The Sailor With One Hand

: ARIZONA NIGHTS
: Arizona Nights

At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased with

miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of sound save

for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves. Nobody ventured to fill in the

pause that followed the stranger's last words, so in a moment he

continued his narrative.





We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was lookout

at a popular game, I saw them a l. One evening I was on my way home

about two o'clock of a moonlit night, when on the edge of the shadow I

stumbled over a body lying part across the footway. At the same

instant I heard the rip of steel through cloth and felt a sharp stab in

my left leg. For a minute I thought some drunk had used his knife on

me, and I mighty near derringered him as he lay. But somehow I didn't,

and looking closer, I saw the man was unconscious. Then I scouted to

see what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand. In

place of it he wore a sharp steel hook. This I had tangled up with and

gotten well pricked.



I dragged him out into the light. He was a slim-built young fellow,

with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean face, and big

hooked nose. He had on only a thin shirt, a pair of rough wool pants,

and the rawhide home-made zapatos the Mexicans wore then instead of

boots. Across his forehead ran a long gash, cutting his left eyebrow

square in two.



There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard, like

a man does when he gets hit over the head. It didn't sound good. When

a man breathes that way he's mostly all gone.



Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say. Men got

batted over the head often enough in those days. But for some reason I

picked him up and carried him to my 'dobe shack, and laid him out, and

washed his cut with sour wine. That brought him to. Sour wine is fine

to put a wound in shape to heal, but it's no soothing syrup. He sat up

as though he'd been touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed,

and cut loose with that song you were singing. Only it wasn't that

verse. It was another one further along, that went like this:



Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,

Blow high, blow low, what care we;

And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,

Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.



It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still, solemn

desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows, and him

sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side his big eagle

nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut across his head.

However, I made out to get him bandaged up and in shape; and pretty

soon he sort of went to sleep.



Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks. Most of the

time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his eyes burning

and looking like they saw each one something a different distance off,

the way crazy eyes do. That was when he was best. Then again he'd

sing that Barbaree song until I'd go out and look at the old Colorado

flowing by just to be sure I hadn't died and gone below. Or else he'd

just talk. That was the worst performance of all. It was like

listening to one end of a telephone, though we didn't know what

telephones were in those days. He began when he was a kid, and he gave

his side of conversations, pausing for replies. I could mighty near

furnish the replies sometimes. It was queer lingo--about ships and

ships' officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and whales

and islands and birds and skies. But it was all little stuff. I used

to listen by the hour, but I never made out anything really important

as to who the man was, or where he'd come from, or what he'd done.



At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to fix him

up with grub. I didn't pay any attention to him, for he was quiet. As

I was bending over the fire he spoke. Usually I didn't bother with his

talk, for it didn't mean anything, but something in his voice made me

turn. He was lying on his side, those black eyes of his blazing at me,

but now both of them saw the same distance.



"Where are my clothes?" he asked, very intense.



"You ain't in any shape to want clothes," said I. "Lie still."



I hadn't any more than got the words out of my mouth before he was atop

me. His method was a winner. He had me by the throat with his hand,

and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back of my neck. One

little squeeze--Talk about your deadly weapons!



But he'd been too sick and too long abed. He turned dizzy and keeled

over, and I dumped him back on the bunk. Then I put my six-shooter on.



In a minute or so he came to.



"Now you're a nice, sweet proposition," said I, as soon as I was sure

he could understand me. "Here I pick you up on the street and save

your worthless carcass, and the first chance you get you try to crawl

my hump. Explain."



"Where's my clothes?" he demanded again, very fierce.



"For heaven's sake," I yelled at him, "what's the matter with you and

your old clothes? There ain't enough of them to dust a fiddle with

anyway. What do you think I'd want with them? They're safe enough."'



"Let me have them," he begged.



"Now, look here," said I, "you can't get up to-day. You ain't fit."



"I know," he pleaded, "but let me see them."



Just to satisfy him I passed over his old duds.



"I've been robbed," he cried.



"Well," said I, "what did you expect would happen to you lying around

Yuma after midnight with a hole in your head?"



"Where's my coat?" he asked.



"You had no coat when I picked you up," I replied.



He looked at me mighty suspicious, but didn't say anything more--he

wouldn't even answer when I spoke to him. After he'd eaten a fair meal

he fell asleep. When I came back that evening the bunk was empty and

he was gone.



I didn't see him again for two days. Then I caught sight of him quite

a ways off. He nodded at me very sour, and dodged around the corner of

the store.



"Guess he suspicions I stole that old coat of his," thinks I; and

afterwards I found that my surmise had been correct.



However, he didn't stay long in that frame of mind. It was along

towards evening, and I was walking on the banks looking down over the

muddy old Colorado, as I always liked to do. The sun had just set, and

the mountains had turned hard and stiff, as they do after the glow, and

the sky above them was a thousand million miles deep of pale green-gold

light. A pair of Greasers were ahead of me, but I could see only their

outlines, and they didn't seem to interfere any with the scenery.

Suddenly a black figure seemed to rise up out of the ground; the

Mexican man went down as though he'd been jerked with a string, and the

woman screeched.



I ran up, pulling my gun. The Mex was flat on his face, his arms

stretched out. On the middle of his back knelt my one-armed friend.

And that sharp hook was caught neatly under the point of the Mexican's

jaw. You bet he lay still.



I really think I was just in time to save the man's life. According to

my belief another minute would have buried the hook in the Mexican's

neck. Anyway, I thrust the muzzle of my Colt's into the sailor's face.



"What's this?" I asked.



The sailor looked up at me without changing his position. He was not

the least bit afraid.



"This man has my coat," he explained.



"Where'd you get the coat?" I asked the Mex.



"I ween heem at monte off Antonio Curvez," said he.



"Maybe," growled the sailor.



He still held the hook under the man's jaw, but with the other hand he

ran rapidly under and over the Mexican's left shoulder. In the half

light I could see his face change. The gleam died from his eye; the

snarl left his lips. Without further delay he arose to his feet.



"Get up and give it here!" he demanded.



The Mexican was only too glad to get off so easy. I don't know whether

he'd really won the coat at monte or not. In any case, he flew poco

pronto, leaving me and my friend together.



The man with the hook felt the left shoulder of the coat again, looked

up, met my eye, muttered something intended to be pleasant, and walked

away.



This was in December.



During the next two months he was a good deal about town, mostly doing

odd jobs. I saw him off and on. He always spoke to me as pleasantly

as he knew how, and once made some sort of a bluff about paying me back

for my trouble in bringing him around. However, I didn't pay much

attention to that, being at the time almighty busy holding down my card

games.



The last day of February I was sitting in my shack smoking a pipe after

supper, when my one-armed friend opened the door a foot, slipped in,

and shut it immediately. By the time he looked towards me I knew where

my six-shooter was.



"That's all right," said I, "but you better stay right there."



I intended to take no more chances with that hook.



He stood there looking straight at me without winking or offering to

move.



"What do you want?" I asked.



"I want to make up to you for your trouble," said he. "I've got a good

thing, and I want to let you in on it."



"What kind of a good thing?" I asked.



"Treasure," said he.



"H'm," said I.



I examined him closely. He looked all right enough, neither drunk nor

loco.



"Sit down," said I--"over there; the other side the table." He did so.

"Now, fire away," said I.



He told me his name was Solomon Anderson, but that he was generally

known as Handy Solomon, on account of his hook; that he had always

followed the sea; that lately he had coasted the west shores of Mexico;

that at Guaymas he had fallen in with Spanish friends, in company with

whom he had visited the mines in the Sierra Madre; that on this

expedition the party had been attacked by Yaquis and wiped out, he

alone surviving; that his blanket-mate before expiring had told him of

gold buried in a cove of Lower California by the man's grandfather;

that the man had given him a chart showing the location of the

treasure; that he had sewn this chart in the shoulder of his coat,

whence his suspicion of me and his being so loco about getting it back.



"And it's a big thing," said Handy Solomon to me, "for they's not only

gold, but altar jewels and diamonds. It will make us rich, and a dozen

like us, and you can kiss the Book on that."



"That may all be true," said I, "but why do you tell me? Why don't you

get your treasure without the need of dividing it?"



"Why, mate," he answered, "it's just plain gratitude. Didn't you save

my life, and nuss me, and take care of me when I was nigh killed?"



"Look here, Anderson, or Handy Solomon, or whatever you please to call

yourself," I rejoined to this, "if you're going to do business with

me--and I do not understand yet just what it is you want of me--you'll

have to talk straight. It's all very well to say gratitude, but that

don't go with me. You've been around here three months, and barring a

half-dozen civil words and twice as many of the other kind, I've failed

to see any indications of your gratitude before. It's a quality with a

hell of a hang-fire to it."



He looked at me sideways, spat, and looked at me sideways again. Then

he burst into a laugh.



"The devil's a preacher, if you ain't lost your pinfeathers,"' said he.

"Well, it's this then: I got to have a boat to get there; and she must

be stocked. And I got to have help with the treasure, if it's like

this fellow said it was. And the Yaquis and cannibals from Tiburon is

through the country. It's money I got to have, and it's money I

haven't got, and can't get unless I let somebody in as pardner."



"Why me?" I asked.



"Why not?" he retorted. "I ain't see anybody I like better."



We talked the matter over at length. I had to force him to each point,

for suspicion was strong in him. I stood out for a larger party. He

strongly opposed this as depreciating the shares, but I had no

intention of going alone into what was then considered a wild and

dangerous country. Finally we compromised. A third of the treasure

was to go to him, a third to me, and the rest was to be divided among

the men whom I should select. This scheme did not appeal to him.



"How do I know you plays fair?" he complained. "They'll be four of you

to one of me; and I don't like it, and you can kiss the Book on that."



"If you don't like it, leave it," said I, "and get out, and be damned

to you."



Finally he agreed; but he refused me a look at the chart, saying that

he had left it in a safe place. I believe in reality he wanted to be

surer of me, and for that I can hardly blame him.