by Max Brand
As it flowed past, Jimmy Jones turned slowly back into the office.
“Jimmy,” said Joe Parson, “you’ve got them behind you.”
“For tonight,” said Jimmy Jones. “They may change their minds before the morning, but there’s one Burwell in this town that’s going to wish he were somewhere else before long.”
“Tell me the straight of it,” pleaded Joe Parson. “Are you serious?”
“About what?”
“About cleaning up the town. Is that really why you came here?”
“No,” said Jimmy Jones. “I came here to make some money on a hard proposition. But I’m finding a whole lot of interesting stuff here. And I’m going to stay until Jasper has a cleaner face.”
“Look out,” said Parson. “The fighting isn’t finished yet.”
“If it were,” said Jimmy, “Jasper could go hang for all of me. How d’you feel?”
“Groggy,” said Parson. “But not out.”
“It was Harry Burwell that slammed you in the face while that other hombre held your arms.”
“Was that Harry?” said Joe Parson almost dreamily. “Well, he has a nice right hook. I learned that punch by heart. I had it printed right on my face.” He added: “Let’s go get a drink.”
“As soon as I wash my face,” said Jimmy Jones. “We can’t go to bed yet. Not till we’ve heard what happened to Clive Burwell.”
They went into the saloon across the street. Far away, as they sat at their table sipping their drinks, they could hear a dim noise of outcries, and finally there was a crackling noise of guns.
Jimmy held up a finger for attention. “You hear, Joe?” he asked.
“I hear it, all right. I’m not deaf. Is the sheriff trying to fight them all off?”
“Not Clive Burwell. He’s tracking for tall timber. Those are the first real guns of the war, Joe. And from now on the town is going to be without a sheriff for a while.”
“It doesn’t need one,” answered Joe Parson with his damaged grin. “It’s got a Jimmy Jones.”
VI
The hot forenoon of the next day the editor and the reporter of the Jasper Journal sat opposite one another at a table.
“What are you going to run in that Saturday edition . . . outside of the supplements?” asked Parson. “And is it true that you’re charging a whole thousand dollars a page for the three pages of advertising in the second supplement?”
“Brother,” said Jimmy Jones, “I’m doing a kindness to let people in at those rates. They want to see their names mentioned in that edition. Do you know why?”
“You tell me,” said Parson.
“Because they know that the Saturday edition is going to be history. And everybody wants to have his name written in history. To be a part of the immortal chronicles of fame, Joe . . . to stand blazoned on the heights . . .”
“Quit it,” said Joe.
“I was just telling you,” said Jimmy Jones.
“Now, brother,” said Joe Parson, “what facts are you going to write? What do you know about the killing of poor old Charlie Denham?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Total of all facts . . . zero. Is that it?”
“That’s exactly it.”
“What do you guess?”
“I guess,” said Jimmy Jones, “that Denham didn’t go out on a hunting trip but on a prospecting trip with the Burwells . . . Sigmund and young, murdering Harry. I guess that while the three of them were together, they found the outcropping that became the Burwell mine. I guess that poor Denham was done in by the two Burwells, who then put on a good show and carried him toward Jasper and a doctor, making sure that they had him dead before he was brought in.”
Parson nodded his bandaged head. “I’ve got just a hunch,” he said, “that you’re right. The proof is that the Burwells are trying to take your scalp. But that’s the only proof you’ll ever have. That and a bullet through the brain one of these days. When you’re an angel, you’ll know all about it, but that won’t do the town of Jasper any good. You can look down out of the blue and see Harry Burwell walk up the church aisle with Ruth Denham . . . and will that be a help to you?”
At this, the owner of the Jasper Journal sighed heavily. Another sound seemed to be a prolongation of his sigh, but it was a whisper that came from near the door. Joe Parson showed the state of his nerves by jerking around and snatching up a sawed-off shotgun. Then they both saw that it was merely an envelope that had been thrust under the edge of the door.
Jimmy Jones picked it up and found written on the face
of it:
Mr. Jones
Jasper Journal
Main Street, Jasper
Then he opened the envelope and found written inside, in ink that had spluttered on the spongy paper of the writing pad:
I can tell you just how Charlie Denham died because I seen it. Meet me tonight at the entrance to Taylor Gulch, and I’ll talk for $500. I’ll be riding an old gray horse that’ll look white by the moonlight.
Jimmy Jones read the letter again, aloud, slowly. Then he looked up thoughtfully toward the ceiling.
“You’re not a half-wit,” said Parson, suddenly alarmed. “You wouldn’t go out and walk into a trap like that, would you?”
“Why is it a trap?” asked Jimmy.
“The gulch is right out in the middle of the Burwell country. They’re asking you to put your head in the middle of the bull’s-eye. Wait a minute, Jimmy . . . I can see the crazy look in your eye!”
“Five hundred dollars isn’t much to pay for the truth about this case. I’ll pay that much,” said Jimmy Jones.
“Money be damned! It’s a question of your life, Jimmy.”
“You know something,” said Jimmy Jones. “My life has been bordered by a couple of question marks for a long time. Never mind about it. Joe, this letter writer means business.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because his letter is so short. Liars use up more words than honest men.”
“Listen, Jimmy, if you go up there to the gulch, they’ll murder you sure.”
“Come along and save me, then,” said Jimmy Jones.
Joe Parson groaned heavily. “I wish that I’d never seen your funny mug,” he declared.
* * * * *
But, nevertheless, Joe Parson, his head completely swathed in lighter bandages, accompanied Jimmy Jones through the dusk of that twilight toward Taylor Gulch. Parson had been long enough in the West to learn how to ride, but when he looked at Jimmy Jones, he shook his head.
“How long’d you take to learn to fit into the saddle like that?” he asked.
“It wasn’t time that taught me,” replied Jimmy. “I wasn’t made right, so it was a question of getting fitted bit by bit.”
“What you mean by that?” asked Parson.
“Just being broken up a few times. Left leg twice . . . right leg three times. Half a dozen lumps along the collar bone. Ribs crashed here and there.”
“You look to me,” said Parson, “as though you were a part of a horse. I don’t see how a mustang could throw you.”
“You know what they say down in Texas?”
“What’s that?”
“‘Every horse can be rode . . . every man can be throwed.’”
Parson chuckled. “How much of your life have you spent in hospital?” he asked.
“Not so long as I’ll be in the grave,” answered Jimmy Jones. “Is that Taylor Gulch?”
It opened among the western hills like a deep, narrow mouth with a red tongue in it; the red was the last of the sunset light. Well up in the east, growing brighter than the clouds through which it drifted, sailed the moon.
“There’s Taylor Gulch, all right,” said Parson, “and it looks as though there’s blood in it already. Every one of the rocks and all those trees look to me like trouble waiting to jump at us, Jimmy.”
They drew up their horses in a scattering grove of trees, not far from the entrance to th
e gulch.
“There he is,” said Jimmy Jones, pointing toward the glimmering figure of a white horse that was issuing from the mouth of the ravine. “Stay here, Joe. I’m going out to talk to him . . . if there’s crooked work, you can see what happens.”
“I’ll go with you, Jimmy,” answered Parson. “I may not be a champ with a gun, but, if there’s fighting, you can’t keep me out of it.”
Jimmy Jones answered, chuckling: “Stay here, Joe. I’ve seen you fight, and it’s good enough to suit me. But if there is a trap set here, it’s big enough to swallow two men as easily as one. You stay here and be the float to mark the spot . . . if I sink.” He patted Parson’s shoulder, and then rode out from the trees.
The red had died out of the gorge; there was only the increasing light of the moon, which now shone with such power that the night was like a clear but rather ghostly imitation of the day. And in the windless air the rocks, the trees, the tall hills seemed to be frozen to an endless quiet by the moon.
Jimmy Jones, loosening his guns in their holsters a little, jogged his horse straight toward the silver figure of the other mustang and, as he drew nearer, made out the lines of a tall rider with a widely flowing sombrero, narrow shoulders, and a pronounced stoop of the back. He was an old-timer. That much was perfectly clear, long before his face could be seen.
“Hello!” called Jimmy. “What you looking for, stranger?”
“Five hundred bucks,” said a dry, harsh voice in answer. “Can I find it on you?”
Jimmy halted his horse close to the other rider and saw one of those faces that seemed typical of the West of an older day—a long, thin face, with a long, thin mustache drooping from it.
“Do I pay first or listen first?” asked Jimmy Jones.
“Make it half and half,” said the stranger. “Gimme a coupla hundred, and then I’ll tell you the yarn.”
“Suppose that it’s something I know already?” asked Jimmy Jones.
“It ain’t nothing you know already. The Burwells may get blame’ nervous, but I reckon that all you been doing with your talk about the real story of the Burwell mine . . . I guess all that chatter has just been bluff.”
“How do you know that I haven’t picked up some real information?” asked Jones.
“I’ll tell you why, brother,” said the tall man. “It’s because them that murder don’t talk about what they’ve done. And outside of the killers, there wasn’t nobody there but the dead man and me.”
Jimmy Jones took from his pocket a prepared sheaf of bills and handed all of them over.
“I don’t know your name, but I like the first part of your yarn, and I’d like to hear the rest,” he said.
The other, without counting the money, pushed it into the side pocket of his canvas coat.
“By name of Vinnie Wharton,” he said, “though some calls me Vince.”
“Wharton, did you put the bullet through Charlie Denham?” asked the editor.
“I could have, but I never done it. I was just taken kind of by surprise when I heard the gun bang, and the plop of the slug when it hit into Charlie Denham. I could hear the smack of that bullet like the thump of a fist, sort of. And Charlie rolled over on his side and kicked over the pot of coffee that he was heating up.”
The picture grew suddenly clear in the mind of Jimmy Jones.
“Did you see the fellow who put lead into Denham?” asked Jones.
“No.”
“Then you don’t know who it was?”
Before Vinnie Wharton could answer, three or four rifles started clanging from the rocks and shrubbery all around the place. And Vinnie Wharton, reeling in the saddle, spilled suddenly out of it toward the ground.
VII
It was not a farce on the part of Vinnie Wharton. Jimmy Jones had heard at least one bullet strike into the flesh of the man. Therefore, Jimmy made no effort to gallop away to safety through the whirring of the bullets. He merely dived out of the saddle and stretched himself on the ground beside the wounded man, while the bullet-stung horse galloped furiously away. Rifles still spat fire here and there. He answered the flashes with shots from his revolver.
Then a voice shouted, and the echoes of the uproar died down the gulch and along the faces of the hills. There was only the groaning of poor Vinnie Wharton, sick with the hurt of his wound.
The big voice called out: “Jones, we got you, all right! We got you and we’re gonna finish you. But we’ll give you a chance to talk your way out of trouble if you surrender now and don’t make no more of a fight.”
Jimmy recognized the voice of Harry Burwell, and looked hungrily, anxiously around him. Yet there was no hope for escape. He might have trusted the speed of a horse. But his horse was gone. The moonlight was almost as clear as the sun, for good shooting, and about him the rocks offered a hundred little forts behind which murder could shelter itself at ease. More than that, there was the groaning of poor Vinnie Wharton, dissolving the battle hunger of Jimmy Jones.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll knuckle under, Harry.”
“Go in and get him . . . you, Ralph, and you, Tom,” commanded the unseen leader.
“Why not go in and get him yourself?” asked someone.
“Because if he gets a fair chance at me, he might go crazy and turn loose with his guns,” said Harry Burwell. “He’s a nut, anyway, or we wouldn’t have had all this trouble with him.”
Someone called to Jimmy Jones: “Look here, Jones! Stand up and drop your guns and hold your hands over your head.”
Jimmy Jones obeyed. There was nothing for him except this obedience, he knew. And it seemed to him, as he stood there, that the moonlight was like a river of cold, striking fear through him.
Two men appeared at once, climbing among the rocks, striding down toward him. The voice of Harry Burwell directed them to tie Jones’s hands and his ankles.
This was done quickly, and Jimmy was allowed to sit on the edge of a rock. He called out: “Harry, there’s a sick man here! A dying man, I think. Will you do something for him?”
They all came in, now. There was a round dozen of them, and the numbers were, in a direct way, a compliment to Jimmy Jones. With half of this number, Harry Burwell had delivered his first attack.
Jimmy, turning his head, looked wistfully toward the grove of trees where he had left Joe Parson. What could Joe do, against such numbers as these? If Joe rode to Jasper to get help, the mischief would be finished long before he returned. And if Joe remained nearby to watch, he would be helpless, one man against twelve. Hope, in that direction, seemed entirely cut off. All hope, in fact, was nearly dead in Jimmy.
He saw Harry Burwell, at last. The big fellow came striding up to him and laughed in his face.
“Here’s where you finish, eh?” said Burwell. “When I first saw you, I knew that I was going to have a chance to clean you up, Jones. I sort of had the taste of you on the back of my tongue. And here you are.”
“Do something for this poor devil, this Wharton, will you?” asked Jimmy Jones.
Harry Burwell stepped to the place where Wharton lay and, gripping him by his long hair, quickly jerked him to a sitting posture. Wharton, released, slumped loosely, his shoulders against a rock. His head leaned over on one shoulder, and with both arms he embraced his body. Every breath he drew had a deep, bubbling groan in it.
“So you tried to do me in, Vinnie, eh?” said Harry Burwell. “Why, you low hound. How long have I been spending good money on you to keep your dirty mouth shut?” He leaned and struck Wharton heavily with the flat of his hand across the face.
Wharton’s head rolled across to his other shoulder and hung there. His eyes were closed. “I’m dying, Harry,” said Wharton. “Just put another bullet into me and leave me die, will you?”
“Why should I make it any easier for you?” asked Harry Burwell. “You’re getting what’s coming to you, I guess.”
“Where’d the bullet hit him?” asked one man, leaning over Wharton.
“R
ight through the middle,” muttered Wharton. “Gosh, I’m awful sick. Harry, use your gun on me, will you? I can’t . . . I can’t even take a breath.”
“Search his pockets,” said Harry Burwell.
This was done, and the package of money was produced at once. Harry Burwell counted the dollars. “Five hundred, eh?” said Harry Burwell. “You sold me out as cheap as that, did you?”
“I thought they knew, anyway,” said Wharton. “I didn’t guess . . .”
“Blast you!” snarled Burwell. “When I saw you sneak away from the place, this evening, I don’t know why I guessed that you were on a dirty trail. But you were, all right. I’ve always hated your rotten heart, Vinnie. Now I’m going to watch you cash in. We can finish with Jones later on. Vinnie, did he come up here alone?”
“Far as I know,” said Wharton.
“Jones, did you come up here alone?” demanded Harry Burwell.
“Of course,” said Jimmy Jones.
“Of course? Why of course? Tuck and Wallace, back trail this hombre and see if the trail doubles up any place.”
Two men moved away at once, bending low to search through the moonlight for the sign left by the mustang of Jimmy Jones.
Burwell leaned over Wharton. “He’s not bleeding much,” he declared. “Maybe the old swine is playing ’possum on us.”
“Look at his face . . . look at his eyes. He ain’t playing ’possum,” said another.
“Sit down and have a smoke, boys,” suggested Burwell. “This is pretty good. We’ve had thorns pulled out of us, all right, tonight.”
“We can talk business, now,” suggested Jimmy Jones. “But look here, Harry. You don’t gain a great deal by letting Wharton lie there and groan his life away. Give him some water, will you?”
“You like this hound, do you?” asked Harry. “Well, Jimmy, watch him and listen to him, because what’s happening to him isn’t a patch on what’s going to happen to you.”
“It’s not likely that you’ll be fool enough to do anything to me,” answered Jimmy.
“No?” asked Harry, and then laughed loudly. “You hear that, boys?” he echoed.