The Max Brand Megapack (433 page)

“Always wanted to make a speech to a jury,” said the Kid.

“Lookit!” broke out Deacon, examining the handles of the weapon they had taken from the Kid. “They’s eleven notches in this gat, boys! Eleven dead men wrote their names here, eh?”

They looked at the Kid almost with terror, and yet with triumph, also. The discovery made their triumph all the sweeter.

“Not notches that I filed,” said the Kid. “No, no, don’t you attribute those marks to me, old fellows. That gun belonged to poor Jig Yates.”

“Hey, you don’t mean that this was the Jigger’s own gun?”

“Yes, his own gun. You’re looking at history, my lads!”

“Jigger Yate’s own gun! How’d you get it from him?”

“He left it to me when he died,” said the Kid sadly. “A great, game chap was Jigger.”

“Game? As a bantam!” exclaimed Lefty Morgan eagerly. “There was a man. And I didn’t know that he died. Who bumped him off? I mean, what crowd bumped him off?”

“Aye,” said Deacon, “no one man was likely to take his checks all in a heap. Who done it?”

“Young chap that had a turn of luck,” said the Kid smoothly. “Yes, the Jigger is dead. He loved that gun, though!”

“Where did he die? What was the young feller’s name?” asked Lefty Morgan, his mouth wide open.

“Away down in Yucatan he came to his last day,” said the Kid sadly. “He had a gun smoking in each hand, too. But that’s a great mistake. If he’d trusted all of his attention to this one gat, he would have been better off. Too many irons in the fire, you might say, and so he slipped and went down.”

“Shot in front?”

“Just between the eyes,” said the Kid, nodding. “Just exactly between the eyes.”

Bud Trainor had been silent. Now he slowly lifted an arm and pointed at the Kid.

“You done it yourself!” said he.

“I?” said the Kid, apparently surprised. “You amaze me, Bud. I don’t hunt the land sharks that swim as fast as Jigger Yates did. Not I!”

But here the three exchanged glances. And they nodded to one another.

“Well,” said Deacon, “I sure hope that you live out the year after you dropped Jig Yates. That’s all that I hope.”

“I’m not likely to,” said the Kid.

“Ain’t you? Why do you say that?”

“I see things in the future,” said the Kid, and yawned a little.

“Whatcha see?” asked Deacon.

“I see Deacon and Morgan riding across the hills with a third man between them, his feet tied into his stirrups, and his hands tied behind his back. His face is dark to me. No, he comes closer. Yes, it’s myself, as I suspected, and the horse is the Hawk.”

“The devil you say,” said Deacon. “Then what happens in this foresight of yours.”

“Why, a thing that makes me very sorry for myself, old boy. A desperate idea comes to that prisoner. He makes a sudden move to escape. His two guards are forced much against their will to shoot him full of holes!”

“Why, they wouldn’t dare!” shouted Davey, in a shrill, and tremulous voice.

“We wouldn’t have to,” said Deacon darkly. “We wouldn’t have to because you wouldn’t be such a fool, and the judge and the jury will take care of you, old son!”

“There’s not a court in the world that has a claim against me—north of the Rio Grande,” said the Kid, gently. “No, not one.”

“You mean to say that you ain’t wanted anywhere in the country?”

“Not in a single place,” declared the Kid. “Oh, there might be one or two old charges of disturbing the peace. But everything is self-defense and sweetness and light, as far as I’m concerned, boys!”

“It’s a lie!” said Deacon, “and we know it’s a lie, and we’re takin’ you because you’re wanted, and we’re gunna get the reward for you. We’re actin’ for the law, not for ourselves!”

“Of course, you’re not acting for yourselves,” answered the Kid. “A pair of big, clean-hearted American boys like you two—you wouldn’t act for yourselves. It’s just to mop up the criminal element and make the country safe for the poor shots. I understand you perfectly. Even if there’s no charge against me.”

“We’ve heard enough of this gabble,” said Morgan. “Let’s get him on the way.”

“Drop me where there are a lot of big stones,” said the Kid lightly. “You’ve no idea how I hate the thought of wolves playing sexton to me!”

“You think that we’re gonna murder you, do you?” asked Deacon.

“Aye, aye, aye!” cried out old Dad Trainor suddenly. “There’s nothin’ but murder in your face, right now. Murder, and my guest, and as good as in my house. Heaven forgive me!”

He wrapped his arms around his old head, tortured by his impotence.

CHAPTER 13

Branding Iron

“We’ll be starting along,” said Deacon. “Are you ready, Kid?”

“Of course I am,” said the Kid, cheerfully.

“Go on with ’em,” exclaimed old Mrs. Trainor suddenly, to her son. “Roll up your blankets, and get along with ’em, and never come back here!”

“Ma, ma!” muttered her husband. “What are you sayin’ to our own boy?”

“I’m sayin’ the truth as I sees it. I never want to see his face ag’in. I’ve throwed him out of my heart and life. I’m throwin’ away the misery and the care and the love that I’ve given him. I’m throwin’ away the one thing that we’ve given to the world, Dad. But we ain’t gonna have him set at our table with blood on him!”

The nerves of the Kid were of the nature of chilled steel, but even he was startled by this unexpected outbreak from the old woman. Her husband gaped at her as a spirit from another world. And both Deacon and Morgan almost forgot to watch their captive as they stared at Ma Trainor.

Bud, turning pale and purple in patches, growled out: “What kinda fool talk is all this? Dad, are you gunny set there and listen to ma talkin’ like this?”

“All my life,” said Dad Trainor, “I’ve done nothin’ but listen to your ma, when it come to a pinch, and I’m pretty old to change my habits. She’s told you to go, and if I was you, I’d git!”

“Here’s mother love for you!” said Bud Trainor, desperate with anger and disgrace.

“I ain’t no mother of yours!” cried the poor old woman. “There ain’t no Trainor blood in you. Even a sneakin’ copper-faced Injun wouldn’t do such a thing. Him that has had his feet under our table, you’ve sold him. Heaven forgive you, for I ain’t never gonna!”

“Aye,” said old Dad Trainor, grimly. “It’ll be you and me, alone, ma, like it was in the beginning. Bud, you roll your blankets, and git along with you.”

“I’ll go the way that I stand,” said Bud Trainor. “I don’t want nothin’ from you. If you throw me over, I throw you—”

He paused, at the end of that sentence, and his wild eye rolled about over the faces in the room.

He saw little Davey, his face utterly white with horror and with loathing. He saw his companions in crime, Deacon and Morgan, watching him with a certain pity, perhaps, but with a more profound contempt and disgust. Finally, he saw the Kid, the betrayed man, regarding him not with hatred, but as if from a height looking down on lesser souls.

And the last words died out of the lips of Bud Trainor. His great shoulders—they were even more massive than those of the Kid—twitched convulsively.

“What was I gonna do?” he said huskily. “What was I gonna do when I was ground down and beat and never had no chance? Is two thousand bucks something that I could afford to throw away like it was a paper of pins? I ask you that. Ma, d’you hear me?”

“If they was two thousand pounds of diamonds, I’d feel the way that I do now. Yo’re gonna be a thing that’ll be talked of for years. You ain’t gonna be called Bud Trainor. You’re gonna be called a sneak and a dog that sold his friends’ lives from under his own roof. And me—”

Here her strength, which had sustained her marvelously for a moment, gave way utterly, and she dropped into a chair and began to sob in a stifled way.

Her husband stepped to her side, and put his arm around her bowed shoulders.

“Like the beginning,” he said, “we got each other, and we’ll get through, somehow, to the end of things!”

It was too much for Deacon and Morgan.

“We’re movin’ out of here,” said Lefty. “Here, boys. Gimme a start. Kid, you hold out your hands behind the small of your back, will you? Hold ’em out and put the wrists close together—”

“Sure,” said the Kid.

Now little Davey, startled out of his horrified stare at Bud Trainor, turned toward the other actors, sweeping his glance across the convulsed face of the traitor.

What Davey saw was the cord, ready in the hands of Morgan to tie the wrists of the captive. An inspiration came to Davey. He was standing with the lamp just before him, and rather close to his side of the table. That table was low, and Davey, leaning over, blew out the lamp with a single puff.

There were stars outside, burning brightly. And there was even a scattering of reddish streaks of light from the stove itself, where the fire shone through certain gaping cracks. However, the extinguishing of the smoky lamp acted like double darkness in which surprise was the chiefest element.

Two guns instantly spoke like two thunderstrokes on the heels of one another. Pungent scent of burned gun-powder stung the nostrils of all in the cabin.

There was a tumbling of wrestling bodies, curses, and then a wild scream of pain and terror.

Through the doorway, dimly silhouetted against the stars, leaped a man who was throwing out his arms before him, and still yelling as he fled.

Then Davey, who had put out the lamp, lighted it again. It revealed an odd scene.

In the doorway stood the Kid, with a rifle all ready in his capable hands. He was looking after the fugitive, who now departed with a rapid pattering of hoofs, putting his horse at a dead gallop. But the Kid did not open fire. Instead, he lowered the weapon and turned back into the room, as though he cared too little about the matter to shoot down the fleeing rider.

In the room itself, old Ma Trainor was cowering into a corner. Her husband stood in front of her, with a short-handled axe gripped in both hands, and a wild light in his eyes. There was a faint hint of red on the edge of the heavy blade. An explanation, perhaps, of the shriek of terror which had filled the cabin the moment or two before this.

But, most interesting of all, in the corner of the room where two men had been struggling, one of them was now rendered helpless. That was Sam Deacon, and he who had pinned him down was none other than Bud Trainor!

“Thanks, Bud,” said the Kid. “It’s all right, now. Let him get up after you’ve taken his guns away.”

The guns were promptly taken away, and the two got to their feet.

The thin, white face of Deacon was covered with a ghastly smile, his habitual expression, which he deepened now in order to show that he was not at all afraid.

But afraid he was, most ghastly afraid, and this smile of his only accented his terror.

He looked at Bud and snarled from the side of his mouth: “You double-crossin’, sneakin’, dirty, hound!”

And Bud winced, and made no reply. He hung his head, doggedly, until his small mother ran to him out of the corner of the room and cast her meager arms around him.

“Oh, Buddy, Buddy darlin’!” she sobbed against his breast. “My own boy, my brave boy. Oh, thank Heaven, thank Heaven!”

He cradled her in his arms, and he turned to the wall for fear that the others might see what was happening upon that grim face of his. His father gripped his arm with a brown old hand and said not a word, but it was plain that the ties which held that family together had been riveted with something stronger than steel, in the last moment.

The Kid, in the meantime, sat down in the chair and drew a breath.

“Well,” he said frankly, “I thought that I was a goner, that time.”

Then he nodded toward Davey.

“You’re a cool kid,” said he. “I can thank you first, Davey. And, Bud, something more than cancels out, too. He lost two thousand and put up a fight, besides. And this Deacon is a wild cat. I know all about him. Aren’t you, Deacon?”

The smile with which he asked this last question turned the pallor of Deacon from yellow-white to green-white. He blinked. But resolutely he maintained his smile.

“Well, what’s the game?” said Deacon, lightly.

“Sit down and make yourself a cigarette,” said the Kid. “There’s no hurry. We’ll just have a friendly little chat. That’s all.”

“About what?” asked Deacon.

“Oh, about old times. And new ones, too. I want to know who hired the pair of you for this job, Deacon.”

“Yeah? You wanta know?” said Deacon. “You ain’t expecting me to talk, Kid, are you?”

“Yes,” drawled the Kid. “You’ll talk, all right.”

Sam Deacon shrugged his lean shoulders. His eyes flickered aside toward the door. Then they returned to the face of the Kid, who was lighting a cigarette. Almost desperately, Deacon followed that example.

“You’ll talk,” said the Kid. “You’ll tell me everything.”

“I’ll not say a word,” declared Deacon, and pinched his lips together with an effort.

“Deacon,” said the Kid, “don’t you think that you ought to pay something for your life?”

“I’m no double-crossing curl,” said Deacon, looking bitterly at Bud Trainor.

“All right,” said the Kid. “You don’t double-cross. You simply murder, eh? Well, Davey, take a lid off of that stove and freshen the fire and put the poker in under the lid, will you?”

Davey, without a word, did as he was told.

And Deacon watched him, curiously. Sweat began to gather on his forehead.

But the silence continued, through which the Kid was smoking quietly.

At length he said: “Bud, will you take your mother and father outside of the house? Davey, you’d better go along, too. What’s going, to happen now won’t be pretty to watch. You’d better get out of earshot. There may be a little noise in here.”

“Kid,” said Deacon huskily, “whatcha got on your mind?”

“When that poker’s hot,” said the Kid, “it ought to make a good running iron. That’s all I mean.”

Deacon got up slowly from his chair.

“You ain’t serious, Kid,” he gasped.

“No, only joking,” said the Kid, “if you intend to talk.” Deacon rubbed a hand violently across his face.

“Aye,” said he. “You’ll do what you say! There ain’t nothin’ but a devil inside you. Kid, whatcha wanta know?”