by Max Brand
“When you’ve got two hands to use!” shouted Rankin suddenly, “I’ll come back and get you when there’s nothing between us! Jingo, we ain’t at the end of the road!”
He was out of the water and on the shore. He turned once at the side of a boulder and shook his fist at the pair who stood wavering in the stream. Then the great bulk of the Parson swept up on Jingo and the girl and bore them ashore.
CHAPTER 26
The Return
They got pack mules from the ranch. That was the way the wounded were taken back to the Tyrrel place. Boyd was gone with his smashed face; Jake Rankin was gone, too, and they took the horses with them. Only Lizzie was left, for the good reason that even Rankin understood that she was useless except to her master.
It was on the back of Lizzie that the Parson placed Jingo, irons and all. He walked beside the big mare, leading her. A strange picture he made with the huge bandage that had been twisted around his body. But he kept laughing, in spite of the pain.
Wheeler Bent had been picked out of the edge of the stream, living indeed, but with a dozen bones broken in his body. He was packed on one mule, and Oliver, hovering between life and death, went up on another. The judge was there in person to supervise everything. The girl was there, too, being quick and efficient with her hands in the dressing of wounds, saying little, but now and again hunting out Jingo with her eyes.
That was how the procession went back to the ranch house finally, with Jingo in irons, but leading the way with the Parson.
When they got to the ranch, Farrell came with some files out of the blacksmith shop and began to cut the manacles from Jingo’s hands and feet. The files screeched on terrible, grinding notes, but no one minded the noise. No one minded anything, except that tragedy had come and gone again.
There were a good many things to remember.
The torn flesh of the forearms of the Parson was one picture that would not be forgotten. When they were bandaged, he refuse to go to bed. A big Indian blanket was huddled around his torso, and he sat up and drank whisky out of big tumblers. Every breath he drew must have tormented his flesh, but he would not notice pain.
He kept shouting out: “Here’s to Jingo; long may he jingle, and never jangle! Here’s to you, Jingo, old son!”
The girl sat close to the Parson, and kept looking him in the face, nodding and smiling as though every moment she were discovering more matter for wonder.
But he had not so much as a glance for her. When the irons at last were filed off the hands and ankles of Jingo, the Parson scooped them up off the floor and hurled them to the roof, high up among the shadowy beams. They fell again with a crash, but even Judge Tyrrel appreciated this jest.
Afterward the cook came in with word that Wheeler Bent was asking for Jingo.
“For me?” said Jingo. “No; he may be asking for the devil, but he’s never asking for me.”
“It’s you that he wants to see,” said the cook.
So Jingo, after one almost frightened glance around the room, went off to the chamber, where Bent was lying. They had put his legs and arms in splints. He was swathed in bandages. One side of his face was frightfully swollen and discolored where a fist of the Parson had glanced from the flesh. The effect of the blow had been sufficient to close one eye completely, and even the bright little golden mustache seemed dim and was twisted awry. The other eye held steadily on Jingo.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I’ve got a few words to say to you, Jingo.”
Jingo tried to find some honest word in his heart. None was there, and he could only hold silence.
“I wanted to say,” said Wheeler Bent, “that I’m glad it turned out this way. I don’t care how long the prison term may be. I’m going to be glad that it turned out this way. It’s better—it’s a sight better to be in jail than to be a murderer and free to walk about.”
Jingo came suddenly closer and looked down into the battered face. “By the leaping old thunder,” said Jingo, “sometimes it takes a lot of hammering to make the steel right.” He held out his hand.
The one eye of Wheeler Bent widened. “Do you mean it?” he asked. “Don’t do it unless you mean it.”
“I mean it,” said Jingo. And he shook hands with Wheeler Bent.
“Will you tell Gene?” asked Wheeler Bent.
“I’ll tell her everything,” said Jingo.
“Then,” said Wheeler Bent, “I’m halfway out of hell already!”
It was not many days after this that the Parson lay aslant in the longest and widest double bed in the house of Judge Tyrrel. Lying in this fashion, he was barely able to give himself sufficient room to lie straight. There was gloom in the heart of the Parson, but since a slight fever persisted, the doctor had insisted that he remain in bed for another day or two.
Judge Tyrrel, seated near the window, was helping the Parson to kill time. “And as for you, Parson,” said the judge finally, “what is there that I can do for you?”
The Parson considered for a long time. At last he shook his head and answered: “I gotta wear my own clothes. I can’t put on the other gent’s coat, or his ideas, neither. And I can’t shorten up my step, neither, to the walk other gents walk. There’d be only one thing you could do for me, and that would be to turn Jingo loose to go on the trail with me again. Well, I reckon you can’t do that. I reckon that nobody is ever going to be able to turn Jingo loose again.”
Out of the distance just then came a sudden chorus of laughter from a woman’s voice and a man’s.
“No, I guess nobody ever will be able to do that,” said the judge.