“Watch out who you go tripping.”
“Oh bushwah,” Frankie said.
Pete shouldered him sideways. “Bushwah nothing. You watch out who you go tripping around into fires.”
“Who’ll make me?”
“I’ll make you.”
“You and whose army?” Frankie said.
“I don’t need any army.”
Their hands were up, they were sparring lightly, shuffling around in the corner where the table had been. Chet coughed in the smoke. “Come on outside and settle it,” he said. “We’re gonna get our pants burned off in here.”
The quarrelers started out just as Bill, his eyes bugging out and his jaw so loose that he could hardly speak, stuck his head inside and shouted something. “What?” Chet said. He pushed past Bill, Frankie and Pete on his heels, shouldering each other angrily in the doorway. Bill yelled again and pointed. A wagon was coming up the hill, hardly more than two blocks away, and in the wagon was Angus MacLeod and his whole family. Even as they stared Angus was tossing the reins to his wife and jumping to the ground.
Bill and Frankie broke together around the smoking shack. Chet and Pete a step behind, hitting for the aspen coulee that came down close. After ten steps Frankie stopped, digging, and legged it back, to come after the other three in a moment pushing his bicycle on the dead run.
By the time Frankie reached the edge of the protecting brush Angus, tall, red-headed, and surprisingly fast, was around the house. He didn’t even stop to look inside or put out the fire. Fists doubled, red hair blowing, he covered ground like a galloping horse, so that there never was a chance of getting the bike away. A block inside the brush Frankie wheeled it into a clump of bushes and came pounding after Chet, burdened down with his two guns. Bill and Pete were out of sight, maybe still running, maybe hiding.
The grade got steeper. Chet’s mouth was dry, his eyes bulging, his chest on fire for air. Once, when the trees thinned, they heard Angus yell, and looked back to see him coming with that terrible unsuspected speed. They ducked up a side trail, raced across a stretch of level ground, slid off to the left through straggling brush, and huddled up under the bank of the watercourse, completely spent, trying to swallow the heaving of their breath. They waited, hoping that they had fooled Angus, and in a minute they heard him go thundering by. Even then they stuck where they were. Chet started to whisper to Frankie, but a sound above made him huddle close up against the bank, so close that little clods of dirt broke loose and rolled down past his cheek.
Angus was coming back. They heard his steps, heavy, not running now, and his hoarse breath. The steps went straight on down the path, and after three minutes Chet peeked through the roots on the lip of the bank and saw the farmer just disappearing into the trees. Keeping out of sight under the bank, they went back up the coulee, crossed through it onto the east side near the top, and came down through the other coulee to the sandhills. At the edge of the hills they found Bill and Pete, scared to go on any further till Angus left. They had run clear up onto the bench and then come down under the cover of the trees.
“Well, by Jeez,” Chet said, “he never caught any of us.”
In the low sumac between the aspen and the sandstone pillars they lay sprawling on their backs. Chet began to feel pretty good. They had got away slick as a whistle, and he still had the six-shooter, too. “Never laid a hand on a one of us,” he said.
“No,” Bill said, “but he’s got Frankie’s wheel.”
Frankie sat up, was pulled down instantly. He opened his mouth and squawked. “What?”
“I seen him,” Bill said. “I seen him come out of the brush pushing the bike. It’s stood against the shanty now.”
They all stared at Frankie. His lip trembled, and a tear popped into each eye. “What’ll Mr. Lipscomb do?” Chet said.
“He’ll kill me,” Frankie said. He dashed his forearm across his eyes and bit his lower lip. “You don’t know. When he gets mad he’s just as likely to hit me with a stick of type.”
On hands and knees he crawled to the very edge of the sumac. The others wriggled up and they lay in a row looking across the green slope to the shack. The smoke wasn’t going up any more, but there was a smoldering pile of stuff outside, where Mrs. MacLeod and the kids had thrown it. Mrs. MacLeod and the children were sitting by the wagon, Angus was hitching his horses to the plow he had brought along, and Frankie’s wheel was leaning against the corner of the shack.
“Oh damn!” Frankie said. He lay down in the brush with his face on his arms.
Chet, looking over the six-shooter, rolling the empty cylinder, peering down the fouled barrel, thought darkly that they ought to go right down there and throw a gun on old MacLeod and take the bike and tell him to hit the grit. He would do just that, if he had any more bullets. He would throw his gun from low on his thigh, and it would come so fast Angus wouldn’t even see it. “All right, MacLeod,” he’d say. “Give the kid back his bike, and don’t take your time, either!”
He stole a look at Frankie. Once, on a hike, he had seen old man Lipscomb, who was the scoutmaster, get mad at Frankie and slap him so hard on the jaw that the red mark stayed there for an hour. Frankie would get hail columbia now.
Frankie raised up a little. “We got to get it back,” he said doggedly. “I wouldn’t dast go home without it, and I ought to be there now.”
“Well, how?” Chet said.
“I ain’t gonna help,” Bill said. “I didn’t want to bust up Tex’s shack in the first, place.”
“You’re a coward,” Frankie said.
“I ain’t either. I just don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Me neither,” Pete said. “Any guy that’d shove you in the fire.”
“Oh, quit arguing,” Chet said. He was remembering an Indian story he had been reading in the American Boy where one hunter had drawn the Indians’ fire while the other got away and went for help.
“Lookit,” he said. “Come on over here.” They all crawled to the edge again. “See? If you could get into the brush on this side, then the rest of us could go around on the other side and make a racket and get Angus chasing us and then you could dash out and get on your bike and beat it.”
“I’m game,” Frankie said. His face was smeared and his mouth tight. “Who’s coming?”
“Not me,” Bill said.
“Me neither,” said Pete. “I’m not helping any guy that tries to push a guy in the fire.”
Frankie half raised up. “Oh for gosh sakes,” he said. “I’ll smack you in the nose.”
“Try it,” Pete said. “I dare you. Go on and smack me.”
They lay on their elbows glowering, and Chet got mad at both of them. “You can fight any old time,” he said. “We got to get that wheel.”
So he and Frankie went alone, Chet feeling loyal and heroic and contemptuous of the two left behind. He left his two guns with Pete, so he could run faster if Angus took after him, and he and Frankie worked back down through the coulee until they could hear the cries of Angus’ two little girls playing.
“Now I’ll sneak on across,” Chet whispered. “You watch, and when you see the bushes jerk, get ready. Then I’ll jump up and see if I can get him after me, and you grab the bike.”
Stealthily he snaked through the golden bright shadows of the aspen and into the fringe of sumac. Lifting his head carefully, he could see Angus plowing the potato patch he grew on Tex’s land every year, and Mrs. Angus spreading out some lunch in the shade of the wagon. None of them was within a hundred feet of the bike. He jerked the bushes, and a bush across the opening, hardly fifty feet from the shack, twitched back.
Chet drew a long breath, trying to un-knot his stomach. He waited until Angus was plowing in his direction, as far from Frankie and the bicycle as he would get. Then he jumped to his feet, yelled, waved his arms, thumbed his nose.
Angus did not hesitate a second. He dropped the reins from around his neck, turned the plow on its side, and started like a footr
acer for Chet. Out of the corner of his eye, before his legs could answer his command to bolt, Chet saw Frankie run crouching to the corner of the shack, and then he himself turned tail and dug for the woods.
He had gone only a few steps when Mrs. Angus yelled. He threw a scared running look over his shoulder. Angus had turned, and was trying to cut Frankie off as he pushed the wheel desperately across the bumpy ground toward the road. Chet stopped and watched, hardly breathing.
Frankie had fifty yards to go before he hit the trail and ground smooth enough to ride on, and Angus, coming down at an angle, had a good chance to cut him off. Frankie sprinted, bouncing the wheel, his bare legs and fallen stockings twinkling, but Angus was coming like a thunderbolt. Chet’s heart stopped for a full two seconds as Frankie hit the road and made a running leap onto the seat. It looked as if Angus could reach out in one more stride and grab him. He had looked terribly fast before, coming uphill. Now, going down, he was all legs. He opened up clear to the neck like a clothespin, he ate up twenty feet at a stride. Frankie’s head was down, his feet on the pedals were a blur, his shirt was ballooning out behind, but he did not open up any daylight between himself and Angus. One bump, one spill, and Frankie was a goner.
But he didn’t spill, and he didn’t let up, and even at the tracks, where he had with providential carelessness left both gates open, he pedalled right on, bumped perilously over the planks of the crossing, and legged it out the other side and up the road to town. Angus stopped at the fence.
Chet yelled, cheered, waved to Frankie far down below. When he took his eyes off the flying white figure and woke up to where he was, Mrs. Angus was only a few rods away, bearing down on him with her face puckered in anger. Like a scared antelope Chet cut for the woods. At first he didn’t really fear her much. Then, a little way inside the aspen, he glanced back to see her almost upon him. She was almost as fast as Angus. Fear put a spurt of speed in Chet’s legs, but he couldn’t shake her. He heard her feet pounding on the path behind, close upon him. In a minute her hand might reach out ...
Like a flash he dropped to hands and knees. Mrs. Angus’ heavy knee hit him solidly, knocking his wind half out, and she went over him ponderously, grabbing for him as she fell. But Chet scrambled loose and escaped like a limping, winded fox into the brush.
When Chet got home from that expedition he hid the six-shooter in the cellar and kept his mouth discreetly shut, waiting to see what would happen. A time or two he slipped home from school at noon, when he knew his mother would be down at the postoffice seeing if there was a letter from Pa, and took out the gun to snap and fondle it. But it came Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and nothing happened. Angus wasn’t going to raise a fuss, or maybe he didn’t know who to raise it at.
He and Frankie had started building an elaborate shanty in the brush by the east ford. Pete came in, over Frankie’s protest, when he produced a full bag of Bull Durham stolen from his father. Bill came in too on the strength of half a raisin pie he had got from home. They camouflaged the shanty with brush, disguised the path in. And on Thursday afternoon Chet proposed that they take the six-shooter down and have some target practice. Shells for a .44 probably cost plenty, so everybody’d have to divvy in.
A quick foray under the plank sidewalk in front of the hotel turned up a dime and a good deal of tea lead. Crawling out, they scattered to their homes to see what could be raised.
In half an hour all were back. Bill had a dime. Pete had hooked seventeen cents from his father’s second-best pants. Frankie had only four pennies. Mr. Lipscomb wouldn’t give him any money, and he was scared to hook any. Chet had bummed a dime from his mother. Altogether they had fifty-one cents.
“I should think that’d be enough,” Chet said. He shifted his pants, because the .44 was inside them and kept slipping down. On their way to the hardware store they ran into Bruce, going. to mail a letter for Ma. That was the second one she had sent in two days.
“Don’t you go following us,” he warned Bruce.
“Why? What you gonna do?”
“None of your business. You just stay away, is all.”
“I guess I can walk where I want to,” Bruce said.
“You’re too little to hang around with us,” Chet said, and hitched his pants. The string that hung the gun around his neck was cutting into him; he walked a little spraddling to keep the pistol from banging against his stomach.
They ditched Bruce and went into the hardware. Mr. McGregor‘s, pale egg-like bald head came forward along the dark counter. On a nail keg sat Jewel King, hugging his knees.
“Hi, Mr. King,” Chet said.
“Hi, boy,” King said. “Been throwing any parties lately?”
“No sir,” Chet said. He wished he could forget that Mr. King was town marshal, and he wished he hadn’t brought the gun along in here. It was so dark that probably the little bulge it made wasn’t noticeable, but it bothered him anyway, and he crowded against the counter. “Have you got any .44 cartridges?” he said to Mr. McGregor.
Mr. McGregor bent over the counter. “You mean .45, don’t you?”
“No..44.”
“That’s an old-fashioned size,” Mr. McGregor said. “If you really want anything that big you must want .45’s. What do you want them for?”
“It’s for a gun of Pa‘s,” Chet said. “It’s .44, I know.”
Mr. McGregor looked across at Jewel King. His toothless mouth wrinkled up like the mouth of a paper bag. “You ever see a .44, Jewel?”
“Sure,” Jewel said. “They make ‘em, all right.” He let his knee down and said to Chet, “You haven’t got the gun handy, have you? Maybe we could tell.”
Chet swallowed. Jewel King was looking at him from one side, Mr. McGregor from the other. Bruce had come in and was standing by the door. “No,” Chet said. “I haven’t got the gun. I just wanted some to ... to ...”
Jewel’s hand came out suddenly and patted him around the waist, felt the gun, dragged it out, broke the string. He looked the pistol over and showed it to Mr. McGregor. Mr. McGregor nodded his head up and down. “Give themselves away every time,” he said.
Jewel spoke sadly to Chet, who was standing frozen, not trying to run. “I’m sorry to do this, boy,” Jewel said, “but I’ve got to arrest you. You stole that gun from Tex Davis’ place. Didn’t you?”
Chet swallowed. The door slammed and he turned his head quickly. Frankie and Pete and Bill had all skipped, and only Bruce stood inside the door.
“Yes sir,” Chet said.
Mr. McGregor munched his gums together and cackled. “ ‘Y God it’s funny,” he said. “Both in jail the same time. That’s a funny one.”
“What?” Chet said.
Jewel King looked at him soberly. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“Never mind,” Jewel said. “I’ll have to take you over to the jail, and then I’ll have to go see your mother. I don’t like to see you in a mess like this, Chet. I had a pretty high opinion of you, up till now.”
As they started for the door Bruce, pale and weeping, turned and fled. When they got out on the street Chet saw him streaking along the irrigation ditch toward home.
7
“He said that?”
Elsa rose slowly from the chair in the kitchen and stared at Bruce. He nodded, sniffling.
“But how could he know,” she said, half to herself, “when I just got the letter today?”
“He just took hold of Chet and said, ‘I’m sorry, boy, but I’ve got to arrest you,’ and then Mr. McGregor said that about both of them at the same time. Is Pa in jail, Ma?”
Elsa put her hand in her apron pocket and felt the letter. “No,” she said.
“What are they going to do to Chet?”
“Never mind,” she said. “You run out and play. I’ll go get Chet straightened out.”
“I want to come, Ma.”
She said, “You stay as far out of this as you can get. I’ll be back pretty soon.”
Along the ditch bank, as she went uptown, there were purple crocuses, and the primroses were just beginning to fold their petals together. A chilly little wind blew in from the river. So now everything’s falling apart, she said. Now Bo’s in jail in Havre and Chet’s in jail at home, and we’re right back where we started in Dakota, only worse now, with the kids in it.
Walking, she pulled out the letter and read it again. Two policemen had been waiting at the line, picked him up before he could get across. He was full of shame, he couldn’t blame himself enough for bringing this on her. They had confiscated the car and the load and had him charged with smuggling. “I should have listened to you, Sis,” he wrote, “but I wanted so damned much to get out of the hole. If I could have made a good stake at this we could have gone anywhere you wanted, and settled down to some steady business. I was just sick of living on sowbelly and beans in a dirty little jerkwater town, I guess. They’ve got me in jail with a nigger, but I’m not complaining. I’m no better than a nigger, the way I’ve made you live. I hope you won’t think you have to tell the kids. If this turns out all right I’ll make it up to you, that’s a promise ...”
She put the letter away again. Don’t tell the kids.
At the jail she found Jewel King. “I was just going to call you,” he said, “but I thought I better let Chet stew a while in the jail-house.” He chuckled, and his belly shook. “He’s got guts, that kid,” he said. “Most kids would of bawled, but he just sits there and grits his teeth. I like to see a kid like that.”
“Do you like to see a boy steal?”
“Oh, steal,” Jewel said. “This wasn’t really stealing. Any kid would snitch a gun if he found it in a deserted shanty. He’s just full of beans. I wouldn’t of put him in the cooler only Angus MacLeod was pretty hot, said a bunch of them swiped the gun and some other stuff and then tried to burn the house down.”
The Big Rock Candy Mountain Page 43
