The Hair-Trigger Kid by Max Brand (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Chapter 16 Storm Clouds

When discretion and judgment were considered; Spot Gregory seemed to

possess both. He looked Dixon in the eye. He even allowed himself time to

glance to the side, and to observe the broad grins upon the faces of the

four men who were looking on, leaning on the posts of the fence.

 

“Well,” said he, “if you was to hunt around to pick out a piece of ground

that would do you less good, and more harm to Milman. I dunno that you

could of picked better than this.”

 

“No, sir,” said Champ Dixon, “I dunno that we could I looked over this

here layout personal, a while back, and that’s what I figgered myself.”

 

“Tell me, Dixon,” said the foreman of the ranch, “what made you boys have

it in for Milman? What’s he ever done agin’ you, or any of you?”

 

Champ Dixon, at this unimpassioned appeal, was forced to scratch his head

with such earnestness that he pushed his hat far back.

 

“What’s he done agin’ us?” he echoed, while he gathered his thoughts.

 

“Yeah. That’s what I’m askin’.”

 

“Well,” said Champ, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll tell you about that.

Out here in the Far West, where they’s still a frontier, as the hooks put

it, and out here where the hair grows long, they ain’t much law nor not

much respect for the other feller’s rights, is they?”

 

“Well, in a way I reckon that there ain’t,” said Spot Gregory.

 

“And I reckon that worryin’ about how the law goes through pretty nigh

bites you folks to the bone!”

 

Champ Dixon permitted himself a broad grin.

 

“Well,” said he, “maybe that’s a way of puttin’ it. The way that it seems

to me, a whole lot of gents, they step into this here country, out here,

and they says to themselves that the country’s so big that they got a

right to pick out the parts of it that they want for themselves. So they

sashays in and they picks out what they want and they don’t pay nothin’

much for it, and they settles down onto it, and they says that because

they’re here, there ain’t any reason why they should ever have to budge.

Now, sir, some of us, we take a look around and we say that the pigs that

is the fattest might be the pigs that is the most profitable to drive to

market, if you foller what I mean?”

 

“Yeah, I sort of foller your drift,” answered Spot Gregory. “And so you

want to budge the old landholders?”

 

“You might say that!” remarked Champ Dixon. “What I mean is that here is

the Milmans set down on the land and gettin’ hog-fat, and how? What title

they got to this land, I ask you?”

 

“Why, I dunno that anybody has asked that question for a long time,” said

Gregory. “Everybody that I know has took it for granted that the Milmans

own the Milman land.”

 

“Yeah,” said Dixon. “They’s a lot of incurious folks in this neck of the

woods. But supposin’ that I ask you, how did the Milmans get this here

land. D’you know?”

 

“Why, they bought it from the Injuns.”

 

“And who sold it to them?”

 

“I dunno that I know that.”

 

“I’ll tell you. It was Little Crow, was his name. He was a tolerable

sizeable man, in his day, and a big war chief. And he had a pile of

scalps to his credit. He’s got a war suit all trimmed up with scalp

locks. He’s got more than one suit. If he goes on a Comanche trail, he

can put on a suit dressed up with Comanche hair. And if he tackles a

white war party, he’s got a suit tricked up with white folks’ hair. Some

tolerable long and golden hair, in the lot. And he’s a great fighter,

this here Little Crow. When it comes to the finish, it takes booze and

three whites to take the scalp of that infant, what I mean to tell you.

 

“Well, sir, along comes old Daddy Milman, before this here boy of his

ever see the light, and he reckons that he’ll take up land here. And he

picks up the spot that’ll suit him the best.

 

“And then he finds out that it’s Injun land. And he says, what Injun shall

he buy it from, him wantin’ to be all straight and honorable. And so he

picks on the big war chief and grand scalp-getter, Little Crow, that had

counted so many coups that he gets the arm ache every time that there

come along a grand feast and lyin’ party among the tribe.

 

“So he goes to Little Crow and he says, what do you want? And whatcha

think that Little Crow wants?”

 

“I dunno,” said Spot Gregory, “that I ever heard.”

 

“Most folks ain’t. But it’s been our business to find out. What he wants

is six rifles, all in prime shape, and a hundred rounds of ammunition for

each of ‘em, and two dozen hosses—because that’s about as high as he can

count—and one whole keg of thirty-six gallons of fire water.”

 

“That’s what he wanted for this ranch?”

 

“Aye,” said Champ Dixon, “and he thought that he was gettin’ a whale of a

big bargain, and that he could step in and run out the whites with the

guns that he had got from them whenever he had a mind. So he makes the

bargain, and old Milman, he counts out the goods, and he goes better than

his bargain, and he makes that set of rifles the finest that can be got,

and he chucks in an extra lot of ammunition, and he makes them hosses an

even thirty, and the best that money can get or ropes steal off the

range. And that fire water he makes, it’s the pure stuff, because he

don’t make it alcohol, prune juice, and water, but he makes it straight

alcohol, and on the night of that sale, and payment, they is three braves

that plumb die of joy, and a couple of squaws they change husbands, and

they is five sets of hair lifted inside of the next week or so, because

the whole bunch goes on the warpath. But anyway, the Injuns is happy, and

Milman is happy. He’s got a coupla million dollars’ worth of land, and

the Injuns, they has got one grand jag.

 

“After a while, they start in tryin’ to get paid over again.”

 

“Blackmail?” said Spot Gregory.

 

“You can call it that,” admitted the other. “Anyway, they try to collect

some more of that thousand proof fire water, but they find that in behind

old Milman there has sneaked another man, by name of Uncle Sam, and when

the Injuns climb onto their war ponies, old Uncle Sam, he hits out of the

dark, and pops ‘em in the nose and knocks ‘em off again. You foller

that?”

 

“I foller all of that,” said Spot Gregory, looking with the corner of his

eye at a tangle of fifty thirsting cows who were trying to rush to the

water, but in vain.

 

“Now along comes Billy Shay and me,” continued the narrator, “and we get

to lookin’ over the lay of the land, and we get to seein’ how much law

and order they is around here, and how good a claim a lot of these cattle

kings has