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Title: The Hair-Trigger Kid (1931)
Author: Max Brand
A Project Gutenberg Australia eBook
eBook No.: 0801381.txt
Language: English
Date first posted: December 2008
Date most recently updated: December 2008
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The Hair-Trigger Kid
Max Brand
(1931)
CONTENTS
1 Plain Poison
2 The Kid Arrives
3 Battle Royal
4 Davey Rides
5 Three-card Stumbles
6 Watching
7 Treed
8 A Great Business
9 A Suggestion
10 Handmade Shoe
11 Callers
12 Notched Gun
13 Branding Iron
14 A Compact
15 Land Sharks
16 Storm Clouds
17 Bad News
18 A Volunteer
19 Two Reasons
20 A Challenge
21 Watching
22 The Chase
23 Compliments
24 The Law
25 Mixed Answers
26 Past history
27 Strange Tales
28 The Fifth Man
29 Cattle Lover
30 Down the Canyon
31 The Fifth Man Again
32 Milman Rides
33 Danger Ahead
34 The Approach
35 Hiding
36 Chuck
37 One Match
38 The Verdict
39 Davey Rides
40 For the Sake of Cows
41 Two Against Twenty
42 Heroes
*
Two Things waited for John Milman when he got West. One was his family,
and the other was the spring. When he got to the end of the railroad, he
could see spring eating its way up the mountains, taking the white from
their shoulders and streaking the desert itself with green. But his
family was not on hand with means to take him out to the ranch, and
therefore he had to wait restlessly in the hotel, pacing up and down his
room, and damning all delays. Sheriff Lew Walters was in that room,
trying to help his friend kill time and uselessly pointing out that in an
hour or two, at the most, the wife and daughter of Milman were sure to
arrive. He might as well have read a chapter out of the Bible. Or better,
perhaps.
“I haven’t seen them for six months!” said Milman.
This was a proof that he was still, to a degree, an outlander. Real
Westerners will not give way to their emotions so readily. They have
picked up some of the manners of the wild Indians. But the sheriff, who
knew the worth of this man, merely smiled and nodded.
“A lot of things can happen in an hour,” said Milman. “I wonder what’s
kept them hack? Elinore’s as punctual as a chronometer, always. And
Georgia would never be late for me! A lot of things can happen in an hour
around this part of the world. How is Mr. Law, and old lady Order, his
wife, Lew? They’re still in your charge, I suppose?”
“They’re recuperatin’,” said the sheriff gravely. “They got a sort of
shock and a setback a while ago, but they’re recuperatin’.”
“What gave them the shock?”
“Well, typhoid fever, smallpox, diphtheria, delirium tremens and muscular
rheumatism all hit this town together, one day, when Billy Shay turned up
and opened his gambling house. I had old Law and Order out, taking the
sun and the air every day, but now they don’t dare to leave their beds
till the sun’s at nine o’clock, and they creep back in around about
sundown.”
“Who is Billy Shay?” asked Milman, willing to forget his trouble for a
moment.
“Shay is poison,” said the sheriff.
“What kind?”
“Skunk poison,” said the sheriff inelegantly. “He’s just one of those
mean, low-down, sneakin’ curs that has teeth and knows how to use ‘em.”
“Then why don’t you run ‘im out?”
“I can’t hang anything on him. I know that everything crooked in the town
depends on Shay, but still I can’t get any information against him. He’s
slick as a snake, and he could hide in a snake’s hole, if he wanted to.”
“How does the town take to him?”
“How does any town this far West take to a chance to spoil its health,
throw away its bank account, wreck its eyes, and quit work? Why, this
town of Dry Creek is crazy about Billy Shay.”
“Does everyone know that he’s a crook?”
“Of course, everybody does. That won’t hold your real hundred-per-cent
Westerner from going to that gaming house and tossing his money away.
Shay has such a good thing that he only has to use the brakes now and
then to stop somebody on a big run. As long as a fool wins once in three
times, he’s sure to come back for more. And one player out of ten always
makes something worth while. They do the advertising for Billy Shay.”
He extended his hand, pointing across the street.
“There’s Billy’s house. He’s gone and got himself the finest place in
town.”
“That’s Judge Mahon’s place, I thought.”
“The judge has sold out and moved up Denver way. Didn’t you know that?”
“News is six months dead to me,” admitted the rancher. “There’s somebody
piling down the street in a hurry.”
The horseman came with a rush and a sweep.
“Maybe news from the ranch—maybe bad news!” muttered Milman under his
breath.
“Why, it’s Billy Shay!” said the sheriff. “I never saw him ride in like
that before!”
Billy Shay appeared to Milman as rather a hump-shouldered man with a
long, lean, white face. As he got to the front of his house, he sprang
from the saddle, without pausing to throw the reins, and as the horse
dashed off down the street, Billy cleared his front gate with a fine
hurdle and fled to the door of the house.
Then, as he fitted the key into the lock, he cast a frantic glance over
his shoulder up and down the street and flattened his body against the
door like one who feels the eyes of danger in the center of his spine.
A moment later he had disappeared into the house.
“Yes, that’s a mighty hurried fellow,” said Milman. “He doesn’t act as
though he’s so dangerous as you’ve been saying.”
“No, he don’t,” replied the sheriff. “He don’t look bad enough to eat a
raw egg, right now. But I’ve seen him—” He paused and sighed. “I’d like
to know what’s after Billy!” he continued, shaking his head. “Whatever is
in his mind, I’d like to find out the nature of it. I’d like to discover
the kind of mongoose that makes that cobra run!”
Then, distinctly, across the road, they could hear the noise of furniture
being dragged—heavy articles which screeched against the floor. They
even saw the door tremble as these things were piled against it.
“Dog-gone me if he ain’t barricadin’ himself in that house of his!” said
the sheriff with a growing awe.
He laid his brown hand with withered, wrinkled fingers upon the shoulder
of his friend.
“I got an idea that maybe we’re going to see something, old-timer.”
“See what?” said Milman.
“I dunno. A mob, maybe, that’s after him. Once we can crack the shell and
get at the news that’s in that hound’s life record, we’d have enough to
raise the whole of Dry Creek, I suppose.”
“You think there’s a mob rising? I don’t hear a sound.”
“Mobs that mean real business don’t make no noise at all,” said the
sheriff. “I’ve seen a hundred and fifty men wearin’ guns and masks, and
as quiet as a funeral. Funerals was what they was providin’, as a matter
of fact. Cheap funerals and a quick way out of the world to them that
didn’t understand the ways of the West, as you might say. How that Shay
slicked off of his horse, eh? I never seen nothin’ like it!”
“He’s a badly scared man, all right,” said Milman. “If the crowd should
come to mob him, will you have to intervene?” At this the face of Lew
Walters turned grim.
“I’d have to,” he declared. “The old days is gone, and Law and Order is
supposed to be strong enough to walk right up and down the main street of
this town night or day. I’m the escort. I’ve swore to do that job, and I
intend to do it!”
He looked anxiously up and down the street as he spoke.
But there was nothing in sight that agreed with his grave imaginings of
danger.
“Look at that dormer window in the roof!” exclaimed Milman.
The house of the judge, having been built as pretentiously as possible,
had a roof like the crown of a Mexican hat, and on one side of it was a
dormer window. The window was open, and inside it a mirror flashed a
blinding ray of light, winking rapidly.
“There’s a signal—that’s heliograph work as sure as I’m a foot high,
Lew. Can you make out the dots and dashes?”
“I can’t make out a thing. I’m not a telegrapher. But I could guess the
name of the fellow who’s handling that mirror!”
“You mean Shay?”
“That’s who I mean. He’s sending out a message to pals of his somewhere,
and I’d put my money that it’s a howl for help.”
“If we could get at the meaning of that message, we might be at the heart
of Shay’s private affairs—information enough to enable you to make your
arrest, eh?”
“Aye, we might. Here’s somebody coming. The mob, I’d say. And a mighty
small mob to crack a nut with a shell as hard as Shay’s. He’s probably
got half a dozen armed men in that house.”
The dust cloud down the street dissolved, presently, to show two women
and two men riding abreast, with led horses directly behind them.
“That’s no mob, Milman,” said the sheriff after a moment. “That’s your
wife on the left, there, if I ain’t lost my eyes.”
Milman, with an exclamation, made for the door, but the sheriff remained
fixed at his post at the window, watching with curiosity-squinted eyes
the flickering light from the heliograph that played in the dormer
window. He quite agreed with Milman that this message might be useful to
him in his work of ridding the town of the gambling nuisance. But he knew
that by the time he had secured a telegragher the signaling would
probably have stopped. He could only sigh and watch, uncomprehending.
Still his mind struggled to guess at a solution of
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