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

Chapter 20 - A Challenge

The first thought of a mother is for her child. And though she knew that

Georgia had hardly more than laid eyes upon this man, suddenly Mrs.

Milman was thinking of the girl. So strongly, so vividly the thought

struck home in her that the name bubbled to her lips. And she had to make

an effort to keep from speaking it.

 

For, above all, there was in this straight look of the Kid a confession

of a dangerous purpose that shook her to the ground.

 

It frankly told her that what he wanted was something more than she would

give, and the bright face of Georgia rose smiling across her mind like a

sweet vision.

 

“You won’t tell me the other reason, I suppose?” she said.

 

“Mrs. Milman,” said the Kid, “you see how it is. I’m a gambler, and you

can’t expect me to play with my cards face up on the table.”

 

She sighed a little, and then nodded.

 

“I’d better ride down to the creek,” said the Kid, “and look over these

fellows and the lay of the land. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. By

that time, we’ll have the recruits in camp, I suppose?”

 

She could not speak, and merely made a little gesture, but she was

worried to the heart. She watched him striding off toward the horses with

a darkened brow. She had met strong men before this, but she never had

met men who were both strong and free, and the Kid seemed to her as free

as a bird. Studying him, she thought that she could understand why he was

called “the Kid,” and simply that. In his step, in the carriage of his

head, there was something inexplicably and eternally young. He was the

very spirit of youth. And, adding up his qualities as they occurred to

her, she thought of youth as a thing swift, cruel, careless, and without

precedent or law to bind it. So much the more natural that upon youth,

this youth, she should be depending in the great time of stress. Through

the Kid they might be able to drive the transgressors from their land and

save the cattle. What other danger would they be taking in exchange for

it?

 

She sighed.

 

But, after all, there seemed nothing else to do about the matter. It

might be that her shrewd suspicion was right, and that the Kid was here

primarily to distinguish himself in such a manner that he would be forced

most favorably upon the attention of Georgia. It might be that she was

entirely wrong, and that he had no such hope in his mind. In any case,

she would have to be a gambler, and with her cards also hidden, she would

have to play out this game against the professional, which he confessed

himself to be.

 

When she had come to this conclusion, she started back toward the house,

her head a little bowed, and the shadow of it made large by the wide

brim of her hat, falling always before her, so that she was stepping

continually into the edge of it.

 

The Kid, in the meantime, had joined Bud Trainor at the watering trough,

and found him tracing designs in the dust, while the horses drank. He

noted carefully that the cinches had not been loosened, and this he did

himself, letting them sag down.

 

“What’s that for?” asked Bud Trainor.

 

“Well,” said the Kid, “how would you like to come in dry and have to

drink with your belt sunk into the middle of you?”

 

“Why, a hoss can stand that,” said Bud, curiously.

 

“A horse can stand it, all right,” said the Kid. “But I’ll tell you what,

Bud, these horses are more than horses to us: they’re to us what wings

are to birds. They’re life and death to us. We’ve got to keep them fit.”

 

Bud regarded him strangely.

 

“I see,” said he. “They’ve finished drinking now, I guess.”

 

“Don’t hurry ‘em,” said the Kid. “They’ll take a sip or two later on.

Have a cigarette and we’ll watch ‘em digest their drinks.”

 

“You’d think it was whisky, to hear you,” grinned Bud. “Better than

whisky, to them,” said the Kid. “Are you sorry about that play I made,

over there?”

 

“You mean about the ten thousand?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“No, I’m not sorry.”

 

“You’re sure?”

 

“I’m sure. But what about this job with Dixon and his hired thugs? You

ain’t bit off more’n you can chew?”

 

“I dunno,” said the Kid, carelessly. “We can have a try at it.” Trainor

swallowed hard, and then nodded.

 

“All right,” said he.

 

“Does it seem like a crazy thing to you, Bud?”

 

“I’m not thinking,” said Bud hastily. “You’re the boss and the lead hand

in what we do. I’ll follow on.”

 

The glance of the Kid dwelt upon him, gravely.

 

“Tell me,” broke out Bud Trainor. “Whatever made you wanta have me along

with you? What made you finally decide to take me along from my house?”

 

“I’ll tell you. By my way of thinking, murder’s not the worst crime in

the world.”

 

“I know,” said Trainor. “I tried a worse one, back there. I tried a lot

worse one. What of that? Did that make you think that I could turn

straight, and stay straight?”

 

“I think you can,” said the Kid. “You needed more rein than you’d been

having. I’m going to give you the rein. You may break your neck—or you

may have a good time out of it. I don’t know.”

 

The other sighed, faintly.

 

“Which way now?” said he.

 

“Down to Hurry Creek.”

 

Bud, without a word, stepped forward to pull up the cinches.

 

“Let ‘em hang for a while,” said the Kid. “Give ‘em a chance after

drinking, and they’ll run ten times as well for you later. And likely we

may have to come back from the creek a lot faster than we went down to

it.”

 

Bud, without a word, stepped forward a little as though these marching

instructions irritated him, but he went on at the side of his companion,

as they led the horses forward across the grass.

 

The Kid, finishing his cigarette, seemed in high spirits. And. as they

went over the top of a hill, he even made a dancing catch step or two.

Bud watched these maneuvers askance. But it seemed that his friend had

nothing better to do, as he sauntered along, than dance like this, and to

look cheerfully up the stream of little white clouds which the wind was

hurrying across the sky, sometimes compacting them into solid puffs, very

like the smoke blown circling from the mouths of cannon, and sometimes

stretching them out to translucent fleece.

 

They walked for a good half hour through the heat of the sun, Bud

stumbling now and then in his high-heeled boots. At last, the Kid gave

the signal, and pulling up their cinches again, they mounted. Bud’s

gelding came up strong and hard against the bit, and he grinned aside to

the Kid.

 

“You know hosses!” he confessed.

 

The Kid said nothing. He merely smiled. And suddenly Trainor felt that he

had been let into the intimacy of the wisest and strongest man in the

world. He himself was older; but he felt that all the knowledge he had

was as nothing compared with the information lodged in the brain of his

confederate.

 

So they jogged easily along, swinging into a mild canter over the level,

but always walking the horses up and down the grades.

 

“Shoulders!” the Kid explained. “You have to watch their shoulders more

than diamonds!”

 

At last they drew toward Hurry Creek, and on a hill before them, they saw

a horseman waiting, on guard, with a rifle balanced across the pommel of

his saddle. Moveless he watched them as they came up the last slope.

 

The Kid, from a short distance, waved his gloved hand. “You know that

gent?” asked Trainor.

 

“It’s Tom Slocum.”

 

“Is that the Slocum that killed the Lester boys?”

 

“That’s the one. He’s done other things, too. Oh, this must be a

hand-picked crew that Champ Dixon has with him!”

 

As they came closer, Tom Slocum was revealed as a mild-appearing man with

pale, sad blue eyes and a pair of old-fashioned saber-shaped mustaches,

which drooped past the corners of his mouth as far as his chin. The wind

was blowing the long tips of them.

 

“Why, hello, Tom,” said the Kid.

 

“Hello, Kid,” said Tom Slocum, starting in his saddle. “You come up to

the right place, Kid,” he went on as they came closer. “We got a need for

you here, old son. Is that Bud Trainor? We can use you too, Bud.”

 

“What’s the wages on this job?” asked the Kid.

 

“Twenty bucks a day, and found, and good found,” said Slocum. “Look

yonder!”

 

They were at the top of the rise, now, and could see Hurry Creek, and the

working men, and the glistening strands of the wire fence stretching

almost to the end of either side of the gap between the canyon mouths.

The gesture of Slocum indicated the camp wagons in the center of the

farther shore, with horses tethered around them. In the midst was a tent,

above which smoke curled lazily into the sunny air.

 

“Nothin’ but the fat, in there,” said Slocum, licking his lips at the

thought. “Anything from fresh bread to marmalade. And no questions asked.

Steaks three times a day, smothered in onions. You live like in a

restaurant and nothin’ to pay. Nothin’ to do but to bluff out the

shorthorns on this here ranch, Kid. And twenty bucks a day for sittin’

pretty. Come along down, and I’ll show you to Champ Dixon, because he’s

the boss. He might sweeten your pay, Kid, if he’s got any sense. He’s

sweetened mine!”

 

“Who else have you got down there?”

 

“Boone Tucker, and Hollis, and Dolly Smith, and Graham, and Three-finger

Murphy, and Canuck Joe, and Silvertip Oliver, and Doc Cannon, and—”

 

“Do they all stand up to that level?” asked the Kid, thoughtfully.