Jingo

by Brand, Max; Burns, Traber;

  Yonder in the ravine, Jingo was doing his best to keep the attention of Jake Rankin and the two men who helped Jake keep watch. For, while Jingo entertained the three, the Parson was still busily at work, rubbing his ropes, with all the backward strength of his arms, against the edge of the boulder where he leaned.

  If there had not come to the ears of the Parson, now and again, the muted sound of parting of strands of the rope, he would not have continued his labor, it seemed certain. Moreover, there was something in his huge, ugly face that was like a hope. He kept on stealthily, his shoulders and elbows working imperceptibly, except to a keen eye like that of Jingo.

  He even saw the moment when the blood began to run out from the chafed arms of the Parson. It was a mere darkening of the surface of the rock, barely visible from the side. But it increased rapidly. It looked as though the Parson, in his labors, had chafed through some artery in his wrist. After all, the vital life was hidden close under the skin in that part of the body.

  It was even a possibility that the Parson had chosen this moment of letting the life run out of his body rather than waiting for a blow on the head and then that horrible death in the grinding mill of the cataract that muttered in the distance.

  But it needed only a moment for Jingo to decide that he was wrong. Whatever was in the mind of the Parson, he would not give up hope until the last instant.

  So Jingo went on with the story of the brindle steer that Hugh Wilson had bought from the rustlers, and what followed in the track of the steer, and how Laughing Dan McGillicuddy had called on Jingo to come and join the Dance of the Brindle Steer up there in Lawson County. It was a good story, particularly after the point where Jingo joined and speeded up the dance.

  Little Boyd, with the rat-face, kept making small snarling noises of delight, and Oliver grunted with pleasure now and again.

  Boyd said finally: “Jake, it’s almost kind of too bad to bump off a gent like Jingo. It’d be kind of a game to ride a trail with this here hombre.”

  Jake Rankin answered: “I’ll tell you boys something. Jingo takes things easy, like a crook. He likes a fight as much as a crook. He likes a change as much as a crook. But he ain’t a crook. And all you’d get out of him after a while would be a dose of lead between the ribs someday. But, leaving all of that out of it, I got a brother back home that’s been plastered by him. And when I get back to town, I wanna tell my brother something that’ll make him sit up in bed and take an interest in life ag’in.”

  That ended the argument.

  Boyd muttered: “Aw, I was just talking. Go on, Jingo. What happened after you got the greaser cornered?”

  “Wait a minute,” broke in Rankin thoughtfully. “Seems like Jingo was talking to kill time.”

  “Sure he is,” answered Boyd. “He’s talking to keep his mind off the noise of the water.”

  They were silent for an instant, listening to the cool, dashing sound of the cataract, and the small muttering of the echoes.

  Then Rankin said: “All right. But Jingo’s got something in his head, mind you.”

  “Brains,” suggested Boyd, “but they’ll stop working pretty soon.”

  The attention of the crew was so totally fixed upon Jingo by this time that the Parson, with a slight nod of understanding at Jingo, began to saw on his ropes with a larger and more reckless motion of his arms. And the dark stain spread farther over the surface of the rock, and the gleam of the coursing blood was so plain to the eyes of Jingo that he wondered how the others could fail, even at the first casual glance, to mark the thing.

  “Hey!” Boyd cried suddenly. “There’s somebody coming. Jake, what we going to do?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Rankin.

  He stepped back among the boulders.

  Jingo could distinctly hear the thump and the grinding of heels on the rocks as someone came on the run toward them.

  Then Rankin stepped back into view, saying: “Sure, there’s somebody coming, and it’s the boss. Jingo, you and the Parson won’t have long to wait.”

  Out through the tangle of the great rocks came Wheeler Bent a moment later. He was panting from the hard effects of his run, and he stood there, leaning his hand against a big stone for an instant, and getting his breath.

  But his smile of satisfaction had begun even before he was able to speak.

  At last he gasped: “I was afraid ... every step I took along the way ... that I wouldn’t find you fellows around here. I was afraid that something must’ve gone wrong.”

  Oliver said: “Three hearts that beat as one, boss. What could go wrong with us?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Boyd. “Nothing could go wrong. We got him in irons, and the key’s been throwed away. What could go wrong?”

  Wheeler Bent nodded. Then he went over to Jingo and leaned above him.

  “How goes it?” he asked.

  “Better than you dream,” Jingo said. “Thanks.”

  “Better?” Wheeler Bent snapped with a suspicious side glance at Jake Rankin.

  “Sure, a lot better,” said Jingo.

  “He’s just talking,” Jake Rankin said. “You can’t put him down till you put him dead. He’s got that kind of a tongue. It’s gotta keep going.”

  “Well,” said Wheeler Bent, “I’ll tell you that the girl and her father are all worried about you, Jingo. You’ll be sorry to hear about that, I guess.”

  Jingo said nothing. He merely bent back his head and looked calmly up into the face of Wheeler Bent.

  “She’s rather tragic about it,” went on Bent. “But she’ll get over all that. And when she’s over it, there’ll be a good friend ... an old friend, a tried-and-true friend ... waiting to take her to the altar. Eh?”

  He laughed.

  Jingo said: “She’s seen a man, old son. She’ll never make that mistake. Not that way.”

  “Who you guys talking about?” demanded Boyd curiously.

  “Nothing you know about,” Wheeler Bent answered, looking annoyed. “Just a little secret. We might call it a family secret, Jingo, eh?”

  “We might call it that,” Jingo said.

  “Well,” said Wheeler Bent., “the time’s come, boys.”

  “How d’you want us to go about it?” demanded Jake Rankin.

  “Pop them over the head and then throw them in the water. That’s good enough for me.” He added after a slight pause: “Wait a minute. I’ll do the trick on Jingo. I’d enjoy doing it, as a matter of fact.”

  Wheeler Brent took out a revolver as he spoke, and grasped it firmly and swayed the heavy gun up and down, ready for the stroke. That was the instant that Jingo heard a distinct popping sound as a big strand of the Parson’s rope gave way.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Four

  That sound of the parting rope strand was no doubt partially covered by the noise the creek was continually making, yet it seemed very strange to Jingo that every one of the four men did not whirl suddenly around. Perhaps it was because the thing plucked at the strings of his heart that it seemed to him certain that the four must have heard it, and that they were masking their knowledge.

  Or perhaps it was the savage, panting voice of Wheeler Bent that kept the attention of the rest. They could not see the great arms of the Parson swing clear from behind his back. Tangled fragments of rope hung down from his wrists, and from the frayed ends of the rope the blood was dripping.

  “You’re a bright fellow, Jingo,” Wheeler Bent was saying. “You’re so bright that perhaps you’ll be able to say a good prayer for yourself ... out loud. Mind you, you’ll live just as long as it takes you to say the prayer ... out loud.”

  There was laughter trying to get into the rage and savage delight of his voice.

  Jingo looked up into the face of Bent and saw the beast in it. The eyes were changed. The flesh was furrowing up around them and covering them
with shadow.

  Jingo saw the hand that weighted the revolver above him and the strain of the knuckles in grasping the gun. He saw, also, that forward sway of the freed arms of the Parson in the background, and something that was more important to him than anything else, though it was simply another study in facial expression. For the Parson had not the look of guilty fear that a man wears when he is hoping to free himself from an immediate peril and then dodge away. Rather, he looked like one who is shaking off impediments so that he can charge into battle.

  That was the grim expression of the Parson as he brought out a hunting knife and with it slashed through the ropes that tied his legs. Almost with the same gesture he was rising to his feet. Why, the mere shadow of his coming, the mere wind and stir of the rising of the giant should have made those others turn toward him.

  But they did not turn. They were too utterly fascinated by the words and the actions of Wheeler Bent, and the murder that he was weighing in his hand above the head of Jingo. There was interest and some cruel satisfaction in their faces, and a sick distaste, as well. Only the butcher was going to enjoy the actual process of the butchery.

  “Now you tell me, and stop sneering up at me!” Wheeler Bent cried. “You tell me your last prayer ... you hear? I want to know it. I want to hear how you’ll beg and ask for mercy.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Jake Rankin said.

  “Then he gets it now!” shouted Wheeler Bent. And he swung the heavy revolver to the full stretch of his arm.

  The Parson struck them then. He came in with his arms spread out wide. He looked like a father about to sweep up his family of little boys. Such was the vast size of him. And as he came running in, bent to the shock, Jingo could still see the blood dripping fast from the rope ends that festooned his wrists.

  He struck them all in a heap. All except Boyd. The rat-faced man had the least bit of instinct working in him, the electric thing that made him leap suddenly to the side, and the reaching hand of the Parson just swept by and missed him with its clutch.

  The others went down in a crashing, squirming, shouting heap on top of Jingo. A hand reached in for him and jerked him out with the resistless sway of some great steam derrick. The hand caught his clothes at the breast and nearly ripped them off his back. He came clear of the heap in time to see Boyd shoot a bullet right into the body of the Parson.

  Jingo had time to say to himself that that was the end. It was all he had time to say before the arm of the Parson flew out with the walking-beam weight of his shoulder behind it. His fist spatted against the face of Boyd. It seemed as though there were no weight to the head of the rat-faced man. It seemed as though he would not, therefore, receive any real damage from the blow—no more than a light image stuffed with sawdust, say.

  His head flicked back—so far back that he looked headless for an instant. Then he was falling.

  That living heap of men was surging up around Jingo as he saw Boyd knocked flat. Something glinted—a revolver in the hand of Wheeler Bent. Jingo got that gun in his two manacled hands as the Parson swung his weight up and over his shoulder, like a sack of bran. Jingo lay on his stomach over the vast, boardlike bones of the Parson’s shoulder, with a snaky cushioning of muscles to make his resting place easier.

  He saw, as the Parson sprang away with him, how Boyd lay on his back, with his head supported against the base of a boulder. His neck looked as though it were broken. His eyes were open, empty. His face no longer looked like the face of a rat. It looked simply like an incomplete thing—a mangled thing.

  Jingo saw that and knew that Boyd would give no other person any trouble, not on this night, at least. But Boyd was not worth noticing, compared with the upspring of three wildcat forms out of the heap of humanity that the Parson had struck to the earth. He had only needed two or three seconds to strike, grab Jingo, and leap away among the shadows of the boulders. He had pounced as a tiger might spring. But Jingo heard a wild yell that could not come out of any throat except that of Jake Rankin. He saw Jake come up off the ground as though flung from a springboard.

  And right at him, Jingo fired the first shot from the gun that he held in both hands.

  He missed his target. He knew that he had missed. To fire with both hands ironed together was no easy trick. Besides, lying on the shoulder of the Parson as he ran was no smoother than lying across the back of a trotting horse. That was why Jingo missed an easy shot at five yards. Then the raw, ragged edges and the faces of the boulders came in between. He could not see anything more. He could only hear the monstrous yelling of Jake Rankin, like a beast driven mad with a torturing disappointment. Jake was like a cat that had played with a mouse until the mouse escapes. He was simply screaming in a blinding passion.

  Aye, and running. Wheeler Bent’s voice was shouting something. Yes, something about more money to them all if they caught the runaways.

  Well, they would be caught, all right. Jingo was sure enough. The Parson was a giant, but, after all, he had not the strength of a horse. Not even the Parson had as much strength as that. He had, besides, a bullet somewhere in his huge body. Jingo had seen the bullet strike. He had heard the thud of it, like a blow on a filled barrel. In a moment or two the Parson had to curl up and quit.

  Jingo said at his ear, while the Parson raced with immense strides among the rocks: “Chuck me, Parson. They’ve got us now. Chuck me. You can save yourself then. Get away. Then start on their trail and finish them all, Parson.”

  The arm with which the Parson was gripping him, holding him in place on that vast shoulder, was like the weight of a beam. It was crushing the breath out of Jingo. A little more pressure from that arm was his only answer, as though the Parson had felt him slipping.

  To Jingo, suddenly, to die was nothing. When two friends face it together, what is death more than a joke?

  He had a split part of a second for that thought, and then he saw Oliver sprint around the side of a boulder as big as a house and come right at them. Oliver had a gun out. He was leaning so far forward with speed that he seemed with each step barely to save himself from falling on his face. He was shooting every time his foot struck the ground.

  Jingo saved his own bullet through half a count, to get the sway of the Parson’s running balanced in his mind, his eye, his manacled hands. Then he fired.

  Oliver kept right on running, but he started falling, too. His arms stretched out. The gun slid down from one of them, like a drop of liquid brilliant with moonlight. Oliver struck the ground. He turned a somersault. He lay bunched like a wounded spider, his legs drawn up, his arms wrapped around himself.

  Wheeler Bent and Jake Rankin were in full view for an instant. Then they were out of sight.

  The Parson had dodged behind another of those vast fragments of mountain, and now he dropped to one knee and let Jingo slump off his shoulder.

  The thumping and grinding of footfalls sped past them.

  Jingo stood up with his back against the rock, the gun still clutched with both hands. He and the Parson were on a little strip of gravel beach, at the edge of the waters of the creek. The moon shadow fell thickly over them, but the light of the moon danced up like the ghostly image of firelight and threw from the stirring face of the creek a changing, wavering, dim pattern over the boulder and over the Parson.

  He leaned his shoulder and his head against the rock. He was stifling the noise of his panting and the groaning of his pain, so that his face was made frightful by the struggle. He had both of his immense hands pressed against his side, where the bullet had struck him.

  The noise of Rankin and Wheeler Bent was gone out in the distance. There was only the smooth sound of the creek as it slipped among the rocks and the cool dashing of it far away, at the end of the flume. There were these sounds and the small throttling noises that came out of the distorted mouth of the Parson.

  But he was not an ugly mask to Jingo. Instead, he was someth
ing more than handsome. If Jingo lived to tell of that night, he knew he would always remember every day of his life, with awe and a great swelling of the heart, the exact look of the Parson. Because that was the way a man looked when he was dying for a friend.

  It was not the face only that was distorted. The great bare throat of the Parson was swollen with the might of his effort.

  Jingo laid the gun on the ground, filled his cupped hands with water, and dashed it into the face of the Parson, and the Parson suddenly seemed able to breathe.

  He closed his eyes. His mouth was open. His jaw worked as he bit at the air and swallowed it and regained life.

  Jingo, on his knees, pulled the hands of the Parson from the place of the wound.

  The whole side of the giant was sopping and running with blood. He ought to be dead, Jingo told himself. Surely any other man in the world would be dead.

  He caught hold of the shirt and tore it from the Parson’s body. Then he could see what had happened. The bullet had glanced on the ribs and furrowed under the flesh and jumped out again toward the back. If it had pierced through the ribs, it would have found the heart.

  “Thank heaven,” whispered Jingo. “I thought they had you. But you’re going to live, Parson.”

  “Sure ... I’m going to live ... you fool,” breathed the Parson.

  He kept leaning against the rock, his head and shoulders both, but he put out his other arm and hung it loosely over Jingo and let the weight of that arm speak for him more than any words that he could have dug up out of his soul.

  The little lines of reflection from the water kept running over that big, ugly face. They made the Parson seem about to speak. But still the only voice was the running of the stream.

  Jingo looked out at it and saw how the current cut around the great stones that were scattered through the bed of the stream. He saw how the speed of the stream made the water lift a little as it leaped away from the rocks on the lower side, streaking out a wake. It was strange that the creek could run so fast and so smoothly—so smoothly that it kept throwing back the trembling reflection of the moonlight. But for all its speed, he saw the one thing that they could do.