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  He yelled so loudly that worse things began to happen to him. The last event that the sheriff wanted was the attendance of any drunken loiterers who might make a disturbance outside the barn while the dance was in progress. In order that Tower Creek might continue to put forward its best foot without annoyance, the sheriff posted his most-trusted deputy, Steve Matthews, outside the barn.

  Matthews was a man small of speech and large of hand. When he heard the furious whoop of Wheeler Bent, he went straight for the scene of action. He saw the wheeling circles of the boys. He saw the rope. He saw the man in underwear. And Steve Matthews blushed not with shame but with anger.

  Suppose that the eyes of some of the ladies had fallen on this grotesque?

  He was glad he had gloves on his hands when he went in and took the rope out of the hands of the boys. They scattered with yells of fresh pleasure when they saw the law taking up where they had left off.

  Wheeler Bent yelled: “Arrest those little ruffians ... arrest those young hyenas ... those ...!”

  The gloved hand of Steve Matthews was clapped over the mouth of his victim. It was a good, thick, buckskin glove, and yet he was somewhat afraid that the fellow might bite through the leather into his flesh.

  “You fool of a drunk half-wit,” said the deputy, “shut up your mug and march along with me.”

  “I’m Wheeler Bent!” shouted the captive.

  “You’ll be a plumb broke wheel if you don’t shut up,” declared the deputy. “I gotta mind to sock you.”

  “He’s Wheeler Bent! He’s Wheeler Bent!” chanted the red-headed boy, and all the rest of the evil little tribe took up the cry, exploding with laughter.

  And Wheeler Bent, assuring himself that he was going mad, found himself dragged down the street behind his tall captor.

  They came to a little squat building with the fatal bars across the windows. The door was opened. They passed in. A Negro came carrying a big bunch of keys. A cell was opened, and Wheeler Bent actually found himself in jail.

  “Disturbing the peace is the charge ag’in’ you,” the deputy said calmly. “And if you don’t get three months, I’m a sucker, and the judge is a worse one. What you been drinking? I didn’t get it on your breath.”

  A hoarse, trembling voice came out of the throat of Wheeler Bent.

  He said: “You’re going to be smashed, for this. If Judge Tyrrel has any influence in this part of the country, you’re going to be smashed flat. Robbery and assault right in the middle of the town.”

  There was only one thing in this speech that meant anything to the deputy, and that was the name of Judge Tyrrel. It was true that the judge resided, when in the West, in Blue Water, but his hand was strong even farther away than Tower Creek.

  Steve Matthews, therefore, narrowed his eyes and considered his prisoner a little more closely.

  “Hey, George,” he said to the Negro, “go fetch a bucket and sluice off this gent. We’ll have a look at him.”

  The water was brought, a three-gallon pail full of it, and it was doused suddenly over the head and the entire body of Wheeler Bent.

  To him, this was the greatest outrage of all. It left him rigid with rage, like molten steel when it is suddenly cooled. And he wished that death might suddenly sweep the town of Tower Creek.

  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 leaping thunder,” he said. “George, get the door of that cell open, because it appears to me like maybe we’ve started more trouble popping than we knew anything about.”

  Chapter Ten

  Not long before, Jingo had finished stripping and re-dressing 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 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 Mister Wheeler Bent,” said the hardware man.

  “Hello, Mister 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 Wheeler 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 $100 that 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 enclosed 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 stain 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,” Jingo said.

  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 $5 bill into the good right hand of each of the trombone players.

  “Miss Tyrrel has a frightful headache,” Jingo told each. “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,” Jingo said. “I’m only speaking for the lady.”

  He went to the orchestra leader and gave him two of those $5 bills.

  “You’re putting on a great show, brother,” said Jingo. “But the
trombones could rest, one dance. Miss Tyrell has a headache.”

  “So have I,” the orchestra leader said. “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,” she said.

  “The only thing that’s wrong with him now,” he said, “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,” he said, 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,” the girl said.

  “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,” Jingo agreed. “That’s what makes it perfect.”

  “Perfect?” she asked.

  “A perfect scandal,” Jingo elaborated. “Your father will have to know. And just as you start to forget about everything that happened in Tower Creek, they’ll start in 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,” Jingo said cheerfully and confidently. “Unless you tell me not to come.”

  “You must not come!” she cried.

  “All right then,” Jingo said. “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,” she said.

  But she had begun to laugh again, quietly.

  “When shall I come?” asked Jingo.

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

  “Certainly,” Jingo said. “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. I don’t know what he’d do.”

  “He’ll call out the foot and horse,” Jingo said, “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.

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

  “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,” Jingo said. “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 bye.”

  “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. Tomorrow 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.

  Deputy Steve Mathews cried out: “Sheriff, have you 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 Eleven

  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.

  He said: “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 going to make Tower Creek a hot griddle under you, you jumping flea.”

  Jingo laughed and went on to the hotel, where he found the Parson waiting for him. The $10 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,” Jingo said.

  “For trouble,” said the Parson.

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

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

  “We ride up to call on her tomorrow,” 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.”
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  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.”