by Max Brand
Even in the tingling fear of that crisis, Wheeler Bent noticed that there was no outcry from Jingo. And that seemed strange. He would have expected the snarling of a fighting wild cat. Instead there was only the noise of scuffling and the gasping and grunting of laboring men.
Then a perfect silence followed. Jingo lay on the ground, trussed hand and foot.
“That’s easier than I figgered it would be,” said the voice of Jake Rankin, as he stood up again.
“Yeah,” said another, “but if the Parson had yipped a quarter of a second sooner, it wouldn’t ’a’ been easier for a couple of us. We’d ’a’ been too dead to worry about how we went out. That’s my way of seeing it!”
“Get the irons on him,” said Rankin.
One of the men stepped away.
“Give us a patch of light,” went on Rankin.
One of his helpers struck a match and kindled, with the little crackling flame, a handful of dry twigs. It burned up like a torch. The gentle wind leaned the fire to one side, and in the utter silence, Wheeler Bent could hear the soft fluttering of the flame.
By that light, he saw the Parson, his immense body swathed in rope, his hands tied behind his back. He seemed so powerful that it was a wonder that ropes which could hold a horse were able to hold him. There should be a series of loud bursting noises as the ropes flew to pieces and the giant sprang up to battle.
A man with the pointed face of a rat and bright little hungry eyes came from down the hill, carrying a jingle of irons. He kneeled beside Jingo and began to fit the irons on him.
And a sudden excess of joy rushed over the heart of Wheeler Bent, making him exclaim: “You’ve done a great job, Rankin! You’re a real man catcher.”
“Now, I’ve got him, where you want him delivered?” asked Rankin.
“Wait a moment, boys,” said the calm voice of Jingo. “Is Bent behind this job?”
“Behind it? He is it!” exclaimed the Parson. “The dirty pup hired Rankin to get us. They grabbed me here, from behind. I was watching the house, Jingo. I wouldn’t ’a’ thought of something coming from behind. And they dropped right onto me. They dropped out of the sky on me, and tied me up in a bundle.”
“And Wheeler Bent is the paymaster, eh?” said Jingo softly. “Oh, I’m a soft-headed fool!”
Bent came closer. His body was quivering. There had been electric fear in him, then triumph, and now he found himself wanting to enjoy sufferings. “You see,” he said, as he stood over Jingo, “what a fool I would have been to fight you?”
Jingo looked up at him with a smile such as Bent had never endured before from any man. A savage impulse made Bent lean and strike the flat of his hand into the face of Jingo. The blow made a loud, popping sound. The sound and the feel of the flesh under his fingers sent long thrills through the body of Wheeler Bent.
He drew back his hand again, and suspended the weight of it, ready. He was thinking of what effect this scene would make upon Judge Tyrrel and upon the daughter of the judge, if they could look in on it. He enjoyed considering that effect. It seemed to Wheeler Bent that there was one simple solution to all the problems of life, and that was to have at one’s beck and call trustworthy men, savage, wolfish men, who obey because it is worth their while.
These things were in the mind of Wheeler Bent. He was ready to strike the face of Jingo again, because the smile continued there. But his arm was caught by Jake Rankin, who said: “Don’t sock that hombre while he’s down. He ain’t that kind. He’s a straight up-and-up fighter. Don’t poke him in the face again while his hands are tied.”
“I’ll do what I want with him. I’ve bought him and paid for him,” gasped Wheeler Bent. His own voice was new to him. It was huskier and pitched on a deeper note than of old.
“Yeah, and that’s all right,” said Jake Rankin. “But don’t sock him again when he’s down. I don’t like it.”
Jake Rankin did not like it? Well, in the future days, when the fortune of Judge Tyrrel was at his command, he would have men who would not dare to question him on how he lifted his hand.
But for the present?
There was something in Jake’s manner of speaking that made Wheeler Bent step back though an unsatisfied appetite was still raging in him. Strange to say, he felt the throb of a recurrent pain on the side of his jaw, where the fist of Jingo had gone home the night before. He knew, suddenly, that he could enjoy shredding away the body of this man to small bits and pieces. He wanted nothing in the world so much as a chance to wring one shriek of agony from Jingo. Above all, he saw in the eyes of Jingo a perfect understanding of him, and that maddened Wheeler Bent more than ever.
He could hardly hear the voice of Rankin, saying: “What’s to happen to this pair of hombres?”
“Take them—somewhere. Hold ’em!” said Wheeler Beat “I want—to see Jingo—again.” Brutal words came to him, but he kept them back.
Rankin said: “Put him out of the way and hold him? You dunno what you’re talking about. But I understand this hombre, old son. I understand him like a book!”
Rankin kept on nodding his head. “You can’t keep a pair like this. You can’t keep ’em long, I mean. They’ll find ways of busting loose. A pair like this, you’d need ten men to watch ’em, day and night. You gotta do something else with ’em.”
“What do you mean?” snapped Wheeler Bent.
“Yeah—and you know what I mean,” answered Rankin.
The cruel fury swelled in the throat of Wheeler Bent again. “Then—bash in their heads here and now!” he said.
Rankin looked at him curiously.
Boyd, the rat-faced man, and Oliver, the bulldog, drew close to the shoulders of their chief and stared at Wheeler Bent. They seemed to understand very intimately what they saw there.
“Bump off the pair of ’em right here,” said Rankin, “where we leave a lot of footprints and stuff like that behind us? No, Bent. I ain’t such a fool. We gotta take ’em to another place. And that’s where we’ll finish ’em. Got any good place in mind?”
And suddenly Wheeler Bent saw the place. He seemed to have known it from the first. Above the house, where the canyon of the creek narrowed, where the water gathered headway as through a flume, there were many great boulders strewn about, and the whole place looked as though it had been produced by an explosion that had rent through the base of the mountain and left vast fragments scattered here and there.
“Go up the canyon of the creek,” said Wheeler Bent. “And—and hold ’em there for a while. Will you? Up the canyon of the creek. You’ll come to a place where the water’ll chew up their bodies against the rocks. Chew ’em up so small that there won’t be a trace left afterwards. There’ll be moonlight, a little later. You’ll be able to see what you’re doing. Take ’em there—and hold ’em.”
“Why hold ’em?” asked Rankin, still staring curiously.
“Because I’ve got to go back to the house now, and explain that Jingo has gone away—with the Parson! And I won’t be able to tell where they’ve gone!” He laughed hoarsely.
“Hold ’em up the canyon, and when I get a chance, I’ll come up there and see the last of ’em. I’ve got to make sure. I’ve got to see what happens!”
CHAPTER 21
The Canyon
Wheeler Bent went straight back to the house. He paused only an instant at the door and when he entered the room, he was laughing.
“Where’s Jingo? Where’s the Parson?” asked Judge Tyrrel.
Wheeler Bent dissolved the heartiness of his laughter into a mere chuckling sound. “There’s a wild pair for you, Judge Tyrrel,” he said. “When I got out there, I saw the Parson, looking as big as a house, and told him that you wanted him in for supper. ‘That’s all right,’ said the Parson, and pulled Jingo aside, and muttered something at his ear. Jingo seemed excited. ‘Where are they?’ he asked. At that, the Parson whispered something else. ‘We’ll go and get them now! We’ll burn ’em up!’ said Jingo.
“And with that,
he jumped a horse and simple sang out to me: ‘Tell the judge that I forgot I had a previous engagement!’ And he and the Parson went galloping off. They’re as wild as a pair of hawks!”
“Hawks are not half as wild,” said the judge. “Well, I was young myself, in the old days, but I was never half as young as that. What do you think of it, Eugenia?”
The girl stood by the fireplace where the uneven flooding of the light threw continual shadows over her face. She said nothing at all in answer to her father but looked straight at Wheeler Bent as though she were thinking about him rather than seeing his face.
“What is it?” asked the judge. “Come now, Eugenia. What’s in that brain of yours?”
She shook her head. “I was simply wondering,” she said, “what might be the point of Wheeler’s joke.”
“Wheeler’s joke?” said Judge Tyrrel.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t think that Jingo is galloping anywhere, just now.”
“Great Scott, Gene,” said Wheeler Bent, “what do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m just doing a little wondering.”
Wheeler Bent was silent. He stared at the girl with half-closed eyes, for suddenly it came over him that Jingo was as like this girl as though he had been born her twin. Their coloring was different, but they had the same slenderly rounding beauty of body, the same look of swift-handed surety, the same sheen of the eyes, the smile that meant nothing but delight in life. Now that the idea had come to Wheeler Bent, by looking at the girl, he was able to conjure up the ghost of Jingo beside her. And he was mortally glad that the last hours of Jingo were now ending. Only a little time from this and if he were seen, it would have to be his ghost, indeed.
Not long after that, a procession moved up the canyon of the creek, Jake Rankin riding first with his Winchester balanced across the bow of his saddle, and behind him came the Parson with his hands still lashed behind his back, his feet tied under the belly of his mare, and her lead rope fastened to Rankin’s saddle.
After them came Jingo with the irons on his wrists and on his ankles. Therefore he had to ride aside in his saddle, and he was very simply secured by means of a lariat whose slip noose was about his throat, the other end of the rope being fastened about the horn of his saddle. If he slipped from his place on the restless horse, he would be quickly throttled, and since his hands were not free, he had only his sense of balance to preserve him in the saddle. This had been the device of Jake Rankin.
“You been used to walking a tight rope all your life, partner,” he had said to Jingo. “You might just as well continue to keep on walking one right up to the very end, as I see it.”
“Of course I might,” Jingo had answered.
On either side of Jingo, watching with keen eyes lest he should free himself by some stroke of magic, rode Boyd, the rat-faced man, and Oliver, the bulldog. They kept smiling—the sort of smiles that stretch the lips without wrinkling the eyes. They felt, when they looked at their prisoner, that they were eating the food of the gods.
The moon was up now. And since the canyon turned straight toward the east, the pale light flooded the ravine and gilded the nakedness of the rocks as though rain were falling and every stone were polished with wetness.
“Here we are,” said Jake Rankin at last. “This is the spot that Bent picked out. I gotta say that hombre has an eye in his head. Look around you, Jingo. Here’s where you pass out, brother.”
Jingo took the advice and looked around him. They were in the midst of a junk heap, and the boulders were the junk. It looked as though some incredible stream of water had blasted a way through the mountain range as the jet from a hose cuts through a light heap of dust. That force seemed to have cleared the mountains in a cleancut line, and here were scattered the fragments—rocks the size of a house.
The creek that ran at their feet was a thin trickle left over after the deluge. The moonlight showed the rapidity with which the whirlings drifted down the course of the creek, and from the troubled surface of the stream, mild flickerings of moonlight kept at play over the rocks, like the ghost of a dancing fire.
Just below this wider point, the creek gathered in a narrow flume that sucked in the water with an audible sound. For a considerable distance the current shot through a deep decline and hurled out on the other side among more rocks, where the water was shattered to a white froth.
“Look at it, Jingo,” said Jake Rankin. “This here is a regular machine. Regular combination harvester. We tap you birds over the head and drop you into this here end of the run, and the water pulls you right down the shoot to where the machinery chews you up fine. There ain’t going to be no testimony left. Maybe a button or a fingernail might float ashore, somewhere further down the line. But not much. Not enough to start nobody thinking.”
“It’s certainly a surprise to me,” said Jingo.
“What’s a surprise?” asked Jake Rankin.
He undid the lariat from the pommel of the saddle, as he spoke, and allowed Jingo to slide, with a jangling of irons, to the ground. Now Jingo looked around him again, his head held cheerfully high.
“It’s a surprise to run across so many brains in a fellow with a mustache like Wheeler Bent’s,” said Jingo.
Jake Rankin, laughing, made answer: “You never can tell. He’ll change when he gets older. There’s some men that change their mugs the way pretty girls do when they put on ten years. This bird Wheeler Bent, he’s going to look like what he is in a little while. And when he does, the snakes are going to run to get away from his poison. Set down, Jingo, and make yourself at home. You’ll be gone before you know it.”
“Thanks,” said Jingo. “This rock was made to order for me.”
He sat down not far from the edge of the water, while the Parson sat down cross-legged on a patch of pebbles near by, with his back against a rock.
“Looka, Parson,” said Jake Rankin, with something like kindness in his voice, “you got your back up agin’ the edge of that rock. You ain’t going to be comfortable there.”
“I like it better this way,” said the Parson. “I need something sharp to dig into me, because that’s the only way I’ll be sure that I ain’t dreaming.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Rankin. “Are you taking this hard, old son?”
“Me?” said the Parson. “Sure, I ain’t taking it hard. But it’s kind of like a dream. It’s so like a dream that I’m going to be dropping away to sleep before long. I mean—the idea that you gents could ’a’ got Jingo and me so dead easy!”
“Yeah,” said Jake Rankin. “I looked for a lot more trouble. Sit down, boys, and keep your eyes on things, will you?”
Boyd and Oliver sat down, facing Jingo. They had an occasional eye for the Parson, but, in spite of the irons that held Jingo, he was their main concern.
“We oughta get the job over with,” said Boyd, making his eyes smaller and brighter than ever.
“What’s eating you, kid?” asked Jake Rankin.
“Nothing. Except that Jingo looks so cheerful that it kind of gets on my nerves. It kind of gets me worried. We’d oughta finish him off right now!”
“Quit being worried,” said Jake Rankin.
He added, as he fished a key out of a pocket: “Look at this here! Them are old-fashioned irons, and Jingo ain’t going to get clear of them unless they’re sawed through or unlocked. And so there go his chances of any funny work!” He tossed the key into the air. It flickered in the moonlight, made a spark of brightness on the surface of the water, and was gone.
“Yeah,” said Boyd, “but suppose that this hombre passes his hands out through the handcuffs. I’ve heard of that.”
“You’ve heard of folks that could make their hands smaller than their wrists? I’ve heard of it, too,” said Jake Rankin. “But not hands like Jingo’s, that have some muscle in ’em! Jingo, you ever seen a growed-up man that could slip a pair of handcuffs?”
“One,” said Jingo, after a moment of thought.
“Yeah, and maybe not more’n one in the world,” answered Rankin. “But you boys keep on watching Jingo, and the more nervouser you are, the closer you’ll watch him. We can’t finish off the job now.”
“Why not?” asked Oliver.
“Because our boss wants to see the job done,” answered Rankin. “Don’t forget that Wheeler Bent wants to see these hombres wiped out. And he’s paying plenty good money to see the party, too. And suppose we pass this pair into the machine before he comes; he might say that we’ve only turned ’em loose in the hills. No, we gotta wait!”
Boyd grunted. He pulled out a big Colt, laid it on his knee, and pointed it straight at Jingo. “All right,” said Boyd. “We’re going to keep you here till the boss shows up. But if you make any funny move—well, he’s going to have to see you dead instead of alive. Savvy?”
“I follow your drift,” said Jingo. He even smiled as he spoke, and then, looking past Boyd, he was aware that the shoulders of the Parson were stirring slowly up and down, and his elbows seemed to be inching up and down little by little, also.
He thought at first, with a shock, that it was mere nervousness, but the regularity of the motion convinced him that it was something more.
Then he could understand.
The Parson had not chosen to put his back against the sharp edge of that rock for any casual reason. He wanted the ragged corner of the boulder to use as a saw for scraping through the strands of the ropes that held his wrists together behind his back!
CHAPTER 22
The Judge’s Story
Time went on strangely in the house of Judge Tyrrel. The judge told an excellent story of his early mining days, and how he had grubstaked for ten years a gloomy old sourdough who turned in not a single penny worth of profit.