The Max Brand Megapack (427 page)

He did not wait to look about him.

He fled across his barren garden with such speed that his long hair streamed out behind his head, and, reaching the fence at which the first man had had his fall, Billy Shay took it in his stride like a good hurdler, and twisted out of sight down the path beyond.

Once more silence fell upon the house of Shay, except for the dreadful groaning of the man on the first floor, as it seemed. A groan for every breath!

Then some one began to whistle, there in the attic of the place. The whistling grew dim, but still was distinguishable. It passed from the attic down to the second floor, and so down to the first.

There it stopped, and the groaning stopped, also.

“He’s killed that poor devil,” someone said between clenched teeth.

Georgia felt herself growing faint.

But now the front door of the house was opened, and out upon the porch stepped the Kid!

He stood there, teetering idly back and forth from heel to toe, while he made and lighted a cigarette, and then, smoking, he sauntered leisurely up the path.

At the gate he paused to remove the wedges from the bells at his heels, and as he crossed the street they clinked merrily in tune with every step he took making his way to the mare.

He gathered the reins.

“Billy had to go out, and couldn’t wait for me, boys,” said he. “Matter of fact, there was nobody home.”

He swung into the saddle and added: “Except Three-card Alec. He was so glad to see me that he slipped coming down the stairs, and I’m mighty afraid that he’s broken his leg. Any friend of his here to give poor Alec a hand?”

CHAPTER 4

Davey Rides

Out of the town, as he had come into it, the Kid rode most leisurely. No one halted him; and only Tommy Malone asked him to have a drink.

He refused the drink, with apologies for the demands upon his time which made it impossible for him to linger, no matter how he wished to. But when he got farther down the street, a little freckle-faced boy of nine ran out into the street and shouted at him in a voice as thin and squeaking as the sound of a finger nail on a pane of glass. It was little Dave Trainor, “Chuck” Trainor’s boy. Some of the neighboring women heard and saw what followed.

They watched, breathless. It was known that Trainor had made a lot of money in the mines recently, and it was more than possible that the terrible wild man, the Kid, might kidnap this child and hold him for ransom.

Old Betty Worth, who had fought Indians in her day, went so far as to get the old-fashioned Kentucky rifle, loaded with a bullet which contained an ounce of lead. This she rested on the corner of a window sill, and looking out through the branches of the honey-suckle vine, drew her bead and looked at the very heart of the Kid. At the first move he made, Betty was determined to shoot him dead. And she probably could have done it, for, even without a rest, she was known to have shot a squirrel out of a treetop only the year before.

The scene between the Kid and freckled young Dave Trainor progressed somewhat as follows:

“Hey!” yelled Davey.

“Hey!” yelled the Kid in return.

“Hello!” shouted Davey, waving.

“Hello!” shouted the Kid.

“Hey, wait a minute, will you?” said Davey.

“Sure I will,” said the Kid.

He turned in the saddle. The mare, unguided, as it seemed, walked straight up to Davey and paused before him.

“Say, how did you make her do that?” asked Davey. “Why, she reads my mind, most of the time,” said the Kid. “Golly!” said Davey; then added briskly: “Not that I believe you a dog-gone bit!”

“That’s a mighty big word that you’re saying,” said the Kid. “Yeah?” said dangerous Davey. “It’s what I say, though. Are you the Kid?”

“That’s what my friends call me,” said the Kid.

“What’s your real name?” demanded Davey.

How many a sheriff, deputy, editor, and hungry reporter in that wide and fair land would have been glad of an answer to that question.

“My real name depends on where I am,” said the Kid. “You take one single, solitary name, it’s hardly enough to spread over a lot of country the way that I live and travel.”

“Why ain’t it?” asked Davey, doubtful, but willing to be convinced.

“Well, south of the river the Mexicans like to hear a man called by a Spanish-sounding name.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like Pedro Gonzales, say.”

“Golly,” said Davey, “anybody what called you a greaser name like that, you’d about eat them, I reckon!”

“Oh, no,” said the Kid. “I hate trouble. That’s why I change my name so much.”

“Say why ag’in?”

“Why, to be a Spaniard with the Spanish, and a Mexican with the Mexicans. They used to call me Louis, up in Canada, when I was among the French Canadians.”

“Didn’t you punch them in the nose?” asked Davey candidly. “Of course not. I was glad to have them take me in like that.”

“What else are you called?” asked Davey.

“Oh, I’ve been called Johnson in Minnesota, and Taliaferro in Virginia, and a lot of other things. These States in our country are so big, old son, that a fellow has to have a lot of different names. What are you called, son?”

“Well, I’m like you,” said Davey. “It depends on where I am. Over to the south side of town they just call me Red. I licked two of ’em last week for callin’ me that, but still they call me Red. I don’t care. I can stand it, I guess.”

“I guess you can,” said the Kid. “What’s a name or two, anyway?”

“That’s just the way that I look at it,” said Davey. “I don’t mind, and I get a chance to punch their heads once in a while. Down on the creek, all of the Banks boys—they got a great big place there, with the whangin’est swing that you ever see—they call me Freckles. When I ain’t got a spot on my face compared to Turkey-egg Banks.”

“Freckles is a good outstanding name,” said the Kid.

“D’you think so? Well, they call me that, anyway, and they’re all too big for me to lick.”

“Are they? Maybe you’ll grow to that, though.”

“Yeah, maybe I will, but a Banks, he takes a pile of licking.”

“Any other names?”

“Well, around here, they call me Slippy, account of me being hard to catch at tag. They’s a lot that can run faster, but I get through their fingers, somehow.”

“Slippy is a good name, too. I never heard a better flock of names than you carry, partner. Any more?”

“They call me Davey, during the school term, a lot of ’em.”

“Yeah. That’s a good name, too. Any others?”

“Pa calls me Snoops—I dunno why. There don’t seem to be much meaning to it. Ma calls me David when she’s feelin’ good, and David Trainor when I ain’t brought in the wood, or wore my rubbers on rainy days, or things like that.”

“Well, Davey Trainor,” said the Kid, “I’m mighty glad to meet you, sir.”

“The same goes by me,” said Davey.

He reached up and shook hands.

“Is it straight talk,” said Davey, “that you can do all of them things?”

“What things?” asked the Kid.

“I mean, that you can shoot a sparrow right out of the air? There’s one now up there on that telephone wire! And I suppose that you got a gun with you?”

The Kid looked at the sparrow, shook his head, and then snatched out the revolver. As it exploded, the sparrow flirted off the wire and dipped into the air, leaving a few little, translucent feathers which fluttered slowly down to the earth—slowly, since they were not much heavier than the air through which they fell.

The Kid put up the heavy Colt revolver with a single flashing movement.

“You see, that’s one thing that I can’t do,” said he.

“Golly, but you knocked feathers out of it, and you didn’t take no sight nor nothin’.”

“That was only a lucky shot,” said the Kid. “Don’t you pay any attention to people who talk about shooting sparrows at any sort of a good distance, Davey.”

“What happened to the gun?”

“Why it went back home, where it lives.”

Davey laughed.

“You’re mighty slick, all right,” said he. “Can the mare do everything, too?”

“Like what?”

“Come when she’s called?”

“Yes.”

“Walk on her hind legs?”

“Yes.”

“Open a barn door?”

“Yes, if it’s only to lift the latch and give a pull.”

“Lie down when you tell her to?”

“Yes.”

“Sit down, too?”

“Yes.”

“Kneel for you to get on?”

“Yes.”

“Golly,” said the boy, “that’s an awful lot. I can’t hardly think of no more things for a hoss to do. What else can she do?”

“Oh, she can do a lot of things besides. She has brains, son. She thinks for herself right along, and she does a lot of thinking for me, too.”

“Like what, Kid?”

“Why, like telling me if we’re crossing a bad bridge.”

“Can she tell that?”

“Yes, she can smell that. She’s got a nose like a wolf. And I can sleep out, with her for company as safely as though I had the sense of a wolf myself. She reads everything that crosses her wind.”

“My golly, my golly,” said Davey Trainor, almost bitterly, “it must make you pretty tired to have to spend time with most folks, whan you got a hoss like that to be with.”

“Yes,” said the Kid soberly, “most people make me pretty tired, unless they have plenty of names.”

“You wouldn’t want to do something for me?”

“Why not? You’ve got about as many names as I have.”

“Well, would you let me see her do something?”

“Of course I will. You tell me what.”

“Well, make her stand up on her hind legs.”

Davey could not hear or see a command or a sign, but the mare presently heaved up, her forehoofs flipping close to Davey’s face.

Down rocked the mare again.

“Golly!” said Davey. “What else can she do? She’s wonderful, ain’t she? Could I touch her?”

“I’ll ask her,” said the Kid with gravity.

He leaned and murmured, or appeared to murmur, in the ear of the Duck Hawk, at which she reached out with a sudden snaky movement and plucked Davey by the ragged forelock, sun-faded to the color of burned grass.

“Hold on!” said the rider, keeping his eye fast on the boy’s face. And Davey had not altered a trifle in color. He merely set his teeth and then grinned.

“Would you like to ride her?” asked the Kid suddenly.

“Why? But nobody but you has ever been on her back!” cried out Davey.

“You’re there now,” said the Kid.

He whispered something in the ear of the mare and rubbed her muzzle. And then young Davey rode the terrible fleet mare of the Kid across the road. She slid over the fence, unexpectedly, but as smooth as running water, and turning in the field beyond, she floated back across the fence again and halted beside her master.

“Now you know what she’s like,” said the Kid.

“Golly,” said the boy, “now I know what heaven’s like.”

CHAPTER 5

Three-card Stumbles

The watching population of Dry Creek had moved across the street to the house of Billy Shay.

It was not merely an interest in the welfare of the wounded man who had been groaning inside the place, but rather an inescapable curiosity to be on the site of the Kid’s latest exploits. They were anxious to pick up first-hand details with which to furnish the stories which each and all of them would one day find an opportunity of telling to strangers.

In the Far West there is one thing which is more fabulously valuable then gold, even. And that is a story, whether it be truth or good, true-sounding fiction. Stories in the West are of two varieties. The first is the openly and the humorously exaggerated. These are not greatly considered except when they are really funny. But the staple Western story is one which clings so closely to the truth throughout most of its telling, that the embroidering of the main truth with fancy in the vital point of the tale will be overlooked by the listener. If only one shot is fired, there is no good reason why two Indians, Mexicans, or thugs should not be in line with its flight; but the narrator is sure to express astonishment before he tries to arouse yours, and he will carefully explain, with a false science, just how the odd position came about. There is the story-teller who never speaks in his own person, too. All of his stories begin, end, and are supported in the middle by “they say.” “They” of “they say” is a strange creature. It has the flight of a falcon and the silent wings of a bat; it speaks the language of the birds and bees; it can follow the snake down the deepest hole, and then glide like a magic ray through a thousand feet of solid rock; it can penetrate invisibly into houses through the thickest walls, in order to see strange crimes; it can step through the walls of the most secretive mind in order to read strange thoughts. “They” has the speed of lightning, and leaps here and there to pick up grains of information, like a chicken picking up worms in a newly turned garden; “they” throws a girdle around the world in a fortieth of Puck’s boasted time. Those who quote “they,” who quote and follow and mystically adore and believe in “they,” sometimes do so with awe-stricken whispers, but there are some who sneer at their authority, and shrug their shoulders at the very stories they relate. Such people, when questioned, yawn and shake their heads.

“I dunno. That’s what ‘they’ say.”

You can take your choice. Believe it or not. Most people choose to believe, and therefore the rare information of “they,” thrice, yes, and thirty times watered and removed, is repeated over and over until it becomes a mist as tall as the moon and as thin as star dust.

There were gossips of every school in the crowd that poured into Shay’s house. The moment that they drew open the front door, they found a scene which was interesting enough to charm them all.

The furniture which first had been piled against the door to secure this point against the entrance of the Kid, was now cast helter-skelter back against the walls. Much of it was broken. The legs of chairs seemed knocking together, or else they bowed perilously out. And one chair, as if it had taken wings, had become entangled in the good, strong chains which suspended the hall lamp near the door. For this was a very pretentious house.