Ransom (24 page)

So he grinned when they all laughed, answered wittily in his own peculiar schoolboy slang when spoken to, acted for all the world like a guest of a gentleman in his country home. And he could see that Spike liked it.

It was not until the tomato cocktail, the fresh bread, the fried ham, coffee, and the delicious grapes and pears that the guest had evidently brought with him had all been consumed, and Bud and the boss were silently tidying up in their crude way, that Spike turned to Rannie with a keen, friendly look and said: “Now what's this all about you not willing to ask your father for ransom?”

Rannie faced him with bright eyes, knowing that a crucial time had come, his young face hardening into dogged determination.

“I couldn't do it!” said Rannie firmly.

“Not if your life depended on it?”

“Not if my life depended on it.” There was a ring to his voice that would have thrilled his father if he could have heard it, and would have made him forgive even all the childish outrages and scrapes he had been in at school; and if Rannie had lifted his eyes an instant sooner he would have caught a glint of admiration in the eyes of the gentleman crook who watched him. But what Rannie saw when he dared to study that strong face before him was a cruel look in the man's eye. Very well, if it was a fight to the death, Rannie determined to fight. It was probably the one chance of his lifetime to retrieve the silly, wasted past. That was his thought as he put steel into his own young, frightened eyes.

“Tell me about it,” ordered the crook in an impersonal tone.

“Well, you see, this is the story,” burst forth Rannie in his schoolboy tone. “My dad is about ta fail. He told me about it just a few minutes before your men got me. You see, I'd been pretty rotten, got into all sorts of a mess at school, stole the exam questions and got expelled for it, and my dad had just found it out and felt pretty bad about it. I tried ta tell him he'd make it right, an' he said he couldn't. He didn't even have a little trifle like fifty thousand ta put up, an' he said he wouldn't if he did have it. He said I deserved what I got an' he'd have ta suffer with me, and things like that. And then he told me how his business had about gone under, and he didn't know which way ta turn, an' how I'd disgraced him in school, an' how my mother'd feel if she were alive an' all that. An' right after that I had ta be so simple as ta go an' get kidnapped. I ask ya, ef you was in my place, could you ask yer bankrupt dad fer any kind of a ransom, after all that?”

There was something about Rannie's earnest young face, white with excitement and strain, that held the three men silent as they watched him, and Spike, after a moment, answered him quietly, “Perhaps not,” and there was something about his face that was quite inscrutable.

Almost at once Bud led Rannie away to his room, and he lay on his bed in the dark and heard a low murmur of voices from the carefully guarded conversation.

He could not remember just when he drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with unhappy dreams of home and Mother and the old house where they all lived together. The whirr of an airplane seemed to mingle with his dreams, and the bed was hard and the night cold.

He woke early in the morning with memory getting him quickly in hand, and listened but heard only Bud's steps as he stumbled about the outer room, and later, the boss grumbling at him. Spike seemed to have faded like a dream from the cabin. No one spoke of him or referred to last night in any way.

As soon as there was enough light in the room, and Rannie was reasonably sure that no one would come in for some time to interrupt, he pulled out the little packet he had hidden so carefully in the crack behind the cot and examined it. It was a little envelope with printing on the outside, and a line of script with a name signed. He half sat up and held the packet where the light would shine better on it.

“This little book will help you win the game. Read it and find out how.” And the name signed below was the name of one of the world's greatest athletes, known in college and athletic circles as “The Grand Old Man of Football.”

Rannie fairly caught his breath and read the magic words over again. What prize was this that he had found hidden away in a dreary cabin in the wilds of a far mountain? That it would be well worth reading, he had no doubt. Rannie had once had the privilege of picking up a fallen program and returning it to the great hero on the bleachers at a national game, where privilege and unerring ability to worm himself to the front had blessed him with a position at the great man's feet. Oh, Rannie would read that book with his heart as well as his eyes. Already the thought of Spike had dropped back a pace or two in his mind, and Rannie was eager to read the little book. He pulled it reverently out of its paper case and turned it around in his hand. “THE GOSPEL OF JOHN,” he read in bold black letters on a bright red cover. But it meant nothing to him. Who was John?

Rannie opened the book and began to read.

The first few verses puzzled him. It was an odd language, and he couldn't quite get at what it meant. He still had in his mind the words on the envelope. This was some strange kind of introduction to the story of an athlete named John, probably. Rannie skimmed it and came to the sixth verse. Ah! Here was John.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
That was a strange way to put it. What did God have to do with athletics? Probably some new modern kind of praise, considered the highest one could give. He read on and gathered that here was a story about something that it was important everybody should believe. This John was a kind of trainer perhaps, or manager, or somebody who went out and arranged for the games, was that it?

Then gradually as the majestic figure of the God-Man Christ Jesus emerged from the page in all His glory as a “Lamb of God,” Rannie stood in awe before the thought of Him. Why, it was talking about Jesus Christ, this book was, and trying to make everybody understand what He was. This person, John, had known Him and was His witness, that was it.

He went back a few verses and caught up a little more of the meaning. Why, if this was true, and of course it was, since his hero of the football field stood for it, then Jesus Christ was very different from what Rannie had ever supposed. This book made Him a real person, yet more than a mere human person. It tied him up to God so closely that it actually stated that He was God.

Rannie went back to the beginning and caught up vaguely a trifle more of the meaning of the “Word” that was in the beginning with God and was God. The Word that made all things that were made. That, too, was a new thought. He had never connected the traditional Christ of the Bible with the creation. Of course not. He knew almost nothing about the Bible except as he had sketchily read in textbooks about it. He knew no real truth at all. He was a little pagan brought face-to-face with the Book of God for the first time in his life, and he was amazed.

But when he came to that astounding announcement, “
Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world
,” he paused and read it again.

Sin, of course, was anything you did that was wrong—that is, one didn't recognize it as sin unless it got to some heinous stage like murder or kidnapping or theft, but it was sin in a general sense anyway. And, yes, his father had practically told him he had been a thief when he stole those exams, though he had always looked on that as only following out an old custom, poetic license as it were, for the sake of the school traditions. But likely in God's eyes, if there was a God and He took account of things individuals did, Rannie was counted a sinner. At any rate, he had been guilty of disloyalty to his father and family and the rules of the school, and he felt mean enough now in his present situation to count himself as the worst sinner in the world.

But—take away the sin of the world! How could that be true of a man who lived long ago? Oh, of course he knew Christ's death on the cross was somehow connected with philanthropy toward mankind, but what had that to do with taking away guilt? Guilt. That was what he was feeling. That was why he couldn't ask his dad to help him out now. He felt guilty. And this book suggested a way for sin to be taken away! Well, he wished he knew how.

It was just this faint wish to find out that kept him reading on through phrases that he did not understand, phrases that so far as his knowledge was concerned, meant just nothing at all.

But he gathered that this book was a plea, a witness of the sincerity and character and ability of Jesus Christ by one named John. And John seemed to be a bright guy who wasn't doing it just to make a good show for himself. He was all for the Christ. He wanted people to believe. Rannie turned the brief pages, absorbed in the Word of God. Belief? Why did belief seem so important? He wanted to find out. There, perhaps that was the reason: “
And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God
.”

Well, if He really was the Son of God, that was enough to talk about so earnestly, of course.

Then Rannie found himself following with the two disciples, asking with them, “
Rabbi, where dwellest thou?
” and he seemed almost to hear the Master's answering voice: “
Come and see
.”

Could he find Him in those few pages of that book, Rannie wondered? Probably not, or all the world would have come to believe on Him by now, but at least it was interesting. He read on, gathering new data, new testimony of this man named John, who at least evidently himself believed what he was telling. The power of Jesus' first miracle interested him. He paused to think about how that water might have been made into wine by sleight of hand or some such method, and concluded that one could prove nothing about it without having been there to watch the whole process. Then, suddenly, came the thought that if this was the Son of God, if God was what a God was supposed to be—all-powerful—why, neither He nor His Son would have to resort to trickery to bring about a thing like that. God wouldn't be God unless He could do things beyond man's power or thought. It occurred to him with a pang that if God were here now, He could probably get him out of this cabin and down across space to his home without any ransom being paid at all. How he wished that God were there.

Then he came to the verse: “
But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man
.”

Then a God wouldn't need to be here to know one's need. Perhaps God knew right now what was happening here in this cabin. Perhaps He knew a way out for him.

Rannie plunged deep into the matchless third chapter of John, reading the testimony on miracles of one Nicodemus, who came to talk with Jesus by night, when suddenly he felt that someone was in the room. With a sense of imminent peril, he looked up over his shoulder and there stood his two captors watching him read with suspicion. The door stood open behind them, and he had not heard it!

R
annie's first alarm was lest they should take the book away from him before he had finished reading it. And next he remembered the file. If they should find that! If they should go searching his room and take that away, he would feel there was no hope left.

But he summoned his wicked little grin and spoke. “Good night!” he said. “I didn't hear ya come in. Whatcha been doin' ta that bolt? Oiled it? It didn't make a sound.”

But the boss was up in the air. One could see that at a glance. He was eyeing the little red book with suspicion.

“Where'dya get that?” he demanded, pointing to the book.

“Found it over there between the logs right in plain sight. Somebody stuffed it in ta keep out the wind, I guess, an' then went off 'n' fergot it. It's real interestin'. Listen, I'll read ya some. This is a story about a man named Nicodemus.”

“But what kind of book is it?” insisted the boss, coming over to the cot and looking over Rannie's shoulder.

“Oh, it's some kind of witness in a court case, as far as I can make out. The witness's name is John. Stand outta my light there, Boss, I can't see ta read this fine print.”

“Come out in the other room,” urged Bud, curiosity and interest in his ugly face.

“Well, come on, then,” said the boss grudgingly, “but I ain't goin' ta listen long. I ain't got no time fer books.”

“Well, just listen ta this,” said Rannie, and sitting down on the first box he came to, he began to read.

The story form of the narrative caught the interest of the men at the start, and Rannie was a good reader. He had always taken prizes in oration. From the first word, he had his audience. Neither of them had perhaps ever heard any reading aloud before in their lives, and they sat down, spellbound. Even through the wonderful imagery, which they did not understand, they sat with strained expression listening to the old, old mystery story that a man must be born again before he could see the kingdom of God.

But when Rannie reached John 3:16, they sat forward on their wooden boxes, their elbows on their knees, Bud's mouth half open in wonder, the boss frowning heavily.

“ ‘For God so loved the world,' ” read Rannie.

The boss sniffed. Not much love had come his way. He didn't believe in love. His idea of love was something vile and impure and uncertain. Real love was a thing about as far from the lives of these two men as the east is from the west. God loving the world simply couldn't be comprehended.

“ ‘… that he gave his only begotten Son …' ”

The boss edged his box a little nearer and stretched his neck to look over Rannie's shoulder.

“ ‘… that whosoever believeth in him should not perish …' ”

Bud edged a little nearer, his chin in his hand, and cleared his throat.

“ ‘… but have everlasting life,' ” finished Rannie.

Bud held up his hand. “Read that there bit again, won't ya?” he asked huskily.