Jingo Django

by Sid Fleischman

  “Jingo,” he said with a lightning flash of teeth. I hadn’t seen him smile before. “Old Split-Foot’s coughin’ fire and brimstone. You’re doin’ cleverly, all in all. But he reasoned you’d turn up along the waterside.”

  Sea gulls were squalling overhead. “I aim to sign aboard a clipper ship and sail to China,” I said.

  Casharagoo glanced back over his shoulder. “Take my best advice and make a straight shirttail out of here. I’ve been caught on the wharfs more’n once. Don’t you know he’s put a dollar reward on you? And he ain’t far behind, over at Long Wharf passin’ out the news. We’re all out lookin’ for you.”

  That dollar reward must have been a torment to Casharagoo. He as much as had it clasped in his hand. But his eyes kept darting about and he seemed eager for me to be gone. “Cut dirt before it’s too late,” he said.

  But I stood there like a stump. “I’ve changed my mind, Casharagoo. I ain’t had a bite to eat and my stomach’s hollow as a gourd. I hid the morning in a rain barrel and it was half full of water. I’m wore out hopping about like a flea. I calculate I might as well give myself up.”

  He gazed at me through his sad, blinking eyes. I figured he could collect that reward and then directly I’d run off again. “Has your brains turned to sawdust?” he said.

  “Scraping chimneys is a fine, noble profession. First rate and a half. You just haul me in.”

  “Tarnation!” he exploded. “Don’t you know he’ll take your hide off? And soon as you grow up too big for the flues, why he’ll kick you out by the seat of your breeches! It’s no proper trade at all.”

  “My mind’s made up,” I said.

  “So’s mine. Peel out and keep a sharp eye until you get your senses back.”

  Suddenly it came to me. If I could make good my runaway he and the other sweeps might be eager to try it again.

  “Quick now!”

  I nodded. “Quick as I can.” We almost shook hands, but didn’t. He turned and I lurched away.

  I dodged back to the North End where I had tucked the chimney brush and scraper in a woodpile. I’d have traded them both for a biscuit. But it dawned on me that the one place General Dirty-Face Jim Scurlock wouldn’t expect to find me was inside a flue.

  Directly I began knocking at back doors and offered to do a bit of scraping for something to eat. A gentle-eyed woman took me in. Her name was Mrs. Jenks.

  She said her oven would hardly draw. I gazed up the one-story chimney and then shook my head as if I knew what I was about. “It’s dreadful caked with soot, m’am,” I said. “I’m surprised your chimney ain’t caught fire.” And then I added, “nothing extra for clearing out the swallows’ nests.”

  I chipped and scraped and brushed in that flue until the sun went down. When I finished and lit a small fire it drew like an eight-knot breeze. I felt enormously pleased with myself.

  She came in from the yard where she was boiling clothes in a wash kettle, stirring them with a ship’s oar, and clicked her teeth as she looked me over. I was soot and ashes from head to toe. “You poor, dear orphan,” she sighed.

  “I’m not an orphan, m’am,” I answered stoutly and tried to prove it. I said my pa had started out in the flues and now he was master of a China clipper and I meant to follow in his own grand footsteps.

  It’s not likely that she believed me, but she pretended she did, and marched me out to the yard and tried to scrub me down for supper. I told her I could scrub myself. It was candlelight before I finished. She stuffed me with turnips and fish cakes and all the bean porridge I could eat. Before I left she gave me a chunk of brown bread tied up in an old handkerchief, and that was the last I saw of her. She was uncommon nice, and I was sorry I had told her those lies.

  The night was dark and I lurked about waiting for it to get darker still. General Scurlock would give me up in a week or so, I thought, and a fresh hiding place took my fancy. If he wouldn’t expect to find me in a flue, he’d never think to look for me in the orphan house.

  The scheme near took my breath away. I’d be walking on cat-ice every moment, but I would chance it and humbug the sweep master and Mrs. Daggatt, both!

  I shied about in the trees and watched the lights of the orphan house go out upstairs and down. It seemed an eternity before Mrs. Daggatt retired for the night. The doors would be locked tight, but that wouldn’t keep me out.

  I climbed an old branchy elm and was on the roof quick as a squirrel. I had three stone chimneys to choose from. One led down to the west parlor, which was only used on occasions, and I decided on it.

  I slipped inside and let myself down, scuttling like a crab, elbow by elbow and toe by toe. It was a black, fearful way down, but I tried not to think about it.

  At the bottom the fireplace was large enough to roast an ox. It was swept clean of ashes. Mrs. Daggatt was a bear for cleanliness.

  But I had to be careful not to leave footprints. I stood on the hearth and peered about the room. Most of the chairs and things were covered with heavy muslin sheets and they had the glowering look of headstones in a graveyard.

  I meant to spend a week in that chimney. I would come out mostly at night to forage the kitchen for things to eat. And I meant to make myself as comfortable as possible.

  A sea hammock, I thought!

  Well, it took me most of the night to rig it up. I used one of the points of the chimney scraper to chip out a deep crevice in the mortar between the great fire bricks, about eight feet up, on one side of the flue and then the other. It was mouse work. I had to be careful not to make a clatter.

  When I finished I returned to the hearth, scooped up the mortar chips and poured them into the ugly vase that always stood on the mantelpiece. Then I snatched a sheet off the nearest chair.

  I made large knots in two corners and drew the sheet up the flue with me. I snugged one end in the upright crevice and pulled hard and downward against the knot. Mishto! It held. Feeling my way like a blind man, I slung the sheet across the flue and worked the other end deep between the bricks. The knot took a firm purchase at the top of the open mortar joint and I gave the sheet another test. Mishto! again.

  I climbed in gently as a snail. I barely dared breathe for fear the whole thing would give way. But it didn’t. Before long I was feeling snug as a seaman. My hammock sagged about three feet above the open fireplace and I considered myself safe from discovery.

  I bit off a chunk of brown bread and fancied myself slung in the foc’sle of a China clipper with my pa on deck issuing orders in his soft but gallant voice. Then I forced these moonstruck ramblings out of my head. I was beginning to believe my own vaporish lies.

  I slept most of the day. Not a soul came into the west parlor. But the following day, late in the afternoon, I could hear Mrs. Daggatt grumbling and waddling about the room.

  And then I saw her hand. I saw it reach up like a fat pink claw and grasp a thing corner-snugged behind the inner ledge of the chimney crosspiece. I held my breath for fear she’d peer up into the flue. But she didn’t. And then her hand was gone.

  It seemed less than a minute before she put it back. And then she was gone and I had the west parlor to myself.

  Of course I scuttled down out of my hammock. The thing was soot-blackened and shaped like a powder horn.

  I knew what it was at once. Here was General Scurlock’s chimney-hid thing!

  It was a whale’s tooth.

  4

  MR. JEFFREY PEACOCK, GENT.

  The late afternoon sun glowed like moonlight through the parlor curtains. I dropped to my feet to have a closer look at this chimney-hid thing.

  I polished the soot off on my breeches and saw scrimshaw markings carved and tattooed all over that whale’s tooth. It was nothing uncommon. I’d seen heaps of scrimshaw along Indian Wharf. Whaling men were forever carving mottoes and pictures on whales’ teeth to pass the time at sea. Some of them took your breath away, with spidery views of ships and spouting whales and far-off places. They weren’t worth much, as
far as I knew.

  But this one was worth a ten-dollar gold piece to General Scurlock, and that sent my mind whirling. I’d wait till dark, around midnight maybe, and toe it to old Split-Foot’s ash shed. I’d give it to Casharagoo; he could claim the reward and we’d divvy it down the middle.

  But that’s as far as I got in my thoughts. I heard footsteps and made a cat-leap back into the flue. It was Mrs. Daggatt.

  “Come in, sir,” I heard her say in a voice as smooth as lard. “I don’t usually receive callers this late in the day. Especially not without a proper appointment, but I can see you’re a special fine gentleman.” I heard the shrouds whipped off the furniture. “Sit down, sir. I don’t usually have a moment off my feet. My flock of orphans hardly leave time to catch my breath. Now then, what was it you said your name was?”

  “I didn’t, madam,” he replied. “I gave you my card.”

  “Glory be, of course you did. Tush! Here it is in my hand.”

  Wasn’t she putting on airs, though, I thought! And all the while she’d be skinning him with her hawk’s eyes. She’d probably already weighed and bit every coin in his purse, and from her manner she must have reckoned it considerable. She read off his card as reverently as if it were a bank note.

  “Jeffrey Peacock, Gent. I knew you were a true gentleman right off, sir! And what brings you to our poor orphanage, Mr. Peacock? Is it a little apprentice you’d like to take home with you?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “My little girls can scrub, scour and sew. They’re proper trained, I assure you. My boys are strong and healthy. Young dray horses, they are! Is it boy or girl you’ve come for?”

  “A boy, madam.”

  “I’ll choose you a fine chap. Indeed I will.”

  He paused. “The boy I want would be about twelve years old.”

  “Oh, I’ve a good supply of twelve-year-olds, Mr. Peacock.”

  “His name would be Jango.”

  “Jingo! Is that who you mean! Tush, Mr. Peacock. He’s not the chap for you. A bad bargain, Jingo is. Slippery as an eel. Why, before your back was half-turned he’d make off with your fine gold-headed walking stick.”

  “Capital,” he answered evenly. “That’s to my liking. A thief.”

  I bristled at hearing myself branded a thief. Slippery, for sure, and a bad bargain, maybe, but Mrs. Daggatt was laying it on almighty thick about the gold-headed walking stick.

  She seemed kicked speechless by his reply. And then I wondered if Mr. Peacock wasn’t laughing to himself. Maybe he was putting on airs of his own. Avali! I thought. Mrs. Daggatt had met her match.

  But why me? He’d got my name wrong, but he’d come close and I wondered what mischief he was about. I had certainly never heard of any Jeffrey Peacock, Gent. Maybe he was a highwayman, a knight of the road like Captain Thunderbolt, and I found the thought dreadfully pleasing.

  Mrs. Daggatt finally got her wits back. “Bless you,” she said piously. “I understand perfectly, Mr. Peacock. Indeed I do. You hope to take my shabbiest castoff and turn the little maggot into a fine Christian gentleman such as yourself. Commendable, sir.”

  “That’s not my intention at all, madam. I would consider it a service if you would fetch the lad.”

  Silence again. Her head must have been given another spin. Then the tone of her voice hardened. “That’s quite impossible,” she said.

  “Indeed, madam?”

  “If it’s Jingo you’re set on he’s already spoken for. Apprenticed out.”

  “To whom?”

  “That’s a matter of confidence, sir. But it would cost a pretty penny to buy up his contract, I assure you.”

  “How much?”

  She now had a solid grip on the business. I could almost hear her run up figures in her head. The walking stick would start the bidding. If he were wearing a silk cravat it would lift the sum a digit or two. And I pitied him if he had stepped into her parlor with a well-brushed top hat. It would double the price.

  “Two hundred dollars,” she announced finally.

  “Fetch him,” Mr. Peacock replied calmly, and I imagined Mrs. Daggatt could have bit off her tongue. She might have doubled the price again and got it just as easily. But what an infernal humbug she was, I thought. She had drawn up no apprentice papers with General Scurlock.

  “Then it’s settled,” Mr. Peacock said, and I could hear him rise from his chair. “You’ll find me at the Black Horse Inn. I’ll expect the boy tonight.”

  Mrs. Daggatt cleared her throat. “The money in advance, if you please.”

  “The money when you deliver the boy,” he countered, and I could hear him stride toward the door.

  “Mr. Peacock, may I ask why you insist upon Jingo and no other?”

  His footsteps came to a stop and he must have turned to face her. I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer. But then his voice hit me like a cannon shot.

  “I’m his father,” he said.

  I might have fallen out of the chimney had I believed him. The man was a jolly rogue, but he didn’t know my pa was a one-legged man.

  He left, both heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

  5

  CACTUS GOLD

  Mrs. Daggatt must have sent for General Scurlock quick as lightning, for I saw him loping up the street like an answering clap of thunder.

  I spied him from the roof. I had hoped to get a look at Mr. Jeffrey Peacock, Gent., before he departed, and had climbed the flue, but I was too late. I fancied he had driven off in a carriage with a fine span of horses. I remained aloft in the open air, thoughts tumbling about in my head and the whale’s tooth in my pocket.

  General Scurlock ducked in the back way and I reckoned Mrs. Daggatt would be waiting for him in her private parlor. I capered silently over the slate roof to her own chimney top. I thought I might lower myself for the entertainment of their conversation. Mrs. Daggatt would explode like a dropped pumpkin to learn that Mr. Peacock’s two-hundred-dollar apprentice had slipped through General Scurlock’s fingers.

  But when I reached the chimney their voices came echoing up the flue. I stuck my head in. Tempers were clashing below and words rose like sparks on the updraft.

  “You blundering, thick-skulled fool!” she roared. “You let the little brat run off?”

  “Me dear Daggatt!” he protested.

  “Don’t dear Daggatt me! And hasn’t the whale’s tooth given you the slip as well!”

  “A temporary embarrassment. A mere momentary setback. A bit o’ patience is in order here, me dear Daggatt!”

  “Patience! I promised to deliver the boy tonight!”

  “Faugh! What’s the gentleman’s pittance to us once we lay hands on the scrimshaw? There’s a treasure of cactus gold waiting for us in Mexico. I saw it with me own eyes, didn’t I?”

  “You were boozefuddled, the lot of you! Tavern tales, that’s what it amounts to! I don’t believe in the whale’s tooth anymore’n I do that cactus gold.”

  Wasn’t she trying to humbug him, I thought! She had the whale’s tooth all along. Only I had it now and I’d be glad to see her face when she found it missing.

  “Do ye take me for a jill-poke?” he thundered. “Didn’t I trail little Billy Bottles soon as I was mustered out? And didn’t I finally catch him up right here in Boston? And didn’t I rattle his backbone and shake his teeth until he coughed up the old map?”

  “Billy Bottles!” she scoffed.

  “Aye, a weasel was Billy. But no worse than the rest of us, me dear Daggatt.”

  They kept up a windy clamor. I missed bits and pieces, but directly I began to get the gist of things. During the Mexico war, Scurlock and Billy Bottles and two or three others had stumbled across a peck of old coins hidden in a clump of cactus. Well, they weren’t about to share out that minted gold with the whole U.S. Army. They hid it somewhere and planned to dig it up after the war.

  But Scurlock and Bottles, being friends at the time, I reckon, had decided to fingle-fan
gle the others. They snuck out the cactus gold and buried it somewhere along the Mexico border. They drew a map, but then Bottles decided to fingle-fangle Scurlock himself. He popped the treasure in another spot while Scurlock was laid up with a bullet wound in the leg.

  “Aye, that gold went leaping about like a Texas jack-rabbit,” Scurlock was bellowing. “A buzzard could get lost in that country without a map. And our map wasn’t worth the cowhide I had drawn it on! But I had Billy by the throat, didn’t I?”

  “And you let him get away!”

  “Was I to know he’d grown up a soot devil? But when I saw him snatch up a whale’s tooth and shoot up the flue, didn’t I put two and four together? He’d scrimshawed a new map and dodged me all over Boston like a chimney swallow. When he took a header down this very fireplace, didn’t he call out me name and tell ye with his last cackling breath he’d left the whale’s tooth chimney-hid? Aye, ye knew ye were on to something, me dear Daggatt! But ye needed me to discover what it was and ye bargained like a fishwife! Didn’t we come to a partnership, open and fair and half and half on the treasure? And didn’t I set myself up a sweepmaster with a flock of climbing boys to find it?”

  “Numskull! He meant to send you on a fool’s errand.”

  It was falling dark with great black clouds tumbling in from the sea. I remembered a rumpus in Mrs. Daggatt’s parlor about a year before, but she’d told us it was only a thief caught and captured in the night. Billy Bottles!

  I leaned my back against the chimney stack and examined the whale’s tooth. I felt the first wild stirrings of treasure fever. But there wasn’t enough light to make out the map.

  I slipped it tight under the waistband of my breeches like a hidden pistol. Scurlock was no match for Mrs. Daggatt, I thought. She had fingle-fangled him from the beginning!

  Billy Bottles must have had the scrimshaw with him when he fell. How else could she have got her claws on it?

  Then she had flummoxed Scurlock with the story that the whale’s tooth was chimney-hid. Maybe she expected him to give up the chase, for the tooth would likely be charred as the winter passed, and useless. In due time, by my reckoning, she intended to go venturing after that treasure by herself.