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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moment, for a final reef of rocks in the neck of the canyon had chopped
up the waters and taken their headway from them.
Now, all in a moment, the water slackened and spread out shallowly across
a bed four times as spacious as that into which it had been crowded by
the narrow walls of the ravine. Here, flat-faced, gently, it ran into the
open valley, heading toward the other dark throat into which it was soon
to fall and again begin to rage and roar like a lion.
And the Kid, soaked to the skin, tired, and aching from his labors,
looked out on that flow of water as a strong and busy man looks out upon
one placid moment between strenuous days of action and of danger—one
walk through the green country, one solemn moment of peace.
Yet there was no peace for him.
He had performed all of these labors merely to bring himself to the door
which opened upon the real peril. And of all the arduous tasks which he
had taken in hand in his days, none was comparable with the thing which
lay before him.
No strength or craft of hand, he knew, could ever make him equal to the
assembled strength which Dixon had gathered here.
If he were superior to each of them by the flickering, broken part of a
second in speed of draw; if he were a finger’s breadth closer to the
bull’s-eye when he fired, these advantages which meant life and victory
in a single combat were nothing compared with the overwhelming odds which
he would have to encounter.
No, there was now nothing left for him except subtlety and silent craft,
like an adventuring Indian in a camp of the enemy.
The Kid, taking stock of these truths, gravely advanced still farther,
until he was on the exact verge of the canyon mouth, where a little shore
of gravel went down to the waters.
From this point, he could see all that the hollow contained. He could see
the mist rising faintly against the stars above the uneasy cattle. He
could hear the desperate moaning voices of the thirst-starved creatures.
That sound made the roar of the river at once a small thing.
He looked down on the red beacon of the camp fire where his enemies were.
He looked away to either side, where the soft curves of the hills
undulated against the sky line; surely those hills never had seen a
stranger thing than he would attempt this night!
Then, narrowing his eyes, he crouched low, his head close to the water,
and scanned the shore on each side.
He was inside the lines, He could see, here and there, the flicker of the
barbed wire which made the outer defense. He could see also the
occasional form of a guard marching as a sentinel up and down the fences.
Now, as he watched, he saw the vague outline of a man come from the camp
fire and walk down to the water’s edge. There the fellow stood. It was
Dixon, perhaps rejoicing in the mischief which he was working, and
grinning as he listened to the noise of the tormented cattle.
His own mind flashed back to another picture—the sunwhitened desert, and
the two poor cows struggling and swaying under their unaccustomed yokes.
Then he stepped with his naked feet into the cold waters of the stream.
His revolver he kept above the surface of the stream, which was now not
more than three or four feet deep. But though it was shallow, and slid
along a fairly fiat surface, there was amazing force in it still, the
last effect of the long impetus which it had received in shooting down
the flume of the ravine.
He had to lean upstream at a sharp angle, with the current heaping
shoulder and even neck high as it bubbled and rushed and gurgled loudly.
His nerves were as good as those of any man, but before he was halfway
across the stream, walking in the dim, red path of the light from the
camp fire, he made certain that the men on the shore must have seen him.
If they had not seen, they must have heard. Surely they were watching
there, laughing in the dark of the covert, and grinning at the poor fool
who was walking into their hands.
Then he remembered that there were other noises abroad in the valley
besides the intimate voice of the river just under his ear. There was the
dull and distant roaring of the penned-up waters in the canyon above, and
a deeper, fainter call from the lower ravine; above all, the solemn music
of the lowing cattle flooded across the hollow.
No, he could not be heard, but surely he was seen!
The long, red arm of the firelight stretched toward him and caught him by
the throat.
He thought of lying flat on the surface of the stream. It would shoot him
like a log safe past the fire, past all the watchers, and at the mouth of
the lower canyon, he would struggle on shore and try to escape.
That thought of flight tempted him mightily. He fairly trembled on the
verge of giving way to it.
But he went on.
The strength of the resolve which drove him had a pull like that of
gravity and carried him step by step against his reason. And then the
ground was shoaling beneath him. The suction grew less in the shallows,
and finally he crawled out on his hands and knees.
There on the shore he lay flat.
He was shuddering with cold. He was helpless with it. Any yokel, any
cowardly boy might have mastered him then, he felt. The snow water had
sent its numbing chill through him to the bone. His breathing failed. The
tremors shook him more than earthquakes shake cities.
But he had to lie quietly while he took stock of the situation before
him.
He was not nearly as close to the camp fire as he had thought while
striding across the creek. He lay, in fact, some distance to the north of
it, and between him and the flames stood a row of three wagons. Their
wheels looked enormous and misshapen. They seemed to be broken and
flattened on the lower surface that met the ground. Their shadows went
wavering across the ground. Sometimes it was as though the wheels were
turning.
Around the fire three or four men were sitting.
Others, wrapped in their blankets, apparently were asleep, or trying to
sleep. And it seemed to the Kid that this was the ultimate proof of their
brutality. They could sleep while that sound of agony from the thirsty
cattle moaned and howled across the valley! That water which had tugged
at him which had swept by him in countless barrelfuls, in unnumerable
tones, which had frozen and shaken him, how sweet it would have been in
the dusty, dry gullets of those thousands and thousands of dying beasts.
All the sweetness of life would have been in it.
A blast of heat came to him out of memory as he thought again of the
unforgotten picture of his boyhood—the creaking wagon, and the two old
cows swaying and staggering before it, halting in their steps, but
leaning again on the yoke and slowly drifting the miles behind them. He
himself had had the thirst of fever in his body on that day. He had it
again now. A flash of burning heat, and of hatred for these men or devils
who were with Dixon.
When he looked more closely toward the fire, he saw that on the opposite
side, with the full red flush of the flame in his face, sat Dixon
himself, looking rather old and stoop-shouldered, as almost any man will,
who is sitting cross-legged on the ground.
Suppose that Dixon guessed, even faintly dreamed, that his enemy had
broken through the invincible outer lines and was lying there in easy
gunshot? Oh, so easy to draw a bead even from this distance, and by
pressing the trigger, beckon the brain and heart of the enterprise out of
existence!
He could not do it.
His philosophy, blunt and uncertain on many points of life, was in one
respect absolute and true. He could not strike from behind or from the
dark. There was no Indian in his nature to excuse such ways of fighting.
But he felt, at the sight of Dixon, a calm heat of anger rise that made
him forget the river water and its cold hands.
He got up to his knees and went slowly on, still pausing to turn his head
from time to time, until he reached a thick, solid wedge of shadow that
extended behind one of the wagons.
When he came to this, he rose, and as he rose, he saw suddenly that a man
was standing before him!
The breath was pressed from him by that sight. His mind spun about. It
was as though a spirit had risen through and out of the solid ground.
How long had the man been there, lost in the shadow, calmly watching the
progress of the spy, the secret enemy? Who was he that he dared to take
that advance so calmly?
These questions rushed through the mind of the Kid in a broken portion of
a second.
“Where’d you get the redeye that knocked you out, buddy?” said the man.
“You know where you been? You been crawlin’ around, this side of the
water, like a sick snake! Did Bolony Joe open up that keg of his for you,
or d’you tap it for yourself? Old Champ will sure raise a riot if he
finds out. You better not let him see you!”
“You’re a fool,” snarled the Kid in apparent anger. “I got a slip and
fall down there on the edge of the water, and I got soaked, and turned my
ankle. The ligaments are ‘bout pulled out of place. Get out of the way,
will you, and leave me be with your fool ideas!”
“Who are you?” demanded the other, taking a step closer. “Who are you to
be orderin’ me around? I’ll tel! you a thing or two, old son, if you was
ten Champ Dixons rolled into one!”
He came closer. The Kid was silent, but putting down his right foot on
the ground, he made a slow, hobbling step, and groaned aloud.
The other was not moved. He had come much closer.
“Yeah. You come out of the river, all right,” said he, “but I dunno that
I recognize you. What’s your moniker, son? I don’t seem to place your
head and shoulders, sort of, among the boys. What’s your name?”
“I’m the Kid,” said he.
This name made the man jump back a good yard in surprise and in fear.
Then he began to laugh. He laughed with deep enjoyment. “Yeah, you’re the
Kid, are you?”
“I’m the Kid,” said he truthfully.
“I didn’t know you, Larry,” said the other. “I wouldn’t never of guessed
you, except you begun kidding, like that. It’s a funny thing the way
night changes things. Your voice is changed too.”
“How could it help?” said the Kid, “and me doused in that ice water and
pneumonia likely, coming on!”
“Here,” said the other. “I’ll give you a hand back to your blankets.
Where’d you bed down? Over by the fire, or in one of the wagons?”
“Leave me be,” said the Kid.
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