Fightin' Fool

by Max Brand

  Instantly it was answered by a rustling of bedclothes. A footfall pressed the floor with a sense of weight rather than a sound. Then, not far from Bent, a voice murmured: “Well? What’s up?”

  “I want to talk to you on the quiet.”

  “Go back to the woodshed. There’s a lantern inside it. Light that. I’ll get there as soon as I’ve got some clothes on me.”

  Bent pulled his head out of the darkness, feeling as though he had leaned into a wolf’s cave where the brute lay asleep, but with senses attuned to the first warning whisper.

  Behind the house, Bent found the shed, the door sagging open. He lighted a match. From the cup of his hand he threw the light over the heap of stove wood, and over, the dusty glimmer of the spider webs, like old, sagging sails. The gray of them filled the space between the rafters. Then the light glinted on the chimney of a lantern, which he set going.

  He had hardly hung the lantern back on the wall before man of more than middle size, his flannel shirt well filled with a padding of muscles, his face like the heavy-jawed but jointed face of a wolf, stepped through the doorway and looked silently at him.

  A chill sprang out of the ground and ran trembling up the spinal column of Wheeler Bent. “My name is Wheeler Bent,” he said.

  The stranger nodded and said nothing. As though he felt that it would be foolish to mention his own name; as though the entire world must know that he was Jake Rankin.

  “And you’re Jake Rankin?” asked Wheeler Bent.

  Rankin nodded again. His jaw muscles were working a little; his eyes were working, also.

  “I’ve come here to talk business with you,” said Wheeler Bent.

  Then, as his host nodded again, a sort of breathless despair came over Bent. He said: “You want the scalp of Jingo, so do I.”

  At this Rankin grinned suddenly. It made his face even more formidable than before. “I heard about things that happened at the dance,” he said. “I heard that Jingo might ’a’ been there. Nobody else would ’a’ had the nerve, I guess.” His voice was rather high, but it was also husky. He sounded as though he could sing a loud and brazen tenor. When he had finished speaking, his jaws continued to work a little, as though he were masticating the last of a mouthful.

  “They don’t come in parcels—not gents like Jingo,” he said.

  “You like him?” asked Wheeler Bent, amazed.

  Rankin looked away in thought. “I dunno,” he said at last. “I been around a good bit, and I’ve seen a lot of folks, but I dunno that I ever clapped my eyes on anybody that I ever liked as well as I like Jingo.”

  All the wind went out of Wheeler Bent as he answered: “Well—that’s all right, then.”

  “Sure, it’s all right. Who said that it wasn’t all right?”

  “Nobody,” answered Bent. “Only I thought—I thought that you were after his scalp!”

  “Sure I am,” answered Rankin calmly. “That’s all right, too. I want his scalp, and I’m going to get it, but there’s going to be a big red spot on the trail when the pair of us meet. What’s your slice in the game?”

  “I want to know when you start on the trail.”

  “Not now. My kid brother is all bashed up. Jingo done the bashing, and that’s why I’m going to get Jingo. But I gotta stay here on the job. I gotta keep the meat in the pantry and help around the house till Wally is straightened out—as straight as he’s ever going to be again.”

  “That’s where I come in. I give you enough cash to fix you and the family.”

  “That’s where you come in, is it? What would you call fixing?”

  “You know what money you need for your family. I’ll give you that much, and then you’re free for the trail.”

  “I’d want a thousand,” said Rankin, narrowing his eyes as he entered upon the bargaining.

  “A thousand would be all right,” declared Wheeler Bent.

  “There’s other expenses,” continued Rankin.

  “What are they? I thought you simply wanted to be free.”

  “Jingo is traveling with a big whale of a gent called the Parson. A gent that could eat a feller like you or me at a coupla meals. I’d need a couple of good men to cancel the Parson. I’d need to hire ’em.”

  “What would they cost?” asked Wheeler Bent nervously.

  “I dunno. Maybe another thousand apiece.”

  “That makes three thousand altogether!” exclaimed Bent.

  “No. Not altogether. There’s the cost of three good horses, too. And there’s saddles and fixings, all around, and a margin to work on. It’d come to around about five thousand.”

  Bent groaned. “It’s too much. It’s robbery!” said he.

  “It’s robbery. It’s murder!”

  Bent started. But there was plenty of metal in him. And he kept thinking of the strange, new light that had come glimmering into the eyes of the girl when she had spoken of young Jingo.

  Rankin went on explaining: “Nobody would be fool enough to hit the trail of Jingo and the Parson unless there was good money in it. Jingo ain’t been in town a whole day, but he’s gone and built himself a pretty tidy little reputation. Understand? I’d want to pick my men first. And afterward I’d want to be able to pay ’em what they ask. Suppose one of those gents wanted two or three thousand—I’d be out of luck, wouldn’t I? No, I’m making it cheap when I say five thousand. Eight or ten thousand would be more like it.”

  Wheeler Bent looked through the blackness of the door. His mind took a hop, skip, and jump, and suddenly he pulled out the wallet which had been once in the hands of Jingo that night, but which had remained unopened. “I have two thousand here that I can give you,” he said. “Will you trust me for the rest—when the job’s done?”

  “Trust you?” said Jake Rankin. “Man, of course I’ll trust you. You wouldn’t run out on an honest debt to old Jake Rankin, I guess.” And his narrow mouth parted, and Bent watched the flash of his teeth as he laughed.

  CHAPTER 12

  Judge Tyrrel

  Judge Tyrrel had filled his mind with a good many different interests, but to the end he retained the essential character of a cattleman. He had begun his life riding range, and he hoped to end his days on the range, also. Often he had to be away from his ranch for months at a time, but he always tried to get out into the hills at this season, when hay was being hauled in to fill the big barns and assure a supply of winter feed for the stock.

  In some of his other phases he had to dress and talk politely. But when he was on his ranch, he liked to let everything slip. Even his house was more barn than dwelling. He had built four big barns, end to end, and just when he finished building them, the rickety old ranch house burned down. Another man of the judge’s wealth would have seized on the occasion to work out with a good architect the plans for a great mansion in the hills, but the judge was a practical fellow, and he hated show.

  Therefore, since by stowing away the hay carefully, three barns could be made to serve in the place of four, he had the fourth altered a bit to make it into a house. The ends of the buildings were chopped up into boxlike rooms, three stories of them. The central part of the great mow was left open. It made the living room, the dining room, the assembly hall of the house. The floor of it was simply the compacted earth. Ranges of intercrossing, unpainted tiebeams and struts filled the gloom with confusion overhead when lamps were lighted of an evening; and there was a great fireplace built against one wall in which whole logs could be consumed.

  The more polite of the judge’s friends were a bit shocked when they were brought into such a “living room,” but it exactly pleased the judge.

  Better than the house, he liked the saddle; and when he had ranged over the wide miles of the ranch through the day, almost best of all he enjoyed some time at the end of the day sitting under the enormous spruce that grew in front of his barn house. Usually those huge trees are found in two’s and three’s near some creek, standing in the midst of a forest that shrinks back from the regal presenc
e; but this giant stood by itself, drooping its branches of tufted silver-blue. Judge Tyrrel had a good friend and a daughter he loved, but nothing in the world was in his thoughts as often as the great silver spruce at Blue Water. And as he sat in a canvas chair under the vast branches on this afternoon, he felt that the tree was aware of him, as he was aware of the tree.

  He could sit at the head of a long table, surrounded by important directors, and never be aware of half the power that was his as he lounged in the canvas chair under the great Colorado spruce. For many years ago he had gripped the bare sides of his mustang with his bare legs, and looked at the tree, and listened to the talking of the creek, and told himself that one day his ranch house would stand on the spot. That was why the place was dreamlike to him. All that he saw from his chair fitted into the vision, from the mountains, huddled into their forests as into ragged furs, with shining white mantles over their heads and shoulders, to the distant town of Blue Water, which was vainly trying to make an important smoke in the lower valley.

  The face of the judge remained smooth and young, though he was just sixty; but the weight of a great, pyramidal brow bent his head continually forward and showed the sparseness of the silvering hair. His neck was growing thin, also, and even the thickness of his flannel shirt could not cover up the boniness of his shoulders. He had a bandanna around his throat, blue jeans on his legs, and high-heeled range boots on his feet. He looked like a cow-puncher well over his years of efficient labor, and ready to retire to days of ease.

  As he sat in the canvas chair, he used the keen edge of his pocketknife to pare away thin, translucent shavings from a stick of soft pine. Now and then he lifted his weighty brow and looked at the mountains, or at the glimmering windows of Blue Water; now and then he gave a glance to the two people near him, his daughter and young Wheeler Bent. She sat cross-legged, with her back against the vast brown knuckle of a root of the tree, which broke out from the ground.

  But Wheeler Bent was standing for two reasons. One was that he thought his golden hair and golden mustache looked their best with a background of blue sky to set them off. The more important reason was that Wheeler Bent was about to be noble, and anyone knows that it is better to be standing straight when on a noble stage.

  Judge Tyrrel said: “Now, tell me, what about all this?”

  “Go on, father,” said the girl. “All what?”

  “Wheeler,” he demanded, without lifting his eyes from his whittling, “did Gene carry on and make a fool of herself with a young feller down there in Tower Creek?”

  When the judge came to his ranch he put formal language and formal grammar as far from him as he put formal clothes. He made himself easy in his speech.

  Wheeler Bent lifted his golden head a little higher. “Of course not,” he said. “Eugenia couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t what?” asked the judge.

  “Couldn’t make a—” stammered Wheeler Bent. “Couldn’t make a—a fool of herself.”

  “Couldn’t she?” asked the judge.

  “She is your daughter, sir,” said Wheeler Bent.

  “Wheeler,” said the judge, “I’ve been a fool most of my days, and when I was her age I was the greatest fool in the world. I was worth traveling to see, I was such a big fool. You could ’a’ called me ‘Old Faithful,’ I was a fool so regular and so often.” He shook his glorious head and went on with his whittling.

  The girl said nothing. She had her bare, brown elbow resting on her knee, and her brown chin was cupped in her hand as she turned her head a little from the young man to her father, watching. The great spruce shed its fragrance over her and allowed golden handfuls of sunshine to slip through its branches and spill over her continually. There was a moment of silence, in which the speaking of the creek seemed to grow louder and to approach them with its presence.

  “You, speaking personal and for yourself,” said the judge, “haven’t anything to complain about down there in Tower Creek, Wheeler? Nothing you could say against Gene?”

  The young man lifted his head higher still. He wanted his pose to be remembered. For this was his chance to be his noblest, and he wanted to take advantage of it. “No, sir,” said he. “I haven’t a word to say against Gene—of course!”

  The judge lifted his head for half a second. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I didn’t think it was as bad as that. I didn’t think she’d been so bad that her friends had to lie about her. Gene, stand up here.”

  “I’d rather take it sitting,” said Eugenia Tyrrel.

  “You’re a lazy young loafer,” said the judge, holding out for his own admiration a transparent shaving half a yard in length. “You’re a lazy, spoiled, random young whippersnapper, Gene.”

  “I ought to be pitied,” said the girl. “I’ve been spoiled. Only children always ought to be pitied. I read that in a book somewhere.”

  “Spanking is better for them than pitying,” said the judge. He looked suddenly at Wheeler Bent. “I’m pleased with what you’ve done, Wheeler,” he said. “I’m pleased with what you’ve just said. I was afraid that there might be a mean streak in you—and I’m glad that you don’t carry any grudges back from Tower Creek. You go inside and get the fire started, will you? It’s going to be chilly this evening.”

  Wheeler Bent went toward the barn house, stepping stiffly, for his spinal column was congealing with happiness.

  “Now for me,” said Eugenia, lying back in greater comfort against the root of the tree.

  “Speak up and tell me,” said her father.

  “What’s the use? You know. You know everything. You always do!”

  “Do you think I spy on you?” he asked suddenly.

  “Great heavens!” said the girl. “Of course you don’t!”

  “Thanks, Gene,” said he. “But there’s always a lot of earthworms and insects buzzing around anxious to carry favor with a rich man by telling him things. You know that I’m a rich man, Gene?”

  “Of course I know that.”

  “You know that I’m very rich?”

  “Yes. I know that, too.”

  “You know that I’m too rich?”

  She sat up and looked straight at him. “Well?” she said.

  “I’m too rich. And I’ve only got one child, and I’m sixty years old. Understand?”

  She was silent.

  “And,” he went on, “I care about that one child so much that when a lot of busybody fools come to me whispering, I have to listen to what they say. This time they’ve said quite a lot. Well, I’ve never talked to you like this before, and I’ll never talk like this again. You can have as free a rein as you want, but I know that you’ll think about what it means to me now and then. That’s all I’ll say.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Judge’s Orders

  What her father had said was so important that the girl had to think it over for a time. She watched the slow motion of the knife as it was drawn through the wood; she saw the curling filament of the shaving that separated from the stick; then she said: “Do you want me to tell you everything?”

  “If you think it’s wise,” he answered. “Remember that I’m a hard man and a stern man, and a man of action, Gene. If I don’t like what I hear from you, I’m reasonably sure to try to do something about it. And what I attempt to do may be pretty radical.”

  She thought that over for a moment, then she said: “Well, no matter what you have to do about it, you must know exactly what’s happened. I’m going to tell you.”

  He went on whittling. His face looked younger than ever, but the eyes were darker and deeper hollows. Increasing years simply made him seem a man who is a trifle ill, or who is convalescing.

  She said: “Everything you’ve heard from the gossips is true, and a lot they haven’t heard is true, too. A man walked in on the dance—a man the sheriff wanted to keep out of it. He made another fellow introduce him to me, and he sat down and talked. I liked him a lot. The sheriff appeared and ran him through a window. After a while h
e got Wheeler away from me and knocked him cold, and took his clothes and his mask, and walked in through the door again as though he were Wheeler. He came up and talked to me. I knew it wasn’t Wheeler, of course. But I danced with him.”

  Judge Tyrrel stopped his whittling, folded his knife, put it into a pocket, and slipped his hands around one knee. Braced to this manner, in a poised position, he looked out of the darkness of his brows at the girl and waited for the rest of her story.

  She saw that he was moved, and she was frightened, but she went on: “Well, I danced with him. He told me that Wheeler hadn’t been hurt. He said that he would call on me to-day, before night. Before the twilight ended, he would call on me. Here!” She stopped and waited.

  After a time the judge said: “The name of him is Jingo, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “I don’t know. He says that his real name is only for the girl that marries him.”

  “Perhaps you’re that girl,” suggested the judge.

  The calmness of his voice increased her fear. Suddenly she regretted the frankness with which she had talked to him, and she remembered many a story she had heard of grim things which he had done in business. People who stood in his way were simply pushed aside. That was always the fashion of the judge.

  She thought of the bright and fearless figure of Jingo, and she thought of the calm and resistless strength of her father’s mind. If the two ever met in conflict, what would happen? Out of the distance there was a groaning sound as a big load of hay came down the road, the brakes shuddering against the iron tires.

  The judge said again: “Perhaps Jingo intends to honor you with his hand, Gene?” The irony in his voice and words terrified her more than ever.

  “Don’t you see, father,” she said, “that it’s all a joke? He’s just a wild, irresponsible, careless fellow.”

  “The sort of a character that the sheriff of the county doesn’t wish to allow into a dance hall,” said Tyrrel. “Why did the sheriff want to keep him out?”