The Hair-Trigger Kid by Max Brand (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📖
- Author: Max Brand
- Performer: -
Book online «The Hair-Trigger Kid by Max Brand (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📖». Author Max Brand
“It ain’t gonna fool nobody nor make them think that you ain’t loaded for
bear. What’s the good of buryin’ your gat under your coat, that way?”
“Because it’s the fastest place,” said the Kid. “A gun comes up slower
than it falls down. I jump an empty hand for that gun, and the weight of
the gun itself helps the gun down and out.”
“I don’t see it,” persisted Lefty Morgan.
“All right. I’ll show you. Just hand me the old gat—”
“Easy, sonny, easy!” said Lefty Morgan, continuing the search. “I’m
mighty young, and I’m mighty tender, but you can’t see through me that
quick. I’ve heard about the way you move, and I’ve seen it too.”
“Look at it,” said Sam Deacon, his voice lowered to a profound
admiration. “Will you look at it now? Ain’t it a bird? Them sights
slicked off so smooth and polished up. There ain’t no friction about that
there Colt, sonny.”
“How long.” demanded Lefty, “did it take you to learn to fan a gat with
one hand and hit something?”
“I used to work every Sunday in our back yard,” said the Kid gently.
“After I came home from Sunday school, I used to take off my little
jacket and turn up the starched cuffs of my shirt, and I used to take a
gun in my little hand and amuse myself, boys.”
“Yeah,” said Lefty, “and every week day, too, and twice on Christmas.
Say, Kid, what was you? A juggler in a circus, once? Where’d you get them
hands of yours?”
The Kid spread the taper fingers upon the edge of the table.
“Every night,” said he, “I used to wash them with violet soap, boys, and
then give them a good massaging with a pure cold cream, and then I put on
kid gloves when I went to bed. You’ve no idea how that sort of treatment
helps them.”
Morgan, now facing the Kid from the far side of the table, with a ready
gun balanced on the table’s edge, grinned widely.
“Yeah,” said he. “I reckon that you’ve used cold cream. Well, you don’t
have to confess to us. The jury’ll be what will want to hear you talk.”
“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.
“We’ll be starting along,” said Deacon. “Are you ready, Kid?”
“Of course I am,” said the Kid, cheerfully.
“Go on with ‘cm,” 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
Comments (0)