Jingo

by Brand, Max; Burns, Traber;

  “Parson,” he said, “you can break the chain that holds my feet together ... or my hands together? Can you do that? Smash the links between a couple of big rocks?”

  The Parson had his eyes closed. He did not open them again, but he reached out and fumbled the ankle chains with his fingers. Then he shook his head in dissent.

  Jingo looked down at the vast, moving head and understood. There was no hope of freedom for him. The key lay somewhere in the bottom of the creek. Not for the first time, he struggled to pull his hands through the grip of the manacles, and failed.

  Then he heard footfalls coming back toward them among the rocks.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  “They’re going to hunt us down, and we got one gun between us ... and three slugs in it,” muttered the Parson. He kept his hand on his wounded side, and the blood steadily welled out between his fingers. But there was no use attempting to make a bandage to gird that vast barrel of a body—not until they had time to do the job thoroughly.

  Jingo, staring down at the great, ugly face, wanted to find words so that he could speak what was in his heart, or a little of it. But then he knew that words were not necessary. They understood one another, and they would always understand.

  “Parson,” he said, “there’s only one way out for us. They’ll search till they find us. But if you can get across the stream and go down the farther side, you’ll be able to get help here from the Tyrrel place.”

  “Yeah, sure. A coupla hours from now I could get help here from the Tyrrel place.”

  They had to whisper. The sound of footfalls no longer approached them. But they whispered at the ear of one another.

  “And you’d be dead a long time before that,” said the Parson.

  “There’s no other way,” Jingo said. “You’ve got to take your chance, and I’ll stay here and take mine.”

  He nodded toward the stream.

  “Plenty of rocks out there in the center. Once you get on the farther side of them, you’ll be all right, Parson. You’ll be fixed, all right. The boulders will shelter you from gunfire. The trip out to the center of the creek ought to be the only dangerous part of the business.”

  “All right,” said the Parson. “Here goes.”

  He stood up and raised the revolver.

  “Take the gun,” said Jingo. “It’s no good to me now. I could only absolutely ...”

  “You’d want me to walk off and leave you, would you?” said the Parson. He added sternly: “Take hold of that gun.”

  Jingo meekly grasped the rough handle of the Colt.

  Then he was raised suddenly and thrown over the wide shoulder of the Parson. He tried to protest, but already the Parson was striding into the stream. The water deepened. It reached the feet of Jingo. It soaked him to the knees. Water rose to the very chin of the Parson, and Jingo felt the strong pulling of the current. If he felt it at all, how was the Parson able, in any way, to keep his footing?

  Jingo scanned the shore they had left. As they advanced, it seemed that the boulders grew greater. He stared at the gaps between them, but there was no sight of the manhunters.

  Aye, but there they were, suddenly—Wheeler Bent standing on top of a low rock, looking slowly up and down the ravine. Then there was Jake Rankin beside him. The moon glimmered on their guns.

  Jingo looked behind him, over the shaggy head of the Parson. They were not many steps from the central rocks of the stream, but to a man carrying a heavy burden, and immersed to the chin in a strong current, every yard is a dangerous distance.

  He was about to tell the Parson to hurry if he could—when the gunfire started.

  A sightless something knifed through the water at the side of the Parson. Instantly came the report, flinging off the face of the stream and slapping against the ear of Jingo.

  The Parson reached out his long arm, leaned as he strode forward, grasped the lower edge of the nearest rock, and swept himself and Jingo to the shelter behind it.

  A bullet, at the same time, stung the ear of Jingo like a wasp. It had clipped away a bit of the lobe.

  Then he found himself with the Parson behind the comfortable bulwark of the rock, safe.

  But not really safe. There was only a narrow distance between them and the opposite shore, but that distance, small as it was, was totally impassable. Here the current had been compacted in a narrower throat, and the surface of the stream was streaked with little telltale bubbles of speed. The force of the creek pulled at the legs of Jingo and carried them out aslant.

  The weight of the irons on his ankles became a trifling thing compared with the sweep of the water.

  All that Rankin and Wheeler Bent needed to do was to wait on the opposite shore until the two were finally torn from their grip on the rock.

  The Parson, shuddering as the cold of the water entered his wound, said simply: “All right, Jingo. I guess we’re gone. See if you can send the last three shots out of that there gun. Then we might as well take what’s coming to us.”

  “That would only show that we’re stuck here,” said Jingo. “Otherwise ... well, they won’t know what’s happening. They can’t see what this water is like any more than we could when we were over there. They think that we’re crawling ashore by this time.”

  “Aye, and what’ll be done then?”

  “Maybe they’ll give up. Then, when they leave, we can go back across the creek the way we came.”

  “Maybe they’ll come over after us,” suggested the Parson.

  “Maybe,” agreed Jingo. He added: “Push me up a little, Parson. I’ll take a look as carefully as I can and hope that they won’t see me.”

  He was being lifted in the great hands of the Parson when the catastrophe came on them suddenly. Right over the brim of the big rock appeared the dripping body of Jake Rankin, with Wheeler Bent at his side.

  Their guns were slung around their necks. They had only their hands to use against the Colt of Jingo, but the hand of Jake Rankin was as swift as the head of a striking snake. He caught Jingo’s gun. One futile bullet rose at the face of the moon. Then Jingo, torn from the grasp of the astonished Parson, whirled down the current with Jake Rankin gripping him close.

  The gun was the prize that Rankin wanted. And he had two hands to use. He kept his grip on the weapon with one hand. With the other he tried to beat Jingo to senselessness. And all the while the current swept them over and over. There was only a random chance now and then for Jingo to gulp in a breath of air. They swung around and around slowly. The force of the stream threw them to the side in a freakish eddy toward the shore from which they had come. Suddenly they were standing breast to breast, shoulder-high in the stream.

  Well above them, Jingo saw the Parson standing up on the rock that had given them a moment of shelter. He saw Wheeler Bent entangled in the terrible arms of the giant. He heard the wild screech out of Bent’s throat, and saw the limp body of the man flung down into the creek. Then the Parson plunged in and came toward his friend.

  Jingo saw that as he ducked under the water to avoid a stranglehold that Rankin was trying to fasten on him.

  Still his grasp was on the gun. They were staggering in toward the shore, through rapidly shoaling water, as Jingo received a heavy blow on the side of the head.

  His wits spun. The clubbed hand of Rankin fell on him again. They were only knee-deep, with the shore beside them. Out of the distance, the tremendous lion’s roar of the Parson gave promise of instant aid. Another voice, on a thinner and a higher note, was crying to him from the shore.

  Through the whirl of his mind, moonlight and darkness and many images thronging across his eyes, he saw the girl coming toward him, running. She was in the water now, stretching out her hands, when another blow took the last strength out of the hands of Jingo. He had his wits and his eyes about him still. But he was loose as a wet rag, and out of
his numbed fingers Rankin tore the revolver easily.

  Jingo saw the gleam of it. It would be the last sight that came to him in this world, he was sure.

  Something then came in between him and the sheen of the dripping Colt. That was the girl, flinging her arms back around his body, and with her head strained back as she strove to cover him from Rankin, who she faced.

  He saw the big hand of Rankin go out to tear her away from his quarry. He heard her crying out like a frightened animal.

  The sound seemed to go through Rankin like a knife. His hand fell. He tried once more, and the scream stopped him.

  “When you’ve got two hands to use,” shouted Rankin suddenly, “I’ll come back and get you, but only 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

  Twenty-Six

  They got pack mules from the ranch. That was the way the wounded were taken back to the Tyrrel place. Boyd, with his smashed face, was gone. 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 seemed to mind 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 refused to go to bed. A big Indian blanket was huddled around his torso, and he sat up and drank whiskey out of a big tumbler. 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?” Jingo said. “No ... he may be asking for the devil, for he’d never ask for me.”

  “It’s you that he wants to see,” the cook insisted.

  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,” Wheeler Bent began, “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,” Jingo said, “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,” Jingo assured him. And he shook hands with Wheeler Bent.

  “Will you tell Gene?” asked Wheeler Bent.

  “I’ll tell her everything,” Jingo said.

  “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.

  the end

  About the Author

  Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately thirty million words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business, and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways.

  Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, Italy, and finally in Los Angeles.

  Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack
on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can bvvve found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski.