Jingo

by Brand, Max; Burns, Traber;

  “Now for me,” Eugenia said, 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,” he said. “But there’s always a lot of earthworms and insects buzzing around anxious to curry 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 Thirteen

  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.

  Finally 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 he 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 in 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 today, 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 that 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?”

  “Well, there had been a fight that day. Jingo was in it.”

  “What sort of a fight?”

  “With guns,” she admitted. She hated to go on. She could see how her father would judge the thing.

  “Where was the fight?” Tyrrel asked.

  “In a saloon ... in Tower Creek.” Then she went on rapidly: “The other fellow was cheating at cards. Jingo shot him. After the other man had pulled a gun. It was just self-defense.”

  The judge raised his hand, saying: “When you’re older, you’ll hear other stories of men who shoot down others in self-defense. Cold-blooded rascals who spend half their time practicing with guns and know that they can depend on their skill. Men against whom an ordinary honest citizen has no chance. No more chance than a pigeon has against a hawk.”

  “Jingo wouldn’t spend half his time practicing at any sort of work,” she declared.

  The dark brows of her father were turned constantly toward her.

  “Afterward,” he said, “when he had shot down his man, he wanted more amusement, and it seemed to him a good idea to go to the dance and defy the sheriff and take for his dancing partner my daughter. He tricked the sheriff out of the way once. The next time he got your escort away from you, knocked him senseless, took his clothes, and paraded past the sheriff a second time. And you were willing to dance with the blackguard?”

  The words were emphatic enough, but not once was the voice of the judge lifted. She saw how things were going. She wished heartily that she had not made her free confession.

  “And then,” said the judge, “the brazen scoundrel has the effrontery to tell you that he intends to call on you before tonight. Is that it?”

  “It’s just a sort of game with him,” the girl tried to explain. “He doesn’t mean ...”

  “Eugenia,” said the judge, “I want you to be perfectly honest with me. Do you like him very much?”

  She wanted to talk down about Jingo, but that appeal to her honesty staggered her.

  She said: “I’ll tell you frankly ... I’ve never met a man I liked so well.”

  The judge smiled without mirth.

  “I’ve told you that I might have to take strict measures. I’ll tell you now what those measures are going to be. You’re to confine yourself to the house until dark. And after that we’ll see. In the meantime, I can pledge my faith to you that young Mister Jingo will not call on you before twilight has ended.”

  She was on her feet by this time. “What do you mean to do?” she gasped at him.

  “I simply mean to keep trespassers off the premises,” said the judge. “When you go in, tell the cook to get Hooker and send him to me. Hooker’s back, watching the putting away of the hay in the barns.”

  She wanted to beg her father to limit his anger. She wanted to urge the youth and the careless mind of Jingo. She wanted to say that Jingo was like his name—just a reckless, strange sort of a person. But she saw that every word she spoke on his behalf would serve to increase the calm anger of Judge Tyrrel. So she went back into the house and sent the cook on the errand.

  So Lem Hooker came out to meet th
e big boss. Lem was a fellow tall and very lean, and he had a long and very lean face with prominent buckteeth. The projection of his teeth made Lem seem to smile all day long, and he had spent his life trying to prove that the good nature was only a matter of the surface, and not of the soul. He had a bull terrier’s love of trouble, and the men who worked under him on the big ranch knew all about his nature.

  When he came up to the judge, he tipped his hat. The only thing in the world that he loved—outside of a fight—was Judge Tyrrel. He would have hanged a good many years ago had it not been for the judge. But there was more than a sense of gratitude in Hooker. He looked up to Tyrrel as one strong man may to another who is still stronger.

  The judge said: “If you’ve heard any gossip from Tower Creek, you’ve heard about the carryings-on of a fellow called Jingo.”

  “I have,” Lem Hooker said.

  “Know what he looks like?”

  “Five feet eleven. About a hundred and sixty pounds. Dark eyes and skin. Mighty handsome sort of a gent.”

  “He says,” went on the judge, “that he’s going to call on Eugenia before night. Before the end of the twilight, he’s going to call on Eugenia, no matter where she may be on the place. Your job is to see that he doesn’t arrive. Search the house first. Then search the barns. Give every man on the place a description of the man. Make sure that he’s nowhere near us. When you’ve made sure of that, stretch a cordon around the house and the barns. There’s an early moon, but you won’t need its light. If he doesn’t show up before night, he’s missed his bet. Hooker, this may sound to you like a joke, but it’s not.”

  “In this here kind of a game of tag,” said Hooker, “somebody’s likely to stay down after he’s ‘it’.”

  The judge considered for a long moment. He began to whittle at his stick again.

  “Lem,” he said, “this fellow Jingo is a gunman and gambler and worthless idler, I take it. If he intrudes on these premises, I think I’m right in my own mind ... I know I’m right in the law ... if I stop him at any cost. You understand?”

  The right hand of Lem Hooker stole in a subtle gesture toward his hip and came slowly away again. A real smile allowed his big buckteeth to flash in the slanting light of the sun.

  “I sure understand,” he said.

  The judge said one thing more, deliberately.

  “If Jingo manages to break through, I won’t be expecting to have you around tomorrow.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The work of Lem Hooker was always done thoroughly. He got a group of men together first and searched the house from the attic to the floor. Then he went through the barns. He had thirty hands or more hauling hay, leading the derrick horses, handling the big Jackson forks, or stowing the hay away in the tops of the barns. There were plenty of hands present, therefore, and when the search had been completed without finding Jingo, Lem Hooker made a little speech to the gang in which he described Jingo.

  “He ain’t here now,” he said. “All you need to do is to make sure that he don’t get here later on. Now go to work ... and keep your eyes open. Act like he could burrow underground, or turn himself into a load of hay, or drop down out of the sky on a pair of wings. If any of you ain’t packing a gun, go and load yourselves down. In this here game, the gent that’s tagged is going to know he’s ‘it’ without nobody telling him.”

  * * * * *

  In the meantime, Jingo and the Parson had cut across country, taking their ease on the way, since there was no great hurry in performing the journey. The tireless trot of Lizzie, which would have broken the bones of any man other than the Parson, continued steadily, and Jingo’s fierce-eyed horse easily kept pace.

  So they came, in the heat of the afternoon, to the crest of a hill from which they looked down on the white windings of the road that ran through a valley beneath them. The wind was traveling down the valley. Now and then it picked up a whirl of dust and carried it like a ghost over the road. The day was hot. The wind blew the heat even through flannel shirts, and scorched the skin.

  The Parson said: “Down yonder, Jingo, there’s a thing that looks to me like a doggone’ oasis, and today’s hot enough to be a desert. You see them trees and the red roof in the middle of ’em, and the shed that sticks out onto the side of the road? That’s a place where a man could get a glass of beer, I’m thinking.”

  “And show our faces and show our hands?” said Jingo. “Would that make any sense?”

  “I’ll throw a coin,” the Parson suggested.

  Jingo laughed. “All right,” he said.

  The coin spun, winking high in the air, off the thumb of the Parson.

  “Heads,” said Jingo.

  The half dollar spatted in the great hard palm of the Parson.

  “Tails,” he said, closing his fingers over it.

  “I didn’t see it,” answered Jingo.

  “Hey, you wouldn’t argue about a glass of beer, would you?” asked the Parson.

  Jingo laughed again.

  “You love trouble, Parson,” he said. “You’re going to have a ten-course dinner of it before very long. You’re going to have trouble roasted with the feathers on. But come along.”

  He turned his horse down the slope, and they swept up in good style to the front of the tavern. It was a comfortable type, white-painted, with watering troughs stretching in front, enough of them to accommodate a sixteen-mule team with the spans still harnessed to their singletrees. A big wooden awning stood out from the front of the saloon, so that buggies and carts and horsemen could come right up to the door of the place and hitch at the inside rack. Above the saloon rose the vast green cloud of the trees.

  The Parson and Jingo went inside. The floor was black-spotted with water that had recently been flung over it, and there were fresh strewings of sawdust arranged in dim lines as it had fallen from the fingers, somewhat like iron filings on a paper above a magnet. The air was damp and cool. A windmill was clanking not far from the house, and Jingo could hear the whisper of the gushing water. The sour-sweet pungency of many drinks was in the air. The bar rail had been scarred by ten thousand heels and scratched to brightness, but at that moment Jingo and the Parson were the only people in the place, except for the bartender and a boy who was washing windows.

  The bartender looked like an ex–prize fighter. But now his blunt face and his chunky body were layered over with soft fat. He was constantly moist with perspiration. When he picked up a glass, he left his finger marks outlined in mist.

  “We’ll have a game of seven-up,” said the Parson. “Give us some cards, bartender. We’ll play a game while we have a drink. Take something with us?”

  The bartender admitted that it might be a good idea. He took a small beer that was mostly froth, and punched the register for three full-size drinks. He put out two packs of cards, and as the Parson and Jingo sat down at a corner table to finish their beer slowly and play a hand or two of seven-up, the barman motioned the boy to him from the window that he was washing.

  The Parson was dealing, flicking out the cards with expert fingers.

  Jingo said to him: “Did that bartender look you in the chin or in the eyes?”

  “He slammed me in the eyes once, and after that he couldn’t look higher than my stomach,” said the Parson. He announced, immediately afterward, that he was shooting the moon. But he was playing his jack for high, and a queen fitted neatly on top of it out of Jingo’s cards.

  “There’s something on the bartender’s mind,” urged Jingo. “Did you ever hit him while you were wading through a crowd?”

  “I’ve got a memory for mugs,” the Parson answered, “and I never saw his map before.”

  A door slammed with a jangling of a wire screen at the rear of the place. The boy was gone from the saloon, and the bartender was polishing the bar.

  The Parson added: “What’s eating you, Jingo?”
r />   “He’s sent the kid out on an errand, and the errand is about us,” said Jingo. “He’s thinking so hard about us right now that he’s turning redder than his work oughta make him.”

  “Well?” asked the Parson.

  “We’ve got to make him call the boy back,” Jingo advised.

  “Got to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, bartender, what’s your name?” the Parson demanded loudly.

  “Wilson,” came the answer from the saloonkeeper as he continued to polish off the bar.

  “Wilson,” said the Parson, “I wanna take a look at that boy. Call him back.”

  Wilson continued his work. He lifted his eyes for one brief glance at the giant, and dropped them again to his cloth.

  Then he said: “The kid’s busy.”

  “Maybe he’s too busy to suit us,” said the Parson.

  Wilson tossed his cloth aside, leaned, and picked up something from the shelf under the bar. He looked not at his two guests, but straight ahead. It was perfectly plain that he had taken up a gun.

  The Parson laid one pack of cards on top of the other and tapped them into a trim-edged little mass.

  “I ain’t a mind reader,” he said, “but sometimes I can tell a fool when he’s in the middle of a play.”

  He took the two packs between his hands with a reversing grip, and slowly, without a jerk, twisted the stiff mass in two. He flung the mass from him, and they fell with a little rattling shower on the floor.

  “Now call back that kid!” the Parson barked.

  The bartender stared for an instant at the torn packs that were scattered before him. Then he turned toward the door behind the bar.

  “Don’t leave the room!” the Parson snapped with authority.

  Wilson stood fast. His back was turned to them. He was breathing so hard that his head kept lifting and nodding a little.

  Finally he went to an open window and sent out a long, shrilling whistle. After that he returned to the bar and began to rub the wood meditatively with the heel of his hand, looking with vague eyes straight before him.