The Max Brand Megapack (453 page)

“That camp is sure a wreck. The cook tent is just a black mess, that’s all. Everything is gone, includin’ their hosses. All that they got on their hands, it’s a pile of saddles and such.”

“But the Kid, the Kid!” exclaimed Milman impatiently.

“Yeah, and I’m coming to that. I got up the line, closer to the fire, and there I seen a lot of the men standin’ around, and whisperin’, and shakin’ their heads at each other. You’d think that they was standin’ around and lookin’ at the devil or a ten-foot rattler. But it was the Kid. He was stretched out, there. They had his hands and his feet tied. I gathered from what I heard them say that he’d ’ve got clean away on the back of one of the hosses, if it wasn’t that the one he was ridin’ bareback had had a tumble and broke its own neck, and dropped the Kid. He was senseless, but while I was there, he woke up, and sat up. Jiminy, before that, I pretty nigh thought that he was dead!”

“What else?” asked Milman. “What else did you see?”

“D’you think I’d wait there?” demanded the youngster. “D’you think that I’d wait there till they murdered him?”

“Murdered him?” cried out Georgia Milman suddenly, and her voice rang sharp and thin in the air, almost like the excited yipping of Davey himself.

“Sure they’ll murder him,” said Davey, “unless we do something about it. Surely they’ll murder him. D’you think that that bunch of yeggs would ever let the Kid loose to go wanderin’ around and pickin’ ’em off? Why, it would be pretty jolly for the Kid, wouldn’t it, to have that many gents to trace down and bump off? It would keep him happy pretty night all the rest of his life, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose that it would,” said one of the punchers. “What can we do?”

“Ride down, ride down!” said Davey desperately. “Ride down and make a try. They’s five of you here. You’re something. You can make a try for him. You can sure make a try to help him. You wouldn’t be letting the Kid get bumped off, Buck, would you? You wouldn’t let the Kid go like that, Charlie? I know you wouldn’t. Mr. Milman, you say something to ’em!”

“There’s nothing for me to say,” said Milman, after a moment of quiet. “I know that I’m going down to do what I can!”

“There are twenty of them, father!” cried Georgia. “What could you do? It’s a lost cause. You’re only throwing yourself away!”

But her heart leaped in her throat, and she knew the answer almost before she heard it.

“It may be a lost cause,” said Milman, “but it’s my cause. And if the Kid is brave enough to die for us, we’ll have to die for him. Georgia, so long for a little while!”

He rode off.

“I’m number two in this party!” said Bud Trainor, and instantly his horse was beside that of the rancher.

CHAPTER 41

Two Against Twenty

But the other three cow-punchers did not move to join the two. Two against twenty! Aye, or even five against twenty, considering who the twenty were, seemed sickening odds. Besides, these were not gunmen or professional fighters. They had been hired to ride range, not to shoot it out with such as the Dixon crowd. They milled about a little, uneasily, until one of them said: “I got a wife and two kids that live on what I make. I reckon that I ain’t afraid to be ashamed:”

The other two said nothing, but they seemed willing to allow the other’s speech to stand as a lead for them.

Little Davey Trainor suddenly cried out:

“You ain’t punchers! You ain’t Westerners! You’re a bunch of yaller-livered, no-good skunks! I’m gonna tell every man on the range about you! I know your names, and I won’t forget ’em. The Kid’s down there doin’ your work. The Kid’s gonna die for what you should’ve died for—”

He looked about him, and suddenly he saw that the girl had ridden off into the dark of the night.

Instantly he pulled his own mustang about and was beside her.

“Whatcha gonna do? Where you headin’?” asked the boy.

“Go back, Davey,” said she. “Never mind where I’m going.”

“You’re gonna go in there!” exclaimed Davey. “You figger on follerin’ your daddy.”

“It doesn’t matter what I figure on. This is no place for you, Davey! Go back, and try to talk those three punchers into coming along.”

“They can’t be talked into nothin’! They wouldn’t budge. You couldn’t pray ’em into budgin’. Dog-gone it, though, you can’t go in there! D’you think that those thugs’ll be able to see that you ain’t a man? D’you think that they’d care, much, even if they knew? They’ll shoot at everything that budges, after a while!”

“Davey,” said the girl, “I know that you mean well, but don’t try to persuade me any more. There’s no use. I’m going to ride in there. Nothing can stop me. Go back and try to find some of the other men. We have something besides cowards on our ranch!”

“Ride back for ’em yourself,” said Davey. “You ain’t a man, and I am. I’m gonna go in there and see what happens!”

“Davey! Davey!” she cried at him. “You silly child—you great, silly baby, what can you do?”

“I’ve got a gun, and I can use a gun,” declared Davey. “That’s what I can do. Is that enough?”

And then, as they entered the outer fringe of the cattle, there was too much work for them to allow further talk.

It was no easy thing.

Wandering on the outer edges of the hollow, masses of the cattle stirred here and there, wakeful with thirst, uneasy, prevented from getting on by the more solid masses of living flesh which barred the way toward the desired creek.

Among those crowds they had to go. It seemed impossible, at first, but they knew that a recruit to the Dixon crowd had gone through, and they knew that the boy himself had gone back and forth, and that the horses had burst through the mass.

What was the fortune of Milman and Bud Trainor, they could not guess. The double dark of the night and of the dust clouds shut them from sight as soon as they entered the herds.

Now and then, with a loud bellowing, a section of the herd would loom at them, with vaguely glistening horns, and terrible eyes, but the sight of the mounted men made them turn back.

It was as though they passed into a whirlpool of many currents, conflicting, and the waves of it armed with horns that looked long enough to impale horse and rider with a single thrust.

So they went on, the girl holding her breath with fear; then half choking in the dust.

She arranged a bandanna over her mouth and nose and breathed through this with an effort. Yet the choking effect of the dust was thereby much lessened.

It was a nightmare, and beyond this evil dream lay another far more horrible, toward which she was going. What she could do, she could not guess. To see the tragedy that must occur was abhorrent to her, but yet she was drawn on as by a magnet of an overwhelming power.

On the whole, the problem of getting through was not half as desperate as it looked from a distance. The courage of the lad in first facing that tangle of dust and stamping hoofs and horns staggered her, however. He was before her, now, leading the way, parting the currents of danger, as it were.

And, with another leap and ache of her heart, she knew that here was the promise of such another manhood as the Kid’s. Something great for good, or for evil. No man could tell for which.

But goodness began to appear to her struggling mind in a new light. It seemed not so very difficult to dodge all evil by denying all temptation. Good women did that, closing their eyes upon what is dreadful and horrible, what is wild and enchanting in its wildness. Good men did it, also, keeping to a straight and narrow path, and blinding themselves to the possibilities which lay right and left. Yonder three punchers, for instance, were good men, who would have died rather than not do their duty. But for this thing which lay outside and above their duty, which was extra reasonable and had nothing to do with law, that wasn’t business for them. It was the business of the professional gambler, the gunfighter, the manslayer. It was the business of the Kid!

How to rearrange her ideas she could not tell, but she knew that the Kid began to appear before her mind luminously, a moon of brightness among starry mankind, making them very dim indeed.

And then, the dust mist before her began to be stained by the faint rose of the firelight. The dusty herds grew more dense. They would never have gotten through had it not been for the tactics of the mustang on which the lad was mounted before her. That mustang had been trained for many a long year in the ways of the range and of range cattle. He went at the steers and the cows with teeth and striking forehoofs. He went through them as a sheep dog goes through a well-packed flock of sheep, making them crowd to either side and leave a narrow channel through which he runs. In that thin wake she followed, taking advantage of it by pressing up close to Davey. And, now and then, she could hear his thin, piercing voice, shouting cheerfully back to her above the mighty thunder of the lowing.

There were waves of that sound, and then moments of almost utter silence, except for the melancholy music from the hills-that rimmed the hollow.

In one of those spells of silence, they came through to the final rim of the cattle, and saw before them, here and there, the gleam of the triple rows of barbed wire, and the dul! silhouettes of Milman and Bud Trainor just before them, very close to the rim of the encampment.

Now the girl could see the blackened debris of what had once been the excellent camp of Dixon and Shay. Yes, that was the work of the Kid. There was a thoroughness about the destruction which seemed to identify it as his, immediately.

She looked to the left. Two men walked up and down the fence, with black-snake whips, striking at the faces of the cattle which came too close. The two men were so near that it seemed\ miraculous that they did not see the four interlopers out there on the rim of the cow herds.

But the glow of the fire prevented, no doubt, blinding the watchers, as little Davey had pointed out before.

It was not so much of a blaze, now, but the glow was intensely bright, as it struck up from the masses of embers. When a gust of wind struck it, the light pulsed brighter, and took on a more yellow and penetrating color.

And the first of those brighter pulses showed her, at the right of the fire, the group for which she was looking. It was very close at hand. She could see every feature of every man that faced her.

The Kid stood there with his hands and feet lashed, his back to her. Facing him was a loose semicircle of Dixon’s men; and just in front of him was Shay, his long, white face inhumanly ugly as he balanced a revolver in his right hand.

“I’m going to hold up a minute, Kid,” said he. “If you got anything to say, we’ll try to remember it for you.”

The Kid answered, and his voice was clear, free, and almost joyous.

“I can talk for quite a while, Billy, but I don’t want you to make your wrist ache, holding that heavy gun so long.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Billy Shay. “Just talk your heart out, if you want to, Kid.”

“Well, there are only two or three things. You know Bud Trainor, some of you?”

“Yeah, I know the sucker,” said a voice.

“Well, tell Bud to forget about this. Tell him that was one of my last wishes. He might have an idea that something was expected of him.”

“Not if he’s got sense,” said the other. “But I’ll pass your word along to him.”

“Another thing,” said the Kid, “is that I’d like to have my name scratched on a rock, and the rock put at my head, so that if the Milmans get around to burying me, they’ll know who is lying here. My name is Benjamin Chapin, alias a lot of things.”

“What makes you tell us?” said Billy Shay, curiously. “After you’ve covered it up for so long, too!”

“I’ll tell you why,” said the Kid. “There’s one person in the world that I wish to learn it, and this is the only way I can make sure that the news will travel.”

“It’s a girl, Kid, I suppose?” said Shay.

“Billy,” said the Kid, “a warm, sensitive, proud heart like yours is sure to get at the truth of things. Yes, Billy, it’s a girl.”

“Yeah, you been a heartbreaker all your days,” said Billy Shay. “I’m supposin’ that she’ll bust hers when she learns how you dropped.”

“Thank you, Billy,” said the Kid. “There’s one other thing. I think that Bud Trainor may do as I want and keep his hands off you. But there’s another who won’t. Boys, watch out for him, when little Davey gets man-size.”

“Is that all?” asked Shay.

“Yes, that’s all, Billy. Go ahead.”

“No prayin’, nor nothin’ like that?”

“Prayers won’t help a man like me,” said the Kid cheerfully. “I’ve done too much that was wrong. You boys will know when you come to my place. You’ll understand what I mean when I say the prayers don’t help. Excuse me for talking a little bit like Sunday school. All right, Billy.”

“Now for you,” said Shay, stepping a little closer, and his face twisting into more consummate ugliness. “You’ve hounded me, and you’ve dogged nie. You blamed your partner’s death on me. You’re right. I plugged him and the reason that I plugged him was because he was your friend. You done me shame in Dry Creek. It ain’t a thing for me to live down. But I’ll have the taste of this to make me feel better. Kid, you’re gonna see the devil in another quarter of a second!”

And, with this, he jerked up the gun until it was level with the head of the Kid.

A report sounded, but no smoke issued from the revolver in Billy Shay’s hand. It was a sound closer to the girl, and with a wild glance, she saw that a rifle was couched against the shoulder of Bud Trainor, as he sat his saddle in the dust cloud near the fence.

The head of Billy Shay jerked back. He leaned. It was as though he wished to recoil from his victim, the Kid, but could not move his feet. Back he leaned. His body was stiff. He reached an absurd angle. It seemed as though he must be sustained by the counterpoise of some other weight.

And then he slumped heavily to the ground, with a distinct impact.

There were guns in the hands of the entire semicircle of Dixon’s men, but, with amazed, uncomprehending faces, they stared into the dust fog, and could see nothing. The firelight which made them easy targets had blinded them thoroughly.