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

Chapter 3 - Battle Royal

The same idea came suddenly home to all of the watchers, and there was a

stir and a bustle on the hotel veranda. Newcomers were running from

either side to get to this natural grand stand.

 

“What about it, Lew?” asked Milman.

 

“I only got one thing to say,” answered the sheriff dryly. “They both got

only one life to give to their country, and they might as well do the

giving today. Why, Milman, if you was to see a wasp and a hornet start a

fight, which would you want to see win?”

 

This seemed the attitude of nearly all the watchers. They looked on with

a smiling content.

 

“He don’t know that they’s half a dozen thugs in the house there with

Shay,” said one.

 

Georgia Milman grew excited

 

“Lew, that ought to be stopped!” she declared to the sheriff

 

“Because of the Kid’s blue eyes, honey?” asked the grim sheriff. “No,

ma’am. I ain’t gunna stop it. If they was to blow the tar out of each

other, it would simply save the State from lodgin’ and boardin’ ‘em a

good many years, or else usin’ up a good rope to break their necks with.”

 

Every one grew silent now. For the Kid had come to the porch of Shay’s

house, and was going swiftly up the steps. He went, not to the door, but

to a window at one side.

 

There he worked for an instant.

 

It seemed to Georgia Milman that the windows of that house were so many

eyes, peering out at the stranger with serpentlike content.

 

“He’s read the mind of that latch already,” said the sheriff, for at that

moment the Kid pushed the window up so softly that certainly no sound

floated across to the people who waited and watched from the hotel.

 

“What are they doin’ inside?” said some one.

 

“When you got a trap set, don’t you wait for the critter to get inside

before you spring it?” said another.

 

The Kid did not hesitate. The moment that the window was open he slipped

inside—and then closed the window behind him.

 

They could see the glimmer of his raised hand and ann.

 

“He’s latched it behind him!” gasped Georgia. “What possesses that

madman?”

 

“Why, honey,” said the sheriff, “he’s as happy right now as you would be

when you stepped into a dance hall and all the boys popped their eyes at

you, and the music started up and you figgered that you had all of the

other girls in that hall stopped four ways for Sunday. The Kid is just

spreadin’ his elbows at the board!”

 

There was not a sound from the house. The Kid had disappeared. The sun

poured strongly and steadily down upon the roofs and raised from them a

thin stream—the last moisture of the winter. Down the street rushed a

whirlwind, white with circling dust. It passed rapidly, but the crowd on

the veranda stirred and shifted uneasily and peered through the passing

veil, as though they dreaded lest it might shut them off from some sight

of importance.

 

But there was nothing to be seen. The house stood there, bald and open of

face, with its windows black or bright in shadow or sun. The silence

continued.

 

Said a voice: “Aw, it’s a joke. Nothin’ ain’t gunna happen!” And a

whisper answered: “Shut up, you fool!”

 

For every one felt like whispering. The stillness in a church was noise,

compared with this. Suspense drew every nerve taut. Georgia gripped the

arm of her father; her face was cold, and by that she knew how pale she

must be. Covertly she rubbed her cheeks and looked guiltily askance at

the sheriff. He had prophesied that she would be interested in the Kid.

She was ashamed even then of the depth of that interest.

 

She kept saying to herself over and over again: “He’s just a bad one.

He’s no good. Everybody knows that he’s no good!”

 

But the words had little meaning. They seemed to be brushed away by the

bright beauty of the Duck Hawk, as the lovely mare lifted her head and

listened to some far-off sound. She, it seemed, loved and trusted her

master. Therefore he could not be all bad.

 

Then the silence of the Shay house was broken, and broken in no uncertain

manner. Guns boomed hollowly and heavily within the walls, and a voice

was heard screaming in pain, or fear, or both.

 

“Thunderation!” said the sheriff.

 

He burst through the crowd and started across the street, but Milman and

two or three others grabbed him and pulled him back.

 

“You said the right thing before,” said Milman. “It doesn’t matter what

happens to the rats in that den. We’re not going to let you chuck a

useful life away, Lew, old fellow.”

 

“There’s murder being done in there!” shouted the sheriff. “You fools,

leave go of me, I’m gunna—”

 

“You’re gunna stay here and stand quiet,” said one of the men who held

him. “If they’s a murder in yonder, it’ll be only a murderer that’s

killed! And what’s the difference, as you was sayin’ before?”

 

In spite of himself, the sheriff could not budge. He had to submit to the

strong hands which restrained him.

 

The uproar in the house of Shay continued. Vaguely they could follow it.

It seemed to dip from the first floor to the cellar. Then it climbed

again.

 

Through the window by which the Kid had entered a man burst. Literally,

he dived through.

 

He struck the porch, rolled headlong across it, and picked himself up

from the ground. His face was a red mask, as he had been badly cut by the

glass through which he had burst. Apparently he was half-blinded, for he

stretched his hands out before him as he started running, and when he

carne to the side fence he collided heavily with it.

 

The blow knocked him down. He got up, climbed the fence, and ran on, out

of sight.

 

“He’s had enough,” said the sheriff grimly. “That’s Lefty Bud Gray. He’s

the one that killed Tucker and Langton on the Pecos. Governor Chalmers

pardoned him—the fool!”

 

A frightful crashing and dashing now came from the second floor of the

house as though furniture were being hurled about. Georgia Milman

suddenly regained her breath and her color.

 

“Mother!” she whispered. “It’s like seeing the rabbits come out when a

weasel has gone down into the warren!”

 

Like rabbits, indeed!

 

And they came in a frantic haste! For now a door crashed at the back of

the house, and an unseen man rushed out, screeching at the top of his

voice.

 

The yells diminished as he turned a corner, but still they sounded, far

off, floating like a wailing spirit in the air.

 

“I never seen nothin’ like it!” said a puncher. “What’s he done?

Dynamited that old shack?”

 

Again the door at the back of the house slammed, and this time a double

footfall could be heard rattling down the board walk at the rear.

 

The sounds of these fugitives diminished more quickly. “That’s four

gone,” said some one.

 

Silence came in the house of Shay.

 

And then, low at first, but more distinctly as their ears grew attuned to

it, they could hear the groaning of a badly hurt man.

 

Mrs. Milman sagged suddenly on her daughter’s arm, but Georgia caught her

close.

 

“Steady, mother! Steady, dear!” said she. “It’s not the Kid—I think!”

 

“That boy?” gasped Mrs. Milman. “Of course it’s not he, but what’s

happening to the poor creatures in that house? That tiger—and those

wretches who—”

 

At the very top of the house there was another wild outburst of gunshots,

a continuous peal of them. Then the distinct sound of a door being

slammed, and the dormer window from which the signal had flashed not long

before was cast open.

 

Out at that opening slid the long, gaunt person of Billy Shay himself,

and at this sight a whoop went up from the spectators across the street.

 

Billy was in a frightful haste. He acted as though he would die if he did

not reach the ground.

 

He slid down the sharply shelving roof. There, at the eaves, he hung by

his hands, swinging back and forth like a pendulum of a clock.

 

“Lemme go!” shouted the sheriff. “I gotta get there and—”

 

But still they held him helpless, for it seemed to all of those men a

most foolish thing to risk such a life as the sheriff’s in order to

enforce the law among the lawless.

 

Billy Shay, twisting his legs in, got hold on a ledge below the eaves and

climbed down like a great cat, reached the window beneath, and so down

until he slid the length of one of the porch pillars.

 

He did not wait to look about him.

 

He fled across his barren garden with such speed that his long hair

streamed out behind his head, and, reaching the fence at which the first

man had had his fall, Billy Shay took it in his stride like a good

hurdler, and twisted out of sight down the path beyond.

 

Once more silence fell upon the house of Shay, except for the dreadful

groaning of the man on the first floor, as it seemed. A groan for every

breath!

 

Then some one began to whistle, there in the attic of the place. The

whistling grew dim, but still was distinguishable. It passed from the

attic down to the second floor, and so down to the first.

 

There it stopped, and the groaning stopped, also.

 

“He’s killed that poor devil” some one said between clenched teeth.

 

Georgia felt herself growing faint.

 

But now the front door of the house was opened, and out upon the porch

stepped the Kid!

 

He stood there, teetering idly back and forth from heel to toe, while he

made and lighted a cigarette,