Fightin' Fool

by Max Brand

  But what the deputy sheriff saw, first and last and all the time, was the gleaming little golden mustache that adorned the upper lip of his prisoner. He had seen that before, and he had seen only one like it, and it was worn by the dapper youth who had been the chief escort of the Tyrrel girl.

  A sudden shadow swept over the brain of Matthews. He took a quick, deep breath and stared again. “By the leapin’ thunder!” he said. “George, get the door of that cell open, because it appears to me like maybe we’ve started more trouble poppin’ than we knowed anything about!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Jingo’s Dance

  Not long before, Jingo had finished stripping and redressing himself. Now he looked down with satisfaction on the white gleam of his borrowed suit. The little red flower at the buttonhole of the left lapel had been more than a bit crushed, but when he dusted it off, it looked fresh enough to pass. He felt that he might need that red flower as the final token of his new identity. Then he took from a pocket a light hood of white silk that went completely over his head. The care of Mr. Wheeler Bent for detail had been so exact that he had even furnished his mask with a curling red feather that trembled along one side of it. Best of all, the clothes fitted; even the shoes were exactly the right size—a thing that caused Jingo to feel a sudden accession of respect for his late enemy.

  Then he went into the barn.

  The hardware merchant was there at the door. So was the sheriff. And in the near distance, none other than the lofty form of the Parson could be seen, towering above his neighbors. He had picked out the smallest and the most-freckled girl in the crowd, and the mask that he was wearing was not half big enough to cover his smile.

  “Here’s Mr. Wheeler Bent,” said the hardware man.

  “Hello, Mr. Bent,” said the sheriff.

  Jingo waved an airy hand and walked through the gate into the interior. He had a little time on his hands, but not too much. For he could not tell when Wheeler Bent would rouse and get help. And by the exactness with which the borrowed clothes fitted him, Jingo could prophesy the hugeness of the wrath of Mr. Bent.

  The dance was about to commence.

  He drifted by the half-masked giant, the Parson, saying: “Oh, just a moment, if you please.”

  The Parson turned slowly toward him and made a partial step. If the mask could not cover all his smile, it could not begin to cope with his scowl, and now he was scowling.

  “Well?” growled the Parson.

  Jingo spoke in his natural voice. He said: “I’m about to start dancing with her, Parson. If you try to double-cross me again, I’ll knock so many holes through you that your black heart’ll come out to surprise the world.”

  The Parson was made into a rigid form, by this announcement. And leaving him transfixed, Jingo went on to win something more than the hundred dollars which he had wagered.

  He found the cool little pool of white in the farther corner. The two young men gave Jingo a bit of applause for the handsome quality of his hood, which had quite undone them. He merely waved his hand at them and murmured to the girl: “This dance is ours?”

  When she heard his voice, she looked up at him quickly, and he saw her eyes open and close as swiftly as the shutter of a camera. He knew that the idea was safely inclosed in her mind in that instant. She stood up. The orchestra was beginning to tune; Jingo took note of the black mask that covered her face down almost to the tip of the nose. As though her smile in itself were not sufficiently revealing! Merely the blue satin of her eyes, he felt, would have been enough for him to identify her.

  “Let’s go by the orchestra and see if I can persuade the slide trombones to rest their arms,” said Jingo.

  She looked up and aside at him, once more, and went along without a word. And his heart jumped. She was able to do her thinking in silence, and her price mounted suddenly in his estimation.

  So he went on to the orchestra and slipped a five-dollar bill into the good right hand of each of the trombone players. “Miss Tyrrel has a frightful headache,” said Jingo. “Perhaps you’d better not play, this one dance.”

  Said the older of the two artists: “Sure. I know. We’ll just kind of let the old trombones mourn along with the rest of the music. It wouldn’t sound like no real orchestra without no trombones in it.”

  “Chance it just this once,” said Jingo. “I’m only speaking for the lady.”

  He went to the orchestra leader and gave him two of those five-dollar bills. “You’re putting on a great show, brother,” said Jingo. “But the trombones could rest, one dance. Miss Tyrrel has a headache.”

  “So have I,” said the orchestra leader. “I’ve had the things blatting and blubbering in my ears all evening long. If I had my way, all the trombone trumpets would be stuffed down the throats of the brass-headed fools that play ’em!”

  A sudden smile came in the eyes of Jingo. He took his likes even as his dislikes—on the wing. And he liked that orchestra leader.

  He turned back to the girl as the music commenced with the swaying rhythm of a waltz. And that was why wretched Wheeler Bent, when bound and gagged, had heard the orchestra strike up without the braying of the slide trombones.

  “What has become of Wheeler Bent?” she asked breathlessly. “What have you done to him?”

  “Not a hair of his head has been hurt,” said Jingo.

  “No, but every bone in his body might be broken,” she suggested.

  “Where’s the woman’s instinct?” asked Jingo.

  “That is my instinct,” said she.

  “The only thing that’s wrong with him now,” said he, “is that he’s choking with anger. It’s as big as a fist in his throat.”

  “He hasn’t come to harm?”

  “You know he hasn’t. You’re dancing here with me.”

  “Jingo, who are you?”

  “I’m the town entertainer,” he told her.

  “Was that why you’ve done some terrible thing to Wheeler Bent?”

  “I’ve only given him a chance to do a little quiet thinking. He’ll be able to forget his bright little mustache and look at nature, Gene.”

  He felt the flash of her eyes as she looked swiftly up at him.

  “The great big mountains of the open-hearted West, Gene,” said he, persisting in the nickname calmly, “they’re good for any man, and if they can cure a sore heart, I don’t see why they can’t cure a sore jaw.”

  The music rose into a fine sweep now, and they gave themselves up to it. He danced like a silky-stepping Mexican. They went through a group of the dancers without touching a sleeve.

  “I’ve got to go to poor Wheeler,” said the girl.

  “You’d better let the mountain come to Mahomet,” said Jingo.

  “Are you going to tell me what you did to him?”

  “I sent a red-headed boy to tell him that one of his horses was down. Then I met him on the way and tapped him on the chin and took his clothes and tied him to a tree. How much do you mind?”

  She began to laugh, even while she was shaking her head. “It will kill Wheeler,” she said. She almost stopped in the dance. “He’ll know that I’ve danced with a stranger dressed in his clothes,” she cried breathlessly.

  “He will,” said Jingo. “That’s what makes it perfect.”

  “Perfect?” she asked.

  “A perfect scandal,” said Jingo. “Your father will have to know. And just as you start to forget about everything that happened in Tower Creek, they’ll start reminding you. I don’t want you to forget me before I come to call on you.”

  “Are you coming to call? Are you coming up to Blue Water to call?” she asked.

  “If they hired all the United States army and marched it in ranks around your father’s house, I’d find a way through ’em,” said Jingo cheerfully. “Unless you tell me not to come.”

  “You must not come!” she cried.

  “All right then,” said Jingo. “I won’t.”

  “But I want you to,” added the girl. �
��But you mustn’t.”

  “If you want me to, I’ll be there.”

  “I’d be in a real terror,” said she. But she had begun to laugh again, quietly.

  “When shall I come?” asked Jingo.

  “I’m going back home to-morrow. Suppose you come in the twilight of the day?”

  “Certainly,” said Jingo. “Tell your father that I’m coming, will you?”

  “Tell him? You don’t know my father. He’s a very stern man, Jingo. He’s a frightfully stern man, Jingo. He’s a frightfully stern man. I don’t know what he’d do.”

  “He’ll call out the foot and horse,” said Jingo, “and that will make the game.”

  “You actually mean that I’m to tell him?”

  “Of course you are. We don’t want to do anything underhanded, do we?”

  She looked straight up at him, without her laughter now. “Will you tell me who you are?” she asked.

  “I’m a traveler,” said Jingo.

  “Where do you travel?”

  “Oh, from place to place.”

  “But how do you live?”

  “On the best in the land.”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “How do I make money? Well, I play a pretty good game of cards. I generally have a horse fast enough to get inside the money at the rodeo races. And one way and another I get along very well.”

  She was silent.

  “Some day I may find something worth doing,” said Jingo.

  “Will you tell me your real name?” she asked.

  “I’ve taken an oath,” said Jingo, “never to tell a soul except the woman who marries me, if I ever find one.”

  The music rose to a crescendo, and then died out to a sudden halt. They walked side by side right past the vast shoulders and the staring eyes of the Parson.

  “I’d better go,” said Jingo. “Wheeler Bent may be awake, by this time, and in a short while he’ll remember that there’s a dance and that he needs clothes to go to it. Good-by.”

  “Are you going? First—of course it was only a joke—about your coming to Blue Water.”

  “No joke to me,” said Jingo. “And I’ll be there. To-morrow at twilight. Before the sunlight’s gone from the sky.”

  He left her at her chair, and went rapidly out of the room. The Parson, seeing a significant sign, had started to follow him, but before he reached the door he was stopped for an instant by the entrance of the deputy sheriff, who cried out: “Sheriff, seen a gent here dressed up in the clothes of Wheeler Bent? There’s been assault and robbery around here.”

  “By the leaping thunder!” exclaimed the sheriff. “Then I know who did the job!”

  CHAPTER 11

  Bent’s Bargain

  The excitement brought every man out of the dance hall in one rush. They poured here and there under the trees, looking for a fellow in the glimmering white of a linen suit, and they carried lanterns in their search, but no one climbed to the top of the horse shed, where Jingo was calmly seated, changing his clothes back to his own comfortable outfit.

  When the tide had poured back into the barn, Jingo descended, put the linen suit in the fork of a tree, the shoes on top of the suit, and the wallet on top of the shoes, and went back toward the hotel. He only paused a moment at the door of the barn to look in and say: “Well, sheriff, keeping everything in order?”

  The sheriff looked at him with eyes that bulged with wrath. “Jingo,” he said in a trembling voice, “there’s no way I can prove anything, but I’m goin’ to make Tower Creek a hot griddle under you, you jumpin’ flea!”

  Jingo laughed and went on to the hotel, where he found the Parson waiting for him. The ten-dollar bills were lying in a pile on the center table. Jingo pocketed them without a word.

  “Where do we head for?” asked the Parson.

  “You guess,” asked Jingo.

  “For trouble,” said the Parson.

  “What’s the name of it, then?” asked Jingo.

  “The name is Eugenia Tyrrel,” said the Parson.

  “We ride up to call on her to-morrow,” agreed Jingo. “Be ready for the start, Parson.”

  “Old blue-eyed lightning!” murmured the Parson. “I seen you strike Jingo in the middle of things.”

  It was only a little later than this that Wheeler Bent, again clothed in his white linen suit, confronted Eugenia Tyrrel. He was white about the mouth and red around the cheeks. His mouth worked so that his mustache bristled. “My clothes!” he stammered. “He had on my clothes. You couldn’t fail to know them. They say—they say that incredible—the ruffian—that he even had the red flower in the buttonhole—and yet—and yet you actually danced with him. As if you didn’t care. As if it didn’t matter.”

  “I’m sorry, Wheeler,” said the girl. “Is that purple spot on the chin where he hit you? Did he hurt you very much?”

  Wheeler Bent caught in a breath. He looked straight into her eyes. He was on the very verge of believing that she was making light of Wheeler Bent. But then he realized that this could hardly be. “I’m going crazy, Gene,” he told her. “I’m losing my mind. Why didn’t you call the sheriff the moment you understood—”

  “I thought it was all just a joke,” said the girl. “Are you sure that it was anything more?”

  “Joke?” gasped Wheeler Bent. “He’s a gunman. A notorious ruffian. A gambler. A saloon gambler. An idle tramp. He’s knocked me out, and he’s taken my clothes, and actually danced with you. Eugenia, he had his arm around you! What will your father say? And you call it a joke! I’ve been assaulted, robbed, stripped, thrown into the common jail—” He threw his hands up over his head. He kept one hand raised. He dropped the other and gripped his hair with it.

  Eugenia Tyrrel said nothing. Her blue eyes were open and calm. She kept shaking her head and murmuring small words of sympathy, but nothing dimmed her eyes. They remained bright and curious.

  Finally, Wheeler Bent controlled himself. He looked at the girl, and all he could see was the blue of her eyes, not the lack of sympathy in them. He exclaimed: “And they can’t prove anything. Not unless they dragged you in for a witness. You’re the only one that could prove that he was the assailant and the robber.”

  She was silent for a moment “Did he keep your purse, Wheeler?” she asked at last.

  “No, but the point is—” Suddenly he mastered himself, for something told him that he had been losing a great deal of ground in the last few moments. He gathered his dignity about him like a robe. “One thing, at least,” he said. “Your father must not know about this. I shall see that he never hears a word.”

  “He can’t help hearing about it,” answered the girl. “The gossip will surely reach him. Before it dies, I intend to tell him myself. Besides, he has to know that Jingo intends to call on me to-morrow evening, at twilight.”

  “Jingo intends to—what?” cried Wheeler Bent.

  “He says that he’s coming to call on me before the end of to-morrow, in Blue Water,” said Eugenia Tyrrel.

  “The infernal ruffian!” cried Wheeler Bent.

  “He’s something more than that,” answered the girl.

  With that he stared at her, and saw that she at least meant all that she had said. He was by no means a fool. It was plain that he needed a bit of time for thinking, so he left her at once and went off to his room.

  There he sat, with his chin on his fist, for a long time, pondering. He had bent playing for very high stakes when he was playing for Eugenia Tyrrel. He had a tidy little fortune of his own, but to get his hands on the Tyrrel millions would be to make himself one of the powerful ones of the world, he felt.

  His bruised jaw began to thrust out a little farther. And his rather pale eyes brightened and hardened. He was remembering the house that had been pointed out as they drove into Tower Creek, the house where lived “the hardest men in Tower Creek—gamblers and gunmen—the Rankin brothers.”

  Well, he had heard a good deal more about them in the course of the day a
nd the evening. That had been only natural, for Tower Creek was humming with talk about the gun fight in which one of the Rankin brothers had gone down.

  “Jake will level the score,” every one said. “Wally has the size, but Jake is the pure steel. He’ll fix Jingo before he’s through. Jingo has a smart way with a gun, but Jake will handle him, all right.”

  That was the way they had talked, and the more Wheeler Bent pondered the thing, the more he felt that he was called to see Jake Rankin and make somewhat more sure of the future. In short, he did not like the thing that had been in the eyes and in the voice of Eugenia Tyrrel when she had announced that Jingo intended to call at her home in Blue Water before the end of the next day.

  Women like handsome youths.

  At that thought he picked a lamp off the table and went to the mirror and held it over his head. The face that it showed him was handsome enough, he felt. It had given him a great many successes with the ladies, and, before the end, it ought to give him a great many more. There were only two defects in that face so far as he could see. One was a bruise on the right side of the chin, and one was a bruise on the left side of the chin, put there by the fists of a fellow whose face had a certain dark handsomeness that might be more pleasing, perhaps, to the eyes of a girl like Eugenia Tyrrel.

  Not permanently. No, he could be sure that in the long run she belonged to him. But for the moment, Jingo might very well sweep her off her feet. And, once she was swept away, might she not be taken to an irrecoverable distance? The more he considered this, the darker became his thoughts.

  Suddenly he was on his feet, his hat on his head, and a gray dust coat over his clothes. He went out on the street and down it until he reached the Rankin brothers’ house. There was no light in the front of it. Down the side he saw one glimmer, and, going to the spot, through a broken shutter he saw an old, hard-faced woman asleep in a chair beside a bed. In the bed lay a man of gigantic torso, his shoulders and arms swathed in bandages.

  It was highly necessary that Wheeler Bent should be seen by only one member of that household. He went down to the next window. It was open on darkness. He could lean in across the low window sill, and therefore he did so, and raised the thinnest of whistles.