’!” The sparkle of the gems was in Jim’s eyes, and he began sorting out the larger dia-

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