The Hair-Trigger Kid by Max Brand (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕
"The curtain ain't up," said the sheriff, "but I reckon that the stage is set and that they's gunna be an entrance pretty pronto."
"Here's somebody coming," said Georgia, gesturing toward the farther end of the street.
"Yeah," said the sheriff, "but he's comin' too slow to mean anything."
"Slow and earnest wins the race," said another.
They were growing impatient; like a crowd at a bullfight, when the entrance of the matador is delayed too long.
"We're wasting the day," said Milman to his family. "That's a long ride ahead of us."
"Don't go now," said Georgia. "I've got a tingle in my finger tips that says something is going to happen."
Other voices were rising, jesting, laughing, when some one called out something at the farther end of the veranda, and instantly there was a wave of silence that spread upon them all.
"What is it?" whispered Milman to the sheriff.
"Shut up!" said the sheriff. "They say th
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what would that accomplish?
Men who were willing to jump claims knew beforehand the resistance they
were likely to encounter, and they were sure to come well prepared. If
they were not great in numbers, they would be great in ability. Not a
soul among the crowd down there, as Spot Gregory shrewdly guessed, but
was a thorough ruffian, a mankiller, or ambitious to kill men. Every one
of them had proved his desperate character, or he would not now be
present. They were hand-picked villains who probably had lived by the
guns for years, hunting down their fellow men as more respectable hunters
might chase bears or wolves.
So Gregory felt a rising sense of helplessness.
He was on the verge of swinging his horse about and rushing for the ranch
house, to let his employer know the disaster which had befallen them. The
water claim of the Milman ranch had been jumped, and that would be
tidings to make Milman turn green with passion.
However, Milman was too much the honorable man to meet murder with
murder. Bare-handed aggression he had plenty of courage to meet, but if
there was the ghost of a legal form lined up against him, he would be
certain to wait for the law to show him the way.
The law!
How could the law act in time to save the thousands of the Milman cattle
from death by water famine?
In the meantime, it was better to go down and look this trouble in the
face. So he cantered the nervous mustang down the easy slope toward the
men who, on this side of the river, were toiling to run the fence line.
There were four of them so employed, two cutting post holes, stamping out
the earth with cutters, or drilling it with augers. The second pair set
up the posts and tamped them in place, or stretched the wire.
The posts were poor, twisted ones, and the wire was but loosely
strung—two meager strands of it. Plainly the boundary was not to be
strong, unless gunpowder could strengthen it enough!
In the background, there was a fifth man, who rode slowly back and forth,
keeping an eye on the fence builders, and again on those hands who warded
back the thirsting cows as they descended from the hills. To this fellow
of apparent authority, Spot Gregory advanced, with a wave of his hand,
which the other came forward willingly to meet.
They met one another close to the fence makers, and the latter stopped
work gladly to watch the interview.
As for the rider, Gregory found him to be the true Western type, spare in
flesh, but looking tough as whip leather. A magnificent forehead rose
above the lean, brown face.
“Hello!” said Spot Gregory. “You’re Champ Dixon, ain’t you?”
“That’s me,” said Dixon, pleasantly. “I’ve met you, somewheres. Gregory.
Is that your name?”
“Yeah. That’s my name. What in hell-fire are you up to here, Dixon?”
“Oh, just picking up a right smart little piece of ground for me and my
partner.”
“Who’s your partner?”
“Billy Shay.”
“Shay!” exclaimed Spot angrily. “That—”
The other raised his gloved hand.
“Easy, Gregory!” he warned.
And Spot Gregory set his teeth with a stifled groan.
He had expected the worst, and yet this was a little too bad even for his
expectations. The snakelike cunning of Shay and the deadly hand of Dixon
to back him up made the combination hard to defeat.
For his own part, he was a mere child before such a practiced assassin as
Champ Dixon.
“Dixon,” said he. “How’re you gonna hack this up in the law courts? Or is
it only a way to blackmail poor Milman out of money to water his cattle,
for a few days?”
“Money for watering his cows?” said the other genially. “Well, old son,
the fact is that we wouldn’t plunge like this except for a big thing.
We’ve looked into Milman’s title to his whole ranch, and it ain’t worth a
whoop! So we’ve took over the piece that we want!”
When discretion and judgment were considered; Spot Gregory seemed to
possess both. He looked Dixon in the eye. He even allowed himself time to
glance to the side, and to observe the broad grins upon the faces of the
four men who were looking on, leaning on the posts of the fence.
“Well,” said he, “if you was to hunt around to pick out a piece of ground
that would do you less good, and more harm to Milman. I dunno that you
could of picked better than this.”
“No, sir,” said Champ Dixon, “I dunno that we could I looked over this
here layout personal, a while back, and that’s what I figgered myself.”
“Tell me, Dixon,” said the foreman of the ranch, “what made you boys have
it in for Milman? What’s he ever done agin’ you, or any of you?”
Champ Dixon, at this unimpassioned appeal, was forced to scratch his head
with such earnestness that he pushed his hat far back.
“What’s he done agin’ us?” he echoed, while he gathered his thoughts.
“Yeah. That’s what I’m askin’.”
“Well,” said Champ, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll tell you about that.
Out here in the Far West, where they’s still a frontier, as the hooks put
it, and out here where the hair grows long, they ain’t much law nor not
much respect for the other feller’s rights, is they?”
“Well, in a way I reckon that there ain’t,” said Spot Gregory.
“And I reckon that worryin’ about how the law goes through pretty nigh
bites you folks to the bone!”
Champ Dixon permitted himself a broad grin.
“Well,” said he, “maybe that’s a way of puttin’ it. The way that it seems
to me, a whole lot of gents, they step into this here country, out here,
and they says to themselves that the country’s so big that they got a
right to pick out the parts of it that they want for themselves. So they
sashays in and they picks out what they want and they don’t pay nothin’
much for it, and they settles down onto it, and they says that because
they’re here, there ain’t any reason why they should ever have to budge.
Now, sir, some of us, we take a look around and we say that the pigs that
is the fattest might be the pigs that is the most profitable to drive to
market, if you foller what I mean?”
“Yeah, I sort of foller your drift,” answered Spot Gregory. “And so you
want to budge the old landholders?”
“You might say that!” remarked Champ Dixon. “What I mean is that here is
the Milmans set down on the land and gettin’ hog-fat, and how? What title
they got to this land, I ask you?”
“Why, I dunno that anybody has asked that question for a long time,” said
Gregory. “Everybody that I know has took it for granted that the Milmans
own the Milman land.”
“Yeah,” said Dixon. “They’s a lot of incurious folks in this neck of the
woods. But supposin’ that I ask you, how did the Milmans get this here
land. D’you know?”
“Why, they bought it from the Injuns.”
“And who sold it to them?”
“I dunno that I know that.”
“I’ll tell you. It was Little Crow, was his name. He was a tolerable
sizeable man, in his day, and a big war chief. And he had a pile of
scalps to his credit. He’s got a war suit all trimmed up with scalp
locks. He’s got more than one suit. If he goes on a Comanche trail, he
can put on a suit dressed up with Comanche hair. And if he tackles a
white war party, he’s got a suit tricked up with white folks’ hair. Some
tolerable long and golden hair, in the lot. And he’s a great fighter,
this here Little Crow. When it comes to the finish, it takes booze and
three whites to take the scalp of that infant, what I mean to tell you.
“Well, sir, along comes old Daddy Milman, before this here boy of his
ever see the light, and he reckons that he’ll take up land here. And he
picks up the spot that’ll suit him the best.
“And then he finds out that it’s Injun land. And he says, what Injun shall
he buy it from, him wantin’ to be all straight and honorable. And so he
picks on the big war chief and grand scalp-getter, Little Crow, that had
counted so many coups that he gets the arm ache every time that there
come along a grand feast and lyin’ party among the tribe.
“So he goes to Little Crow and he says, what do you want? And whatcha
think that Little Crow wants?”
“I dunno,” said Spot Gregory, “that I ever heard.”
“Most folks ain’t. But it’s been our business to find out. What he wants
is six rifles, all in prime shape, and a hundred rounds of ammunition for
each of ‘em, and two dozen hosses—because that’s about as high as he can
count—and one whole keg of thirty-six gallons of fire water.”
“That’s what he wanted for this ranch?”
“Aye,” said Champ Dixon, “and he thought that he was gettin’ a whale of a
big bargain, and that he could step in and run out the whites with the
guns that he had got from them whenever he had a mind. So he makes the
bargain, and old Milman, he counts out the goods, and he goes better than
his bargain, and he makes that set of rifles the finest that can be got,
and he chucks in an extra lot of ammunition, and he makes them hosses an
even thirty, and the best that money can get or ropes steal off the
range. And that fire water he makes, it’s the pure stuff, because he
don’t make it alcohol, prune juice, and water, but he makes it straight
alcohol, and on the night of that sale, and payment, they is three braves
that plumb die of joy, and a couple of squaws they change husbands, and
they is five sets of hair lifted inside of the next week or so, because
the whole bunch goes on the warpath. But anyway, the Injuns is happy, and
Milman is happy. He’s got a coupla million dollars’ worth of land, and
the Injuns, they has got one grand jag.
“After a while, they start in tryin’ to get paid over again.”
“Blackmail?” said Spot Gregory.
“You can call it that,” admitted the other. “Anyway, they try to collect
some more of that thousand proof fire water, but they find that in behind
old Milman there has sneaked another man, by name of Uncle Sam, and when
the Injuns climb onto their war ponies, old Uncle Sam, he hits out of the
dark, and pops ‘em in the nose and knocks ‘em off again. You foller
that?”
“I foller all of that,” said Spot Gregory, looking with the corner of his
eye at a tangle of fifty thirsting cows who were trying to rush to the
water, but in vain.
“Now along comes Billy Shay and me,” continued the narrator, “and we get
to lookin’ over the lay of the land, and we get to seein’ how much law
and order they is around here, and how good a claim a lot of these cattle
kings has
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