The Max Brand Megapack (441 page)

“Poor fellow!” said Georgia. “Poor chap! Won’t you tell me what’s the trouble—where the pain is the worst? We might try a cold pack, Mother. He’s in a fever!”

“Aw, I’m all right!” declared Chip in a husky murmur.

Here Bud Trainor touched the arms of the two women and drew them to the farther side of the room.

“Leave him be,” he suggested. “You dunno what’s the matter with him, but I do.”

“What is it?”

“He’s one of Dixon’s crowd that’s been trying to throttle your ranch.”

“Well, I guessed that.”

“But to see you treatin’ him so like a white man, it’s sort of hard on his nerves.”

“What do you mean?”

“It cuts him up a good deal. He don’t deserve to be treated no better than a dog, and he knows it.”

The women exchanged glances.

“How was he hurt?” asked Mrs. Milman.

“And where is the Kid?” broke in Georgia. “Oh, good heavens, Mother. He’s got to be warned away if he’s coming back here!”

“He’s not coming back in a hurry,” answered Bud Trainor. “He’s taking his time and waiting for a signal to call him.”

They went into the next room.

“What’s happened?” they asked of Bud.

“Why, the Kid went out explorin’. He wanted to lead Dixon into makin’ an attack on us, and then he thought that the law could be pretty useful to you all. You could put an injunction on ’em—kick ’em off the land by process of law, or something like that. Anyway, you could switch the law on ’em and get it around to our side of the fence.”

“And so? You mean that he went out there, and dared the lot of them?” demanded Georgia.

“Aye, that’s what he sure enough done.”

“But that’s—”

“Aye, that’s crazy. But he done it. They tried to sneak some men out on both sides of the fence and slip around us. Oh, they wanted the Kid’s scalp pretty bad, all right. We come back flying. The Hawk, she could wing away from ’em any time, but my gelding didn’t have enough foot for that sort of work. They gained on us—”

“And the Kid wouldn’t leave you?” cried Georgia, with a shining face.

Her mother looked sharply across at her, but said nothing.

“The Kid.” said Bud Trainor, speaking slowly, and rather softly to keep the emotion out of his voice, “is the kind that’s always better than anybody else, in a pinch. No, he wouldn’t leave me, even when I told him to go.”

“That’s grand!” said Georgia.

There were tears of pleasure and excitement in her eyes. And again her mother saw them.

“It was grand, all right. And dangerous, too. This here Chip Graham, he was on that hoss of his, the Silver King. And the King stepped out pretty fast. He got ahead of us. He aimed to turn us or to hold us till the rest of the crowd came up. There was seven of them, all told. But then the Kid went out and dropped Graham, and got the King for me to ride. And when the rest of ’em came too close, he just up with his rifle and shot the hat off one of their heads!”

He laughed with a fierce pleasure.

“He didn’t kill that man?” gasped Mrs. Milman.

“Him? Of course not,” said Bud Trainor with an almost religious and devoted belief. “He could snuff a candle at about a thousand yards; I guess. But when we came back near to the house, he wouldn’t come in with us. He thought there might be trouble waiting for him here.”

“He’s right! He’s right,” said Mrs. Milman. “Nothing but trouble for him here. My husband and Chet Wagner are in the front room with the sheriff and a deputy, right now. They’ve come out for the Kid; or Mr. Beckwith-Hollis, as he calls himself.”

“Stuff!” said Georgia. “He was only joking.”

Mrs. Milman shrugged her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t try to read the mind of that young man,” said her mother. “But what are we to do? The sheriff is here with a warrant for the arrest of the Kid, alias I don’t know how many other names and nicknames, for breaking the peace, forcibly entering a house, attempted murder, and a good many other things. All because he drove Billy Shay—the scoundrell—into the street!”

“Is that Sheriff Lew Walters? What kind of a man is he, then?” demanded Bud Trainor angrily.

“He doesn’t like the business, but as he points out, he’s a servant of the law,” said Mrs. Milman.

She leaned a hand suddenly against the wall and supported herself there.

“It looks like a lost cause,” said she. “The neighbors won’t help us. Not till the law is clearly on our side. Georgia brought back poor Chet Wagner with her, and that’s the only man who would come. The rest—oh, they’re playing safe!”

“We can go in and try the sheriff,” said Bud Trainor. “That was the idea of the Kid. He’s safe enough out there. They’ll never catch the Duck Hawk and the Kid, together. The Kid’s idea was that if we could bring in one of ’em, it would be a proof that Dixon had started a fight on your ground. And that would be pretty hard for him and Shay to get out of. Let’s go tell the sheriff what’s happened!”

Mrs. Milman shook her head.

“We’ll try, however,” she said grimly.

And, as they started for the next room, Georgia murmured to Bud Trainor. “I wish I’d been there to see it!”

“Aye,” sad Trainor. “It’s all right to look back on. But it wasn’t so slick going through it. I ain’t the same sort of steel that the Kid is made of. I was scared sick!”

She merely laughed.

“I know,” said she. “It’s a point of pride with you fellows to understate things. We’ll see what the sheriff says.”

In the front room, accordingly, they found Lew Walters and his deputy, who was a timid-looking young man, with a frightened eye and an apparent desire to squeeze himself through the wall and away from the presence of the two women. But they could guess that the sheriff would not have selected this youngster for dangerous business like this without a good cause. His big wrists and long fingers were suggestive of more strength than he showed otherwise.

Lew Walters met Trainor with a nod and a smile.

“How’s your ma and pa?” he asked. “And how’s yourself?”

“Everybody fair to middling,” admitted Bud. “I’m out here tryin’ to give a hand agin’ the Dixon crew, sheriff. Now, how come that the law is agin’ an honest man like Milman, and behind a crook like Dixon?”

The sheriff shrugged both shoulders and made a weary gesture with his hands.

“The law,” said he, “is somethin’ that I never been able to understand at all. No, sir, I can’t foller the workin’s of the law, young feller. All that I can do is to ride when the law tells me to ride, and to arrest what the law tells me to arrest. Heaven knows that I ain’t willin’ to side agin’ my old friend Milman, but the law tells me to arrest the Kid, and that’s why I’m here. Where is he, Bud?”

CHAPTER 25

Mixed Answers

At this direct appeal, Bud looked around him. On the wall, by way of decoration, there were some elk heads, badly mounted, and therefore coming to pieces before their time. And, on the floor, there was the enormous pelt of a grizzly bear which Indians had cured, and which was therefore in an excellent state of preservation. From these adornments, or from the old-fashioned Kentucky rifle and powderhorn across the door, Bud received no ideas.

At last he grinned and waved his hand all around the horizon.

“Oh, he’s out yonder,” said Bud.

The sheriff grinned in turn.

“And in there,” said Bud, “is one of Dixon’s men that jumped us and tried to run us down when we went up to see the creek and what was happening there.”

The sheriff got up from his chair.

“One of Dixon’s men? How come he’s here?”

“The Kid nudged him off of his hoss with a bullet. Chip Graham is his name.”

“Hah!” exclaimed the sheriff. “That wo’thless Chip Graham? I’ve had room in my jail waitin’ for him since—”

He clapped a hand over his mouth.

“I’m gettin’ old, John,” he said to Milman. “My tongue, it takes charge, and is always runnin’ me downhill. Well, the Kid knocked Chip off of his boss, did he? Off of the Silver King, d’you mean?”

“Aye.”

“And then you took the hoss, I reckon?”

“Aye, to get away from the crowd that was follerin’ us.”

“Humph!” said the sheriff. “Now, to be honest, Bud, wasn’t that crowd follerin’ you because you had grabbed the hoss first?”

“Hey,” exclaimed Bud Trainor. “Are you tryin’ to make me into a hoss thief?”

“I’m not tryin’ to make you into nothin’. All I know is that if the Kid was to see the Silver King, it’d wring his heart plumb to the backbone to let it get away from him before he’d give it a try under the saddle.”

“I tell you—” exclaimed Bud Trainor.

“Never you mind your telling, Bud. Don’t you go and talk yourself into jail, which is something that a lot of folks is fond of doin’. You say that the Dixon bunch tackled you and the Kid. You, maybe; but folks around these parts don’t go tacklin’ the Kid offhand, just for fun. Not by a long shot, they don’t.”

“We’d gone down and told them what side we were on,” said Bud, growing hot and angry. “They just wanted to bag us and—”

“Here, here, Bud,” answered the sheriff. “I want to be fair to everybody, but this here sounds kind of fishy. Who’s your witnesses?”

“Why, the Kid, of course!” said Bud.

The sheriff grinned.

“All right,” said he. “You bring the Kid in and I’ll hear what he’s got to say!”

Mrs. Milman exclaimed: “Aren’t you taking sides unfairly, now, Sheriff Walters? You’re willing to believe the Shay and Dixon crowd when they ask you to make an arrest; but you won’t listen to our side of it?”

The sheriff smiled upon her almost tenderly.

“Mrs. Milman, ma’am,” said he, “I wanta tell you that there ain’t a man in the world that I respect no more than I respect John, here. And there ain’t a lady that I’d rather please than you. But here I’ve got a warrant swore out all straight and proper for the arrest of the Kid, alias a lot of other names—but who the Kid is I know. I ain’t sayin’ that Shay and Dixon is my friends, or that I think much of ’em. But I know that the Kid busted into Shay’s house. It may be that he didn’t fire no shots. He was just havin’ a little picnic of his own. It was his idea of a good time and a sort of a joke! On the other hand, you want me to believe the Kid. Well, the Kid for what I know of him is the slipperiest, hell-raisin’est youngster in the West. Here’s Bud Trainor talkin’, you say. But after a look at Bud, I know what’s happened. He’s found him a hero, and the Kid is that man. He’d go and jump off a cliff, if the Kid told him to. Wouldn’t you, Bud?”

“You don’t want to believe me,” said Bud, “and I suppose that you don’t have to! Maybe you could get the truth out of Chip, if you was to half try!”

“All right,” said the sheriff. “That’s another young gent that I know about, and you’ll see how much he’ll say!”

They all went into the room where poor Graham lay, patiently studying the ax work which had shaped the rafters that held up the ceiling of the room.

“Hello, Chip,” said the sheriff.

“Why, hello, Walters,” said the boy.

“Sorry to see you laid out like this,” said the sheriff.

“Aw, I been needin’ a rest,” said Chip.

“I hear as how the Kid got the drop on you,” said the sheriff. “The Kid?”

“Aye. Wasn’t it him?”

“You mean that give me this in the shoulder?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I’ll tell you what, sheriff,” said the boy calmly, “I dunno who’s been tellin’ you that kind of bunk. But the way it happened was that I was cleanin’ an old gun of mine—”

“Oh, I see,” said the sheriff. “Just cleanin’ an old gun, and it went off in your hands, eh?”

“Yes,” said Chip, looking him in the eye.

“Why, I saw the Kid shoot you off your hoss!” exclaimed Trainor.

Graham stared calmly at him.

“It’s been a tolerable hot day,” said he. “Maybe you got your brain touched up with the sun, eh?”

“That gun exploded as close as that, and didn’t leave no powder burns?” went on the sheriff, smiling faintly.

“Nary a one,” said Chip, unmoved.

“Well,” said Lew Walters, “I hope that you get well right quick—and then I reckon that you’ll kick the handles right off of that old gun, Chip?”

“I reckon I will,” said Chip.

They went back into the front room.

“You see how it is,” said the sheriff. “He’s not going to give the law a grip on the Kid. He wants the Kid free, so that he can handle him, when he gets back on his feet. Georgia, did you hear—where’s Georgia?”

But Georgia was not there.

Mrs. Milman, with a faint exclamation, ran out of the room and called as she went, but no Georgia answered.

She went on, and hurrying out the kitchen door, she looked toward the hitching rack, where the Silver King had been standing.

He was no longer there, and Mrs. Milman suddenly clutched her breast with both hands. She looked, at that moment, as though she had lost something far more precious than all of the big Milman ranch and all of the cattle that grazed upon its grasses.

CHAPTER 26

Past History

Georgia, in fact, had not waited to hear the end of the conversation.

Very shortly after Trainor attempted to argue with the sheriff, she could tell how matters were apt to drift, and the moment she was sure of that, she had left the house. The Silver King, standing high-headed at the rack, was too much of a temptation to be resisted. So she quickly shortened the stirrups and mounted.

After that, she scanned the rolling ground around the house.

Here and there were clumps of trees, bunches of high shrubbery, and even nests of rocks which would hide a man and a horse without any trouble. But she judged that the most likely place would be the larger growth of the woods to the north of the house, and toward them she rode.

In a moment she was passing under the drift of the brown shadows, sometimes in the blinding brightness of a patch of sunshine, and again in the thicker shadows where the trees grew high and dense.

Crossing a small opening in the forest, a blue jay screeched suddenly overhead in such a discordant note that she reined in the King sharply and Iooked up.

“A good day for lazying in the shade,” said a voice behind her.

She jerked about in the saddle, and there was the Kid, sitting on a fallen log and whittling at a stick with a long, bright-bladed knife.