Jap Herron Part 23

Kelly Jones was capering down the street. Kelly had absorbed enough of Barton booze to make him believe he owned the half of Bloomtown that did not belong to Wat Harlow. He had been having what Bill described as "one large, full time." As he came in sight, Bill's brow darkened.

"I've been afraid that Kelly would burst and catch fire," he said morosely, "and now, by jolly, I wish he would. It's funny how much your good friends will get in your way when they pair off with John Barleycorn. Kelly is certainly one ding-buster when he is lit up."

j.a.p leaned from the door to watch the procession that had formed for the purpose of escorting Wat Harlow to the station.

"Kelly's time is wrinkling," he laughed. "Here comes Mrs. Kelly Jones, with worriment on her brow."

Bill ran his inky fingers through his hair. Something was troubling him.

"j.a.p," he said as he walked toward the door of the composing room, "that skunk of a Jones----"

"Who? Kelly?"

"Oh, no." Bill wheeled, and his face was deadly earnest. "Kelly's not a skunk, even when he has soaked up all the rotgut in Barton. But I had Kelly Jones in the back of my head, just the same, when I mentioned the honorable Editor of the Barton _Standard_. It's getting under my skin, j.a.p, the way he has of tempting these Bloomtown fools over to his filthy village to get the booze we won't let 'em have at home, and then holding them up to ridicule when they make a.s.ses of themselves."

"It's one of the angles of this problem that I haven't figured out yet," j.a.p said earnestly. "Do you think it would do any good to go gunning for Jones?"

"I've thought of that possibility several times," and Bill's tone was not entirely humorous.

j.a.p shoved his stool to the case. As he climbed upon it, he sighed uneasily. It had been sixteen months since Wilfred Jones turned the neat trick that left Bill disconsolate, and still the venom lingered in the bereft boy's heart. To j.a.p, with his standard of womanhood established by Flossy and Isabel, the thing was monstrous, inconceivable. And yet it was a fact to be faced.

"We'll have to get busy, Bill," he said. "We've got enough job work on the hooks to keep us up till midnight for a week. We haven't done a thing the last month but elect Wat Harlow."

"I hope to grab he won't run for another office till I have six sons to help me," Bill snorted.

j.a.p heaved a sudden sigh of relief.

"Looking out again, Bill?" he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the vacant photograph frame above Bill's case.

CHAPTER XXI

It was the day after Thanksgiving. Bill was twirling the chambers of his revolver around. His face was grim. j.a.p halted in the door of their bedroom.

"Going gunning for Jones?" he asked lightly.

Bill turned, and the black look on his face startled j.a.p.

"I am," he said deliberately, "and I will come back to jail or in my coffin."

j.a.p caught the revolver from his hand.

"Bill," he said sharply, "wake up!"

Bill threw a letter to him, and continued his hasty toilet. j.a.p read:

"Dear Will,--

"Come to me. I am almost crazy. Wilfred accused me of giving you information against his father that beat him in the election, and he struck me in the mouth. He said he only married me to spite you, and he hates me. I will meet you at the section house, where the train slows up for the switch, at six o'clock. I want you to take me away, I don't care where. I don't love anybody but you, and I can't live with Wilfred another night. I don't care whether anybody ever speaks to me again, if you will take me and love me.

"Your distracted ROSALIE."

j.a.p stared at the note as if it had been a snake-tressed Medusa that turned him to stone. He stood rigid and paralyzed as Bill said, deadly calm:

"I am going to Barton, and I am going to shoot that dog."

"And after that?" j.a.p's voice was toneless.

"After that!" Bill broke out fiercely. "After that, what more?"

j.a.p drew Bill around to face him. Rivers of fire seemed suddenly to course through his body, and an unprecedented rage burned up within him.

"You are not going to Barton, and you are not going to meet that foolish light-o'-love at the section house," he said sternly.

"Who will stop me? Not you, j.a.p, for even if an angel from heaven tried to bar my way, I would brush it aside. I wanted to kill him when he stole her away and----"

j.a.p shook him angrily.

"No one stole her, Bill. Have you forgotten the insolent, flippant letter she wrote you?"

Bill shook j.a.p's hand from his shoulder.

"It's no use, j.a.p. I am going to kill him!"

j.a.p set his teeth and his gray eyes blazed as he gripped Bill's arms and shoved him into a chair.

"I will have you locked up, you foolish hot-head," he exclaimed, "and give Wilfred Jones a few hours to consider his att.i.tude toward his wife. She _is_ his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that fact from sight. Do you want to hang, because you were a d.a.m.ned fool?

I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder in another man's home--no matter how great your feeling of injustice.

Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."

"But he struck her," gulped Bill.

"I have known times," declared j.a.p vehemently, "when, if I had been of the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thras.h.i.+ng Rosy Raymond. Not having been Jones, I had to content myself with kicking the furniture around. I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both sides. If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will hold him while you give him the licking he deserves. More than that, I will help Rosy to get a divorce. Isn't that fair enough, Bill? What is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on the gallows? Tell me, who profits? For the woman, disgrace. For you---- Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead man, Jones."

Bill glowered at him.

"You had no mother, Bill, because she died when she gave you to the world. I had no mother, because Providence gave me where I was a burden. But G.o.d gave both of us a mother. Bill, before you go any farther with this adventure--misadventure--I want you to kneel with me before Flossy's picture and ask for her approval and her blessing.

Because, Bill, brother, she knows. And what do you suppose will be her counsel? What would Flossy want you to do?"

He took the photograph from the table and held it out to Bill. The brown eyes remained downcast. The hands opened and closed spasmodically. j.a.p lowered the picture so that Bill's eyes could not choose but meet the loved face. A great, gulping sob shook him, and he dashed into the other room and slammed the door. j.a.p's tense features relaxed into a smile. He knew that Flossy had won.

"Will you let me go to Barton instead of you?" he asked through the closed door. There was no reply, and he turned the k.n.o.b. Bill was staring stolidly from the window. "I won't carry healing oil if the case doesn't call for it," he insisted. "You will believe me, boy?"

"It's your job," Bill said, in smothered, tear-drenched tones.