Chapter 15
The men urged the food upon Rannie and offered a second cup of the vile coffee, but Rannie refused. Then the boss spoke.
“Well, young feller,” he said with a false softness in his voice, “we’ve come now ta get ya ta write that there letter I was speakin’ about.”
Rannie sat up and grinned affably, although his heart was beating wildly. He felt that yesterday’s inaction had made him weak and flabby. He wondered if he had the strength to carry on. But he grinned.
“Oh, sure!” he said nonchalantly. “Bring on the stationery. Gotta good pen? I like stubs, if you know what I mean.”
Bud brought a piece of pine board, a much-crumpled sheet of paper, and a government envelope. He drew up a wooden box from the other room for a table and set thereon a small bottle of ink and a cheap, wooden-handled pen.
“Okay,” said Rannie, scrutinizing the point of the pen. “Now, what do ya want said?”
“The letter’s ta yer dad, see?” said the boss, narrowing his gaze and watching Rannie’s face for a quiver or flicker of eagerness. But Rannie’s face was immovable.
“Aw, gee!” said Rannie regretfully. “I shouldn’t like ta write ta him just now. He’d be coming right up here after me an’ I wanna see this thing out.”
“No fear o’ that!” growled the boss. “The letter’s goin’ ta be mailed several hundred miles from this here mountain.”
“Great stuff! Still, I wouldn’t want ta write anything that would worry him, o’ course.”
“This here will make him glad,” said the boss grimly, “because it’ll give him hope you’re comin’ home. Now first set down that yer well an’ bein’ treated right.”
Rannie frowned.
“This letter from you ur me?” he asked, biting the pen handle meditatively.
“From you, o’ course,” said the boss firmly.
“Okay with me!”
Rannie wrote rapidly:
Dear Dad: Don’t worry about me. I’m okay and having the time of my life!
His pen paused, and the two men watched him and studied what he had written.
“Now tell ’im everything’ll be all right if he’ll just obey orders herein contained.”
Everything’ll be all right—
Here Rannie paused again and looked up at the two men standing in the light of the flickering candle, which Bud held high over Rannie’s shoulder.
“What are those orders?” Rannie asked the question casually, his pen poised in the air, a speculative look on his face.
“Why, just about the ransom, how much money, all in small bills, an’ where it’s ta be put.”
“Aw, gee! That’s too bad,” said Rannie, leaning back from his rude desk and looking engagingly up at his two scowling captors. “I can’t ask Dad about money! I’m sorry, but I really can’t. He’s awful generous when he’s flush, but just now he’s about broke, an’ ’twould only make him feel bad. He couldn’t pay any ransom money.”
“Here, what’r ya givin’ us? Ya can’t put anythin’ like that over on us!” said the boss, getting out his ugly gun threateningly. “You write what I tell ya, ur I’ll blow ya inta the air, see?”
“That’s awright,” said Rannie quickly. “P’raps it’s better that way, anyhow. You see, I’m kinda in bad everywhere just now. Got expelled from school an’ come home ta find my dad about ta be bankrupt an’ the house ta be sold ’n’ everything. Guess if I fade outta the picture it’ll make it easier all round.”
The two men looked at one another, aghast for an instant, fear and frustration in that glance. Rannie saw it and drew a deep breath. Perhaps if they realized his father wasn’t rich anymore they might lay off him, he thought. But he had not long hope. The boss fairly roared at him.
“You needn’t think you can put that over on us. You’re a kid, all righty. I’ll hand ya that. But we got our eyeteeth cut yestiday. Doncha think we looked up your old man and found out what he was worth afore we started on all this? You little liar. Take up that pen an’ write what I say. Hear?”
Good-bye, Dad. Don’t feel too bad, and don’t you pay a cent for ransom. I wasn’t worth much anyway. Give Chrissie my love. I’m sorry, Dad.
Your bad boy, Rannie
“There!” said Rannie, throwing down the pen. “I’ve written all I can. If you don’t like it, you can do what you want with me.”
He threw himself down listlessly on the cot behind him, and his chains clacked dismally.
The two men picked up the paper and read, Bud peering over the boss’s shoulder with a dour look in his eyes.
The boss frowned deeply, cursed as he read, and then stood, reading it again.
“That’ll be all right,” he said in an undertone. “I’ll fix it. Maybe even better.”
They went out and bolted the door carefully. Rannie lay still upon the cot and tried to think, but all he could think of was his father’s face when he told him he couldn’t send that fifty-thousand-dollar check to the college. All he could remember was the night he and Chrissie had sat on the big leather couch in Dad’s room with his arms around them both. All he could see was a vision of his own little crib beside the big bed, and the big tree and the side yard with a mother standing there to protect him from a mad dog. Somebody to protect him and love him! Undreamed-of wonder! And what would she feel now for him if she could know?
Well, he was on his own. He must face it alone. He mustn’t even let his dad know how to save him, because his dad couldn’t afford it and he’d think he had to.
How long he lay there he didn’t know. There was talking in a low tone out in the other room, now and then an angry rumble, with louder references to one they called Spike and what he would think. Spike was coming, it appeared, sometime soon. What would Spike be like? Could he work anything with him or wouldn’t he see him at all? Rannie was fed up with crooks, he decided. He was ready to pass out of the picture quick and be done with it, even down there deep in the green waters with a bullet through his brain, but to lie here and do nothing all day was deadly. To do nothing but think!
It was then that a beam of the afternoon sun struggled through and shot into the gloomy place for an instant and flung a double reflection across the place at which he had been looking so long and cherishing a thought of something sticking out between the logs. His eyes turned to it, and there surely was something gray, about six inches long and a quarter of an inch thick, lying neatly along the edge under the roof, just a line of gray.
Well, if it was a hallucination, he must get it out of his thoughts. He would disillusion himself.
So he moved cautiously. The men seemed to be outside in front of the cabin and could not hear him there so well. Moving carefully to keep his chains from clinking, he reached the wall and slowly, carefully, found footing, a step at a time, pausing each step as he climbed, lest his captors should hear him. There were few holdings between these logs. It was not an easy place to climb, and the beam of light was already shifting, but he made it at last; his hand touched the gray line, grasped it, and found it real. It was some sort of little book or pamphlet. He ran his hand over the ledge before he lifted it to see if there was anything else there and found a hard sharp instrument. Excitedly he drew it forth, almost dropped it, but recovered his grasp and looked at it, his breath coming hard.
It was a broken, rusty bit of file. He was so excited that he almost forgot the book. But he managed to steady his nerve and satisfy himself that there was nothing else in the crack or as far as he could reach along the edge. Slipping the file into his pocket and holding the tiny booklet in his teeth, he descended slowly, cautiously.
And just in time. The men were coming back into the cabin. He could hear them talking now, almost deferentially. And there was another voice with them. It must be Spike! Back on his cot with his booty, he guiltily hid the file in the depth of a crack between the logs behind his cot. It would never be found there, and it might be wonderful to have in case there came a chance to use it.
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br /> Then, without stopping to look at the book beyond deciphering the single word “John,” he stuffed it into another crack just below the level of what would have been his pillow if he had one. It was too dark now to read the book even if he dared, and he might be interrupted at any moment, so he hid his treasures and lay trembling with excitement. At least, if he had to stay there another day, he had something to look forward to besides interminable hours of just thinking about what a rotten failure he had been.
Sometime after candlelight a supper was prepared. He heard them going about with bustle, opening cans, and a savory odor of frying ham greeted his hungry senses. Then to his surprise, he was brought out to share in the meal, given a box to sit on, and introduced to Spike, who sat at the head of the crude table.
Spike was a gentleman with frank, fearlessly ruthless eyes. He looked at Rannie pleasantly, greeted him as an equal, and spoke to him man to man. In spite of his natural intuition, Rannie warmed to him. There was a charm about the man, distinction in a way. It was easy to see why men obeyed him. Was this one of the gang leaders of the underworld? Rannie’s quick judgment, aided by his ever-ready imagination, made pretty good guesses and kept his caution in control. His schoolboy code had been when in a doubtful situation, keep still and let the other fellow do the talking. Rannie kept to that now. He listened intently and drew several shrewd conclusions from the general talk going on at the table. He noticed the deference the boss and Bud paid to Spike. He stowed away several veiled allusions for careful thought afterward, and rightly judged that he was out here eating with the rest that he might be sized up and worked upon.
So he grinned when they all laughed, answered wittily in his own peculiar schoolboy slang when spoken to, acted for all the world like a guest of a gentleman in his country home. And he could see that Spike liked it.
It was not until the tomato cocktail, the fresh bread, the fried ham, coffee, and the delicious grapes and pears that the guest had evidently brought with him had all been consumed, and Bud and the boss were silently tidying up in their crude way, that Spike turned to Rannie with a keen, friendly look and said: “Now what’s this all about you not willing to ask your father for ransom?”
Rannie faced him with bright eyes, knowing that a crucial time had come, his young face hardening into dogged determination.
“I couldn’t do it!” said Rannie firmly.
“Not if your life depended on it?”
“Not if my life depended on it.” There was a ring to his voice that would have thrilled his father if he could have heard it, and would have made him forgive even all the childish outrages and scrapes he had been in at school; and if Rannie had lifted his eyes an instant sooner he would have caught a glint of admiration in the eyes of the gentleman crook who watched him. But what Rannie saw when he dared to study that strong face before him was a cruel look in the man’s eye. Very well, if it was a fight to the death, Rannie determined to fight. It was probably the one chance of his lifetime to retrieve the silly, wasted past. That was his thought as he put steel into his own young, frightened eyes.
“Tell me about it,” ordered the crook in an impersonal tone.
“Well, you see, this is the story,” burst forth Rannie in his schoolboy tone. “My dad is about ta fail. He told me about it just a few minutes before your men got me. You see, I’d been pretty rotten, got into all sorts of a mess at school, stole the exam questions and got expelled for it, and my dad had just found it out and felt pretty bad about it. I tried ta tell him he’d make it right, an’ he said he couldn’t. He didn’t even have a little trifle like fifty thousand ta put up, an’ he said he wouldn’t if he did have it. He said I deserved what I got an’ he’d have ta suffer with me, and things like that. And then he told me how his business had about gone under, and he didn’t know which way ta turn, an’ how I’d disgraced him in school, an’ how my mother’d feel if she were alive an’ all that. An’ right after that I had ta be so simple as ta go an’ get kidnapped. I ask ya, ef you was in my place, could you ask yer bankrupt dad fer any kind of a ransom, after all that?”
There was something about Rannie’s earnest young face, white with excitement and strain, that held the three men silent as they watched him, and Spike, after a moment, answered him quietly, “Perhaps not,” and there was something about his face that was quite inscrutable.
Almost at once Bud led Rannie away to his room, and he lay on his bed in the dark and heard a low murmur of voices from the carefully guarded conversation.
He could not remember just when he drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with unhappy dreams of home and Mother and the old house where they all lived together. The whirr of an airplane seemed to mingle with his dreams, and the bed was hard and the night cold.
He woke early in the morning with memory getting him quickly in hand, and listened but heard only Bud’s steps as he stumbled about the outer room, and later, the boss grumbling at him. Spike seemed to have faded like a dream from the cabin. No one spoke of him or referred to last night in any way.
As soon as there was enough light in the room, and Rannie was reasonably sure that no one would come in for some time to interrupt, he pulled out the little packet he had hidden so carefully in the crack behind the cot and examined it. It was a little envelope with printing on the outside, and a line of script with a name signed. He half sat up and held the packet where the light would shine better on it.
“This little book will help you win the game. Read it and find out how.” And the name signed below was the name of one of the world’s greatest athletes, known in college and athletic circles as “The Grand Old Man of Football.”
Rannie fairly caught his breath and read the magic words over again. What prize was this that he had found hidden away in a dreary cabin in the wilds of a far mountain? That it would be well worth reading, he had no doubt. Rannie had once had the privilege of picking up a fallen program and returning it to the great hero on the bleachers at a national game, where privilege and unerring ability to worm himself to the front had blessed him with a position at the great man’s feet. Oh, Rannie would read that book with his heart as well as his eyes. Already the thought of Spike had dropped back a pace or two in his mind, and Rannie was eager to read the little book. He pulled it reverently out of its paper case and turned it around in his hand. “THE GOSPEL OF JOHN,” he read in bold black letters on a bright red cover. But it meant nothing to him. Who was John?
Rannie opened the book and began to read.
The first few verses puzzled him. It was an odd language, and he couldn’t quite get at what it meant. He still had in his mind the words on the envelope. This was some strange kind of introduction to the story of an athlete named John, probably. Rannie skimmed it and came to the sixth verse. Ah! Here was John. “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” That was a strange way to put it. What did God have to do with athletics? Probably some new modern kind of praise, considered the highest one could give. He read on and gathered that here was a story about something that it was important everybody should believe. This John was a kind of trainer perhaps, or manager, or somebody who went out and arranged for the games, was that it?
Then gradually as the majestic figure of the God-Man Christ Jesus emerged from the page in all His glory as a “Lamb of God,” Rannie stood in awe before the thought of Him. Why, it was talking about Jesus Christ, this book was, and trying to make everybody understand what He was. This person, John, had known Him and was His witness, that was it.
He went back a few verses and caught up a little more of the meaning. Why, if this was true, and of course it was, since his hero of the football field stood for it, then Jesus Christ was very different from what Rannie had ever supposed. This book made Him a real person, yet more than a mere human person. It tied him up to God so closely that it actually stated that He was God.
Rannie went back to the beginning and caught up vaguely a trifle more of the meaning of the “Word” that was in the begin
ning with God and was God. The Word that made all things that were made. That, too, was a new thought. He had never connected the traditional Christ of the Bible with the creation. Of course not. He knew almost nothing about the Bible except as he had sketchily read in textbooks about it. He knew no real truth at all. He was a little pagan brought face-to-face with the Book of God for the first time in his life, and he was amazed.
But when he came to that astounding announcement, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” he paused and read it again.
Sin, of course, was anything you did that was wrong—that is, one didn’t recognize it as sin unless it got to some heinous stage like murder or kidnapping or theft, but it was sin in a general sense anyway. And, yes, his father had practically told him he had been a thief when he stole those exams, though he had always looked on that as only following out an old custom, poetic license as it were, for the sake of the school traditions. But likely in God’s eyes, if there was a God and He took account of things individuals did, Rannie was counted a sinner. At any rate, he had been guilty of disloyalty to his father and family and the rules of the school, and he felt mean enough now in his present situation to count himself as the worst sinner in the world.
But—take away the sin of the world! How could that be true of a man who lived long ago? Oh, of course he knew Christ’s death on the cross was somehow connected with philanthropy toward mankind, but what had that to do with taking away guilt? Guilt. That was what he was feeling. That was why he couldn’t ask his dad to help him out now. He felt guilty. And this book suggested a way for sin to be taken away! Well, he wished he knew how.
It was just this faint wish to find out that kept him reading on through phrases that he did not understand, phrases that so far as his knowledge was concerned, meant just nothing at all.
Ransom Page 18
