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

street one day. He’d just come up for

re-election. Every one knew that he’d get the job, but every one was

campaigning for him and making speeches just to show him how much they

appreciated his good work. Oliver was a solemn, sad-looking man, with

eyes that were always traveling around, quietly anxious to pick up even

the smallest crumb of admiration. I stopped him on the street and told

him who I was.

 

“It seemed to upset him a good deal. In fact, I went off down the street

and left him leaning on a fence post, trying the best he knew not to drop

on the sidewalk.

 

“The next time I met him, he asked me what I wanted. He was running a lot

of cows on a fine bit of range, and he could afford to pay high, but I

had to tell him that money was no object to me. He explained that he had

never wanted to strip us, that night so many years before, and that he’d

resisted the idea, and that the others had forced him on. But I reminded

him how he had told my mother that a girl with such a pretty face would

never miss such a thing as a few steers and a mule or so. She carried a

fortune with her, he had said.

 

“That stoppcd Oliver’s explanation.

 

“There was a robbery in town a day later, and he tried to frame me. He

made the arrest all right, but on the way to jail, with me in the middle

of his posse, I began to tell some stories about Chicago Oliver, and,

after I had told a few of them, the sheriff decided that he must have

made a mistake. He asked me a few questions and then he told his posse

men that he was all wrong, and would have to let me go.

 

“The day before the election, I met him in a barroom, and in a corner of

that place he sat down with me, and offered me everything that he owned

in the world. He said that his good name meant more to him than anything.

I told him that I understood his type preferred newspaper space to a

place in heaven hut that I still was merely making up my mind what I’d do

to him. The same evening, he gave up and headed south, and that county

lost its sheriff. He simply left a note behind, saying that he had had to

leave on account of his health. That was reasonably true, too, because

he’d lost thirty pounds since I came to town. That was the finish of

him!”

 

“Ah, that was one who didn’t die!” said the girl.

 

“Die? Oh, yes! The crooks found out that his nerve was gone. They began

to hunt him just as enthusiastically as he ever had hunted them in his

palmy days. A half-breed got to him in Vera Cruz. one evening and killed

him with a knife. I didn’t envy the half-breed though. I never have liked

to get my hands dirty.”

 

And he laughed, suddenly, through his teeth. The girl, shocked by the

sound, jumped up, but sat down again at once.

 

“Are you getting nervous?” asked the Kid.

 

“No,” she gasped. “I can stand it, I think. There’s only one more horror

to hear. I suppose!”

 

“You look.” said the Kid coldly, “as though you had been watching an

operation on a dear friend.”

 

She waved a hand and mutely invited him to continue.

 

“All right.” he said. “I’ll go ahead and show you what a Gila monster I

really am. The next and the last of the four was Mickie Munroe. He was

the only one of the lot who hadn’t reformed—on the surface, at least

Mickie had been the youngest of those five baby killers. He was still not

thirty when I came up to him. He was riding the range, for this outfit or

that, most of the year. But when he ran short of funds—faro was his pet

lay—Mickie did better things than punching cows. He still knew how to

rustle. And with a running iron, Mickie was one of the best artists that

I ever saw. The hide of a cow was to Mickie Munroe like the canvas of an

artist.

 

“This Mickie, I’m telling you about, was a jolly, happy-go-lucky chap. He

was always smiling. He was always the life of any party. Everybody liked

him pretty well, except a few who had an idea about his cattle rustling,

and a few others who had seen the ugly side of Mickie’s face. I spent a

good deal of time wondering what I could do to Mickie. Finally I hit on

the right thing.

 

“There were two things that Mickie was crazy about, when I caught up with

him. One was faro, and one was a Mexican girl who pretended to wait on

the table in the hotel. But really she was just there to cover up the bad

cooking and the high prices in that place. She was so infernally pretty

that men were willing to eat shoe leather, if they had the pleasure of

looking at her face while they chewed. She made the crook who owned that

hotel a pretty well-to-do-man, and she broke about every heart in the

country, until Mickie came over the edge of her horizon.

 

“Mickie was almost as good-looking as she was. He was as free and easy.

And he had a way with the girls. Well, to cut the story short, they fell

in love with one another, and Mickie forgot even faro, for a while. He

was working like mad to make a stake, and as soon as that stake was made,

he was going to marry the girl. Not that Carmelita bothered much about

money. She said that she was willing to live in a tent, so long as it was

with him. It was a strange thing to see ‘em together. She was as hard as

nails, and so was Mickie. They were both professional flirts, but they

were mad about each other. Not so many people went to the hotel dining

room, in those days, and the ones who did get inside had a melancholy

time of it, watching the calf looks that went back and forth between the

pair of ‘em.

 

“However, I judged that Carmelita was able to change her mind, and in

case she did, I thought that I’d try to put myself on the map, where she

could see me. So I broke into some flowing Mexican duds—you know—gold,

silver, even spangles, and lace at my wrists. I put on a new high

sombrero, and a new Spanish name that took two minutes just to sign. Then

I dropped into that town and let Carmelita know that I had arrived.

 

“She seemed to notice me right away, too. Girls are apt to like noisy

colors, if they haven’t been brought up well. Then some of the boys took

offense at me and thought that I was more of a sissy than a high Spanish

Don. They started to kick me out of town the day after I arrived. But the

kicking business was right in my line, and by the time that afternoon

ended, Carmelita was not only sure that I was beautiful, but that I was a

warrior and a hero.”

 

The Kid paused to roll a cigarette, and he lighted it with a reminiscent

air.

 

“I’m talking a good deal about myself,” he remarked.

 

“I’ve asked for it,” said the girl, suddenly husky. “And what happened

with Carmelita? Did you break her heart?”

 

“That kind of a heart doesn’t break,” said the Kid. “Not if you dropped

it out of a tenth-story window. You could break India rubber as easily as

you could break a heart like Carmelita’s. But she was a lovely picture.

And she danced in a way that made me dizzy. Now and then I had to catch

hold of myself and give myself a shake, as it were, to keep from getting

really off my balance about her.

 

“Well, Mickie Munroe was taking all of this very hard, I can tell you. In

the first place, he went to the girl, and she told him that he gave her a

headache when he shouted so loud. In the second place, he came to me.

Mickie was a fighting man, but I had had so much luck that afternoon when

they started to kick me out of the town that he didn’t quite make up his

mind to run me out on his own account. But he had a talk with me, and

tried to convince me that I had no serious intentions so far as

Carmelita was concerned. I told him that he was wrong. And then I told

him some more about myself, and a bit about his own affairs that

interested him a good deal.

 

“Mickie was up against a bad job.

 

“He wanted to cut my throat. He was sure that with me dead and gone,

Carmelita would not remember me very long. And he was right. Carmelita’s

memory for men was merely a thread, a spider thread, you might say. Any

wind was able to blow it away.

 

“When Mickie decided that he had to murder me, he went about it

methodically.

 

“Now that he couldn’t have Carmelita—at least, not right away—of course

he was madder for her than ever. I was three weeks in that town, waiting,

and I give you my word that in that short time poor Mickie turned gray

and grew thin, and appeared to be a tired, old man. I don’t think that he

ever slept more than ten minutes at a time all those weeks. He was like a

scared cat; a wild cat, mind you.

 

“He tried me with poison, a little home-made bomb with a time fuse, a

riot gun fired around the corner of a building, and a knife thrust in the

dark. But he had no luck, though with that bomb he laid out four other

men, and two of them nearly died.

 

“I let their friends into the secret as to who it was that had made the

bomb, and then things began to hum for poor Mickie.

 

“He could only sneak into he town at night. He was hunted like a mad dog.

Carmelita, when she saw him, laughed in his face and snapped her fingers,

because she’d entirely made up her mind that he was a waste of time.

 

“Well, the end of it was a dull affair, in the talking. But really I

think that Mickie suffered more than all the rest put together. There was

enough decency in him, d’you see, really to love a woman. I’d say that

his heart was broken, and that he died of that. One night I heard him

moaning and sobbing like a baby under her window, and I heard her open

that window and tell Mickie that if he didn’t get away, she’d call me to

go down and horsewhip him out of the town. And Mickie left. His spirit

was gone, you understand? His nerve had broken down—”

 

“Like the others!” said the girl, her voice rasping.

 

“Yes,” said the Kid thoughtfully, as he inhaled a deep breath of

cigarette smoke. “The doctor said that it was an overdose of whisky—he’d

emptied a whole bottle in a single evening—but I imagine that it was the

broken heart that killed Mickie.”

 

“And the girl? The Carmelita?” asked Georgia.

 

“She? Oh, I used to remember the names of her first two husbands, but

I’ve forgotten them, now.”