The Max Brand Megapack (438 page)

She looked at him with a new interest.

“You seem to know about such things,” said she.

“Oh, I know what everybody knows. I’ve had bunkies who were willing to die for me, but never one that I could talk frankly to.”

She nodded.

“This matter about the law—”

“The law would probably save you,” said the Kid. “But your cows would be dead before that.”

“Then we have to be law breakers in order to save the cows?”

“That’s it. Are you willing?”

She looked again across the hills. Steadily the cattle were marching across them toward the distant water. And the color flared suddenly back into her face.

“I know that we’re right,” she said, “even if we’re outside the law.”

She waited. Then she broke out: “You can’t be frank, but I’d like to know if you’re doing this only because you hate Dixon and Shay.”

He also hesitated a moment, and then he looked her straight in the eyes again, an intolerable brightness in his glance. “No,” said he, “I’m not!”

CHAPTER 20

A Challenge

The first thought of a mother is for her child. And though she knew that Georgia had hardly more than laid eyes upon this man, suddenly Mrs. Milman was thinking of the girl. So strongly, so vividly the thought struck home in her that the name bubbled to her lips. And she had to make an effort to keep from speaking it.

For, above all, there was in this straight look of the Kid a confession of a dangerous purpose that shook her to the ground.

It frankly told her that what he wanted was something more than she would give, and the bright face of Georgia rose smiling across her mind like a sweet vision.

“You won’t tell me the other reason, I suppose?” she said.

“Mrs. Milman,” said the Kid, “you see how it is. I’m a gambler, and you can’t expect me to play with my cards face up on the table.”

She sighed a little, and then nodded.

“I’d better ride down to the creek,” said the Kid, “and look over these fellows and the lay of the land. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. By that time, we’ll have the recruits in camp, I suppose?”

She could not speak, and merely made a little gesture, but she was worried to the heart. She watched him striding off toward the horses with a darkened brow. She had met strong men before this, but she never had met men who were both strong and free, and the Kid seemed to her as free as a bird. Studying him, she thought that she could understand why he was called “the Kid,” and simply that. In his step, in the carriage of his head, there was something inexplicably and eternally young. He was the very spirit of youth. And, adding up his qualities as they occurred to her, she thought of youth as a thing swift, cruel, careless, and without precedent or law to bind it. So much the more natural that upon youth, this youth, she should be depending in the great time of stress. Through the Kid they might be able to drive the transgressors from their land and save the cattle. What other danger would they be taking in exchange for it?

She sighed.

But, after all, there seemed nothing else to do about the matter. It might be that her shrewd suspicion was right, and that the Kid was here primarily to distinguish himself in such a manner that he would be forced most favorably upon the attention of Georgia. It might be that she was entirely wrong, and that he had no such hope in his mind. In any case, she would have to be a gambler, and with her cards also hidden, she would have to play out this game against the professional, which he confessed himself to be.

When she had come to this conclusion, she started back toward the house, her head a little bowed, and the shadow of it made large by the wide brim of her hat, falling always before her, so that she was stepping continually into the edge of it.

The Kid, in the meantime, had joined Bud Trainor at the watering trough, and found him tracing designs in the dust, while the horses drank. He noted carefully that the cinches had not been loosened, and this he did himself, letting them sag down.

“What’s that for?” asked Bud Trainor.

“Well,” said the Kid, “how would you like to come in dry and have to drink with your belt sunk into the middle of you?”

“Why, a hoss can stand that,” said Bud, curiously.

“A horse can stand it, all right,” said the Kid. “But I’ll tell you what, Bud, these horses are more than horses to us: they’re to us what wings are to birds. They’re life and death to us. We’ve got to keep them fit.”

Bud regarded him strangely.

“I see,” said he. “They’ve finished drinking now, I guess.”

“Don’t hurry ’em,” said the Kid. “They’ll take a sip or two later on. Have a cigarette and we’ll watch ’em digest their drinks.”

“You’d think it was whisky, to hear you,” grinned Bud. “Better than whisky, to them,” said the Kid. “Are you sorry about that play I made, over there?”

“You mean about the ten thousand?”

“Yes.”

“No, I’m not sorry.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. But what about this job with Dixon and his hired thugs? You ain’t bit off more’n you can chew?”

“I dunno,” said the Kid, carelessly. “We can have a try at it.” Trainor swallowed hard, and then nodded.

“All right,” said he.

“Does it seem like a crazy thing to you, Bud?”

“I’m not thinking,” said Bud hastily. “You’re the boss and the lead hand in what we do. I’ll follow on.”

The glance of the Kid dwelt upon him, gravely.

“Tell me,” broke out Bud Trainor. “Whatever made you wanta have me along with you? What made you finally decide to take me along from my house?”

“I’ll tell you. By my way of thinking, murder’s not the worst crime in the world.”

“I know,” said Trainor. “I tried a worse one, back there. I tried a lot worse one. What of that? Did that make you think that I could turn straight, and stay straight?”

“I think you can,” said the Kid. “You needed more rein than you’d been having. I’m going to give you the rein. You may break your neck—or you may have a good time out of it. I don’t know.”

The other sighed, faintly.

“Which way now?” said he.

“Down to Hurry Creek.”

Bud, without a word, stepped forward to pull up the cinches.

“Let ’em hang for a while,” said the Kid. “Give ’em a chance after drinking, and they’ll run ten times as well for you later. And likely we may have to come back from the creek a lot faster than we went down to it.”

Bud, without a word, stepped forward a little as though these marching instructions irritated him, but he went on at the side of his companion, as they led the horses forward across the grass.

The Kid, finishing his cigarette, seemed in high spirits. And as they went over the top of a hill, he even made a dancing catch step or two. Bud watched these maneuvers askance. But it seemed that his friend had nothing better to do, as he sauntered along, than dance like this, and to look cheerfully up the stream of little white clouds which the wind was hurrying across the sky, sometimes compacting them into solid puffs, very like the smoke blown circling from the mouths of cannon, and sometimes stretching them out to translucent fleece.

They walked for a good half hour through the heat of the sun, Bud stumbling now and then in his high-heeled boots. At last, the Kid gave the signal, and pulling up their cinches again, they mounted. Bud’s gelding came up strong and hard against the bit, and he grinned aside to the Kid.

“You know hosses!” he confessed.

The Kid said nothing. He merely smiled. And suddenly Trainor felt that he had been let into the intimacy of the wisest and strongest man in the world. He himself was older; but he felt that all the knowledge he had was as nothing compared with the information lodged in the brain of his confederate.

So they jogged easily along, swinging into a mild canter over the level, but always walking the horses up and down the grades.

“Shoulders!” the Kid explained. “You have to watch their shoulders more than diamonds!”

At last they drew toward Hurry Creek, and on a hill before them, they saw a horseman waiting, on guard, with a rifle balanced across the pommel of his saddle. Moveless he watched them as they came up the last slope.

The Kid, from a short distance, waved his gloved hand. “You know that gent?” asked Trainor.

“It’s Tom Slocum.”

“Is that the Slocum that killed the Lester boys?”

“That’s the one. He’s done other things, too. Oh, this must be a hand-picked crew that Champ Dixon has with him!”

As they came closer, Tom Slocum was revealed as a mild-appearing man with pale, sad blue eyes and a pair of old-fashioned saber-shaped mustaches, which drooped past the corners of his mouth as far as his chin. The wind was blowing the long tips of them.

“Why, hello, Tom,” said the Kid.

“Hello, Kid,” said Tom Slocum, starting in his saddle. “You come up to the right place, Kid,” he went on as they came closer. “We got a need for you here, old son. Is that Bud Trainor? We can use you too, Bud.”

“What’s the wages on this job?” asked the Kid.

“Twenty bucks a day, and found, and good found,” said Slocum. “Look yonder!”

They were at the top of the rise, now, and could see Hurry Creek, and the working men, and the glistening strands of the wire fence stretching almost to the end of either side of the gap between the canyon mouths. The gesture of Slocum indicated the camp wagons in the center of the farther shore, with horses tethered around them. In the midst was a tent, above which smoke curled lazily into the sunny air.

“Nothin’ but the fat, in there,” said Slocum, licking his lips at the thought. “Anything from fresh bread to marmalade. And no questions asked. Steaks three times a day, smothered in onions. You live like in a restaurant and nothin’ to pay. Nothin’ to do but to bluff out the shorthorns on this here ranch, Kid. And twenty bucks a day for sittin’ pretty. Come along down, and I’ll show you to Champ Dixon, because he’s the boss. He might sweeten your pay, Kid, if he’s got any sense. He’s sweetened mine!”

“Who else have you got down there?”

“Boone Tucker, and Hollis, and Dolly Smith, and Graham, and Three-finger Murphy, and Canuck Joe, and Silvertip Oliver, and Doc Cannon, and—”

“Do they all stand up to that level?” asked the Kid, thoughtfully.

“Sure they do. Come down and meet ’em, will you?”

“I’m on the other side of the fence,” said the Kid, running his eyes casually over the prospect. “I’m on the other side, and I’ll stay there.”

Slocum, instinctively, reined back his horse with a jerk. “What kind of a game is this?” he demanded.

“A straight game,” said the Kid. “You might slide down the hill and ask if any of those boys are feeling restless. If they are, come back with any of ’em, and we might have a little party up here, the four of us. Judge Colt, and plenty of ground to fall on. What say, Tom?”

CHAPTER 21

Watching

The reputation of Tom Slocum was very high among those who knew. It was increased now by his bearing toward the Kid. For he seemed interested in only one thing, and that was the hard, square angle of the end of the Kid’s chin.

“Tell me, Kid,” said Slocum. “You’re anxious for a pair of us to come up here and have it out with you—with guns?”

“I’m not anxious, Tom,” the Kid hastened to inform him. “But you boys are on one side of the fence, and I’m on the other. If you want a little action to stir up the game, come along and have it. That’s all that I mean.”

“Come on down with me,” suggested Tom Slocum, “and pick out the fellow you want to make number two with me.”

“I won’t come down, Tom,” replied the Kid. “You’ve given me enough names. Plenty enough to suit me. Any one of them will do. I wouldn’t cramp your style, Tom, by telling you who was to play partners with you.”

Slocum turned burning eyes from the Kid to Bud Trainor.

“You’re number two in this party, are you?” asked Slocum.

And Bud, with a nod, waved his hand toward the Kid, as much as to say that he had been elected by that formidable youth for whatever work lay ahead.

“I’ll go down and find out what the boys say,” declared Slocum. “Just wait up here, will you?”

“We’ll be here,” said the Kid, and Slocum, turning his horse, jogged quietly off down the slope.

But Trainor kept an anxious eye fixed on his companion. Nervously Bud passed his hand under his coat to the new spring holster which was attached under the pit of his left arm. He had adopted this contrivance at the suggestion of the Kid, but still it seemed strange to him. He had practiced until the Kid declared that his time on a draw was less than it had been when pulling from the hip. Still, he was uncertain. Next, he slipped his hand down along the stock of the Winchester which, in its long holster, ran down between his right leg and the saddle. But the Kid did not seem to see these uneasy movements of his companion.

He was too busy, it appeared, in watching the motions of the crowd of cattle which milled on the slope. Some of them lay down, their heads sinking low as though they were already far spent. These, doubtless, were the ones which had come in from a great distance, half dead with thirst and on fire with eagerness for water. Every hour they spent was bringing them closer to death. Others, again, were mixing in swirls and tangles. Some of them ran with their heads high. Others swung their horns right and left, red-eyed with the burning famine, eager to fight. And brigades of these, from time to time, surged ahead toward the fence line, where they crowded close, lifting their heads above the top strand and pressing their throats and breasts against the cruel barbs. There they hung, until the riders swept down the line and flogged them away with whips. Even whips were not enough, now and again. They had to fire blank cartridges into the faces of the poor beasts, which then milled slowly away to a short distance. The same scene was duplicated on the farther side of Hurry Creek by equal numbers of the animals.

Over the fence, a little away from the spot where “Dolly” Smith had jumped his horse across, another rider now sprinted his mount toward Dolly.

The latter turned in his saddle, reining in to meet this danger from behind.

“Now watch Champ Dixon work,” said the Kid, laughing softly. “It’ll be worth while. He is a champ, when it comes to a job like this.”