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

Chapter 4 - Davey Rides

Out of the town, as he had come into it, the Kid rode most leisurely. No

one halted him; and only Tommy Malone asked him to have a drink.

 

He refused the drink, with apologies for the demands upon his time which

made it impossible for him to linger, no matter how he wished to. But

when he got farther down the street, a little freckle-faced boy of nine

ran out into the street and shouted at him in a voice as thin and

squeaking as the sound of a finger nail on a pane of glass. It was little

Dave Trainor, “Chuck” Trainor’s boy. Some of the neighboring women heard

and saw what followed.

 

They watched, breathless. It was known that Trainor had made a lot of

money in the mines recently, and it was more than possible that the

terrible wild man, the Kid, might kidnap this child and hold him for

ransom.

 

Old Betty Worth, who had fought Indians in her day, went so far as to get

the old-fashioned Kentucky rifle, loaded with a bullet which contained an

ounce of lead. This she rested on the corner of a window sill, and

looking out through the branches of the honeysuckle vine, drew her bead

and looked at the very heart of the Kid. At the first move he made, Betty

was determined to shoot him dead. And she probably could have done it,

for, even without a rest, she was known to have shot a squirrel out of a

treetop only the year before.

 

The scene between the Kid and freckled young Dave Trainor progressed

somewhat as follows:

 

“Hey!” yelled Davey.

 

“Hey!” yelled the Kid in return.

 

“Hello!” shouted Davey, waving.

 

“Hello!” shouted the Kid.

 

“Hey, wait a minute, will you?” said Davey.

 

“Sure I will,” said the Kid.

 

He turned in the saddle. The mare, unguided, as it seemed, walked

straight up to Davey and paused before him.

 

“Say, how did you make her do that?” asked Davey. “Why, she reads my

mind, most of the time,” said the Kid. “Golly!” said Davey; then added

briskly: “Not that I believe you a dog-gone bit!”

 

“That’s a mighty big word that you’re saying,” said the Kid. “Yeah?” said

dangerous Davey. “It’s what I say, though. Are you the Kid?”

 

“That’s what my friends call me,” said the Kid.

 

“What’s your real name?” demanded Davey.

 

How many a sheriff, deputy, editor, and hungry reporter in that wide and

fair land would have been glad of an answer to that question.

 

“My real name depends on where I am,” said the Kid. “You take one single,

solitary name, it’s hardly enough to spread over a lot of country the way

that I live and travel.”

 

“Why ain’t it?” asked Davey, doubtful, but willing to be convinced.

 

“Well, south of the river the Mexicans like to hear a man called by a

Spanish-sounding name.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Well, like Pedro Gonzales, say.”

 

“Golly,” said Davey, “anybody what called you a greaser name like that,

you’d about eat them, I reckon!”

 

“Oh, no,” said the Kid. “I hate trouble. That’s why I change my name so

much.”

 

“Say why ag’in?”

 

“Why, to be a Spaniard with the Spanish, and a Mexican with the Mexicans.

They used to call me Louis, up in Canada, when I was among the French

Canadians.”

 

“Didn’t you punch them in the nose?” asked Davey candidly. “Of course

not. I was glad to have them take me in like that.”

 

“What else are you called?” asked Davey.

 

“Oh, I’ve been called Johnson in Minnesota, and Taliaferro in Virginia,

and a lot of other things. These States in our country are so big, old

son, that a fellow has to have a lot of different names. What are you

called, son?”

 

“Well, I’m like you,” said Davey. “It depends on where I am. Over to the

south side of town they just call me Red. I licked two of ‘em last week

for callin’ me that, but still they call me Red. I don’t care. I can

stand it, I guess.”

 

“I guess you can,” said the Kid. “What’s a name or two, anyway?”

 

“That’s just the way that I look at it,” said Davey. “I don’t mind, and I

get a chance to punch their heads once in a while. Down on the creek, all

of the Banks boys—they got a great big place there, with the whangin’est

swing that you ever see—they call me Freckles. When I ain’t got a spot

on my face compared to Turkey-egg Banks.”

 

“Freckles is a good outstanding name,” said the Kid.

 

“D’you think so? Well, they call me that, anyway, and they’re all too big

for me to lick.”

 

“Are they? Maybe you’ll grow to that, though.”

 

“Yeah, maybe I will, but a Banks, he takes a pile of licking.”

 

“Any other names?”

 

“Well, around here, they call me Slippy, account of me being hard to

catch at tag. They’s a lot that can run faster, but I get through their

fingers, somehow.”

 

“Slippy is a good name, too. I never heard a better flock of names than

you carry, partner. Any more?”

 

“They call me Davey, during the school term, a lot of ‘em.”

 

“Yeah. That’s a good name, too. Any others?”

 

“Pa calls me Snoops—I dunno why. There don’t seem to be much meaning to

it. Ma calls me David when she’s feelin’ good, and David Trainor when I

ain’t brought in the wood, or wore my rubbers on rainy days, or things

like that.”

 

“Well, Davey Trainor,” said the Kid, “I’m mighty glad to meet you, sir.”

 

“The same goes by me,” said Davey.

 

He reached up and shook hands.

 

“Is it straight talk,” said Davey, “that you can do all of them things?”

 

“What things?” asked the Kid.

 

“I mean, that you can shoot a sparrow right out of the air? There’s one

now up there on that telephone wire! And I suppose that you got a gun

with you?”

 

The Kid looked at the sparrow, shook his head, and then snatched out the

revolver. As it exploded, the sparrow flirted off the wire and dipped

into the air, leaving a few little, translucent feathers which fluttered

slowly down to the earth—slowly, since they were not much heavier than

the air through which they fell.

 

The Kid put up the heavy Colt revolver with a single flashing movement.

 

“You see, that’s one thing that I can’t do,” said he.

 

“Golly, but you knocked feathers out of it, and you didn’t take no sight

nor nothin’.”

 

“That was only a lucky shot,” said the Kid. “Don’t you pay any attention

to people who talk about shooting sparrows at any sort of a good

distance, Davey.”

 

“What happened to the gun?”

 

“Why it went back home, where it lives.”

 

Davey laughed.

 

“You’re mighty slick, all right,” said he. “Can the mare do everything,

too?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Come when she’s called?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Walk on her hind legs?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Open a barn door?”

 

“Yes, if it’s only to lift the latch and give a pull.”

 

“Lie down when you tell her to?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Sit down, too?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Kneel for you to get on?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Golly,” said the boy, “that’s an awful lot. I can’t hardly think of no

more things for a hoss to do. What else can she do?”

 

“Oh, she can do a lot of things besides. She has brains, son. She thinks

for herself right along, and she does a lot of thinking for me, too.”

 

“Like what, Kid?”

 

“Why, like telling me if we’re crossing a bad bridge.”

 

“Can she tell that?”

 

“Yes, she can smell that. She’s got a nose like a wolf. And I can sleep

out, with her for company as safely as though I had the sense of a wolf

myself. She reads everything that crosses her wind.”

 

“My golly, my golly,” said Davey Trainor, almost bitterly, “it must make

you pretty tired to have to spend time with most folks, whan you got a

hoss like that to be with.”

 

“Yes,” said the Kid soberly, “most people make me pretty tired, unless

they have plenty of names.”

 

“You wouldn’t want to do something for me?”

 

“Why not? You’ve got about as many names as I have.”

 

“Well, would you let me see her do something?”

 

“Of course I will. You tell me what.”

 

“Well, make her stand up on her hind legs.”

 

Davey could not hear or see a command or a sign, but the mare presently

heaved up, her forehoofs flipping close to Davey’s face.

 

Down rocked the mare again.

 

“Golly!” said Davey. “What else can she do? She’s wonderful, ain’t she?

Could I touch her?”

 

“I’ll ask her,” said the Kid with gravity.

 

He leaned and murmured, or appeared to murmur, in the ear of the Duck

Hawk, at which she reached out with a sudden snaky movement and plucked

Davey by the ragged forelock, sun-faded to the color of burned grass.

 

“Hold on!” said the rider, keeping his eye fast on the boy’s face. And

Davey had not altered a trifle in color. He merely set his teeth and then

grinned.

 

“Would you like to ride her?” asked the Kid suddenly.

 

“Why? But nobody but you has ever been on her back!” cried out Davey.

 

“You’re there now,” said the Kid.

 

He whispered something in the ear of the mare and rubbed her muzzle. And

then young Davey rode the terrible fleet mare of the Kid across the road.

She slid over the fence, unexpectedly, but as smooth as running water,

and turning in the field beyond, she floated back across the fence again

and halted beside her master.

 

“Now you know what she’s like,” said the Kid.

 

“Golly,” said the boy, “now I know what heaven’s like.”