The Hair-Trigger Kid - Max Brand (uplifting novels .TXT) 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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“Sure they do. Come down and meet ‘em, will you?”
“I’m on the other side of the fence,” said the Kid, running his eyes
casually over the prospect. “I’m on the other side, and I’ll stay there.”
Slocum, instinctively, reined back his horse with a jerk. “What kind of a
game is this?” he demanded.
“A straight game,” said the Kid. “You might slide down the hill and ask
if any of those boys are feeling restless. If they are, come back with
any of ‘em, and we might have a little party up here, the four of us.
Judge Colt, and plenty of ground to fall on. What say, Tom?”
The reputation of Tom Slocum was very high among those who knew. It was
increased now by his bearing toward the Kid. For he seemed interested in
only one thing, and that was the hard, square angle of the end of the
Kid’s chin.
“Tell me, Kid,” said Slocum. “You’re anxious for a pair of us to come up
here and have it out with you—with guns?”
“I’m not anxious, Tom,” the Kid hastened to inform him. “But you boys are
on one side of the fence, and I’m on the other. If you want a little
action to stir up the game, come along and have it. That’s all that I
mean.”
“Come on down with me,” suggested Tom Slocum, “and pick out the fellow
you want to make number two with me.”
“I won’t come down, Tom,” replied the Kid. “You’ve given me enough names.
Plenty enough to suit me. Any one of them will do. I wouldn’t cramp your
style, Tom, by telling you who was to play partners with you.”
Slocum turned burning eyes from the Kid to Bud Trainor.
“You’re number two in this party, are you?” asked Slocum.
And Bud, with a nod, waved his hand toward the Kid, as much as to say
that he had been elected by that formidable youth for whatever work lay
ahead.
“I’ll go down and find out what the boys say,” declared Slocum. “Just
wait up here, will you?”
“We’ll be here,” said the Kid, and Slocum, turning his horse, jogged
quietly off down the slope.
But Trainor kept an anxious eye fixed on his companion. Nervously Bud
passed his hand under his coat to the new spring holster which was
attached under the pit of his left arm. He had adopted this contrivance
at the suggestion of the Kid, but still it seemed strange to him. He had
practiced until the Kid declared that his time on a draw was less than it
had been when pulling from the hip. Still, he was uncertain. Next, he
slipped his hand down along the stock of the Winchester which, in its
long holster, ran down between his right leg and the saddle. But the Kid
did not seem to see these uneasy movements of his companion.
He was too busy, it appeared, in watching the motions of the crowd of
cattle which milled on the slope. Some of them lay down, their heads
sinking low as though they were already far spent. These, doubtless, were
the ones which had come in from a great distance, half dead with thirst
and on fire with eagerness for water. Every hour they spent was bringing
them closer to death. Others, again, were mixing in swirls and tangles.
Some of them ran with their heads high. Others swung their horns right
and left, redeyed with the burning famine, eager to fight. And brigades
of these, from time to time, surged ahead toward the fence line, where
they crowded close, lifting their heads above the top strand and pressing
their throats and breasts against the cruel barbs. There they hung, until
the riders swept down the line and flogged them away with whips. Even
whips were not enough, now and again. They had to fire blank cartridges
into the faces of the poor beasts, which then milled slowly away to a
short distance. The same scene was duplicated on the farther side of
Hurry Creek by equal numbers of the animals.
Over the fence, a little away from the spot where “Dolly”
Smith had jumped his horse across, another rider now sprinted his mount
toward Dolly.
The latter turned in his saddle, reining in to meet this danger from
behind.
“Now watch Champ Dixon work,” said the Kid, laughing softly. “It’ll be
worth while. He is a champ, when it comes to a job like this.”
“Smith oughta break him in two,” said Bud Trainor, “if Dixon means
fighting. Smith has got twenty pounds on him!”
“Twenty pounds of man, and Champ is all wild cat. You see?”
Champ Dixon leaped out of his saddle like a panther, and plunging through
the air, he tackled Smith and hurled him to the ground like a stone. They
rolled over and over, raising a dust, but then Dixon stood up, and Dolly
Smith remained in a heap on the ground.
“He’s broken his neck!” said Bud Trainor, in horror. “I saw his head bend
back as he hit—he’s busted his neck—”
“That won’t bother Champ Dixon any,” said the Kid. “He’s broken necks
before this. Look at the strength in his hands.”
For Champ Dixon, leaning, picked up the fallen man like a child and
literally threw him across the empty saddle of Dolly’s horse, which had
come back to sniff at its fallen master.
A shout went up from the Dixon men. It roared dimly up the slope, mingled
with the continual voices of Hurry Creek.
“Gents like to see a thing like that,” said Bud Trainor. “They’ll eat out
of the hollow of Dixon’s hand, after this, but how could you of knowed
how all of this would happen, Kid?”
“Oh, I know Dixon. He’s a fox, as well as a panther. Do you think that
he’d let any pair of the boys come up here to fight it out? Not at all!
If they were dropped, you and I could grab one of them and ride him back
to the ranch house in a rush. Then we could claim that he and his partner
had come out and attacked us. Malice prepense!”
“What’s that?” asked Trainor.
“Trouble that’s been planned ahead. On the strength of that, we probably
could get the sheriff out here from Dry Creek to slap an injunction on
Dixon and Shay, and spoil their whole show. That’s what I wanted—to get
that crook Dixon to offer to take a first hold. Then we could have thrown
him hard enough to snap his back. No, no, Bud. He’s taking Dolly back to
camp, but Dolly won’t ever forgive him, and a lot of other boys will feel
the same way. We’ve split that crowd into two sections. We’ve cracked the
solid formation, anyway! If Dixon could only gather us in and make sure
of our scalps, he’d strike soon enough. But he’ll take no chances!”
Dixon, with his reclaimed puncher, now entered the fenced enclosure along
the creek through the narrow gate which had been left there, and another
shout went up from the mob.
“Those are the ones who are willing to lick his boots,” said the Kid.
“The others will hate them for it. Slow poison will work as sure as a
quick one, sometimes. I’m going to start hoping!”
A group of twenty or thirty cows, which had begun to mill aimlessly,
suddenly broke and headed straight for the two of them. The Kid shouted a
warning, and the Duck Hawk, as if with a sudden stroke of wings, floated
well to the side of the charge. But Bud Trainor’s less electric animal
barely got aside, switching its tail across the savage horns of the
flanking cow.
This mad charge went thundering on over the hill and wasted itself on
nothingness. But all the animals on the slope began to toss their heads,
and their eyes were red with anger.
“They’ll settle down, pretty soon,” said the Kid. “They’ll settle down
and get groggy. Before long, they’ll be too weak to stand. Oh, thirst
kills ‘em almost like bullets.”
“Aye,” said Bud Trainor. “I remember once when I was making a drive with
Ned Powell and Pete Lawlor, up the old Santa Fe, we found two water holes
dry, one after another, and there were nine hundred head beginning to sag
at the knees—”
“Let it go!” groaned the Kid. “I don’t want to hear about it. It makes me
sick, Bud. It makes my heart grip and turn over. Child murder—that’s
what it is!”
“It’s a low business,” agreed Bud.
But he looked at his companion with wonder.
“After all, Kid,” he could not help saying, “they ain’t your cows!”
“What difference does that make?” asked the Kid, turning on him almost
fiercely. “They’re helpless, aren’t they? And the curs who’ll take
advantage of a helpless cow, or a helpless woman, or a helpless man, for
that matter—”
He stopped in the midst of his tirade, and seemed ashamed of himself. But
he was so worked up by his emotion that the Duck Hawk partook of the
excitement, and began to prance lightly up and down, her fetlock joints
almost touching the ground, so supple was their play.
“Hold on, Kid,” said Bud Trainor. “What’s the meaning of the three of
‘em, over yonder?”
He pointed out three riders who had left the gate and headed to the
right, northward, pointing toward the rim of the hills.
The Kid took keen note of them. Then he turned sharply about in the
saddle.
“I thought so—the old fox!” said he. And he chuckled. “What is it?”
asked Bud.
“See those four who are sneaking off through that gap where the fence
isn’t finished? They’re heading south, but they aim to swing around and
join hands with that bunch which is moving north, and then they’ll have
us in a net!”
He laughed, and calling to Bud not to press his horse too much, they
cantered back across the hills toward the ranch house. They had barely
topped the second rise of the hills, when they could see the two groups
of riders, both to the right and the left, spurring their horses wildly
forward, jockeying them and leaning into the wind of the gallop like so
many Indians.
“Bear right! Bear right!” called the Kid at that instant.
And Bud Trainor, his heart in his mouth, but his confidence in his wise
young leader unshaken, did as he was told.
Then a new pulse of fear came to him.
It was plain that the Duck Hawk could drift away from this pursuit as
easily as her namesake leaves a flight of sparrows behind, or shoots
across the sky to overtake the lowlier fishhawk, as it rises laden from a
stream or a lake. For the mare ran with her head turned a little, taking
stock of the galloping horsemen to her right, and then to her left. She
could dart away to safety at any moment.
But that was not true of the gelding which Bud Trainor himself bestrode.
Already they made a good long march on that day, and although the careful
watering seemed to have put vigor back into the body of the horse, still
the edge was taken from its early foot. It could not sprint with some of
the enemy mounts.
Above all, there to the right and north of them, a tall gray, flashing
like silver and marked with darkness on the
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