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

the shoal waters of Hurry Creek.

 

As for the wood, it could not be saved, for the oil, running out quickly

on all sides of the pile, made a no-man’s land that weltered with fire

and on which men dared not step.

 

The Kid, wakening, saw these things, and one besides—this was the face

of Billy Shay, white as the belly of a fish, with the little eyes

glittering and fixed. They were not fixed upon the destruction around,

but straight on the Kid himself.

 

It was a nightmare effect from which the Kid looked hastily away. He saw

that the rest of the crowd stood around in attitudes of helpless

surrender. There was only one figure in motion, and that was the lean

form of Bolony Joe, striding up and down near the spot where the cook

tent had stood, once so filled with camp necessitites and camp luxuries;

now a charred and steaming mass of wreckage.

 

Certainly the blow had fallen with full weight, and the end had come

suddenly to the hopes of Shay and Dixon and their crew.

 

Shay came suddenly to the Kid and stood before him. “You’ve won, Kid, and

I’ve lost,” said he, “and I’ve won, and you’ve lost!”

 

The Kid said nothing. There was simply nothing to say. Dixon came up

also, smiling. But there was something tigerish behind that smile of his.

 

“How did you manage to do it, Kid?” he asked.

 

“Oh, I just came down the canyon,” said the Kid. “That’s how I got inside

the lines. If that’s what you wonder about.”

 

“You came down the canyon?” exclaimed Canuck Joe. “Nobody could come down

that there canyon. The water’d kill a whole tribe of tigers in no time,

inside the mouth of the canyon, and there ain’t any way along the walls

of it.”

 

“There is a way, though,” said the Kid. “I found it. Mostly climbing with

my hands.”

 

Canuck sharply turned his hack.

 

“He climbed along that wall with his hands!” said he.

 

And then he made a hopeless gesture of surrender with shoulders and arms.

 

“Then what did you do?” asked Dixon.

 

“I had a little chat with Jip. He found me crawling along from the edge

of the water and when I stood up, he mistook me for Larry.”

 

Jip himself, his face suffused, his eyes brilliant, thrust out an

accusing arm.

 

“It was you! It was the Kid!” he shouted. “Well, cuss me white and

black!”

 

“Then you fixed things?” said Shay.

 

“Then I fixed the things in the cook tent. I was lying down in there

taking a little rest when you suddenly peeked in, Billy.”

 

The face of Shay contorted in the uttermost hatred. But he smoothed out

his expression almost at once.

 

“You’re a bright boy, Kid,” said he. “You shine pretty nigh enough to

light your own way through the dark.”

 

“Thanks,” said the Kid.

 

After this, a little silence fell.

 

The men had gathered around the captive, and they stared at him as at an

inhabitant of another world. They measured him with their eyes, and they

shook their heads at one another.

 

The Kid, for his part, looked away from them and across the waters of

Hurry Creek. They were brightly lighted by the leaping flames from the

woodpile, and the same illumination glittered on the eyes of the cattle

massed beyond the fences. Stil! at those fences, guards went up and down.

Beyond the masses of the cows, the Kid saw, or thought he could see, dim

shapes wandering along the hills. It might not be his imagination, but

actually the forms of the men of the Milman ranch.

 

Shay raised a hand, suddenly.

 

“Now, boys,” said he, “we’re gonna have some voting on this here. We’re

gonna find out what we’ll do.”

 

“Why,” said another, “I suppose that we’ll stay right on here and have

cold water for breakfast and cold water for lunch and cold water for

supper. We can smoke cold water, too. Yeah, that looks like the right

thing for us to do.”

 

This was Three-finger Murphy, a sour and evil-looking man. Shay turned on

him in a quiet fury.

 

“You talk like a fool!” said he. “Are there any men here in this bunch?”

 

“Pick your words a little finer when you wanta talk to me,” said Murphy.

“I ain’t here to soak up any of your back talk, old son!”

 

“Soak up some of mine, then, will you?” asked Dixon. “Or d’you think that

your ugly mug is popular around here with me?”

 

“Gonna gang me, are you?” asked Murphy, almost good-naturedly. “Well,

boys, I’ll take you, one at a time.”

 

“You are a fool, Three-finger,” said another voice. “Shut up and let’s

talk sense. Of course, we ain’t gonna stay on here.”

 

“If we move, we move at a walk,” said Jip. “What I wanta know is, do I

get salvage for that gray gelding that the Kid rode to death, out there?”

 

“I paid eight hundred bucks for that bay mare of mine,” broke in Peg

Garret. “If that means something to you, tell me when I get paid off for

that?”

 

“If some of you,” said Billy Shay, “had had your eyes open and the wool

out of your ears, you’d’ve seen the Kid walkin’ up into the camp,

dripping water as he come. Jip did see him, and played the blockhead. I

never told any of you that I’d guarantee the hosses that you was riding.”

 

The Kid bowed his head and smiled a little.

 

The trouble which had started in that camp was likely, it appeared to

burn even longer than the pile of wood.

 

“I’m talkin’ about the Kid, first,” said Shay. “What’re we to do with

him?”

 

“Turn him loose,” said the voice of young Dolly Smith suddenly. “Turn the

Kid loose.”

 

All heads turned suddenly toward the speaker, and Dolly was seen to he

highly excited, and flushed of face.

 

“I’ll tell you what,” said Dolly, “there ain’t anybody that’s done what

he’s done tonight. He’s all off by himself. The rest ain’t nowheres. I

say, turn the Kid loose. He’s raised hell with us, but he’d’ve got clean

away, if he hadn’t had a touch of bad luck. I seen the cow that started

up and tripped the gray gelding for him. Aside from that, we’d all be out

of luck.”

 

“Is there anybody,” said Shay, “who feels about it the way that Dolly

Smith does?”

 

The voice of Three-finger Murphy unexpectedly said: “I feel that way

about it. The Kid ain’t no friend of mine, as you all of you know, if you

know anything. But a gent with the nerve and the brains that he’s got,

had oughta have a chance to try his luck again. I say, turn the Kid

loose.”

 

The Kid, frankly astonished, turned a more or less bewildered eye upon

the last speaker.

 

“Three-finger,” said he, “you’re all right, Right here I take back what I

said about you and Buck Stacey.”

 

“It was Buck that put the light out,” explained Three-finger. “I believe

you,” said the Kid.

 

And Three-finger smiled with profound pleasure.

 

“All right,” went on Shay, very calm, now. “There’s two that vote for

turning the Kid loose. What do the rest of you say?” This question met

with a deadly silence.

 

Suddenly Peg Garret exclaimed: “You boys think that you know something

about the Kid. Well, I know something, too, and what I know is that he’s

one that never forgets. He’s agin’ us now, and he’ll always be agin’ us.

They’s gonna be a time, if he gets loose, when he’ll pick up some of us

by ones and twos, and them that he picks up ain’t gonna get home none too

quick, and they ain’t gonna feel none too good on the way.”

 

“Peg is agin’ turnin’ him loose,” said Shay. “Who else?”

 

A big man, gray before his time, with a battered, evil face, exclaimed in

his deep voice: “I’m agin’ turnin’ of him loose.”

 

“Hollis, he says that he’s agin’ it, too,” said Shay, nodding. “Who else?

You see that I’m givin’ you your fair chance, Kid?”

 

“Yeah, I knew beforehand just what sort of a chance I would have,” said

the Kid.

 

His voice was not bitter, and his manner was simply that of a man who is

mildly interested, mildly curious in the procedure that went on all

around him.

 

Then three or four more said hastily that they thought it was folly to

turn the Kid loose. He had proved himself their enemy. Gratuitously, he

had taken the part of the rancher against them, though they were really

his kind. He had gone out of his way to injure them, and he had taken a

desperate chance, this evening, to ruin all their work. He had succeeded,

but he ought to pay a penalty.

 

That appeared to be the consensus of opinion.

 

“All right,” said Shay, with a wicked glint of pleasure in his eye, as he

glanced toward the Kid. “And what’ll we do with him now that we have

him?”

 

“Aw,” said Peg Garret, “you better put him in a glass case and show him

around the towns, at a quarter a look. People’ll be glad to see a killer

like him, and they’ll pay dead easy for the chance.”

 

Young Jip, his lips sneering and his eyes hard, broke in: “He busted the

neck of my gelding. I’d like to see his own neck busted. He’s asked for

trouble. He’s got trouble, And if I was you, I’d certainly hang him!”

 

Dolly Smith broke out: “I won’t stand for it. He’s a better man than you

ever were, Jip, you curl I’d—”

 

“Why, dang you—” began Jip, reaching for a gun.

 

The hand of Dixon, however, already was filled with a weapon.

 

“The first sign I see of a gun play,” said he, “I’m gonna turn loose on

both of the fools that start anything You hear me, boys? Now, let’s have

some sense talked, here. Jip says to hang him. Who else votes the same

way?”

 

“I do,” said Garret.

 

“And me!” said Dixon.

 

“And me,” said Shay.

 

Then, in a chorus, came in several of the others.

 

“Otherwise,” said Shay, “we’ll never have him off our trails. Kid, I’d

almost like to ask you if you didn’t swear that you’d get me, one day?”

 

“I swore it,” said the Kid, “and I sent you word that I was coming.”

 

“You’d likely be breaking your oath, now?” demanded Shay, with his

white-faced sneer of malice.

 

“I never broke my word in my life,” said the Kid, without emotion. “If I

live though this, I’m going to get you, Shay, as surely as you got my old

partner!”

 

“You see what he is!” exclaimed Shay. “Now, boys, what’s the answer?”

 

“Shoot him,” said Dixon. “He’s been a brave man. He deserves something

better than hanging.”

 

“I’d drown him,” said Shay, with horrible malice. “I’d drown him like a

blind puppy, if I had my way, but I’ll do what the crowd says. Shooting

it is. Some of you stand him up.”

 

“Oh, I can stand, all right,” said the Kid, rising to his feet.

 

“Stand back, all of you,” said Shay. “I ain’t gonna ask any of you to

take this job and dirty your hands by the shootin’ of a helpless man. But

since it’s gotta be done, I’ll manage to do