The Blue Hotel

VI

The men prepared to go out-of-doors. The Easterner was so nervous that
he had great difficulty in getting his arms into the sleeves of his
new leather coat. As the cowboy drew his fur cap down over his cars
his hands trembled. In fact, Johnnie and old Scully were the only ones
who displayed no agitation. These preliminaries were conducted without
words.

Scully threw open the door. “Well, come on,” he said. Instantly a
terrific wind caused the flame of the lamp to struggle at its wick,
while a puff of black smoke sprang from the chimney-top. The stove was
in mid-current of the blast, and its voice swelled to equal the roar
of the storm. Some of the scarred and bedabbled cards were caught up
from the floor and dashed helplessly against the farther wall. The men
lowered their heads and plunged into the tempest as into a sea.

No snow was falling, but great whirls and clouds of flakes, swept up
from the ground by the frantic winds, were streaming southward with
the speed of bullets. The covered land was blue with the sheen of an
unearthly satin, and there was no other hue save where, at the low,
black railway station–which seemed incredibly distant–one light
gleamed like a tiny jewel. As the men floundered into a thigh deep
drift, it was known that the Swede was bawling out something. Scully
went to him, put a hand on his shoulder and projected an ear. “What’s
that you say?” he shouted.

“I say,” bawled the Swede again, “I won’t stand much show against this
gang. I know you’ll all pitch on me.”

Scully smote him reproachfully on the arm. “Tut, man!” he yelled. The
wind tore the words from Scully’s lips and scattered them far alee.

“You are all a gang of–” boomed the Swede, but the storm also seized
the remainder of this sentence.

Immediately turning their backs upon the wind, the men had swung
around a corner to the sheltered side of the hotel. It was the
function of the little house to preserve here, amid this great
devastation of snow, an irregular V-shape of heavily incrusted grass,
which crackled beneath the feet. One could imagine the great drifts
piled against the windward side. When the party reached the
comparative peace of this spot it was found that the Swede was still
bellowing.

“Oh, I know what kind of a thing this is! I know you’ll all pitch on
me. I can’t lick you all!”

Scully turned upon him panther fashion. “You’ll not have to whip all
of us. You’ll have to whip my son Johnnie. An’ the man what troubles
you durin’ that time will have me to dale with.”

The arrangements were swiftly made. The two men faced each other,
obedient to the harsh commands of Scully, whose face, in the subtly
luminous gloom, could be seen set in the austere impersonal lines that
are pictured on the countenances of the Roman veterans. The
Easterner’s teeth were chattering, and he was hopping up and down like
a mechanical toy. The cowboy stood rock-like.

The contestants had not stripped off any clothing. Each was in his
ordinary attire. Their fists were up, and they eyed each other in a
calm that had the elements of leonine cruelty in it.

During this pause, the Easterner’s mind, like a film, took lasting
impressions of three men–the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the
Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious,
brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater
than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the
long, mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing
flakes into the black abyss of the south.

“Now!” said Scully.

The two combatants leaped forward and crashed together like bullocks.
There was heard the cushioned sound of blows, and of a curse squeezing
out from between the tight teeth of one.

As for the spectators, the Easterner’s pent-up breath exploded from
him with a pop of relief, absolute relief from the tension of the
preliminaries. The cowboy bounded into the air with a yowl. Scully was
immovable as from supreme amazement and fear at the fury of the fight
which he himself had permitted and arranged.

For a time the encounter in the darkness was such a perplexity of
flying arms that it presented no more detail than would a swiftly
revolving wheel. Occasionally a face, as if illumined by a flash of
light, would shine out, ghastly and marked with pink spots. A moment
later, the men might have been known as shadows, if it were not for
the involuntary utterance of oaths that came from them in whispers.

Suddenly a holocaust of warlike desire caught the cowboy, and he
bolted forward with the speed of a broncho. “Go it, Johnnie! go it!
Kill him! Kill him!”

Scully confronted him. “Kape back,” he said; and by his glance the
cowboy could tell that this man was Johnnie’s father.

To the Easterner there was a monotony of unchangeable fighting that
was an abomination. This confused mingling was eternal to his sense,
which was concentrated in a longing for the end, the priceless end.
Once the fighters lurched near him, and as he scrambled hastily
backward he heard them breathe like men on the rack.

“Kill him, Johnnie! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” The cowboy’s face
was contorted like one of those agony masks in museums.

“Keep still,” said Scully, icily.

Then there was a sudden loud grunt, incomplete, cut short, and
Johnnie’s body swung away from the Swede and fell with sickening
heaviness to the grass. The cowboy was barely in time to prevent the
mad Swede from flinging himself upon his prone adversary. “No, you
don’t,” said the cowboy, interposing an arm. “Wait a second.”

Scully was at his son’s side. “Johnnie! Johnnie, me boy!” His voice
had a quality of melancholy tenderness. “Johnnie! Can you go on with
it?” He looked anxiously down into the bloody, pulpy face of his son.

There was a moment of silence, and then Johnnie answered in his
ordinary voice, “Yes, I–it–yes.”

Assisted by his father he struggled to his feet. “Wait a bit now till
you git your wind,” said the old man.

A few paces away the cowboy was lecturing the Swede. “No, you don’t!
Wait a second!”

The Easterner was plucking at Scully’s sleeve. “Oh, this is enough,”
he pleaded. “This is enough! Let it go as it stands. This is enough!”

“Bill,” said Scully, “git out of the road.” The cowboy stepped aside.
“Now.” The combatants were actuated by a new caution as they advanced
towards collision. They glared at each other, and then the Swede aimed
a lightning blow that carried with it his entire weight. Johnnie was
evidently half stupid from weakness, but he miraculously dodged, and
his fist sent the over-balanced Swede sprawling.

The cowboy, Scully, and the Easterner burst into a cheer that was like
a chorus of triumphant soldiery, but before its conclusion the Swede
had scuffled agilely to his feet and come in berserk abandon at his
foe. There was another perplexity of flying arms, and Johnnie’s body
again swung away and fell, even as a bundle might fall from a roof.
The Swede instantly staggered to a little wind-waved tree and leaned
upon it, breathing like an engine, while his savage and flame-lit eyes
roamed from face to face as the men bent over Johnnie. There was a
splendor of isolation in his situation at this time which the
Easterner felt once when, lifting his eyes from the man on the ground,
he beheld that mysterious and lonely figure, waiting.

“Arc you any good yet, Johnnie?” asked Scully in a broken voice.

The son gasped and opened his eyes languidly. After a moment he
answered, “No–I ain’t–any good–any–more.” Then, from shame and
bodily ill he began to weep, the tears furrowing down through the
blood-stains on his face. “He was too–too–too heavy for me.”

Scully straightened and addressed the waiting figure. “Stranger,” he
said, evenly, “it’s all up with our side.” Then his voice changed into
that vibrant huskiness which is commonly the tone of the most simple
and deadly announcements. “Johnnie is whipped.”

Without replying, the victor moved off on the route to the front door
of the hotel.

The cowboy was formulating new and un-spellable blasphemies. The
Easterner was startled to find that they were out in a wind that
seemed to come direct from the shadowed arctic floes. He heard again
the wail of the snow as it was flung to its grave in the south. He
knew now that all this time the cold had been sinking into him deeper
and deeper, and he wondered that he had not perished. He felt
indifferent to the condition of the vanquished man.

“Johnnie, can you walk?” asked Scully.

“Did I hurt–hurt him any?” asked the son.

“Can you walk, boy? Can you walk?”

Johnnie’s voice was suddenly strong. There was a robust impatience in
it. “I asked you whether I hurt him any!”

“Yes, yes, Johnnie,” answered the cowboy, consolingly; “he’s hurt a
good deal.”

They raised him from the ground, and as soon as he was on his feet he
went tottering off, rebuffing all attempts at assistance. When the
party rounded the corner they were fairly blinded by the pelting of
the snow. It burned their faces like fire. The cowboy carried Johnnie
through the drift to the door. As they entered some cards again rose
from the floor and beat against the wall.

The Easterner rushed to the stove. He was so profoundly chilled that
he almost dared to embrace the glowing iron. The Swede was not in the
room. Johnnie sank into a chair, and, folding his arms on his knees,
buried his face in them. Scully, warming one foot and then the other
at a rim of the stove, muttered to himself with Celtic mournfulness.
The cowboy had removed his fur cap, and with a dazed and rueful air he
was running one hand through his tousled locks. From overhead they
could hear the creaking of boards, as the Swede tramped here and there
in his room.

The sad quiet was broken by the sudden flinging open of a door that
led towards the kitchen. It was instantly followed by an inrush of
women. They precipitated themselves upon Johnnie amid a chorus of
lamentation. Before they carried their prey off to the kitchen, there
to be bathed and harangued with that mixture of sympathy and abuse
which is a feat of their sex, the mother straightened herself and
fixed old Scully with an eye of stern reproach. “Shame be upon you,
Patrick Scully!” she cried. “Your own son, too. Shame be upon you!”

“There, now! Be quiet, now!” said the old man, weakly.

“Shame be upon you, Patrick Scully!” The girls, rallying to this
slogan, sniffed disdainfully in the direction of those trembling
accomplices, the cowboy and the Easterner. Presently they bore Johnnie
away, and left the three men to dismal reflection.

VII

“I’d like to fight this here Dutchman myself,” said the cowboy,
breaking a long silence.

Scully wagged his head sadly. “No, that wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t be
right. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Well, why wouldn’t it?” argued the cowboy. “I don’t see no harm in
it.”

“No,” answered Scully, with mournful heroism. “It wouldn’t be right.
It was Johnnie’s fight, and now we mustn’t whip the man just because
he whipped Johnnie.”

“Yes, that’s true enough,” said the cowboy; “but–he better not get
fresh with me, because I couldn’t stand no more of it.”

“You’ll not say a word to him,” commanded Scully, and even then they
heard the tread of the Swede on the stairs. His entrance was made
theatric. He swept the door back with a bang and swaggered to the
middle of the room. No one looked at him. “Well,” he cried,
insolently, at Scully, “I s’pose you’ll tell me now how much I owe
you?”

The old man remained stolid. “You don’t owe me nothin’.”

“Huh!” said the Swede, “huh! Don’t owe ‘im nothin’.”

The cowboy addressed the Swede. “Stranger, I don’t see how you come to
be so gay around here.”

Old Scully was instantly alert. “Stop!” he shouted, holding his hand
forth, fingers upward. “Bill, you shut up!”

The cowboy spat carelessly into the sawdust box. “I didn’t say a word,
did I?” he asked.

“Mr. Scully,” called the Swede, “how much do I owe you?” It was seen
that he was attired for departure, and that he had his valise in his
hand.

“You don’t owe me nothin’,” repeated Scully in his same imperturbable
way.

“Huh!” said the Swede. “I guess you’re right. I guess if it was any
way at all, you’d owe me somethin’. That’s what I guess.” He turned to
the cowboy. “‘Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!'” he mimicked, and then
guffawed victoriously. “‘Kill him!'” He was convulsed with ironical
humor.

But he might have been jeering the dead. The three men were immovable
and silent, staring with glassy eyes at the stove.

The Swede opened the door and passed into the storm, giving one
derisive glance backward at the still group.

As soon as the door was closed, Scully and the cowboy leaped to their
feet and began to curse. They trampled to and fro, waving their arms
and smashing into the air with their fists. “Oh, but that was a hard
minute!” wailed Scully. “That was a hard minute! Him there leerin’ and
scoffin’! One bang at his nose was worth forty dollars to me that
minute! How did you stand it, Bill?”

“How did I stand it?” cried the cowboy in a quivering voice. “How did
I stand it? Oh!”

The old man burst into sudden brogue. “I’d loike to take that Swade,”
he wailed, “and hould ‘im down on a shtone flure and bate ‘im to a
jelly wid a shtick!”

The cowboy groaned in sympathy. “I’d like to git him by the neck and
ha-ammer him “–he brought his hand down on a chair with a noise like
a pistol-shot–“hammer that there Dutchman until he couldn’t tell
himself from a dead coyote!”

“I’d bate ‘im until he–”

“I’d show _him_ some things–”

And then together they raised a yearning, fanatic cry–“Oh-o-oh! if we
only could–”

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

“And then I’d–”

“O-o-oh!”

VIII

The Swede, tightly gripping his valise, tacked across the face of the
storm as if he carried sails. He was following a line of little naked,
gasping trees, which he knew must mark the way of the road. His face,
fresh from the pounding of Johnnie’s fists, felt more pleasure than
pain in the wind and the driving snow. A number of square shapes
loomed upon him finally, and he knew them as the houses of the main
body of the town. He found a street and made travel along it, leaning
heavily upon the wind whenever, at a corner, a terrific blast caught
him.

He might have been in a deserted village. We picture the world as
thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of
the tempest pealing, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One
viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour
of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling,
fire-smote, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. The conceit
of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One
was a coxcomb not to die in it. However, the Swede found a saloon.

In front of it an indomitable red light was burning, and the
snow-flakes were made blood color as they flew through the
circumscribed territory of the lamp’s shining. The Swede pushed open
the door of the saloon and entered. A sanded expanse was before him,
and at the end of it four men sat about a table drinking. Down one
side of the room extended a radiant bar, and its guardian was leaning
upon his elbows listening to the talk of the men at the table. The
Swede dropped his valise upon the floor, and, smiling fraternally upon
the barkeeper, said, “Gimme some whiskey, will you?” The man placed a
bottle, a whiskey-glass, and a glass of ice-thick water upon the bar.
The Swede poured himself an abnormal portion of whiskey and drank it
in three gulps. “Pretty bad night,” remarked the bartender,
indifferently. He was making the pretension of blindness which is
usually a distinction of his class; but it could have been seen that
he was furtively studying the half-erased blood-stains on the face of
the Swede. “Bad night,” he said again.

“Oh, it’s good enough for me,” replied the Swede, hardily, as he
poured himself some more whiskey. The barkeeper took his coin and
maneuvered it through its reception by the highly nickelled
cash-machine. A bell rang; a card labelled “20 cts.” had appeared.

“No,” continued the Swede, “this isn’t too bad weather. It’s good
enough for me.”

“So?” murmured the barkeeper, languidly.

The copious drams made the Swede’s eyes swim, and he breathed a trifle
heavier. “Yes, I like this weather. I like it. It suits me.” It was
apparently his design to impart a deep significance to these words.

“So?” murmured the bartender again. He turned to gaze dreamily at the
scroll-like birds and bird-like scrolls which had been drawn with soap
upon the mirrors back of the bar.

“Well, I guess I’ll take another drink,” said the Swede, presently.
“Have something?”

“No, thanks; I’m not drinkin’,” answered the bartender. Afterwards he
asked, “How did you hurt your face?”

The Swede immediately began to boast loudly. “Why, in a fight. I
thumped the soul out of a man down here at Scully’s hotel.”

The interest of the four men at the table was at last aroused.

“Who was it?” said one.

“Johnnie Scully,” blustered the Swede. “Son of the man what runs it.
He will be pretty near dead for some weeks, I can tell you. I made a
nice thing of him, I did. He couldn’t get up. They carried him in the
house. Have a drink?”

Instantly the men in some subtle way incased themselves in reserve.
“No, thanks,” said one. The group was of curious formation. Two were
prominent local business men; one was the district-attorney; and one
was a professional gambler of the kind known as “square.” But a
scrutiny of the group would not have enabled an observer to pick the
gambler from the men of more reputable pursuits. He was, in fact, a
man so delicate in manner, when among people of fair class, and so
judicious in his choice of victims, that in the strictly masculine
part of the town’s life he had come to be explicitly trusted and
admired. People called him a thoroughbred. The fear and contempt with
which his craft was regarded was undoubtedly the reason that his quiet
dignity shone conspicuous above the quiet dignity of men who might be
merely hatters, billiard markers, or grocery-clerks. Beyond an
occasional unwary traveller, who came by rail, this gambler was
supposed to prey solely upon reckless and senile farmers, who, when
flush with good crops, drove into town in all the pride and confidence
of an absolutely invulnerable stupidity. Hearing at times in
circuitous fashion of the despoilment of such a farmer, the important
men of Romper invariably laughed in contempt of the victim, and, if
they thought of the wolf at all, it was with a kind of pride at the
knowledge that he would never dare think of attacking their wisdom and
courage. Besides, it was popular that this gambler had a real wife and
two real children in a neat cottage in a suburb, where he led an
exemplary home life; and when any one even suggested a discrepancy in
his character, the crowd immediately vociferated descriptions of this
virtuous family circle. Then men who led exemplary home lives, and men
who did not lead exemplary home lives, all subsided in a bunch,
remarking that there was nothing more to be said.

However, when a restriction was placed upon him–as, for instance,
when a strong clique of members of the new Pollywog Club refused to
permit him, even as a spectator, to appear in the rooms of the
organization–the candor and gentleness with which he accepted the
judgment disarmed many of his foes and made his friends more
desperately partisan. He invariably distinguished between himself and
a respectable Romper man so quickly and frankly that his manner
actually appeared to be a continual broadcast compliment.

And one must not forget to declare the fundamental fact of his entire
position in Romper. It is irrefutable that in all affairs outside of
his business, in all matters that occur eternally and commonly between
man and man, this thieving card-player was so generous, so just, so
moral, that, in a contest, he could have put to flight the consciences
of nine-tenths of the citizens of Romper.

And so it happened that he was seated in this saloon with the two
prominent local merchants and the district-attorney.

The Swede continued to drink raw whiskey, meanwhile babbling at the
barkeeper and trying to induce him to indulge in potations. “Come on.
Have a drink. Come on. What–no? Well, have a little one, then. By
gawd, I’ve whipped a man to-night, and I want to celebrate. I whipped
him good, too. Gentlemen,” the Swede cried to the men at the table,
“have a drink?”

“Ssh!” said the barkeeper.

The group at the table, although furtively attentive, had been
pretending to be deep in talk, but now a man lifted his eyes towards
the Swede and said, shortly, “Thanks. We don’t want any more.”

At this reply the Swede ruffled out his chest like a rooster. “Well,”
he exploded, “it seems I can’t get anybody to drink with me in this
town. Seems so, don’t it? Well!”

“Ssh!” said the barkeeper.

“Say,” snarled the Swede, “don’t you try to shut me up. I won’t have
it. I’m a gentleman, and I want people to drink with me. And I want
’em to drink with me now. _Now_–do you understand?” He rapped the bar
with his knuckles.

Years of experience had calloused the bartender. He merely grew sulky.
“I hear you,” he answered.

“Well,” cried the Swede, “listen hard then. See those men over there?
Well, they’re going to drink with me, and don’t you forget it. Now you
watch.”

“Hi!” yelled the barkeeper, “this won’t do!”

“Why won’t it?” demanded the Swede. He stalked over to the table, and
by chance laid his hand upon the shoulder of the gambler. “How about
this?” he asked, wrathfully. “I asked you to drink with me.”

The gambler simply twisted his head and spoke over his shoulder. “My
friend, I don’t know you.”

“Oh, hell!” answered the Swede, “come and have a drink.”

“Now, my boy,” advised the gambler, kindly, “take your hand off my
shoulder and go ‘way and mind your own business.” He was a little,
slim man, and it seemed strange to hear him use this tone of heroic
patronage to the burly Swede. The other men at the table said nothing.

“What! You won’t drink with me, you little dude? I’ll make you then!
I’ll make you!” The Swede had grasped the gambler frenziedly at the
throat, and was dragging him from his chair. The other men sprang up.
The barkeeper dashed around the corner of his bar. There was a great
tumult, and then was seen a long blade in the hand of the gambler. It
shot forward, and a human body, this citadel of virtue, wisdom, power,
was pierced as easily as if it had been a melon. The Swede fell with a
cry of supreme astonishment.

The prominent merchants and the district attorney must have at once
tumbled out of the place backward. The bartender found himself hanging
limply to the arm of a chair and gazing into the eyes of a murderer.

“Henry,” said the latter, as he wiped his knife on one of the towels
that hung beneath the bar-rail, “you tell ’em where to find me. I’ll
be home, waiting for ’em.” Then he vanished. A moment afterwards the
barkeeper was in the street dinning through the storm for help, and,
moreover, companionship.

The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon, had its eyes fixed upon
a dreadful legend that dwelt atop of the cash-machine: “This registers
the amount of your purchase.”

IX

Months later, the cowboy was frying pork over the stove of a little
ranch near the Dakota line, when there was a quick thud of hoofs
outside, and presently the Easterner entered with the letters and the
papers.

“Well,” said the Easterner at once, “the chap that killed the Swede
has got three years. Wasn’t much, was it?”

“He has? Three years?” The cowboy poised his pan of pork, while he
ruminated upon the news. “Three years. That ain’t much.”

“No. It was a light sentence,” replied the Easterner as he unbuckled
his spurs. “Seems there was a good deal of sympathy for him in
Romper.”

“If the bartender had been any good,” observed the cowboy,
thoughtfully, “he would have gone in and cracked that there Dutchman
on the head with a bottle in the beginnin’ of it and stopped all this
here murderin’.”

“Yes, a thousand things might have happened,” said the Easterner,
tartly.

The cowboy returned his pan of pork to the fire, but his philosophy
continued. “It’s funny, ain’t it? If he hadn’t said Johnnie was
cheatin’ he’d be alive this minute. He was an awful fool. Game played
for fun, too. Not for money. I believe he was crazy.”

“I feel sorry for that gambler,” said the Easterner.

“Oh, so do I,” said the cowboy. “He don’t deserve none of it for
killin’ who he did.”

“The Swede might not have been killed if everything had been square.”

“Might not have been killed?” exclaimed the cowboy. “Everythin’
square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin’ and acted like
such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git
hurt?” With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and
reduced him to rage.

“You’re a fool!” cried the Easterner, viciously. “You’re a bigger
jackass than the Swede by a million majority. Now let me tell you one
thing. Let me tell you something. Listen! Johnnie _was_ cheating!”

“‘Johnnie,'” said the cowboy, blankly. There was a minute of silence,
and then he said, robustly, “Why, no. The game was only for fun.”

“Fun or not,” said the Easterner, “Johnnie was cheating. I saw him. I
know it. I saw him. And I refused to stand up and be a man. I let the
Swede fight it out alone. And you–you were simply puffing around the
place and wanting to fight. And then old Scully himself! We are all in
it! This poor gambler isn’t even a noun. He is kind of an adverb.
Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a
dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case
it seems to be only five men–you, I, Johnnie, old Scully, and that
fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a culmination, the apex
of a human movement, and gets all the punishment.”

The cowboy, injured and rebellious, cried out blindly into this fog of
mysterious theory: “Well, I didn’t do anythin’, did I?”