Jigger Bunts

by Max Brand

  “Now, you sons of goats, you tinhorn cheapskates, you corn-fed flatheads, you loudmouthed loafers, if I hear another peep out of you during the night, I’ll come down here and chaw you up so damned small and fine that you’ll blow away in the first night wind. You hear me yap and remember!”

  I give the door another kick and went back to my own room.

  You would think, maybe, that I was a pretty high and hardy fellow, by that line of talk that I used, but I wasn’t. I’m harmless, most generally, but when I get depressed it acts bad on me—like low-grade whiskey, and comes out in wrong language and such things. You understand how it is.

  These fellows thought that I was some terrible fighter, and they didn’t let out a peep.

  Just the same, I couldn’t sleep any. I lay in bed a while glorying in how I had bluffed out those pikers. But then I began to remember about the kid, and that took the joy out quick. All this time since he was cut loose and started burning up atmosphere and crowding the headlines of the newspapers, I had figured that someday, somehow, I would have to work things so that this here Jigger Bunts would be tamed down and made safe for democracy. But I never could figure it out no way at all. Planning on how to handle Jigger was like planning on how to handle the next comet that heaves into sight. You may do a lot of looking and you may do a lot of thinking, but by the time you get turned around, the comet has gone kiting through another dozen light-years, and you got to adjust your thinking all over again.

  Just before dawn, I did fall asleep, and it was well after sunup when I awakened, and that gave me a guilty feeling to start the day. I had breakfast, feeling more grouchier than ever. Then I started out to get my errands done, and when I was coming out of a harness shop after having a fight about the price of some saddlebags, I hear a girl sing out: “Hello, Tommy! What’s the good news?”

  There ain’t much that makes me any madder than to be called Tommy. I don’t know why. It’s all right for a nickname. Only it don’t fit in with my idea of myself. I always imagine that name going with blue eyes and pink cheeks. Besides, when a man is running a big ranch and gets to be forty years old, he’s got a right to be a little particular about his moniker.

  I turned around with a growl, and there was Maybelle Crofter, sashaying across the street and waving her hand at me. She looked more pretty than ever, which might’ve come of her wearing a blue jacket and a blue skirt, and with a big twist of her hair coming over her shoulder and hanging down in a pigtail. It was like the outfit of a sixteen-year-old girl. Well, Maybelle—or Mabel, to spell it the right way and the easier way—could look sixteen when she chose to. She was every inch of thirty-one, but that didn’t bother her. When she felt extra young, she could dress extra young. And when she felt old, she could dress herself up and look like the mother of a family on her way to church. Which I suppose that Maybelle never seen the inside of a church in her whole life.

  As I was saying, this girl comes sashaying across the street waving her hand at me, and she comes up and she says: “The finest sight I’ve seen since I had measles, Tommy?”

  Some of my grouch melted out of me. She had a sunny pair of eyes, that kid did. I knew that there was tons of bad in her. Everybody else knew that, too. But I knew that there was good, too. Anyway, she was company above the average of what you get in New Nineveh.

  I said: “What dropped you in this dive, Maybelle? Have you gone and got yourself another husband?”

  “That’s what I ain’t done nothing but,” Maybelle said. “I got me a fine six foot, two or three inches of husband.”

  “He may be big,” I said, “but if he lives in New Nineveh, he ain’t fine. You take it from me, will you?”

  “I know,” Maybelle said. “This town is full of pikers and strong-arm blackjacks, all right.”

  “What might be the moniker of the guy that you caught, Maybelle?”

  “Harry Wayne is his name,” she answered.

  “Hey!” I replied. “Harry Wayne? The rancher? How did you ever pick up anything as good as that, kid?”

  “Don’t be nasty, Tommy,” Maybelle said, getting a little cold. “I don’t mind an old friend speaking his mind, but I’m not such a piker, when you come to look me over!” She picked up her head and dropped a hand on one hip and did a pirouette very slow. “How am I?” Maybelle asked.

  I had to admit that she was pretty, though she wasn’t half so pretty as she looked. It’s not just a beautiful face that can poison men and make them mad for a woman. It’s something inside the soul of a girl

  “How do you do it, Maybelle?” I asked. “You’ve traveled some, but you don’t look as though you’ve as much as gone across the street.”

  “I don’t take things to heart,” says Maybelle. “When some folks make a slip, they write it down in red and study that passage a lot. But I … well, I just tear out the page.”

  And she laughed and shook her head. She had a fine laugh. Hearty as a man’s, but musical, you know.

  “Which husband is this?” I asked her.

  “Five,” says Maybelle. “Six, I mean to say.”

  “You sort of lose the count?” I ask.

  “I never had much education,” Maybelle said, and grinned.

  “Well,” says I, “how comes it that Harry Wayne is letting you drift around by yourself like this? Is he in town buying cattle, or something?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, “he’s back in Nevada getting a fresh start.”

  I asked her what she meant.

  “He came across one of my back trails,” said Maybelle. “And he read the sign of a lot of my scandals. You would never think that a fellow like Harry Wayne would have thin skin. But he has. He made a scene, and I had to tell him where to get off. So he grabbed the Overland and … Hello, Mrs. Gunther!”

  A lady was heading down the street, and as she came past us, she slowed up enough to look the pair of us over, then she stuck her head in the air and went sailing on. It was easy to see by that that Maybelle’s reputation had come to town with her, at last, but it didn’t bother Maybelle none.

  “Mrs. Gunther is hard of hearing,” Maybelle said loud enough for Mrs. Gunther to hear. “The years will tell, won’t they?”

  And you could see a shiver run through Mrs. Gunther’s back as she went huffing down the sidewalk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Well,” I said, when I got through laughing, “you’re after alimony now, I suppose?”

  “Sure,” Maybelle said. “By reason of not causing hubby any bother about this reason, I get a pretty good slice off the estate. When the dough arrives, I get myself a vacation.”

  “Vacation!” I said. “Why, honey, you’ve had nothing but vacations since they tried to keep you in school back in home!”

  “Don’t make me think back that far,” Maybelle replied. “It gives me a headache. I never remember anything before the time when I crowded a few extra letters into my name. But it hasn’t been all a vacation. Ask any married woman if it’s easy. And I’ve been married five times … six, I mean. When I get my money, I’m going to get me a shack in the mountains where there’s nothing nearer to men than grizzly bears and mountain lions. That’s the way that I feel.”

  “You’ve got enough scalps to retire on,” I admitted. “So long, Maybelle.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Take off your pack and rest a while. What’s gone wrong on the ranch?”

  “Damn the cows and the ranch,” I say. “This is about a man, old-timer, and you can’t help.”

  “Can’t I?” she said. “Why, young fellow, I’m a professor in just that line of work. Tell Aunt Maybelle what’s on your mind. You look like a Methodist Sunday.”

  I gave her another look. It wasn’t that I really expected any solution from her. But I needed help so bad that I was willing to tell everybody how low I felt.

  We were standing in front of a hous
e with a ‘For Rent’ sign pasted inside the window. We sat down on the front steps.

  “You haven’t been here long,” I said, “but you’ve heard about Jigger Bunts?”

  She showed life right away.

  “The bandit? I know about him, of course.”

  “But you don’t know much, and nobody does except me and a few of the boys out at my ranch. If that bandit showed out there, do you know what way we’d act?”

  “Like the rest of the poor fish around here every time they hear his name mentioned,” said Maybelle. “You’d dive through the window or anywhere to get clear of him.”

  “You’re wrong, kid,” I said. “We’d shake hands all around, get out our best moonshine whiskey, and pull up an easy chair in front of the fire.”

  She blinked at me. “Since when have they had easy chairs on a ranch?” she asked.

  “Don’t get too literal,” I said. “I say that Jigger Bunts is the best-liked kid that was ever on that ranch.”

  “Did you say ‘kid?’” she said.

  “He’s about twenty,” I tell her.

  She put up her head and whistled.

  “Let me tell you the story all in a nutshell,” I went on.

  “I was drumming up a crew last fall for riding range on that ranch … which is the meanest bit of range in the world … and I picked up this Jigger Bunts. Old Sam Mitchell … the hound … had filled this tenderfoot Bunts full of talk about me. Told him that I once killed six or seven Indians in a fight …”

  “Six or seven?” gasped Maybelle.

  “Sure,” I said. “And the kid swallowed even that. He’s a fool about such stuff. He was going around looking for a hero, and Mitchell elected me to be the goat, you understand? I took this kid out on the ranch, and he went around worshipping me, wearing his clothes like me, and practicing with his Colt day and night to make himself half as good a shot as he thought I must be. And I got tired of the ruction, though it was keeping the whole crew of hands amused all winter long. Well, there were a lot of pictures of actresses and whatnot on the wall of that ranch house …”

  Maybelle yawned. “I know,” she said. “Men are a silly lot of tramps … thank God. Go on!”

  “One of these blew down, and on the inside scrap of paper there was a picture of a fancy-looking guy with a short black mustache waxed out at the ends and a flowing necktie, and all the rest. Louis Dalfieri was the name that was under the picture. And the idea come to me that it would be a grand joke to break the kid of worshipping me and start him to worshipping that ham movie actor. So that’s what I done. I told him one night how I had been licked fair and square by a man smaller than myself, and when he wouldn’t believe it, I pointed to the picture of Louis Dalfieri and told him that that was the man. It was a terrible shock to Jigger Bunts.”

  “It was a great gag,” Maybelle commented. “Go on.”

  “We started in, then … all of us … to telling Jigger what a terrible fighter and wonderful outlaw this Louis Dalfieri was. Oh, we worked that idea to the queen’s taste, understand? We told him how Dalfieri thought nothing of walking into a barroom and holding up the whole crowd … just for the sake of making the bartender set up the drinks. And how Dalfieri took from the rich and give to the poor. You see, we made a sort of a new Robin Hood out of that Dalfieri for the benefit of the kid. And he fell for the whole idea. In a day or so, he’d started in dressing himself up like Dalfieri’s picture and …”

  “The little fool!” Maybelle exclaimed.

  “No,” I said, pretty serious. “That’s where you are wrong … he ain’t a fool. And if you want proof, I’ll point you out to my gang on the ranch … all hard-boiled … and every one of them would die for the sake of that same kid. The most cheerfullest, best-natured, happy, smiling, willing kid that ever chopped wood for the fire on a snowy morning. Never seen anybody so willing to do a double share of work if he thought that it would help out a pal. A clean sport … white all the way through. But the trouble was that he carried his imitation too far, and after a while just dressing the part of Dalfieri wouldn’t be enough for him. And the result was that he started on the road. And when he goes cavorting around the mountains, holding folks up, and such things, he’s not being himself. He’s just aping Louis Dalfieri … his idea of a hero. You see?”

  Maybelle, she sat there with her eyes closed and her face wrinkled up with pain.

  “Oh, don’t I understand,” she said in a sort of a whisper. “Trying to be somebody else … trying to be somebody else.”

  “Don’t cry about it, Maybelle,” I said.

  “I’m not crying,” she says. “It just hurts too much for tears, and that’s all. Why, Tommy, there’s only one thing in the world for you to do.”

  “Go on, Solomon,” I said. “You can show me how to get Jigger out of this mess, I’ll be your slave for life. Because I got him into it in the first place.”

  “Shut up,” Maybelle said. “I thought I had the right idea, but it slipped away from me. Lemme think!” She sat there with her face in a knot.

  Pretty soon she begins: “This here is gonna give me wrinkles bad.” And then: “Tommy, what you got to do is to give this young fool something to be a knight about that is harmless to the rest of the world. You understand?”

  “No,” I said frankly. “I don’t.”

  “Why, what does a knight do?” Maybelle asks. “He goes around and fights dragons. And then he takes a day off and guards a treasure or something, or carts a message from one king to the next, in spite of the wizards and all such. Have you forgotten the fairy stories?”

  It began to dawn on me. But still it wasn’t clear.

  “Give him something to guard,” she said. “Something that really ain’t in any danger. You see? Or has he raised so much trouble that the law won’t let him alone? Has he killed men?”

  “Only one,” I told her, “and that was a low-down headhunter that needed killing. No, I think that the kid has a lot more friends than he has enemies. But he couldn’t show his face in public, you know.”

  She nodded, still biting her lip and thinking. “You said he was twenty?” she asked finally.

  “Yea.”

  “A baby!” she cried.

  “Not a baby, either,” I began, “but a hundred percent …”

  “Shut up!” Maybelle hisses. “All men are babies … and spoiled ones, too!” Then she says: “I’ll tell you what, Tommy, that boy needs a woman, and he needs her quick. No mere man could handle him. If he’s the sort of fire that you describe, the thing for you to do is to get hold of a mighty safe, mighty sweet girl with a level head on her shoulders and let him start guarding her, if he can. I gather it won’t make much difference even if there’s nothing to guard her from. You can just tell him that there is. Since you’ve started him into trouble with your lies, you’ll have to pull him out of danger again with more lies.”

  It sounded like sense. It hit me where I lived. I had to get up and walk around, exclaiming: “Maybelle, I think that you’ve hit the nail on the head, maybe! I feel that you’ve come close to it. But still, there’s something wrong. He’s got to have something to worship as well as something to guard. He’s got to think that he’s taking care of something that is really taking care of him.”

  She nodded. “You get me perfect,” Maybelle said.

  “But,” I said, “how are you going to make him think that there’s any danger at all in the way of one of these Western girls? A girl in this country never has anything to fear from men. Besides, no girl young enough and decent enough to make a wife for him would have the brains to handle him, and if there was any mistake made in the handling of that bunch of lightning, believe me, it would make an explosion that would just blast a few lives to hell and back again, and make no mistake about that! This kid is the concentrated essence of dynamite.”

  “Well, you want him to fall in l
ove with his grandmother?” snapped Maybelle, very peevish because her idea wasn’t panning out so very well.

  Then a light ripped across my mind. I thought it was an inspiration.

  “Maybelle,” I cried out, “you’re the girl! You’re the girl for Jigger Bunts!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Oh well, looking backward it is always easy to see where a man has made his mistakes. You can glance over the things that you did ten years ago and see where you were a fool and where you were pretty wise. And so I can see now how wild that idea was. But at the time, it looked really all right to me. I had to have a girl with looks, brains, and a sense of humor if I wanted one to handle the kid. And where could I find a better layout in all of these respects than in Maybelle Crofter Wayne, or whatever she happened to be calling herself at the time.

  Maybelle looked me up and down, and then she shrugged her shoulders like a man.

  “What a guy!” said Maybelle.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you too proud for the job?”

  “I’ve done a lot of stupid things, and a lot of crazy things,” said Maybelle, “and I’ve done my share of the bad things, too. But I’ve never used my face and my chatter to rob the cradle. Not yet I haven’t, and I’m not going to start on this baby to please you.”

  The idea that Maybelle herself would put any obstacles in my path made me mad. I couldn’t answer for a minute, while she went on.

  “The idiots that I’ve picked out and made simps of have always been old enough to know better. Something over thirty and something under fifty. That’s my motto. I’ve never even soft-soaped the old baldies, or googled baby talk at ’em. Sure I’m bad. Sure I’m wicked, Tommy. But I got rules. The fight has got to be straight Marquess of Queensberry, or nothing doing.”

  She was funny that way. You never knew how she was coming at you. Always something unexpected. You might talk to her a hundred years, but on the last day, she would flabbergast you with something that you’d never guessed about her before.