Jingo

by Brand, Max; Burns, Traber;

  “You been used to walking a tightrope 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 cañon 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,” Jake Rankin said 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 clean-cut 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,” Jake Rankin declared. “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 chute 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 farther down the line. But not much. Not enough to start nobody thinking.”

  “It’s certainly a surprise to me,” Jingo said.

  “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,” Jingo said.

  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. Sit down, Jingo, and make yourself at home. You’ll be gone before you know it.”

  “Thanks,” Jingo said. “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 nearby, with his back against a rock.

  “Look, Parson,” Jake Rankin said with something like kindness in his voice; “you got your back up ag’in’ the edge of that rock. You ain’t going to be comfortable there.”

  “I like it better this way,” the Parson assured Rankin. “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?” the Parson asked. “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’ve got Jingo and me so dead easy.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Jake Rankin. “I looked for a lot more trouble.” He looked at the rat and the bulldog and said: “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,” Boyd suggested, 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,” Jake Rankin snapped.

  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,” Boyd said, “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,” Jake Rankin said. “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,” Jingo answered 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?” Oliver asked.

  “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, like it or not, we gotta wait.”

  Boyd grunted. He pulled out a big Colt, laid it on his knee, and pointed it straight at Jingo.

  “All right,” Boyd said finally. “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

  Twenty-Two

  Time went on strangely in the house of Judge Tyrrel. The judge told an excellent story of his early mining days, and how, for ten years, he had grubstaked a gloomy old sourdough who turned in not a single penny’s worth of profit.

  “Still I had faith in him,” said the judge. “He was quite a geologist. He was a good, patient worker. And I kept grubstaking him for a decade. Finally my patience gave out. I told him that I was giving him supplies for the last time. Well, out he went, and came back inside of a month with the Lodestar Mine in his pocket, so to speak. I thought at first that it was a queer break of luck. But afterward I found out the truth.

  “T
hat old sourdough had spotted the lode during the second year he was working for me, but he wouldn’t tell of the strike so long as he could get grubstakes out of me. Why? Because he didn’t really want gold. He simply wanted the hunt for it. And he wanted to ramble around alone through the hills. When he confessed what he had done to me, he added that he never knew of any luck to come to a prospector who made a big strike. A strike would just poison him if he made a lot of money. ‘Gold poisoning,’ he said, was what most prospectors died of.

  “I took so much out of the Lodestar that his share made the old fellow rich, but he was always gloomy, always expecting something to happen. What did happen was that a woman got her hands on him, married him, and then gave him such a devil of a time that he signed everything over to her as a way of getting a divorce.

  “Three years after finding the Lodestar he was broke and happy again, and steering a burro through the mountains in search of another strike. He never found another. I kept him on a pension. But he was always happy. He used to say that he was the only man in the world that ever recovered from a bad case of gold poisoning.”

  Wheeler Bent was able to laugh fluently at this tale, but the girl showed not the slightest amusement. She remained in her chair by the fire, regarding nothingness with far-journeying eyes.

  Now and again her glance narrowed a little, and that was always when she turned her gaze on the handsome face and the sparkling little golden mustache of Wheeler Bent.

  For Wheeler Bent was changed. He was not the young man she had known so well in other days. There was a keenness about him, a suppressed excitement, the attitude of one who talks casually, but waits for the curtain to rise on an important stage.

  The judge came over to her suddenly and stood before her with his hands clasped behind his back, while he teetered slowly back and forth.

  “Now you tell me, Eugenia,” he said. “What is the matter?”

  She shook her head.

  “Is this about Jingo?” asked the judge.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She saw a quick shudder run through the body of Wheeler Bent. Perhaps that was not altogether strange. To all intents and purposes, she had been as good as engaged to Wheeler Bent. Now he was hardly more than a stranger. Yes, something more, but not in a pleasant sense.

  Her father said: “Tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t thinking, really,” she said. “It’s only a feeling.”

  “What sort?”

  “Oh ... that something has gone wrong.”

  “With Jingo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps something has. Perhaps he’s gone galloping ... to get a broken neck,” the judge said angrily. “My dear, you have a fancy for a romantic, worthless gunman, and you’ll laugh at the memory of him in another month.”

  “Excuse me,” Wheeler Bent said, rising from his chair. “I’ll trot along to bed. Good night, Judge. Good night, Eugenia.”

  When he shook hands with her, she looked squarely at him, amazed by the alteration that appeared in his face when he was close to her. His expression was set in a new way. There was about him the look of one who is prepared and nerved for a great effort.

  After he had left the room, the judge said: “I suppose he was right to get out of the way, but he had a right to hear us talk. He’s been rather close to you in the past, Eugenia.”

  “I don’t think he ever will be again,” said the girl.

  “No,” agreed the judge slowly. “I don’t suppose that he ever will be again.”

  “Why are you so sure?” she asked.

  “For your reason, I imagine,” said the judge. “Because this lad Jingo has come galloping into our family circle.”

  “That’s the reason,” agreed the girl.

  “You can’t believe that he would be wild enough to gallop off and just send back a message to you?” the judge said.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s the nature of the message,” she answered. “He might have said other things. He wouldn’t have said that.”

  “That he had forgotten that he had a previous engagement?” the judge repeated, chuckling.

  “He wouldn’t be rude,” she said. “If he had to lie, he would tell a polite lie.”

  “He has the reputation of being pretty rough,” the judge said.

  “He has the reputation of liking a fight,” she said. “Rudeness is a different thing.”

  “No matter what you think,” said the judge, “the fact remains that he did make that remark. That was the message he gave Wheeler Bent, and that Wheeler gave you.”

  She shook her head in silence.

  The judge exclaimed: “Gene, you don’t think that Wheeler would lie to you?”

  She hesitated for a long moment.

  Her father kept waiting, leaning over her a little.

  Then she said: “Yes. I’m sure that he lied.”

  The judge took a step back and frowned at her.

  “That’s serious,” he said.

  “I know it’s serious,” she agreed.

  “What do you think is in the air?”

  “Trouble,” she said shortly.

  “Gene,” muttered the judge, “this fellow Jingo has upset you a good deal. You’re taking him pretty seriously.”

  “So are you,” she answered.

  He started. But suddenly he nodded and answered: “Yes, I’m taking him seriously. Because ... well, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong about him ... nothing that wouldn’t wash off, so to speak.”

  He began to walk up and down. Then he took a chair and remained staring at the fire.

  She stood up, saying: “I’m going upstairs.”

  He bade her good night absently.

  She went to the door, paused there to look back at him, and felt with a sudden outrush of affection that there were few problems in the world that she could not work out with his assistance. But on this night—well, things might happen that could not be put straight in the morning.

  She hurried up the stairs, resolved on speaking with Wheeler Bent, but when she rapped at his door, twice and loudly, there was no answer. She pushed the door open. A lamp burned in front of the window, as though to give assurance that Bent was in the room, but he was gone.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  That he should be gone from his room was not very strange, after all. She kept telling herself this, and yet her heart was beating faster and faster. She told herself that she would wait there in the room until he returned. There were a few questions that she had to ask of him. So she went to the open window and looked out at the night, now brightening under the rising moon.

  That light showed the shingles on the sloping roof of the shed just beneath the window. It showed the grand forms of the mountains against the horizon, and it showed the beginning of the trail that advanced toward the upper hills. On that trail she saw a man running, head down with labor as he took the grade. And that man was Wheeler Bent!

  A voice seemed to shout into her ear that he must be stopped, and that she must find out where he was bound.

  She was out of the room in an instant, and down the stairs and through the back door. It was wide open, as Bent must have left it in going from the house. She hurried out beyond the shed. Wheeler Bent was no longer in sight on the first lap of the trail, but he would be in view and in earshot, she was sure, if she ran up to the first angling bend of it. For beyond that the trail went up as steeply as a ladder, and he would be climbing more slowly.

  So she ran to the first turn. But Bent was not in sight.

  She cupped her hands at her lips and shouted on a high-pitched, wailing note: “Wheeler! Wheeler Bent!”

  The echo beat back at her, a flat, dull, quick s
ound. And all at once her heart was hammering and thundering and choking her as it swelled within her. She ran up the sharp slope of the way, staggering with haste and with the steepness. So she gained the next level of the trail—and saw it winding easily before her, but still without a trace of Bent upon it.

  She was too breathless to call for him again instantly. She looked back, with the thought of returning to the house and giving up this wild-goose chase. But as she stared at the moonlit picture of the house and the big barns beside it, with the hay wagons standing nearby, like awkward, black-ribbed skeletons, she heard the mourning voice of the creek rising out of its valley, and a new panic came over her. It was as though the voice spoke directly to her.

  She ran on again, around several turns of the trail. Then, when there was still no trace of Wheeler Bent, she cupped her hands at her lips and shouted his name once more.

  “Wheeler Bent! Oh, Wheeler!”

  She got not even an echo for an answer, only the dull roaring of her own blood in her ears. And then, suddenly, she hoped that he had not heard her, for she remembered at that moment the expression that had been beginning in his eyes before he said good night to her and to her father. If that expression grew, it would not be a thing for her to face by night.

  It was better, perhaps, simply to follow along in the hope of discovering what Bent aimed his course for. Since he had gone on foot, his destination could not be very far away.

  But when she came to the division of the trail, where one branch of it ran into the farther hills and the other half extended down into the upper ravine of the creek, she paused for a long moment. In the upper ravine there was nothing to be found but naked rocks and the rushing of the stream. And yet the voice of the water now called to her more intimately than before.

  * * * * *