The Hair-Trigger Kid, Max Brand [best classic literature TXT] 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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wrists of the captive. An inspiration came to Davey. He was standing with
the lamp just before him, and rather close to his side of the table. That
table was low, and Davey, leaning over, blew out the lamp with a single
puff.
There were stars outside, burning brightly. And there was even a
scattering of reddish streaks of light from the stove itself, where the
fire shone through certain gaping cracks. However, the extinguishing of
the smoky lamp acted like double darkness in which surprise was the
chiefest element.
Two guns instantly spoke like two thunderstrokes on the heels of one
another. Pungent scent of burned gunpowder stung the nostrils of all in
the cabin.
There was a tumbling of wrestling bodies, curses, and then a wild scream
of pain and terror.
Through the doorway, dimly silhouetted against the stars, leaped a man
who was throwing out his arms before him, and still yelling as he fled.
Then Davey, who had put out the lamp, lighted it again. It revealed an
odd scene.
In the doorway stood the Kid, with a rifle all ready in his capable
hands. He was looking after the fugitive, who now departed with a rapid
pattering of hoofs, putting his horse at a dead gallop. But the Kid did
not open fire. Instead, he lowered the weapon and turned back into the
room, as though he cared too little about the matter to shoot down the
fleeing rider.
In the room itself, old Ma Trainor was cowering into a corner. Her
husband stood in front of her, with a short-handled axe gripped in both
hands, and a wild light in his eyes. There was a faint hint of red on the
edge of the heavy blade. An explanation, perhaps, of the shriek of terror
which had filled the cabin the moment or two before this.
But, most interesting of all, in the corner of the room where two men had
been struggling, one of them was now rendered helpless. That was Sam
Deacon, and he who had pinned him down was none other than Bud Trainor!
“Thanks, Bud,” said the Kid. “It’s all right, now. Let him get up after
you’ve taken his guns away.”
The guns were promptly taken away, and the two got to their feet.
The thin, white face of Deacon was covered with a ghastly smile, his
habitual expression, which he deepened now in order to show that he was
not at all afraid.
But afraid he was, most ghastly afraid, and this smile of his only
accented his terror.
He looked at Bud and snarled from the side of his mouth: “You
double-crossin’, sneakin’, dirty, hound!”
And Bud winced, and made no reply. He hung his head, doggedly, until his
small mother ran to him out of the corner of the room and cast her meager
arms around him.
“Oh, Buddy, Buddy darlin’!” she sobbed against his breast. “My own boy,
my brave boy. Oh, thank Heaven, thank Heaven!”
He cradled her in his arms, and he turned to the wall for fear that the
others might see what was happening upon that grim face of his. His
father gripped his arm with a brown old hand and said not a word, but it
was plain that the ties which held that family together had been riveted
with something stronger than steel, in the last moment.
The Kid, in the meantime, sat down in the chair and drew a breath.
“Well,” he said frankly, “I thought that I was a goner, that time.”
Then he nodded toward Davey.
“You’re a cool kid,” said he. “I can thank you first, Davey. And, Bud,
something more than cancels out, too. He lost two thousand and put up a
fight, besides. And this Deacon is a wild cat. I know all about him.
Aren’t you, Deacon?”
The smile with which he asked this last question turned the pallor of
Deacon from yellow-white to green-white. He blinked. But resolutely he
maintained his smile.
“Well, what’s the game?” said Deacon, lightly.
“Sit down and make yourself a cigarette,” said the Kid. “There’s no
hurry. We’ll just have a friendly little chat. That’s all.”
“About what?” asked Deacon.
“Oh, about old times. And new ones, too. I want to know who hired the
pair of you for this job, Deacon.”
“Yeah? You wanta know?” said Deacon. “You ain’t expecting me to talk,
Kid, are you?”
“Yes,” drawled the Kid. “You’ll talk, all right.”
Sam Deacon shrugged his lean shoulders. His eyes flickered aside toward
the door. Then they returned to the face of the Kid, who was lighting a
cigarette. Almost desperately, Deacon followed that example.
“You’ll talk,” said the Kid. “You’ll tell me everything.”
“I’ll not say a word,” declared Deacon, and pinched his lips together
with an effort.
“Deacon,” said the Kid, “don’t you think that you ought to pay something
for your life?”
“I’m no double-crossing curl” said Deacon, looking bitterly at Bud
Trainor.
“All right,” said the Kid. “You don’t double-cross. You simply murder,
eh? Well, Davey, take a lid off of that stove and freshen the fire and
put the poker in under the lid, will you?”
Davey, without a word, did as he was told.
And Deacon watched him, curiously. Sweat began to gather on his forehead.
But the silence continued, through which the Kid was smoking quietly.
At length he said: “Bud, will you take your mother and father outside of
the house? Davey, you’d better go along, too. What’s going, to happen now
won’t be pretty to watch. You’d better get out of earshot. There may be a
little noise in here.”
“Kid,” said Deacon huskily, “whatcha got on your mind?”
“When that poker’s hot,” said the Kid, “it ought to make a good running
iron. That’s all I mean.”
Deacon got up slowly from his chair.
“You ain’t serious, Kid,” he gasped.
“No, only joking,” said the Kid, “if you intend to talk.” Deacon rubbed a
hand violently across his face.
“Aye,” said he. “You’ll do what you say! There ain’t nothin’ but a devil
inside you. Kid, whatcha wanta know?”
The Kid, at this, smiled in the most amiable manner.
“I want to find out about the whole idea,” he said. “Who sent you, why
you were sent, and how much money was promised.”
“Send out this crowd,” said Deacon glumly. “If I gotta tell, there ain’t
any reason why I should tell anybody besides you.”
“They’ll go out,” admitted the Kid. “That is, Davey and the old folks
will. But not Bud.”
“Not Bud?” almost shouted the other. “What has that sneak got in the way
of a right to hear?”
“Why,” said the Kid, “Bud and I are partners, old son. You ought to know
that, by now.”
“Partners? A fine partner he promised to be to you,” said Deacon.
Already the others were leaving the cabin, though reluctantly, but Bud
lingered near the door.
“You mean that you want me to stay here?” he asked incredulously of the
Kid.
“Of course I do,” said the latter.
“And why? Why?” shouted Deacon, infuriated until he trembled. “Here’s the
gent that sold you, and then changed his mind and double-crossed me and
Morgan. Why should he stay?”
“You thought that he’d sold me,” said the Kid. “No, no, Deacon. Bud
Trainor’s not the sort of a fellow to ever do that. He’s not the type for
it, at all. Bud is in partnership with me, and when you tried to buy him,
he simply led you into the middle of the trap.”
“By heck!” cried Deacon. “Is that it? Is that why you were so cool, all
the time? You knew that you had something up your sleeve?”
“Of course I did,” answered the Kid, genially. “You never had a chance
against Bud and me, because all the while Bud was waiting for my signal
before he jumped you from behind.”
Bud Trainor, listening near the door, dropped his head a little, so that
the bewilderment in his face might not be too openly apparent to Deacon.
The latter twisted from side to side, in the agony of his
humiliation—not humiliation because he had attempted to take advantage
of the Kid and failed, but shame, because he seemed to have been tricked
and trapped.
“Have I gone and been a fool?” he asked bitterly.
“You’ve been a fool, Deacon,” said the Kid gently. “You might have known
that Bud Trainor isn’t the double-crossing kind.”
Deacon turned aside and glared at Trainor.
The latter, lifting his head, gave to the Kid an odd look and a faintly
twisted smile, as though there were some deep consideration between them.
But he said nothing.
“I see it!” said Deacon. “Bud was simply drawing us on!”
“How about the news that you have for us, Deacon?”
“Say it over again, what you want to know?”
“Who sent you?”
“Why, Jack Harbridge up in the Mogollons is the feller. He wants to get
even with you for the game you trimmed him in, two-three year back.”
“Harbridge?”
“Yes.”
“That poker game still sticks in his crop, eh?”
“It sure does.”
“He tried to crook me, that game, and I only stacked the deck with two
crimps in it. He found the first crimp, but he banged into the second
one. Well, it’s Harbridge, is it?”
“Aye, it’s Harbridge.”
“I’m glad to know that. What was the price?”
“Ten thousand flat.”
“That’s worth while. I’m glad that Jack puts that high a price on me.
Where did you see Jack last?”
“Up there in the hills. About two weeks back.”
“You been drawing a long bow at me, eh?”
“It was worth time.”
“It wouldn’t take that long to get down here.”
“We didn’t know where you were, for a while. And then we wanted a little
practice with our guns. We expected a hard job ahead of us. And if I’d
plugged you when I came through that door—”
He paused, his teeth showing, but not in a smile.
“You wouldn’t do that, Deacon,” said the Kid. “Bud, see if that poker’s
hot enough now, will you? I want it white hot.” Bud went toward the
stove.
“What’s the idea?” asked Deacon, growing whiter than he had been.
“I have to burn the truth out of you,” said the Kid. “I don’t want lies
from you, Deacon.”
“I’m telling you the honest truth.”
“Then I’ll have to burn honester truth out of you. How about the poker?”
“It’s pretty nigh ready to melt,” said Bud, lifting the lid from the
roaring, glowing stove.
“It ought to be ready for the work, then,” said the Kid. “Bring it here,
will you?”
Bud, accordingly, first wrapped a rag around his hand and then withdrew
the poker from the fire. The end of it was white hot, and snapped out
little bright sparkles. It seemed, indeed, as though the tough iron had
been melting, and was forming a liquid drop at the point.
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Deacon, in a gasp. “I’ve told you—”
The Kid smiled.
“You’re a rat, Deacon,” said he. “You’re a low rat and you always were a
rat. I’ll have the truth out of you or I’ll mark you so’s the boys will
be able
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