Play the Game! Part 21

Jimsy nodded. "The time doesn't matter, Cart'. I just want to ask you one thing, straight from the shoulder. I've been thinking and thinking ... trying to take it in. Sometimes I seem to get it for a minute, that Skipper cares for you instead of me, and then it's gone again. All I can seem to hang on to is that telegram." The painful calm of his face flickered and broke up for an instant and there was an answering disturbance in Carter's own. "I keep seeing that ... all the time. But there's no use talking about it. What I want to ask you is this, Cart'"--he went on slowly in his hoa.r.s.e and roughened voice--"you honestly think Skipper is sticking to me only because she thinks it's the thing to do? Because she thinks she must keep her word?"

Carter swallowed hard and tried to moisten his aching throat, and he did not look at his friend.

"Is that what you honestly believe, Cart'?"

Carter brought his eyes back with an effort and his heart contracted.

Jimsy King--_Jimsy King_--the boy he had envied and hated and loved by turns all these years; Jimsy King, idolized, adored in the old safe days--the old story book days--

King! King! King!

K-I-N-G, KING!

G-I-N-K, GINK!

He's the King Gink!

He's the King Gink!

He's the King Gink!

K-I-N-G, King! KING!

The Jimsy King, the young prince who had had everything that all the wealth of Ali Baba's cave couldn't compa.s.s for Carter Van Meter ...

standing here before him now, his face drained of its color and joy, begging him for a hope. There was a long moment when he hesitated, when the forces within him fought breathlessly and without quarter, but--long ago Stephen Lorimer had said of him--"_there's nothing frail about his disposition ... his will doesn't limp._" He wrenched his gaze away before he answered, but he answered steadily.

"That is what I believe."

Jimsy was visibly and laboriously working it out. "Then, she's only sticking to me because she thinks I'm worth saving. If she thought I was a regular 'Wild King,' if she believed what her mother and a lot of other people have always believed, she'd let go of me."

"I believe she would," said Carter.

"Then," said Jimsy King, "it's really pretty simple. She's only got to realize--to _see_--that I'm not worth hanging on to; that it's too late.

That's all."

"What do you mean?"

He walked over to the little table and picked up the decanter of whisky and looked at it, and the scorn and loathing in his ravaged young face were things to marvel at, but Honor Carmody, coming into the room at that moment, could not see his expression. His back was toward her and she saw the decanter in his hand.

"_Jimsy!_" She said it very low, catching her breath.

His first motion was to put it down but instead he held it up to the fast fading light at the window and grinned. "It's makin' faces at me, Skipper!"

"_Jimsy_," she said again, and this time he put it down.

Honor began hastily to talk. "Do you think Juan will try to come back, or will he wait and come with the soldiers?"

"He'll come back," said Jimsy with conviction. "He must have found the wires down at the first place he tried, or he'd have been here before this. Yes--as soon as he's got his message through, he'll come back to us. I hope to G.o.d he brings water."

"But did he realize about the well? He got away at the very first, you know, and they weren't holding the well, then."

"He'll have his own canteen, won't he?" said Jimsy crossly.

Honor's eyes mothered him. "Mrs. King really slept," she said cheerfully. "She said she had a good nap, and dreamed!" She sat down in a low chair and made herself relax comfortably; only her eyes were tense. She never did fussy things with her hands, Honor Carmody; no one had ever seen her with a needle or a crochet hook. She was either doing things, vital, definite things which required motion, or she was still, and she rested people who were near her. "Well, he'll be here soon then," she said contentedly. "And so will the soldiers. Our Big Boss will have us on his mind, Jimsy. He'll figure out some way to help us.

Just think--in another day--perhaps in another hour, this will all be over, like a nightmare, and we'll be back to regular living again. And _won't_ we be glad that we all stood it so decently?" It was a stiff, small smile with her cracked lips but a stout one. "You know, I'm pretty proud of all of us! And won't Stepper be proud of us? And your dad, Jimsy, and your mother, Cartie!" Her kind eyes warmed. "I'm glad she hasn't had to know about it until we're all safe again." She was so hoa.r.s.e that she had to stop and rest and she looked hopefully from one to the other, clearly expecting them to take up the burden of talk. But they were silent and presently she went on again. "You know, boys, it's like being in a book or a play, isn't it? We're--_characters_--now, not just plain people! I suppose I'm the leading lady (though Mrs. King's the real _heroine_) and we've got two heroes and no villain. The _insurrectos_ are the villain--the villain in bunches." Suddenly she sat forward in her chair, her eyes brightening and a little color flooding her face. "Boys, it's our song come true! Now I know why I always got so thrilled over that second verse,--even the first time Stepper read it to us,--remember how it just bowled me over? And it seemed so remote from anything that could touch our lives,--yet here we are, in just such a tight place." They were listening now. "There isn't any desert or regiment or gatling, and Mr. King isn't dead, only dreadfully hurt, but it fits, just the same! We've got this thirst to stand ... and it's a good deal, isn't it? Those _insurrectos_ down there,--planning we don't know what, perhaps to rush the house any moment--

The River of Death has brimmed his banks; And England's far, and Honor's a name--

That means to us that L. A. is far, and South Figueroa Street ... all the safe happy things that didn't seem wonderful then...."

"'_Honor's a name_,'" said Jimsy under his breath.

"Oh," said the girl, "I never noticed that before! Isn't that funny?

Well--

The voice of a school boy rallies the ranks!

That fits! And won't we be thankful all our lives--all our snug, safe, prosy lives--that we were sporting now?-- That we all played the game?" Her eyes were on Jimsy, rea.s.suring him, staying him. "When this is all over----"

He cut roughly into her sentence. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Skipper, let's not talk!"

Again he had to bear the mothering of her understanding eyes. "All right, Jimsy. We won't talk, then. We'll sit here together"--she changed to the chair nearest his and put her hand on his arm--"and wait for Juan and----"

He sprang to his feet. "I wish you'd leave me alone!" he said. "I wish you'd go upstairs and stay with Aunt Maddy and Uncle Rich'. I want to be by myself."

She did not stir. "I think I'll stay with you, Jimsy."

His voice was ugly now. "When I don't want you? When I tell you I'd rather be alone?"

Honor was still for a long moment. She rose and went to the door but she turned to look at him, a steady, intent scrutiny. "All right, Jimsy.

I'll go. I'll leave you alone. I'll leave you alone because--I know I _can_ leave you alone." She seemed to have forgotten Carter's presence.

She held up the hand which wore the old Italian ring with the hidden blue stone of constancy. "I'm 'holding hard,' Jimsy."

Soon after dark Yaqui Juan came. He had been waiting for three hours, trying to get past the sentries; it had been impossible while there was any light. He was footsore and weary and had only a little water in his canteen, but he had found the telephone wires still up at the second _hacienda_, the owner had got the message off for him, and help was a.s.suredly on the way to them. There was the off chance, of course, that the soldiers might be held up by another wing of the _insurrectos_, but there was every reason to hope for their arrival next day. Jimsy King sent the Yaqui up to Honor with the canteen, and the Indian returned to say that the Senorita had not touched one drop but had given it to the master.

Carter dragged himself away to his room and Jimsy and Yaqui Juan talked long together in the quiet _sala_. It was a cramped and halting conversation with the Indian's scant English and the American's halting Spanish; sometimes they were unable to understand each other, but they came at last to some sort of agreement, though Juan shook his head mutinously again and again, murmuring--"_No, no! Senor Don Diego! No!_"

It was almost midnight when Jimsy called them all down into the _sala_.

They came, wondering, one by one, Carter, Mrs. King,--Richard King had fallen asleep after his half dozen swallows of water--and Honor, and Josita, her head m.u.f.fled in her _rebozo_, her brown fingers busy with her beads.

Jimsy King was standing in the middle of the room, standing insecurely, his legs far apart, the decanter in his hand, the decanter which had been more than half full when Honor left the room and had now less than an inch of liquor in it. Yaqui Juan, his face sullen, his eyes black and bitter, crouched on the floor, his arms about his knees.

Honor did not speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes. _"It comes so suddenly_,"--Carter had told her--"like the boa constrictor's hunger ... _and then he was just--an appet.i.te_."

"Ladies'n gem'mum," said Jimsy, thickly, "goin' shing you lil' song!"

Then, in his hoa.r.s.e and baffled voice he sang Stanford's giddy old saga, "The Son of a Gambolier."

They all stiffened with horror and disgust. Mrs. King wept and Josita mumbled a frightened prayer, and Carter, red and vehement, went to him and tried to take the decanter away from him. Only Honor Carmody made no sign.