The Shining Badge

by Gilbert, Morris

“Yeah, old man Bing didn’t know he was tippin’ me off, but they’re gonna hit Jennings all right.”

  “What are you gonna do, Max?”

  Max Conroy laughed. “They’re gonna find out they bit off more than they can chew.”

  “You gonna get ’em to move the still?”

  “Not time for that,” Max growled, “but there’s time to put that sheriff away and Moon too. Killed in the line of duty. Maybe they’ll even get a medal.”

  The two deputies stared at Conroy and did not speak for a time. “That’s pretty crude, Max,” Arlie Pender said. “Killin’ a sheriff is bad business.”

  “You fellows get out of here. Make yourselves obvious. I want you to be able to account for your time.” He turned and hurried away, and Merle Arp shook his head. “Come on, Arlie. I don’t want any part of this. Somebody could go down for it.”

  ****

  Billy handed out the shotguns and saw that each of the other three had plenty of ammunition. “You’ll have to be closer with these, and I’ll take the rifle. One thing about a shotgun, it’s hard to miss with it.”

  “What’s the drill here, Billy?” Frank Eddings asked. He was a tall, lanky man, and his hair, at the age of sixty, was still black. He had dark eyes and had been known as a tough officer all of his career. He held the shotgun loosely and stood waiting, his eyes on Moon rather than Jenny.

  “You all know where the still is. It’s in the same place the Fender brothers made moonshine.”

  “Kind of a hard place to sneak up on,” Eddings murmured. “It’s right out in the open.”

  “What’s it like, Billy?” Jenny said nervously.

  “Well, Frank’s right. It is hard to sneak up on. It’s an old barn right out in the middle of an open field. The old house burned down a long time ago, so the barn’s just standing there all by itself. Nobody lives there now, but Jennings has been using it for a spell.”

  “Well, if it’s out in the open, how do we get to it?”

  “I’ll work up to where I got a good view of the door. The other three of you come at it from different angles. What I’m hoping is that they’re so busy makin’ the shine that they won’t know until we open the door and throw down on ’em. So, we’ll come up as quiet as we can.”

  Jenny listened, and her hand tightened on the barrel of the shotgun. Somehow she had to keep her fear from these men, but it was difficult. She had read books about men going into battle during war, and this was much the same. She listened carefully to Billy as he went over the plan, and finally when he said, “All right, any questions?” she did not say a word, nor did the other two.

  “It ought to go down pretty easy,” Moon said. “They’re not lookin’ for us, and I’ll go in first.”

  “Better let me go with you, Billy,” Eddings offered.

  “No, I want you three outside to be sure they don’t get away. I don’t think they’ll argue with this thirty-thirty. They know what it can do, and I can get off three shots quicker than they can think.”

  “All right, Billy,” Eddings said.

  Bing spoke up and said, “Sheriff, why don’t you stay back out of this? It doesn’t seem right for you to put yourself at risk.”

  “It goes with the job, Bing. Thanks for thinking about me, but this is something I agreed to do when I took the office. Let’s go.”

  Jenny felt strangely numb as she got into the car with Billy. As he pulled out, she glanced back to see Eddings driving the other car close behind them. They drove for some fifteen minutes, then Moon pulled over and said, “We go in from here.”

  Jenny got out, and her mouth felt dry. She waited until the other two got out of the car and looked to Billy. She felt utterly helpless and knew that without Moon it would be a total washout.

  “We can walk through the trees here. It’s not more than an eighth of a mile. We’ll go quiet, and when we get to the edge of the tree line, we stop and see how it looks. Come on.”

  The sun was moving westward in the sky, and Jenny looked at her watch and saw that it was five minutes until three. She gripped the stock of the rifle until her hand ached, and glancing around, she saw that the three men with her seemed to have little concern. They were all old hands at this, and she felt a sudden sense of shame at the fear that clutched at her.

  As they moved along, a sudden rustling startled her, and she uttered a short, strangled cry and whirled quickly.

  “Just a deer, sheriff,” Kermit said. He had come up even with her and reached out and patted her shoulder. “Nothin’ to be afraid of.”

  “Kermit, I hate to say this, but I . . . I’m scared spitless!”

  “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

  “Aren’t you scared just a little bit, Kermit?”

  “No, not anymore, but I was the first time I went on a job like this. I was no older than you, and it was a tough one. But then again, I got less reason to be afraid than you.”

  “Why, you’re as likely to get shot as I am.”

  “Yes, but my life’s mostly behind me. All the good things are gone. Since I lost Helen, why, nothin’ seems to matter much. But you’re young. You’ve got your life in front of you. That’s why I wish you had stayed back, Miss Jenny.”

  “I can’t do it, Kermit. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”

  They hurried and caught up with the other two, who had reached the edge of the woods. “There it is. No sign of a car, but it could be inside. Don’t see any smoke either, but that doesn’t tell us anything,” Moon said. “Well, we can do this slow or fast. I say we go fast. If they’ve got a lookout, the faster we go the better. You spread out now and let me take the door. Are you ready?”

  Jenny nodded but could not say a word, and then Moon said, “All right, let’s do it.” She felt like a robot, but her legs obeyed her will. She checked the safety to be sure that it was off, and the four of them leaped out of the woods at a fast trot. Jenny moved out to Moon’s right along with Kermit, and she saw that Frank had darted to the left. The four of them made a ragged line as they approached the front of the barn. She could hear the sound of the men’s feet and her own pounding the dry earth and wished fervently she had never thought of such a thing. She also wished she had never decided to run for sheriff, for she knew now that this was beyond her.

  Jenny was caught off guard, as were the others, when a shot rang out. Billy hollered, “Look for cover! They’re waitin’ for us!”

  Then the air was filled with gunfire. She heard the boom of shotguns and the crack of Billy’s rifle, and looking up, she saw a man, in the open window of the loft, suddenly disappear as if driven back by a fist. But she also saw the flickering of rifles or sidearms that filled the air with a rolling thunder.

  “Get out of here!” Billy said. “There’s too many of ’em!” He turned to one side, and Jenny saw blood on his neck.

  “Billy, are you all right?”

  “Yes, get out of here!” He was raking the barn with the thirty-thirty, the shots causing one continual roar. The other men were keeping up the fire as they backed away. They had almost reached the edge of the woods when Jenny heard a muffled cry. She turned to see Kermit as he fell back on the ground. She ran to him, crying out, “Billy—Kermit’s been hit!”

  She heard Billy say, “Keep firing! Give us cover, Frank.” And then he was there with her. Jenny saw the spreading crimson on the front of Kermit’s shirt, and her heart felt as if it were squeezed in a gigantic, freezing fist. “Kermit,” she whispered. “Kermit . . .”

  Billy picked the man up, threw him over his shoulder, and gasped, “Let’s get out of here.” He raised his voice, “Come on, Frank. Get away! Get out of this place!”

  Jenny followed numbly as they dove past the tree line. A bullet clipped a branch off beside her head, and she saw the leaf fall to the ground. But then they were in the trees.

  Billy was gasping for breath, and then Frank came up and said, “Let me help you with him, Billy.”

  “Put . . . me down.”

 
The two men lowered the bulky form of Kermit to the ground, and Jenny saw a bloody hole on the back of his uniform. The bullet had gone all the way through. She knelt down and put her arms around him and whispered, “Kermit, oh, Kermit, don’t die!”

  She heard Kermit try to speak, and when she lifted her head, she saw through her tears that he was smiling at her! “Don’t you cry, Miss Jenny.” Blood bubbled up through his lips, but Kermit reached up and tried to touch her cheek. “I’ll be seein’ my Helen now. I wish . . .”

  And then Kermit Bing suddenly stiffened—and then relaxed.

  Jenny cried out weeping, and then she felt Billy’s hand on her shoulder. “He’s gone, Miss Jenny. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Jenny Winslow clung to the body of the old man. Blood stained the front of her uniform and had gotten in her hair. The world seemed to be spinning, and she looked up and said, “Billy, he can’t be dead!”

  “He did the best he could,” Billy Moon said softly. “He wouldn’t want you to stay here in danger. Come on, me and Frank will carry him. You take the guns.”

  Jenny clung to Kermit for a moment longer, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Then she touched his cheek a final time and got to her feet. As the men picked up the still body, she remembered something.

  He won’t be there to see his grandson get his Eagle badge.

  She remembered the pride in Kermit’s eyes when he had told her of this, and the memory made his death seem more than ever like a terrible, terrible tragedy. Jenny’s mind was numb, but as she followed the two men struggling with the old man, she knew that this moment would never pass away from her memory.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Sign of Jonah

  For most of her nineteen years, Jenny Winslow had lived in a safe and secure cocoon. Her father’s money and position had insulated her against many of the shocks and bruises that less fortunate young women encounter during their early years. Jenny had been born with a proverbial spoon in her mouth. Clothes, jewelry, travel—all that money could buy—had been available to her, and her parents had delighted in seeing that she had those things that made up what most would call the “good life.” If the world outside was harsh and cruel, Jenny didn’t know it. Even when her mother died, she’d had her friends and luxurious home and unlimited allowance to comfort her.

  When the stock market had crashed, Jenny had crashed with it, but she had adjusted to a new life. Now, however, as she sat in the auditorium of Bethel Church, she had never known a more miserable time in her entire life. She had, of course, suffered when her mother died and when her family had been stripped of practically every possession and forced to leave the comforts of a wealthy world to take up residence in a backwater Georgia farmhouse. That had seemed hard, but none of these hardships had touched the deepest recesses of her spirit as had the death of Kermit Bing. For the first time in her life, she felt responsible for another person’s death.

  Ever since Jenny had held the dying man in her arms and watched the life fade away until Kermit lay with that awful stillness of the dead, she had been like one of the walking wounded on a battlefield. Some soldiers get frightfully wounded but keep going forward, doing their duty in spite of a life-threatening injury. In some respects Jennifer was like this. Since the death of Bing, she had spoken, had eaten, had slept, and had performed those things that had to be done—but they were all automatic, for her spirit seemed frozen and dead.

  As the sound of a hymn interrupted Jenny’s thoughts, she lifted her chin and forced herself to face forward, where the body of Kermit Bing lay in a bronzed coffin. The lid was open, and although she could not see the remains of the old man, an image of his face rose in her mind. The hymn “Rock of Ages,” she knew, was Kermit’s favorite song. He had often gone around humming it or whistling the tune. Now she listened to the words numbly as the congregation sang:

  “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee;

  Let the water and the blood,

  From thy wounded side which flowed,

  Be of sin the double cure,

  Save from wrath and make me pure.”

  The words brought her no comfort. Indeed, nothing about the funeral or anything else was able to bring comfort to Jenny. She sat stiffly, her hands clenched together unconsciously, deliberately turning her eyes away from the coffin at the front of the auditorium. As Reverend Devoe Crutchfield got up and read the obituary, her eyes moved without willing it to the family that sat in the front of the church. She was sitting on the left side of the auditorium and could see the faces of Kermit’s family. She had gone to them and expressed her grief, but her lips had been numb, and she had been unable to say anything meaningful. Perhaps it was impossible to say anything at a time like this, but she had forced herself to go. Now she saw the profile of Kermit’s grandson, whose Eagle Scout presentation he had missed, and Jenny saw tears rolling down the boy’s cheeks. Quickly she looked down and bit her trembling lower lip. She did not watch Crutchfield as he read the obituary, but finally when he began to speak, she blinked back her tears and looked up. Luke Dixon was sitting beside her, and she felt a touch on her hand. She took his hand and squeezed it hard, and he returned the pressure as Crutchfield continued to speak.

  “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

  Looking up out over the congregation, Crutchfield’s voice was clear, although sadness marred his features. “We’re all grieved,” he said quietly, “as always when we lose a friend, but I would preface my remarks with this one. When you lose something, it’s lost because you don’t know where it is, but we do know where our brother Kermit is. He’s in the presence of God. And since we know where he is, he is not really lost. What we are feeling is our own sorrow, because for the time being we cannot see Bing or talk with him or do any of those things that we do with friends or relatives. But I’m convinced that one day, no man knows how long, we will all see Bing again, those of us who know Christ Jesus.”

  The church was absolutely silent, and the smell of the banks of flowers came to Jennifer as Crutchfield spoke of the promises of the Bible. The vivid colors and the freshness of the flowers were counterpoint to the sorrow and the grief on the faces of those who sat in the pews. Jenny had attended other funerals in her life, but the loss of Bing was like a knife shoved through her heart.

  “The Scripture says that there is one sign that Jesus was who He said He was. You will remember that He made no little claim for himself. He said He was the only way to heaven. He said this very clearly and very plainly. ‘No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’ The world hates that sentence as it does no other statement in the Scripture. For the world insists that men and women can go to heaven if they are good people, no matter what religion they follow. Mohammed or Confucius, why, they’re just as good as Jesus. But Mohammed is dead, and Confucius, his bones are somewhere in an obscure Chinese tomb, I suppose. Jesus said that no sign would be given but one, and that was that He would come out of the tomb after having died and would authenticate His claims to being the Son of God.”

  For some time Crutchfield spoke of Jesus and His resurrection. Then finally he said, “You do not have your Bibles with you, I’m sure, as you would in an ordinary service. But when you go home I would like you to turn to the book of First Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter, and read it word for word—and then read it again—and when you’ve done that, read it one more time. This will be difficult for some of you, for this is a long chapter. It takes up three pages in my Bible, fifty-eight verses. It’s a tremendously important chapter, for the apostle Paul was chosen to explain Jesus to the world through his letters, and it was in this chapter he takes up this most important subject of all. And as we grieve here, I would like for us to take time to see the magnificenc
e of our faith. Paul says, ‘If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.’

  “Very clearly, Paul says our hope of heaven stands on this one issue: did Jesus come forth from the grave? And in this whole chapter Paul triumphantly shouts, ‘Yes, He is alive! He is risen!’ ”

  Jenny had heard Crutchfield preach many times. She had thought for a while that she might be interested in him as a husband, but she had never found a love for him like that. As she listened, she realized that he was a bigger man than she had thought. He preached at a small, obscure rural church with no stained-glass windows, but he preached with such power that she was somewhat shocked. His expression was alive as he read verse after verse from Paul’s letter, and finally he said, “Paul ends his argument with these ringing words, ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ ”

  Closing his Bible, Devoe was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We are on this side of the river while our brother Kermit has passed to the other side. One day every one of us will have to cross that river, but as we cross it, Jesus will be there with us. And once we are across, we will be in the presence of the King, as our brother is right now. We weep for him, we feel our loss—but we celebrate the entrance of Kermit Bing into the presence of Jesus Christ and of His Father!”

  Jenny could not keep the tears from flowing then. She knew that Luke beside her was aware of her grief, for he put his arm around her, and she turned and put her face against his shoulder. As a final hymn was sung, she felt the pressure of his arm pulling her to her feet. He led her into the aisle up toward the casket in the procession, and when she looked down on the still face, she felt as if she could not go on. She turned quickly, grateful for Luke’s help, for she was blinded by her tears, and he guided her down the aisle and out of the church.