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

of trees in which her master remained, she

looked back to him, pausing, but he waved her on until she had walked

over the brow of the hill, and disappeared.

 

Now that the mare was out of view, the Kid set about his own maneuvers.

He could see that the stranger was skirting rapidly along the back trail

which the Kid had made; and, in the course of the next minute, he was

certain to arrive on the spot where they had made covert in the brush.

 

He decided this, and then slipped ahead for a few paces along the trail

of the mare until he came to a good-sized tree. He swung into the

branches and a dozen feet above the ground he stretched himself along a

big limb.

 

It was so narrowed that it could not pretend to cover the width of his

body. Without an instant’s hesitation, he twisted himself around it like

a snake. By the very strangeness of its posture, this body of his

suddenly seemed unrelated to humankind. By heel and arm and knee he clung

in this difficult position. It would have exhausted another man in a few

seconds; but the Kid had the strength and suppleness of a monkey. So he

clung there, until he saw the fine, reaching head of the mustang come

through the brush, and above it appeared the stranger, bent well forward,

to study the fresh sign of the Duck Hawk.

 

At the place of covert, he remained only for an instant, then headed on.

He had the look of something indescribably wild and wise as he bent above

the hoof marks, reading them. The puckering at the corners of the mouth

had increased into a greater resemblance of a smile, and the eyes of the

Kid narrowed a little as he watched. It was an odd thing to see a man who

acted so like a beast of prey. It gave him a fierce satisfaction to know

that he was hunting the hunter.

 

The head of the stranger was down, but the keen mustang, when it was

almost under the tree, noted something strange about the twisting branch

overhead and looked up. That instant the Kid dropped.

 

Had the horseman been directly underneath, the matter would have been

simple. As it was, he had to swing himself forward with his hands just as

the horse shied. The rider jerked up his head at the same moment in time

to meet the flying danger, but though his hand licked down for a revolver

as fast as the dart of a snake’s tongue, he was knocked headlong from the

saddle.

 

Falling, he twisted in mid-air, to land on his hands and feet. But hands

as strong as they were scientific gripped him and jerked him over on his

back with a half nelson. Flattened out by superior weight and might, he

stared at the young face above him.

 

“Hullo, Champ,” said the Kid.

 

“Hullo, Kid,” said Champ.

 

His eyes burned green, but he kept his voice as steady as the regular

flowing of a river.

 

“I didn’t reckon that the trees are shakin’ down this kind of nuts this

time of the year,” said Champ.

 

“Lucky that I landed in good hands,” said the Kid. “You haven’t been hurt

much by the tumble, Champ?”

 

“No,” said the other. “Not a bit.”

 

“Don’t feel nervous?”

 

“No, I feel pretty calm,” said Champ.

 

“All right,” said the Kid. “I’ll get up, then.”

 

“Sure,” said Champ. “Whenever you say.”

 

The Kid, therefore, arose, moving cautiously and keeping a close eye upon

the older man, who then got up in the same manner. They watched one

another with an intense devotion and application. In spite of the quiet

manner of his speech, those burning eyes of Champ and the strange

puckering smile on his lips showed that he was close to violent action of

some sort.

 

Yet he restrained himself. Sometimes there was a decided flutter and

trembling in his right hand as it hung near the handle of his Colt, but

the weapon remained undrawn.

 

“I didn’t know that you were looking for me,” said the Kid. He whistled

sharply, repeating the note twice. The mare, from a distance, whinnied.

 

At this the other nodded.

 

“She’s more’n a hoss. She’s a partner, that Duck Hawk,” he declared.

 

“Aye, she’s a partner.”

 

“I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking to see who had took to the tall

timber when I hove in sight down the trail.”

 

“Was that it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The Kid nodded, smiling pleasantly.

 

In a way these frontiersmen were like excellent and long-trained actors,

so perfect were their simulations. It began to be obvious that Champ had

put away ideas of violent action for the moment, at the least.

 

“I just got off the trail to let a stranger pass,” said he. “Yeah?”

queried Champ.

 

“I’ll tell you how it is,” said the Kid. “I’m a mighty shy sort of a

fellow, Champ. I don’t know that I’m very interested in having a flock of

people move by and look me over. Besides, it takes a lot of time to

exchange gossip on the trail. It makes the Hawk restless, tool”

 

He smiled a little as he said this, removing thereby all air of na�vet�

that might have adhered to his words.

 

“I understand,” said Champ, and suddenly he smiled in turn. “I don’t like

to rub elbows with all the common bums on the trail either. Suppose that

we go back and pick up my two hosses that I dropped there?”

 

“All right,” said the Kid. “You’ve got a good outfit of horseflesh with

you, Dixon.”

 

“Aye,” said Champ Dixon, “they’re good enough to raise a mite of dust

along the way. You need three when you’re making Iong marches.”

 

He looked up at the tree from which the Kid had fallen upon him.

 

“There ain’t a branch there that would hide a squirrel,” said he.

 

“I didn’t hide,” said the Kid. “I just sort of twisted myself out of

shape around that branch there.”

 

He pointed over his shoulder without turning his head, and Champ Dixon

smiled and nodded again.

 

“You been among trees before,” he announced. “There’s a good many that

are desert-wise and mountain foolish, but I reckon that you been around a

while. There comes the Hawk, and a beauty she is, old son.”

 

The Duck Hawk came up the trail with her lovely head carried high and her

eyes shining toward her master, as though she inquired about the nature

of this odd game in which he had been using her.

 

“I’ve got to eat,” said Dixon. “You’ve had chuck already?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Come back and pass the time of day with me, then.”

 

“I don’t mind if I do.”

 

They went back to the same spot which had been used by the Kid beside the

stream. The horses grazed in a cluster on the good grass, and now a

sleepy, dreamy content seemed to come over the Kid. He stretched himself

out with his back against a rock.

 

Champ Dixon was eating parched corn and jerked beef with powerful and

patient jaws,

 

“You’ve a fondness for climbin’ game, I reckon?” asked Champ.

 

“Well,” said the Kid, after a moment of lazy thought, “I’ll tell you how

it is. There’s a fellow I met who said that one night he heard you

talking about me, and talking sort of carelessly and free and easy. Well,

that’s all right.”

 

“Who was the man that said I talked about you?” demanded Champ with a

decisive click of his teeth.

 

“Who was it? Well, I dunno that I remember. I dunno that I’d ought to

remember.”

 

“Fools that repeat, they make a lot of trouble, because they always

repeat wrong, and dead wrong, too!”

 

“They do,” said the Kid seriously.

 

“They cause a lot of killings.”

 

“They do,” said the Kid in the same manner.

 

“And if you’ll tell me the name of the seven-mile liar that said that

I—”

 

“Well,” answered the Kid, “I dunno that I’ll tell you even now. Even if

what he said was true, it don’t make so much matter. I know how it is

when a fellow comes in off a long trail and puts a few slugs of redeye

between wind and water. It makes him feel strong. He thinks that he can

carry half the world on his upper deck—and all the time the poor fool is

simply sinking—”

 

At this comparison, Champ Dixon broadly grinned.

 

“I wouldn’t mind telling you,” said he, “that a fellow come to me and

said that he’d heard you say that Dixon was a worn-out old man and that

it was about time that somebody had ought to brush him off the trail, and

that you wouldn’t much mind the job.”

 

“Did I say that?” asked the Kid of himself.

 

He stared at a white, translucent cloud in the zenith, but got no answer

whatsoever from it.

 

“I’ll tell you how it is, Champ,” said he. “A man says a lot of foolish

things that he doesn’t remember. But if I were sober and in my right

head, I’d never say such a thing I know that I’ve never felt such a way

about you.”

 

“You haven’t?” barked Champ Dixon.

 

“No.”

 

There was a pause, during which the pair of them stared earnestly at one

another.

 

“Look here,” said Dixon. “They say that you don’t lie.”

 

“Yes,” said the Kid. “It’s true that I don’t lie.”

 

“Then I’m to believe that you never were out after me, Kid?”

 

“That’s right. I never was.”

 

Champ Dixon suddenly sprang to his feet.

 

“Then I’m gunna let light into a couple of grand liars!” he said. “Kid,

I’ve thought that you been after me for a year. Here’s my hand, and a

weight off of my mind, too!”