The Max Brand Megapack (451 page)

“Aye,” said another, “a little thing like havin’ a hoss fall on him and two or three thousand cows walk over him, that wouldn’t bother the Kid, much. Just sort of rock him to sleep.”

The Kid wakened utterly, and sat up at the same time.

He found that his hands were lashed together and his feet similarly secured, and he was sitting in the light of a towering mass of flames that seemed to split the dark of the heavens asunder. Every star was put out by this radiance.

It was the total supply of fuel for the Dixon camp. The incendiarism of the Kid had been even far more successful than he had expected to make it, for two of the wagons were rolling in sheets of fire and a third, badly damaged, had been partially salvaged by rolling it down the slope and into 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 it myself.”

“You’re a fine, public-spirited fellow, Billy,” said the Kid. And, throwing back his head, he smiled straight at the gun which was being lifted in the hand of the gambler.

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!”