by Max Brand
Mrs. Milman shook her head.
“We’ll try, however,” she said grimly.
And, as they started for the next room, Georgia murmured to Bud Trainor. “I wish I’d been there to see it!”
“Aye,” sad Trainor. “It’s all right to look back on. But it wasn’t so slick going through it. I ain’t the same sort of steel that the Kid is made of. I was scared sick!”
She merely laughed.
“I know,” said she. “It’s a point of pride with you fellows to understate things. We’ll see what the sheriff says.”
In the front room, accordingly, they found Lew Walters and his deputy, who was a timid-looking young man, with a frightened eye and an apparent desire to squeeze himself through the wall and away from the presence of the two women. But they could guess that the sheriff would not have selected this youngster for dangerous business like this without a good cause. His big wrists and long fingers were suggestive of more strength than he showed otherwise.
Lew Walters met Trainor with a nod and a smile.
“How’s your ma and pa?” he asked. “And how’s yourself?”
“Everybody fair to middling,” admitted Bud. “I’m out here tryin’ to give a hand agin’ the Dixon crew, sheriff. Now, how come that the law is agin’ an honest man like Milman, and behind a crook like Dixon?”
The sheriff shrugged both shoulders and made a weary gesture with his hands.
“The law,” said he, “is somethin’ that I never been able to understand at all. No, sir, I can’t foller the workin’s of the law, young feller. All that I can do is to ride when the law tells me to ride, and to arrest what the law tells me to arrest. Heaven knows that I ain’t willin’ to side agin’ my old friend Milman, but the law tells me to arrest the Kid, and that’s why I’m here. Where is he, Bud?”
25. MIXED ANSWERS
AT THIS DIRECT appeal, Bud looked around him. On the wall, by way of decoration, there were some elk heads, badly mounted, and therefore coming to pieces before their time. And, on the floor, there was the enormous pelt of a grizzly bear which Indians had cured, and which was therefore in an excellent state of preservation. From these adornments, or from the old-fashioned Kentucky rifle and powderhorn across the door, Bud received no ideas.
At last he grinned and waved his hand all around the horizon.
“Oh, he’s out yonder,” said Bud.
The sheriff grinned in turn.
“And in there,” said Bud, “is one of Dixon’s men that jumped us and tried to run us down when we went up to see the creek and what was happening there.”
The sheriff got up from his chair.
“One of Dixon’s men? How come he’s here?”
“The Kid nudged him off of his hoss with a bullet. Chip Graham is his name.”
“Hah!” exclaimed the sheriff. “That wo’thless Chip Graham? I’ve had room in my jail waitin’ for him since—”
He clapped a hand over his mouth.
“I’m gettin’ old, John,” he said to Milman. “My tongue, it takes charge, and is always runnin’ me downhill. Well, the Kid knocked Chip off of his boss, did he? Off of the Silver King, d’you mean?”
“Aye.”
“And then you took the hoss, I reckon?”
“Aye, to get away from the crowd that was follerin’ us.”
“Humph!” said the sheriff. “Now, to be honest, Bud, wasn’t that crowd follerin’ you because you had grabbed the hoss first?”
“Hey,” exclaimed Bud Trainor. “Are you tryin’ to make me into a hoss thief?”
“I’m not tryin’ to make you into nothin’. All I know is that if the Kid was to see the Silver King, it’d wring his heart plumb to the backbone to let it get away from him before he’d give it a try under the saddle.”
“I tell you—” exclaimed Bud Trainor.
“Never you mind your telling, Bud. Don’t you go and talk yourself into jail, which is something that a lot of folks is fond of doin’. You say that the Dixon bunch tackled you and the Kid. You, maybe; but folks around these parts don’t go tacklin’ the Kid offhand, just for fun. Not by a long shot, they don’t.”
“We’d gone down and told them what side we were on,” said Bud, growing hot and angry. “They just wanted to bag us and—”
“Here, here, Bud,” answered the sheriff. “I want to be fair to everybody, but this here sounds kind of fishy. Who’s your witnesses?”
“Why, the Kid, of course!” said Bud.
The sheriff grinned.
“All right,” said he. “You bring the Kid in and I’ll hear what he’s got to say!”
Mrs. Milman exclaimed: “Aren’t you taking sides unfairly, now, Sheriff Walters? You’re willing to believe the Shay and Dixon crowd when they ask you to make an arrest; but you won’t listen to our side of it?”
The sheriff smiled upon her almost tenderly.
“Mrs. Milman, ma’am,” said he, “I wanta tell you that there ain’t a man in the world that I respect no more than I respect John, here. And there ain’t a lady that I’d rather please than you. But here I’ve got a warrant swore out all straight and proper for the arrest of the Kid, alias a lot of other names — but who the Kid is I know. I ain’t sayin’ that Shay and Dixon is my friends, or that I think much of ’em. But I know that the Kid busted into Shay’s house. It may be that he didn’t fire no shots. He was just havin’ a little picnic of his own. It was his idea of a good time and a sort of a joke! On the other hand, you want me to believe the Kid. Well, the Kid for what I know of him is the slipperiest, hell-raisin’est youngster in the West. Here’s Bud Trainor talkin’, you say. But after a look at Bud, I know what’s happened. He’s found him a hero, and the Kid is that man. He’d go and jump off a cliff, if the Kid told him to. Wouldn’t you, Bud?”
“You don’t want to believe me,” said Bud, “and I suppose that you don’t have to! Maybe you could get the truth out of Chip, if you was to half try!”
“All right,” said the sheriff. “That’s another young gent that I know about, and you’ll see how much he’ll say!”
They all went into the room where poor Graham lay, patiently studying the ax work which had shaped the rafters that held up the ceiling of the room.
“Hello, Chip,” said the sheriff.
“Why, hello, Walters,” said the boy.
“Sorry to see you laid out like this,” said the sheriff.
“Aw, I been needin’ a rest,” said Chip.
“I hear as how the Kid got the drop on you,” said the sheriff. “The Kid?”
“Aye. Wasn’t it him?”
“You mean that give me this in the shoulder?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I’ll tell you what, sheriff,” said the boy calmly, “I dunno who’s been tellin’ you that kind of bunk. But the way it happened was that I was cleanin’ an old gun of mine—”
“Oh, I see,” said the sheriff. “Just cleanin’ an old gun, and it went off in your hands, eh?”
“Yes,” said Chip, looking him in the eye.
“Why, I saw the Kid shoot you off your hoss!” exclaimed Trainor.
Graham stared calmly at him.
“It’s been a tolerable hot day,” said he. “Maybe you got your brain touched up with the sun, eh?”
“That gun exploded as close as that, and didn’t leave no powder burns?” went on the sheriff, smiling faintly.
“Nary a one,” said Chip, unmoved.
“Well,” said Lew Walters, “I hope that you get well right quick — and then I reckon that you’ll kick the handles right off of that old gun, Chip?”
“I reckon I will,” said Chip.
They went back into the front room.
“You see how it is,” said the sheriff. “He’s not going to give the law a grip on the Kid. He wants the Kid free, so that he can handle him, when he gets back on his feet. Georgia, did you hear — where’s Georgia?”
But Georgia was not there.
Mrs. Milman, with a fa
int exclamation, ran out of the room and called as she went, but no Georgia answered.
She went on, and hurrying out the kitchen door, she looked toward the hitching rack, where the Silver King had been standing.
He was no longer there, and Mrs. Milman suddenly clutched her breast with both hands. She looked, at that moment, as though she had lost something far more precious than all of the big Milman ranch and all of the cattle that grazed upon its grasses.
26. PAST HISTORY
GEORGIA, IN FACT, had not waited to hear the end of the conversation.
Very shortly after Trainor attempted to argue with the sheriff, she could tell how matters were apt to drift, and the moment she was sure of that, she had left the house. The Silver King, standing high-headed at the rack, was too much of a temptation to be resisted. So she quickly shortened the stirrups and mounted.
After that, she scanned the rolling ground around the house.
Here and there were clumps of trees, bunches of high shrubbery, and even nests of rocks which would hide a man and a horse without any trouble. But she judged that the most likely place would be the larger growth of the woods to the north of the house, and toward them she rode.
In a moment she was passing under the drift of the brown shadows, sometimes in the blinding brightness of a patch of sunshine, and again in the thicker shadows where the trees grew high and dense.
Crossing a small opening in the forest, a blue jay screeched suddenly overhead in such a discordant note that she reined in the King sharply and Iooked up.
“A good day for lazying in the shade,” said a voice behind her.
She jerked about in the saddle, and there was the Kid, sitting on a fallen log and whittling at a stick with a long, bright-bladed knife.
How had he come there?
It could not be that she had ridden straight past him! And yet he was so thoroughly covered by the shadows that the thing seemed possible. The beautiful head of the Hawk appeared dimly behind some small branches near her master.
“How did you get here?” she asked.
For was it not possible that he had been trailing her, the mare moving with catlike softness, and he had dismounted, even now, for the mere sake of surprising her?
“Ah, I just dropped in,” said the Kid, rising to greet her. “How’s things?”
She turned the King and faced him.
He was smiling a little, and he had raised his hat high, and then settled it slowly back on his head He had the air of one who knows how to talk easily to women. That air, and his smile, troubled her a little; yet she felt that it was a foolish emotion.
“Things are pretty bad,” said the girl. “I’ve heard a little about what you did with the Dixon crowd, though. And over at the house is the sheriff and a deputy, waiting for you.”
“Let them wait and rest,” answered the Kid. “It’s a sort of a sad thing. when you come to think of it, that a man at the sheriff’s age should have to be riding, riding, riding all the time. Let him rest in the cool of the house for a while — and I’ll rest out here Why does he want me?”
He canted his head just a trifle to the side, and waited.
“He wants you for breaking into the Shay house, and for attempted murder—”
“In the Shay house?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t fire a shot in there. It was the crowd already there that made the noise like a Fourth of July.”
“What made you go in there?” asked the girl.
“Oh, I wanted to see Shay.”
“You wanted to scare him, you mean.”
“You think so? Well, if his nerves got a little jumpy, I wouldn’t be sorry, as a matter of fact.”
He added: “Is it only about the Shay business that he wants me?”
“That’s all. What else would there be?”
“You never can tell,” said the Kid, smiling again in that odd way which troubled her. “People sometimes rig up all sorts of foolish grudges, you understand.”
“They persecute you, Kid, do they?”
“A lot,” said he.
She laughed, and the Kid laughed with her.
“Sit down and rest your horse,” said the Kid.
She hesitated, then slipped suddenly out of the saddle. But she did not sit down. With the reins over her arms, and the riding quirt tapping against her boots, she confronted him. She felt much smaller, now, as she stood upon the ground, facing him.
“You act a little nervous yourself,” said the Kid.
“I am nervous,” she answered.
“And why?”
“Look here,” said she, “are you pretending that I ought to take you as if you were just — anybody?”
“No. Take me as if I were just the Kid.”
“I don’t want to call you that. What other name can I give you?”
“Reginald Beckwith-Holman is my real name,” said he. “Beckwith-Hollis you told my mother.”
“Did I? Matter of fact, I have a hard time remembering names.”
“It must be hard — having so many,” she observed. They waited through a pause.
“I wanted to ask you a question,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“About what you will do now.”
“I don’t know. Dixon and his crew have dug themselves in. They have a regular fort down there at Hurry Creek.”
“I know that they have. And there’s nothing that can be done about them. They have the law on their side — until the case is tried!”
“Does the sheriff admit that?”
“Yes, he admits that. Poor Lew Walters! He wants to help us, but his hands are tied!”
“Of course they are,” said the Kid.
“And you’re in danger from the sheriff, if you stay near here.”
“I’ll stay, I think,” said the Kid. “Walters is only joking. We’ve known each other such a long time, I don’t think that he’d do me any harm.”
“He’d shoot you down in a second!” she exclaimed. “You know it, too!”
“Good old Walters,” said the Kid gently, and shifted the subject by saying: “Did you come out to send me away?”
“What right have Ito send you away?” asked the girl. “Whatever hope we have is in you!”
“You do have a hope, eh?” said the Kid. “Thanks. That makes me feel a little better.”
“I wish that you’d come out in the open,” said the girl. “What really makes you take such wild chances as you took today? It’s as if you despised life!”
“Not a bit,” said he, “but I like life with a little seasoning in it. You can understand how that might be?”
She nodded.
Suddenly she had to pinch her lips together to keep from smiling.
“What’s the real reason?” she asked him. “Only the adventure? Or mostly because you hate Dixon and all his crowd?”
“It’s the cattle,” said the Kid with a sudden gravity. She shook her head.
“You don’t believe that?” he asked her. “Hardly!”
“Well, I’ll tell you. When I was a little youngster, my father and mother started to move. We were poor people. Dirt poor. We had a few head of horses, and some cows, and a few head of beef. The land where we were living—”
“Was it out here in the West?”
“Well, it was not East,” he answered evasively, frowning a little.
The girl flushed and bit her lip. “Do go on,” said she.
“We moved off the old land — there was nothing but a small shack on it — and then we started across the hills for a sort of promised land about which we’d heard a lot. We plugged along at a good rate. There was no hurry. We wanted to have our cattle in good condition when we came to the badlands, where we’d heard that the grass had been burned out, and that it was very hard to push through. So we slogged along very slowly, and enjoyed being on the road. Our first bad luck was a real smasher. Half a dozen rustlers came down on us one evening, and scooped up everything that we had in t
he way livestock, except for the two milk cows. They took the horses, the mule, the burro, even; and the steers.”
“The scoundrels!” said the girl. “The contemptible scoundrels! Did you ever learn who they were?”
“There were five of them,” said the Kid dreamily, as though he were looking across the years and seeing that evening closely again. “Yes, I learned all of their names. A tough bunch. Very tough. I learned all of their names, however.”
“How? But go on! What did you do, then?”
“My father was a hard man,” said the Kid. “He’d lived a hard life. He had the pain of work in his eyes, if you know what I mean,”
“Yes,” she answered. “Of course I know.”
“He’d been a farmer. And a scholar! But a farmer — frosty mornings, chilblains at nights, freezing behind the plow, roasting in the hayfield. He worked like a dog.
“Well, when we lost our stock, we were on the edge of the desert. My mother begged him to turn back, but he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t go back to the old life. He lightened the wagon of everything that we didn’t absolutely need, and then he yoked up those two milk cows — and we went ahead!”
“Great heavens!” said the girl. “Across the desert? With cows!”
He paused. His face, losing its characteristic smile, became like iron.
“My mother was a very young woman to have had a boy of six. She was a jolly sort. She was straight, and had a good, sun-browned skin and her eyes were always laughing. Like a dog that loves all the people all around him. You know?”
She nodded She felt a breathless interest.
“She was rather tall,” said the Kid, looking straight and hard at the girl. “She had blue eyes. They sparkled like sea water under the sun.”
The straightness of his glance took her breath. She herself was tall, her skin was brown, and she knew she had dark-blue eyes. Her mirror told her that there was life in them!