CHAPTER XVI
The sun was streaming through the east windows. Jap looked anxiously up and down the street. Bill had not been home all night. This was a state of affairs alarming to Jap. He walked back to the table and turned the exchanges over restlessly.
"I wonder if the boy could have persuaded that butterfly to elope with him, as he threatened he would, when her mother cut up so rough," he worried.
Tim Simpson came in and peered around furtively.
"Bill is drunk as a lord," he announced in a stage whisper. "I've got him in the back room of the calaboose, to sober up without the news leakin'."
Jap paled.
"Bill drunk?" he faltered. "Who got him into it? Is he asleep, Tim?"
"Lord, no! If he was, I would 'a' left him out when he come to, and said no word to you about it. But I'm plum scared about him. He's chargin' up and down like a Barnum lion. I reckon as how you'd better mosey down there and try to ca'm him."
As Jap walked rapidly down the alley beside the night marshal, he asked:
"Did you try to talk to him?"
"Yes," said Simpson ruefully. "He kicked me out and was chasin' after me when I slammed the door on him. He's blind crazy loaded. I fu'st seen him after number nine pulled in, so I think he come on her. He was mutterin' and shakin' his fist when he hove in sight. I got him and steered him into the jug without much trouble, and it was only a hour ago that he started this ragin' and ravin'."
As they entered the jail, sounds of tramping feet and mutterings reached their ears. Bill's swollen, blotched face and reddened eyes appeared behind the grating.
"Let me out of here!" he shouted. "You'll get a broken head for this, you old mule." He shook the grating furiously.
"Bill," said Jap slowly, "do you want to come with me, or do you want me to stay here with you till you've had a bath and a good sleep?"
Bill laughed discordantly.
"A sleep! A sleep!" he cried. "Yes, a long, long sleep. As soon as you take me out of this hell-hole, I'll take a sleep that'll last."
Jap opened the door and stepped inside.
"Don't come any nearer," warned Bill. "I'm too filthy, Jap. But let me stay as I am till it's over."
He sat down on the cot and stared crazily into the corridor. Jap sat down beside him and drew his arm around his shoulder, with the tenderness of a woman.
"Tell me about it, Bill, boy," he counselled gently. "Tim, you may leave us."
Bill sat a long time, staring sullenly at the floor.
"Well, this is a hell of a display for me to bring to Bloomtown," he declared at last. "I should have ended it in Jones's town. If I hadn't been so dumb with rotgut that I didn't know what I was doing, I would be furnishing some excitement for the Bartonites this morning. The finest place in the world to die in—it isn't fit to live in."
Jap shook him briskly.
"Straighten up, Bill, and tell me what kind of a mess you have been in."
Bill laughed wildly. After a moment he dragged a letter from his pocket. Jap read:
"When you read this, I will be the wife of Wilfred Jones, the Editor of the Barton Standard. Maybe you will be pleased? I prefer to marry a real editor, not the half of Jap Herron."
The letter was signed, "Rosalie," but the affectation carried none of the elements of a disguise. To Jap it was the crowning insult. Crushing the silly note in his hand, he threw it from him. Standing up, he drew Bill to his feet.
"We are going home," he said curtly. "When you are sober I will tell you how disappointed I am in my brother."
The news that Bill had been jilted spread over Bloomtown like fire in a stubble-field, and deep resentment greeted the announcement that Jones of the Standard had scored another notch against the Herald.
Bill, sullen and defiant, had battled it out in the room above the office. All the vagaries of a sick mind were his. Murder, suicide, mysterious disappearance, chased each other across the field of his vision, and ever the specter of suicide returned to grin at him. For a day and a night Jap sat beside his bed, talking, soothing, comforting. Finally he made this compact:
"To show you that I love you better than myself, Bill, I am going to promise that I will not marry until you are cured of this blow. Not a word, Bill! Happiness would turn to ashes if I accepted it at your cost. How far I am to blame in your trouble, I can only guess. I am not going to preach philosophy. I am only going to plead my love for you."
He took the revolver from the drawer and laid it on the table beside Bill.
"If you are the boy I think you are, you will be sticking type when I come back from Flossy's. If you are a coward, I will not grieve to find you have taken the soul that God gave you and flung it at His feet."
Not trusting himself to look back, he hurried down the stairs. His heart was heavy with dread as he locked the office and walked blindly to the cottage where all his problems had been carried. He could not talk to Flossy, but, sitting beside her on the little front porch, he fought the mad impulse to run back to the office. He strained his ears for the sound that he was praying not to hear.
Two hours he sat there, fighting with his fears, the longest hours of his life. Flossy sat as silent. No one knew Jap as Flossy did. Smoothing his tumbled hair and stroking his tightly clenched hands were her only expressions. Futile indeed would words be now. The tragedy that hovered over them both must work itself out.
A whistle shrilled from the road. Jap sprang up with a strangled cry, as Wat Harlow came through the gate. His face was stern.
"Bill allowed that this is where I'd find you, chatting your valuable time away," he chaffed. Then the mask of his countenance broke into a grin.
"Is Bill in the office?" Jap's lips were so stiff he could scarcely articulate.
"Sure he is," said Harlow cheerfully. "He wants you to ramble down there."
"There's a hen on, Jap," he confided, after they had taken leave of Flossy. "We'll try to hatch something this time. I'm going to get in the game again. You know the old saying: 'You mustn't keep a good dog chained up.'"
"Well?" queried Jap, his thoughts springing space and picturing what Bill might be doing. Wat was discreetly silent until they had passed through town and were inside the office. Bill, pale and haggard, looked up from his desk. He extended the paper he was writing on. Jap took it without a word.
"WAT HARLOW FOR GOVERNOR!"
"How's that for a head?" he demanded. "If we're going into this thing, we might as well go with both feet."
He looked into Jap's face. Their eyes met. With one voice they cried:
"Ellis!"
"'When Harlow runs for governor,'" Jap quoted tremulously, "'you will boom him. Till then, nothing doing in the Halls of Justice.' Bill, Ellis was a prophet. He even knew that he wouldn't be in the game. Wat, we'll put you across this time."
"Yes, and it'll be a nasty fight," Wat returned, as Bill leaned over and picked nervously at the ears of the office cat. "We've got Bronson Jones to buck up against, in all political probability. He's almost sure of the nomination."
"Just who is Bronson Jones?" Jap asked. "Seems to me I ought to place him. He's been in the papers down in the southwestern part of the state a good deal."
"He's the smooth proposition that came back here a couple of years ago and bought back his old newspaper for his son and has managed up to the present time to keep his own name discreetly out of that same paper," vouchsafed Harlow. "He won't let it leak out till the psychological moment. He's the daddy of the split-hoofed imp of Satan that runs the Barton Standard!"