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

Chapter 39 - Davey Rides

When Milman left his ranch house on the dead gallop, the horse straining

and struggling forward under the spur, there was very little care in his

heart except to finish the miserable business of life at once. But when

he came in the darkness to the rim of the hills which overlooked Hurry

Creek, he had a sudden change of heart.

 

Here was his father’s work and his own, represented by those milling

thousands of cattle. The stinging dust which rose unseen from the hollow

to his nostrils was to him as bitter as poison, and as he stared at this

dim picture beneath him, and the red streak of the camp fire across the

face of the river, there was another fierce desire in him, coming before

that of death.

 

He would die, and gladly, but first he must do his best to solve this

situation; cut this Gordian knot.

 

One of the punchers who drifted up and down the hills, on guard,

challenged him, and instantly recognized the voice of the rancher.

 

He had news that was news indeed!

 

Bud Trainor had seen him and reported that the Kid, single-handed, had

descended by a rope into the upper ravine of Hurry Creek, in the hope of

reaching the camp of the enemy.

 

The mind of Milman whirled in infinite confusion.

 

This youth whom he dreaded, this same youngster who in a day had ruined

Milman in the eyes of his family, this was the same who now ventured his

neck most desperately to defeat the Shay-Dixon crew and rescue the

water-starved cattle in the hollow!

 

Milman strove to fit the two halves of this idea together, but it was a

puzzle beyond his ability.

 

“He went down Hurry Canyon?” said Milman. “But I tell you, there’s no way

for a man to get down Hurry Canyon!”

 

“That’s what I said. That’s what Bud Trainor thinks, too, but he won’t

let himself be honest. He says that the Kid has got to live. It ain’t

possible for him to die.”

 

The puncher chuckled.

 

“From some of the things that I’ve heard about him,” said he, “I reckon

that there’s a little truth in that!”

 

“The walls are as slick as the walls of a house!” exclaimed the rancher.

“And they’re wet with the spray of the creek. How could anybody be crazy

enough to tackle such a job?”

 

“I dunno,” said the other. “It ain’t my style of a job, I know. I can

ride any rope and brand. I can’t be a fly and walk on a wall, though, or

a ceiling. But the Kid ain’t like the rest of us, chief.”

 

“No,” said the rancher solemnly. “He’s not like the rest of us. He’s

different flesh, and has a different brain and soul, I think, as well.

What else did Trainor say?”

 

“Not much. Trainor is half out of his wits. He’s pretty fond of the Kid,

I reckon.”

 

“Will you tell me, if you can, how any man could be fond of a striped

tiger of a man like that boy, the Kid?” asked Milman, the words breaking

from him.

 

“Why, I dunno,” answered the puncher. “But I’ve heard that the Kid’s word

is better than another man’s bond; that he never took an advantage; and

that he sticks by a bunky to the end of time. They’s a lot of men inside

the law that you couldn’t say that much about!”

 

“True!” exclaimed Milman. “There are a lot of men inside the law who

can’t claim such qualities. What else did Trainor say? Did the Kid have a

plan of any sort?”

 

“He had a plan,” said the other, “but he wouldn’t tell Bud. I think he

told Bud that if he got to work in the Dixon camp, there’d be a signal

that we all could see. Trainor has gone around to the other side of the

hollow, so’s to be near to the scene if it comes to a fight.”

 

“I’m going to the same place,” answered Milman, and straightway cantered

off toward the south, to find the main road that bridged the lower canyon

of Hurry Creek.

 

He rode steadily, and he rode hard, the good horse stretching out

gallantly beneath the weight of its master. And so the road rang under

the iron hoofs, the bridge thundered underneath, and the rancher, over

the rail, got one glimpse of the dark and roaring hollow of the canyon.

 

He thought of a man working with hand and foot through the spray and the

darkness of such an inferno. And for what? For the cattle owned by

another man!

 

Bewilderment again surged in a wave over the brain of Mil-man.

 

At the first gate, he turned in from the road, and headed across the

bills until he came out on the verge of them, after making the long

detour. From that verge, as he drew the horse down to a milder gait, he

could see the camp fire in the hollow, and the dust from the moving

cattle blew again to his nostrils.

 

A moment later, he saw a swift shadow speed across the lowland, and a

crackling of the rifle shots welled up to him, sounding wonderfully faint

and far away, almost like bells of an unseen village.

 

He hurried on again, his heart in his throat. It seemed to him that the

final fight might be about to commence, and he doubted the end of it. He

had good men—men who could shoot straight enough at a deer, but men are

not deer, and the best of game hunters may make the worst of soldiers.

 

Sweeping down to the lower plain, he found, beyond the outskirts of the

massed cattle, several of his riders, and Bud Trainor among them.

 

They reported that a rider had come in from the outside and slipping

through a gap among the cattle, had safely reached the lines of the Dixon

camp, in spite of their shooting. Who the stranger was, they could not

guess, unless he were simply a hired gunman sent up from Dry Creek by

Shay, perhaps bearing a message of some importance to the camp to

maintain the spirit of the defenders of those two lines of barbed-wire

fences that controlled the priceless waters of Hurry Creek.

 

Bud Trainor, in the midst of this explanation, began to argue with

another rider, a very small figure of a man, as it seemed to Milman, and

mounted on a mere pony of a mustang.

 

“You get the dickens out of here and go home!” commanded Bud. “Whatcha

doin’ away up here, anyway? Get out of here and go back, as fast as you

kin!”

 

“You can’t chase me out of here,” said the piping voice of a child. “You

ain’t got a chance to chase me out of here! Not all the way back home. I

heard that the Kid was up here and that’s why I come, because him and me

is partners!”

 

“Who is it?” asked Milman.

 

“It’s a fool kid cousin of mine,” declared Bud Trainor. “This kid Davey

is always up to his neck in trouble. And here he is ag’in. He couldn’t

fill one leg of a pair of trousers, but he thinks that he’s a man. I

never see such a young fool!”

 

Milman, in spite of his manifold troubles, began to laugh a little.

 

“You’d better cut back to the road, young fellow,” said he, “and then

follow it up to my ranch house. You’ll be welcome there, and you can turn

into a good bed. My wife and daughter wil! take care of you. But tell me

one thing. What makes you a partner of the Kid?”

 

He asked with the keenest curiosity. Once before, on this night, he had

heard a testimonial to the many qualities of the Kid. Here was a boy,

finally, to add his word.

 

“Why, I dunno,” said Davey, after an instant of thought, “but him and me,

we just sort of hit it off, together!”

 

The punchers laughed uproariously.

 

“All right,” said Davey fiercely, “you laugh, but I’d be in at the death

to help the Kid when a whole lot of you would be scratchin’ your noses

and holdin’ back!”

 

They laughed again, but not quite so loudly.

 

“Now, you get out of here. They’s likely to be trouble, and bad trouble!”

said Bud Trainor.

 

But, before he could speak another word, a thing happened which took the

attention of every one quite away from Davey Trainor and his odd affairs.

 

For, from the center of the heaped shadows of the Dixon camp, a column of

bluish flame shot up, and then the whole mass of the big woodpile put up

an arm of towering fire that clutched at the very sky.

 

“What in the name of thunder is happenin’ there?” asked one puncher.

 

“It’s an explosion,” guessed Milman. “Some of their gunpowder has caught

fire—”

 

“It’s an explosion, all right!” shouted Bud Trainor. “And it’s the Kid

that’s exploded it. It’s his signal. It means that he’s at work! Heaven

bless him, there ain’t another man like him in the world. He’s gone and

done it ag’in! He’s gone and done it, d’you hear? He’s in there raisin’

the devil with the whole crowd of them!”

 

Here there arose a prolonged rattling gunfire from within the camp, or

from that direction, the sounds coming back from the hill faces like

hollow hands clapping violently together. An odd time and an odd scene

for applause!

 

Then, through the mass of the cattle, which divided a little to this side

and that before the charge, streamed thirty or forty swiftly galloping

horses, with no visible riders on their backs. Many of these took a noble

header over some cow which could not get from the path, but, rising

again, the band streamed on up the bottom of the hollow, cleaving a way

as they went, like a flying wedge.

 

“It’s the Kid! It’s the Kid!” screamed little Davey Trainor.

 

All the punchers in the Milman service on that side of the hollow were

riding, now, toward the point at which the frightened horses were issuing

from among the cattle masses.

 

But Davey was there the first of all, and bending low, so that he could

examine the silhouettes of the animals one by one, more closely, he

strained his eyes to make out the form of a rider on one of them.

 

There was nothing to be seen. There was no rider, however flattened on

the back or, Indian fashion, along the side of one of those racing

horses, that could have escaped the glance of the sharp-eyed boy.

 

In the meantime, the inferno of flame continued to whirl upwards into the

air from the camp of Dixon, throwing out long arms which vanished almost

as quickly as they appeared.

 

“It’s the Kid’s work,” said Milman suddenly. “No other man could have

done so much, and the fire and the escape of the horses cannot both be

accidents!”

 

“But where’s the Kid now?” demanded Bud, excited. “He ought to’ve been on

the back of one of those horses. And where’s Davey? Davey, you little

fool, where are you?”

 

But Davey was gone!

 

Chapter 40 - For the Sake of Cows

 

He had gone off, perhaps, to the top of one of