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

Chapter 37 - One Match

The kid, when he heard this, looked desperately around the little tent,

but he could think of nothing that would enable him to hide himself. He

could only lie down on his face beside the row of boxes to the left of

the entrance to the tent.

 

There he waited, gun in hand. If Shay looked down at him, it would be

Shay’s last look in this world, to be sure, but it would also be almost

the last moment in the life of the Kid.

 

Then, though there was no sound, he felt, like a mental shadow, that some

one had leaned into the tent.

 

“Why, there looks to be a lot of stuff in here,” said Billy Shay. “Hand

me a light, somebody.”

 

“Where’s that lantern?” said another. “Hey, Sam, bring the lantern back

here, will you?”

 

“Does he feed you well?” asked Shay.

 

“Sure. There ain’t a better camp cook than Bolony Joe. Outside of his

disposition, I mean, but cooks can’t help bein’ that way.”

 

The light of the lantern flickered closer to the entrance of the tent.

 

“Well,” said Shay, “if you boys are being treated right in the grub line,

I won’t bother to look over Joe’s stores. He most generally has the right

kind of a layout.”

 

The figure withdrew from the tent entrance, and the crowd moved off

toward the camp fire again.

 

And the Kid waited for the thundering of his heart to quiet again.

 

At last, he resumed his work, methodically, where he had left off. The

stores inside that tent were thoroughly drenched with kerosene, and still

only one can was used.

 

The next can, he opened, and carrying it around the side of the tent, he

laid it on its side. At once the slim, silver tide flowed out, with a

soft gurgling, in the direction of the big woodpile. On the other side of

this, again, the fire had been built high, and the flames were wagging

their heads wildly above the pile, above the wagon tops, so that an

uncertain light began to flicker all over the near vicinity.

 

The Kid, when he saw that the oil was actually flowing on under the pile

of wood, went back to the cooking tent and cast a fina! glance around

him.

 

Between him and the eastern fence the horses were grazing, hobbled. They

were in a close group, and the Kid, looking them over, could guess their

quality by the length of their legs, if in no other way. They had not the

roached backs and the stubby underpinnings of the usual mustang. No, such

men as these whom Shay and Dixon had gathered were more likely to be

mounted upon hot-blooded horses of price.

 

And a new thought came to him, wilder and more impracticable than the one

which already had entered his mind. But suddenly he thought of all these

men reduced to their own feet for Iocomotion. They would be like fish out

of water—a hungry crew without means of attack or of retreat!

 

Like all men who rode through that country and sometimes wished to take

short cuts across the open, he carried wire cutters with him. He went

with them now straight to the nearest section of the fence. The guards

who walked up and down, on that side, were not in motion just now. They

were bunched, instead, at the place closest to the camp fire, so that

they could overlook the celebration which, in a mild way, followed the

arrival of Billy Shay.

 

So the Kid cut the wires. It was a thing that had to be done with care.

For the wires were stretched tight, and were sure to spring back with a

twang as loud as a bowstring if they were severed carelessly. Therefore

the Kid first balled a handkerchief inside his hand and with this as a

defense, gripped the top wire and gave it a strong pull. Then he used the

pliers, cautiously, and made the snipping sound as faint as possible. The

loosened wire, jumping hard against the pull of his arm, he held

securely, and then coiled it back at the foot of the left-hand post. The

second and third he severed in the same manner.

 

And here was the gap in the inside line of the Dixon fortifications!

 

Before it the cows wandered, their eyes lighted by the tossing and

falling flames from the fire. They went slowly, hopelessly. Not far away

he saw a group of several lying down, their heads dropped low. They might

be dead, for al! he knew. Surging against this obstacle, stumbling and

sometimes falling upon the prostrate forms, the main currents of the

thirst-tormented beasts were moving.

 

He noted this and then, with a glance to the left, saw that two of the

guards had resumed their beat and were coming rapidly toward him. The Kid

melted back among the grazing horses.

 

He ground his teeth at the thought that there would not be time for the

last maneuver which he had conceived. If only those guards had kept near

the fire for a few more minutes.

 

But they came on, talking to one another. They reached the gap which he

had cut in the fence—and they walked straight past it!

 

They, as well as the cows, seemed to take it for granted that nothing

could be wrong with this fence, so lately strung! And the Kid fell

instantly to work.

 

His knife was in his hand, and moving among the horses, he made that

sound, half-humming and half-hissing, which seems to attract the

attention and soothe the nerves of horses more than any other noise in

the world. With one hand extended to touch them gently on hip, on neck,

and on shoulder; the other hand bearing the knife went down, and one

touch was enough, for the blade was as sharp as a razor edge. One by one,

he carefully parted those bonds, until, at last, there was a free band of

horses.

 

And now he was ready for the last work; the last touch. If he succeeded,

it would be a feat which even the wild West would not soon forget, and it

would wreck the proud hopes of high robbery which were now filling the

brains of Dixon and Shay.

 

He went hastily back to the cooking tent. He did not stay there long, for

he was in great haste. He must act before the horses had begun to scatter

and attract attention. He merely scratched a match and tossed it, flaming

into the interior of the cook tent.

 

An explosion followed, a muffled sound like the clapping together of two

enormous pillows.

 

The tent lifted half a dozen feet, ripping away from its fastening ropes,

as a puff of bluish flame accompanied the explosion.

 

This flame died down to a fierce weltering, which ran along the ground

and instantly, reaching the spot where the oil had run under the big

woodpile, converted that heap into a tower of shooting fire.

 

All of this happened in the first second. The Kid observed it on the run,

for he had headed straight back toward the nearest flank of the horses.

 

They, astounded by the first explosion and the shooting fireworks,

hesitated an instant in a blind terror before they fled. And still they

were not under way when the Kid, like a panther, leaped upon the nearest

back.

 

The firmness of the barrel under the grip of his knees, and the length of

the animal’s neck told him instantly that he had made a wise selection.

He whirled his hands above his head and gave an Indian yell. To the eyes

of the horses, it was as though a second explosion had occurred in their

very midst and had dropped a man on the back of the tall gray gelding.

And this, in turn, plunged forward, and reared against the body of the

animal which blocked its flight.

 

And, to spur them forward, from the men at the camp fire, amazed by this

sudden disturbance, there went up first a wild shrieking of fear and

bewilderment, and then a howling of rage.

 

That uproar frightened the half-maddened horses still more. And those

nearest to the fence at this moment found the gap which the Kid had cut.

And through it they went like wildfire!

 

They found their own free way through the herd of cattle like hawks

through a flock of crows.

 

The thing was done. Dixon and Shay and all their men, without a single

horse to back, without food of any kind, without even oil or wood for a

fire, now had the tables turned upon them and were held in the hollow of

Milman’s hand.

 

So the Kid saw it, and so it seemed to be. And still, as he waved his

arms to steer the horses in front of him through the gap, he shrieked and

yelled like an Indian on the warpath.

 

Rifles began to click and he heard the waspish sound of bullets kissing

the air, but it seemed to him that the game was as good as over when, as

if out of the bowels of the earth, the form of a cow heaved up before

him.

 

The gray gelding, right gallantly, gathered and strove to clear the

obstacle.

 

Had the warning been one hundredth part of a second sooner, he would have

succeeded, but as it was, his forelegs touched the back of the steer. The

gelding spun in a frightfully sudden somersault, and the face of the

solid earth leaped up and struck the Kid so that he was senseless.