The Hair-Trigger Kid, Max Brand [best classic literature TXT] 📗
- Author: Max Brand
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these two.
They crossed the bridge over the creek, and there they were seen by the
Warner boys, Paul and Ned, who were fishing off the old ruined landing
which had been built there in the placer days. They both got up and
shouted—regardless of spoiling their fishing prospects for the rest of
the morning. And the Kid turned in his saddle and waved down to them. He
seemed in the highest and most childishly gay spirits, for he made the
Duck Hawk rear so that she stood with her forehoofs resting on the edge
rail which guarded the bridge.
That rail was made of old and time-rotted wood, and the boys held their
breath at this madness of the Kid’s.
Then he whirled the Duck Hawk away, and with a wave of his hand he
disappeared, taking the Langton Trail through the hills.
That trail the Kid followed until after noon. By this time he had climbed
the trail to a height above Dry Creek. He paused at a point where the
trail looped out around the shoulder of a hill, so that he had a clean
view of the path for a distance, going and coming. Moreover, this was a
spot from which he could survey all the country lying back toward Dry
Creek.
He watered the mare at a small creek, which had been one of his reasons
for pausing there, and then he took out a pair of field glasses and first
picked out the northerly hills, the mountains behind them, finally moving
his view down again to Dry Creek, and its shining windows.
He smiled a little when he saw this town, as though of itself it were
something of a joke; then he shifted his view out into the desert,
lingering his eye along the smoky foliage of the draws, and particularly
studying certain dust clouds which, by careful observation, he discovered
were not wind pools, but clouds in slow motion toward Dry Creek.
There were three of these dust clouds. They might be riders, freighters,
almost anything. Carefully estimating distances from point to point, away
out there on the plain, he then timed each of the three dust clouds
across certain stretches.
This had to be inaccurate work, for he could not estimate with any surety
the distances over which the clouds were passing. Yet he knew that those
draws were of about such and such dimensions. He could see, also, that
two of the dust clouds slanted back, and one rose straight up like smoke
from a chimney on a windless day.
He decided that the two slanting clouds were made of horsemen traveling
either at a fast trot or at a gallop. The other dust cloud might be
either quite a large party with their horses at a walk, or, more
probably, it was the sweating team and the rumbling wagon of a freighter.
He put up his glasses and looked more intimately around him. This was the
sort of country that he loved. It was neither the eye-hurting sweep of
the dusty desert, nor the damp gloom of the great forests. It was a
broken sweep of hills, pouring away in a pleasant variety of shapes, and
dressed with patches of high shrubbery and low, while the forest proper
was chiefly confined to the gulleys and the ravines between the hills. In
such a region as this there were a thousand cattle trails weaving through
the maze of hills; there were ten thousand modes of being lost in every
ten miles of travel. It was a place where one needed to know the lay of
the land, and have under one a good horse, with sure footing and a wise
way of taking the ups and downs of a hill journey. The Kid knew this
region well, and he had a wise horse beneath him, that knew how to take
the constantly recurring slopes easily, but at a brisk walk, with a trot
on the summit, and a break into a rolling lope on the downward slope,
moving all the time so softly that there was no danger of battering
shoulders to pieces. Such a horse can cover not twice, but three times as
much ground as an animal not accustomed to the hill country.
But though the Kid knew this country well, he did not know it well enough
to suit him. He never knew any stretch of land well enough. Nothing could
exhaust the patient, the almost passionate interest with which he studied
a landscape in detail. The position of every tree might be worth knowing,
if he had time to get down to the most minor details.
This was almost his profession. The thick roll of his memory could unfold
a scroll which was an endless map of desert, rolling plain, hills,
mountains, wilderness of trees, the courses of rivers, the sites and the
street maps of towns, dottings of ranches and ranch houses, intimate
details of confused trails.
Like a hawk, when he flew into a new region, he first flew high, and from
the summits of the high places he charted the lower regions with an
exquisite precision. The result was that hardly any district could be
strange to him for more than a day, and he had amazed certain ardent
pursuers, over and over again, by his ability to disappear from under
their very noses in a region where they knew, or thought they knew, every
gopher hole.
So the Kid, as the mare grazed eagerly on the fine grass of that
hillside, with the saddle and the bridle both removed, looked carefully
and lovingly over this landscape. There were many creeks where one could
find water, and by those creeks were many dense thickets where man and
horse could hide—particularly a horse taught to lie down in time of
need.
There were high points for spying in this landscape, and there were
crooked and straight ways across the country. That is, there were safe
and leisurely ways, and there were short trails which condensed many
miles of distances into a certain amount of eerie twisting through
ravines and flirting with precipices.
All in all, he felt that this district was made for him. It was “home” to
the Kid.
He had other homes, of course, but they were not quite so satisfactory
for many reasons.
He took out his lunch. It consisted of a ration which an Arab would have
known and appreciated. That is to say, his food was simply dates and old,
stale, tough bread. A morsel of bread, a morsel of date, he chewed them
slowly, with the enjoyment of a hungry man, for already he had ridden far
on this day.
When he had finished his lunch, which was a meager one even for such
simple fare, he drank from the cold water of the creek, and then sat
beside it for a time watching the rippling shadows which flickered over
the sandy bottom, or the flash and paling of the sun upon a quartz
pebble.
It did not take a great deal to interest the Kid. He never had found a
desert so thoroughly devoid of life that it was dull to him. Now, when he
turned from the gazing at the creek, it was to watch the arduous way of
an ant through the grass, lugging with it the head of a beetle twice its
own size and four times its own weight. Ten times the head fell as the
Kid watched. Ten times the ant picked up the burden and pushed ahead,
forcing between narrow blades and climbing then up and then down, like a
monkey struggling with a vast weight through an endless forest.
Eight feet away lay the nest which was the goal! To the ant it was eight
miles of fearful labor.
A light, quick stamp of a hoof made the Kid look up to the Duck Hawk, to
find her standing alert, with tail arching into the wind, and ears
pricked.
The Kid did not delay. He slid bridle and saddle onto her with practiced
speed, and, running hastily down the trail, he came to a rocky stretch,
turned up among the rocks until he came to a thick place of shrubbery and
trees which perfectly concealed him and the mare.
Here he waited, and after a time, sure enough, from down the trail,
traveling south, he heard first the distant ring of an iron-shod hoof,
striking against hard rock, and then the faint snort of a horse. Such
sounds grew nearer and nearer, and around the corner of the mountain rode
a man on a fine gelding of the mustang type, with two lead horses behind
him.
This man carried a short-barreled repeating rifle, or carbine, which he
balanced across the pommel of his saddle. He had two saddle holsters,
from which the butts of revolvers appeared, and a capacious cartridge
belt girded him.
On each of the two led horses there were small packs, but these were so
light that it was obvious that he was using them as extra mounts rather
than as pack animals.
The man himself was what one might call the true Western type; that is to
say, he was tall, rather bony and thin from much exercise, and little fat
from leisure. He had one of those thin, dark faces which one often sees,
with a truly grand forehead, wide and high, and a little puckering at the
corners of his mouth which made him appear to be smiling a great part of
the time. But smiling he was not, as one could guess by a second glance.
This fellow was forty years old, with a back straight as an arrow, a head
carried like a king, and a glance as bright as’ the Kid’s own.
The latter smiled a little and watched with careful attention until the
other reached that point along the trail where the Kid had lunched and
where the mare had grazed.
The instant he came to these signs the rider slumped lower in the saddle,
and tightening the reins, he slipped the carbine under his arm and
whirled his horse about, scanned the rocks and the trees near him with
the eagerness of a hawk and something of a hawk’s hungry and fierce
manner.
He seemed to content himself a little with this first survey, and then
jumped from his saddle to the ground and carefully examined the grass
that had been trampled down by his predecessor. By the movement of it, as
it gradually was rising, he seemed able to tell that his forerunner had
been there a very short time ago indeed. Therefore he straightened again,
and scanned all that was around him suspiciously. Finally he leaped into
the saddle again, and went on a tour of inspection.
What wind was blowing carried straight from the man hunter to the man.
Therefore the Kid carried out an experiment in which he could use the
intelligence and the obedience of the Duck Hawk. He turned the head of
the mare toward a gap in the brush to the rear, and through this, as he
waved his hand, she went at once.
The noise she made was very slight. She walked like a cat, picking out
her way. For horses who have lived a wild life where there is any amount
of shrubbery and trees either learn the ways of silence or die young.
Mountain lions are excellent schoolmasters in all such lessons. So the
Duck Hawk went off with very little noise, and the wind which stirred was
sufficiently strong to cover these slight noises of retreat.
Getting well beyond the patch
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