The Hair-Trigger Kid, Max Brand [best classic literature TXT] 📗

lands run this far?”

 

“Pretty nigh,” said Dad Trainor. “He’s been buyin’ up and buyin’ up all

the time. Them that have enough money is like stones rollin’ downhill.

The longer they live, the faster they go. He’s gunna own most of the

countryside around here, before long. They’s trouble ahead for him!”

 

“Because he is so rich?”

 

“A rich man with a pretty daughter is like a gent smeared with honey,

when they’s wasps flyin’ in the air, on a hot August afternoon. Pretty

soon he’s gunna get stung bad, I can tell you! Stung right to the bone,

so’s he’ll ache good and plenty.”

 

“I’ve seen her,” said the Kid, looking ‘aimlessly across the night.

 

He seemed to begin to forget the alarm which he had been feeling the

moment before.

 

“Scout out there and see if there’s anything moving,” he said to Davey.

“Get close to the ground, and look at the sky line, will you?”

 

“Sure!” said Davey, delighted, and he bounded away.

 

“What are you suspicionin’ about?” asked Dad Trainor suddenly.

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the Kid. “You never know. In a way, I’m the

honey that attracts a kind of wasp, too. The humming of them, Dad, is a

thing that has waked me up in the night, a good many times.”

 

“If you got any doubts,” said Dad Trainor, “you wouldn’t be sendin’ out a

wee kid like that one, would you? Kind of half town raised, too! If I

could have him out here all the time, his eyes and ears would sharpen up,

maybe.”

 

“They’re sharp enough,” said the Kid, easily. “If so much as a partridge

whirs within a mile of him, he’ll hear it and he’ll see ft. I’ll trust

Davey. He knows how to look at a man in the clay, and he’ll know how to

look for a man in the night. My bet is on Davey.”

 

“Well, he’s a good lad,” said Dad Trainor. “Bright and quick, and I gotta

say that town livin’ ain’t made his fists soft. The tannin’ that he give

to little Harry Michaels one-two year back, it was a beauty. He handed

Harry a ten-pound handicap and a lickin’ that was worth watchin’. But

still, if they’s any doubt about what’s out there in the dark of the

valley—”

 

“There’s always doubt, Dad,” said the younger man. “But if a fellow has

nightmares by day as well as by night, what’s the use of living at all, I

say.”

 

“Aye, and a true thing that is,” said Dad. “Them that takes chances and

changes horses is them that makes the round trip through life, and the

rest of us, we just travel along one road and never see nothin’—but

dust!”

 

He shook his head violently, and led the way on toward the house. They

only stopped outside to give the mare a nose bag of barley, and then they

went into the little shack where Ma Trainor greeted them with a smile and

a face shining with the steam of cookery. She declared that she had some

sour-milk biscuits in that oven that would warm the heart of any man in

the world. In the meantime the stove enriched the air with a multitude of

vapors, while the Kid went over to lift lids, sniff contents, and discuss

the properest ways of seasoning and baking in a Dutch oven. In these

matters, Mrs. Trainor was a mint of information.

 

“Where you been keepin’ yourself, Kid?” she said.

 

“A little bit of all around,” said he. “But mostly south. What What have

you been thinking since I last saw you?”

 

She accepted the question with a smile.

 

“Mostly tasting the first part of my life over again,” said she. “That’s

what you do when you get my age, Kid. Them biscuits oughta be ready now.

Kick that dog off that chair and sit down. Where’s them other two?”

 

There was only one small lamp, the chimney slightly yellowed with smoke,

and when this was placed on the table and the glass still further

obscured with the steam of the food, it gave the room new dimensions, and

a sort of gloomy dignity. In the corner, the ladder which led to the

garret now climbed quite out of sight. As the food was piled on the

table, which sagged a little to one side even under this light weight,

the missing two now came in.

 

“I met Bud,” said Davey, “and he told me that he’d already scouted

around.”

 

“Yeah,” said Bud, rather gloomily. “When I heard that hoss nicker, I just

took a look around, but it ain’t nothin’ but one of the Milman cayuses up

there on the bluff. Them Milmans, it ain’t no wonder that they lose a lot

of stock by rustlers. They go and shove their hosses and cows right down

your throat, sort of.”

 

“A loose horse, eh?” asked the Kid.

 

“Yeah, a loose horse.”

 

“I’m glad to know that. I thought that one hadn’t whinnied himself out at

the finish.”

 

“Can you tell when a hoss has had his fill up of neighin’?” demanded Bud,

somewhat sulkily.

 

“Pretty close,” replied the Kid. “There’s something about the way that he

tunes up at the start that can tell you whether he’s going to wheeze,

snort, cough, or squeal at the finish.”

 

“Well, I never could read the mind of a hoss that close,” said Bud.

“Throw me a coupla them biscuits, will ya?”

 

The Kid, silently, passed the plate, and while Bud helped himself, the

eye of the Kid lingered for a moment, thoughtfully, upon the gloomy face.

He shifted his glance, then, over his shoulder toward the door and seemed

for an instant uneasy, but in a moment shrugged his shoulders and settled

himself to his meal.

 

He had begun a little story of Yucatan in which the very steam of the

jungle of that southland appeared, when, into the doorway behind him,

stepped two men, silent as shadows. The Kid had his back fairly turned,

but something made him stiffen as though he actually had seen the naked

guns in their hands, leveled upon him.

 

But, little Davey, who hardly had been able to shift his eyes from his

hero, up to this moment, now slowly rose like a ghost from his stool.

 

“Jimmy!” he breathed.

 

“Jus’ take it quiet,” said a voice from the doorway.

 

“Aye, take it slow and easy, Kid,” said the second man. “And give a jury

a chance at you!”