The Hair-Trigger Kid by Max Brand (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

of the old ranch house was distorted the roof sometimes

dissolving, so that it seemed quivering with blue flames.

 

This heat was hard enough even on a sound man like Trainor, but it turned

the wounded captive white with suffering and distress. When they reached

the house, Bud had to help him down from the saddle, and through the door

into the dining room, where he slumped down on a couch.

 

Mrs. Milman and Georgia came hurriedly to help.

 

“I’m all right,” said the white-faced Chip. “I dunno what’s the matter

with me, cracking like this. Gimme a drink of water, and I’ll be fine as

silk in a few minutes.”

 

Georgia took charge. She made him stretch out on the couch, and arranged

a pillow under his head. At her command, Bud Trainor pulled off the

boots. The shirt was opened at Chip’s throat, and his head raised so that

he could take a swallow of water.

 

His face, however, began to assume a more and more set expression of

suffering, and, avoiding their faces, he stared fixedly up to the

ceiling.

 

Mrs. Milman dressed the wound with care, putting on a pad of the softest

lint, and she declared, after manipulating the arm a little, that there

was no danger at all. No bones had been crushed by the bullet in its

passage. There had not been enough loss of blood to make serious trouble.

 

“Are you still in great pain?” asked Georgia, leaning above him.

 

He drew his eyes from the ceiling to her face, and flicked them hastily

back again.

 

“Poor fellow!” said Georgia. “Poor chap! Won’t you tell me what’s the

trouble—where the pain is the worst? We might try a cold pack, Mother.

He’s in a fever!”

 

“Aw, I’m all right!” declared Chip in a husky murmur.

 

Here Bud Trainor touched the arms of the two women and drew them to the

farther side of the room.

 

“Leave him be,” he suggested. “You dunno what’s the matter with him, but

I do.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“He’s one of Dixon’s crowd that’s been trying to throttle your ranch.”

 

“Well, I guessed that.”

 

“But to see you treatin’ him so like a white man, it’s sort of hard on

his nerves.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“It cuts him up a good deal. He don’t deserve to be treated no better

than a dog, and he knows it.”

 

The women exchanged glances.

 

“How was he hurt?” asked Mrs. Milman.

 

“And where is the Kid?” broke in Georgia. “Oh, good heavens, Mother. He’s

got to be warned away if he’s coming back here!”

 

“He’s not coming back in a hurry,” answered Bud Trainor. “He’s taking his

time and waiting for a signal to call him.”

 

They went into the next room.

 

“What’s happened?” they asked of Bud.

 

“Why, the Kid went out explorin’. He wanted to lead Dixon into makin’ an

attack on us, and then he thought that the law could be pretty useful to

you all. You could put an injunction on ‘em—kick ‘em off the land by

process of law, or something like that. Anyway, you could switch the law

on ‘em and get it around to our side of the fence.”

 

“And so? You mean that he went out there, and dared the lot of them?”

demanded Georgia.

 

“Aye, that’s what he sure enough done.”

 

“But that’s—”

 

“Aye, that’s crazy. But he done it. They tried to sneak some men

out on both sides of the fence and slip around us. Oh, they wanted

the Kid’s scalp pretty bad, all right. We come back flying. The Hawk, she

could wing away from ‘em any time, but my gelding didn’t have enough foot

for that sort of work. They gained on us—”

 

“And the Kid wouldn’t leave you?” cried Georgia, with a shining face.

 

Her mother looked sharply across at her, but said nothing.

 

“The Kid.” said Bud Trainor, speaking slowly, and rather softly to keep

the emotion out of his voice, “is the kind that’s always better than

anybody else, in a pinch. No, he wouldn’t leave me, even when I told him

to go.”

 

“That’s grand!” said Georgia.

 

There were tears of pleasure and excitement in her eyes. And again her

mother saw them.

 

“It was grand, all right. And dangerous, too. This here Chip Graham. he

was on that hoss of his, the Silver King. And the King stepped out pretty

fast. He got ahead of us. He aimed to turn us or to hold us till the rest

of the crowd came up. There was seven of them, all told. But then the Kid

went out and dropped Graham, and got the King for me to ride. And when

the rest of ‘em came too close, he just up with his rifle and shot the

hat off one of their heads!”

 

He laughed with a fierce pleasure.

 

“He didn’t kill that man?” gasped Mrs. Milman.

 

“Him? Of course not,” said Bud Trainor with an almost religious and

devoted belief. “He could snuff a candle at about a thousand yards; I

guess. But when we came back near to the house, he wouldn’t come in with

us. He thought there might be trouble waiting for him here.”

 

“He’s right! He’s right,” said Mrs. Milman. “Nothing but trouble for him

here. My husband and Chet Wagner are in the front room with the sheriff

and a deputy, right now. They’ve come out for the Kid; or Mr.

Beckwith-Hollis, as he calls himself.”

 

“Stuff!” said Georgia. “He was only joking.”

 

Mrs. Milman shrugged her shoulders.

 

“I wouldn’t try to read the mind of that young man,” said her mother.

“But what are we to do? The sheriff is here with a warrant for the arrest

of the Kid, alias I don’t know how many other names and nicknames, for

breaking the peace, forcibly entering a house, attempted murder, and a

good many other things. All because he drove Billy Shay—the

scoundrell—into the street!”

 

“Is that Sheriff Lew Walters? What kind of a man is he, then?” demanded

Bud Trainor angrily.

 

“He doesn’t like the business, but as he points out, he’s a servant of

the law,” said Mrs. Milman.

 

She leaned a hand suddenly against the wall and supported herself there.

 

“It looks like a lost cause,” said she. “The neighbors won’t help us. Not

till the law is clearly on our side. Georgia brought back poor Chet

Wagner with her, and that’s the only man who would come. The rest—oh,

they’re playing safe!”

 

“We can go in and try the sheriff,” said Bud Trainor. “That was the idea

of the Kid. He’s safe enough out there. They’ll never catch the Duck Hawk

and the Kid, together. The Kid’s idea was that if we could bring in one

of ‘em, it would be a proof that Dixon had started a fight on your

ground. And that would be pretty hard for him and Shay to get out of.

Let’s go tell the sheriff what’s happened!”

 

Mrs. Milman shook her head.

 

“We’ll try, however,” she said grimly.

 

And, as they started for the next room, Georgia murmured to Bud Trainor.

“I wish I’d been there to see it!”

 

“Aye,” sad Trainor. “It’s all right to look back on. But it wasn’t so

slick going through it. I ain’t the same sort of steel that the Kid is

made of. I was scared sick!”

 

She merely laughed.

 

“I know,” said she. “It’s a point of pride with you fellows to understate

things. We’ll see what the sheriff says.”

 

In the front room, accordingly, they found Lew Walters and his deputy,

who was a timid-looking young man, with a frightened eye and an apparent

desire to squeeze himself through the wall and away from the presence of

the two women. But they could guess that the sheriff would not have

selected this youngster for dangerous business like this without a good

cause. His big wrists and long fingers were suggestive of more strength

than he showed otherwise.

 

Lew Walters met Trainor with a nod and a smile.

 

“How’s your ma and pa?” he asked. “And how’s yourself?”

 

“Everybody fair to middling,” admitted Bud. “I’m out here tryin’ to give

a hand agin’ the Dixon crew, sheriff. Now, how come that the law is agin’

an honest man like Milman, and behind a crook like Dixon?”

 

The sheriff shrugged both shoulders and made a weary gesture with his

hands.

 

“The law,” said he, “is somethin’ that I never been able to understand at

all. No, sir, I can’t foller the workin’s of the law, young feller. All

that I can do is to ride when the law tells me to ride, and to arrest

what the law tells me to arrest. Heaven knows that I ain’t willin’ to

side agin’ my old friend Milman, but the law tells me to arrest the Kid,

and that’s why I’m here. Where is he, Bud?”