The Max Brand Megapack (429 page)

It did not take a great deal to interest the Kid. He never had found a desert so thoroughly devoid of life that it was dull to him. Now, when he turned from the gazing at the creek, it was to watch the arduous way of an ant through the grass, lugging with it the head of a beetle twice its own size and four times its own weight. Ten times the head fell as the Kid watched. Ten times the ant picked up the burden and pushed ahead, forcing between narrow blades and climbing then up and then down, like a monkey struggling with a vast weight through an endless forest.

Eight feet away lay the nest which was the goal! To the ant it was eight miles of fearful labor.

A light, quick stamp of a hoof made the Kid look up to the Duck Hawk, to find her standing alert, with tail arching into the wind, and ears pricked.

The Kid did not delay. He slid bridle and saddle onto her with practiced speed, and, running hastily down the trail, he came to a rocky stretch, turned up among the rocks until he came to a thick place of shrubbery and trees which perfectly concealed him and the mare.

Here he waited, and after a time, sure enough, from down the trail, traveling south, he heard first the distant ring of an iron-shod hoof, striking against hard rock, and then the faint snort of a horse. Such sounds grew nearer and nearer, and around the corner of the mountain rode a man on a fine gelding of the mustang type, with two lead horses behind him.

This man carried a short-barreled repeating rifle, or carbine, which he balanced across the pommel of his saddle. He had two saddle holsters, from which the butts of revolvers appeared, and a capacious cartridge belt girded him.

On each of the two led horses there were small packs, but these were so light that it was obvious that he was using them as extra mounts rather than as pack animals.

The man himself was what one might call the true Western type; that is to say, he was tall, rather bony and thin from much exercise, and little fat from leisure. He had one of those thin, dark faces which one often sees, with a truly grand forehead, wide and high, and a little puckering at the corners of his mouth which made him appear to be smiling a great part of the time. But smiling he was not, as one could guess by a second glance.

This fellow was forty years old, with a back straight as an arrow, a head carried like a king, and a glance as bright as’ the Kid’s own.

The latter smiled a little and watched with careful attention until the other reached that point along the trail where the Kid had lunched and where the mare had grazed.

The instant he came to these signs the rider slumped lower in the saddle, and tightening the reins, he slipped the carbine under his arm and whirled his horse about, scanned the rocks and the trees near him with the eagerness of a hawk and something of a hawk’s hungry and fierce manner.

He seemed to content himself a little with this first survey, and then jumped from his saddle to the ground and carefully examined the grass that had been trampled down by his predecessor. By the movement of it, as it gradually was rising, he seemed able to tell that his forerunner had been there a very short time ago indeed. Therefore he straightened again, and scanned all that was around him suspiciously. Finally he leaped into the saddle again, and went on a tour of inspection.

CHAPTER 7

Treed

What wind was blowing carried straight from the man hunter to the man.

Therefore the Kid carried out an experiment in which he could use the intelligence and the obedience of the Duck Hawk. He turned the head of the mare toward a gap in the brush to the rear, and through this, as he waved his hand, she went at once.

The noise she made was very slight. She walked like a cat, picking out her way. For horses who have lived a wild life where there is any amount of shrubbery and trees either learn the ways of silence or die young. Mountain lions are excellent schoolmasters in all such lessons. So the Duck Hawk went off with very little noise, and the wind which stirred was sufficiently strong to cover these slight noises of retreat.

Getting well beyond the patch 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, too!”

He smiled a little as he said this, removing thereby all air of naïveté 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!”

CHAPTER 8

A Great Business

When they had shaken hands, Dixon acted like a man who is breathing a different air. “The dirty dog that told me—” he began.

“Don’t tell me his name,” said the Kid. He raised his hand and shook his head firmly. “I’ll tell you, Champ, that a man has enough trouble in the world without asking for it.”

“But what about a man that goes around telling lies about you?”

“Suppose that I started out to kill every man who is telling lies about me, old-timer?”

“Aye, that’s true. But the sneaking—”

“Of course. Well, I’ll tell you, Dixon, a fellow who hasn’t any permanent home address is pretty likely to have stories told about him, a good deal. You can’t expect to steal eggs and pass the plate, Dixon.”

Champ Dixon chuckled.

“Morrison was telling me that you was this way,” he observed. “I couldn’t hardly believe it, until I set right here and hear you talk! You act, Kid, as though the people that set fast inside of towns was all good and that the fellows on the road was all bad.”

The Kid shrugged his shoulders.

“Why, they’re a flock of throat-cutting hypocrites, and you oughta know it!” exclaimed Champ. “Out here on the open road—look how it is! You and me have put a year’s trouble straight in a coupla seconds.”