The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  “I nearly borrowed a pair of your father’s horses one evening,” said the Kid. “But there were too many barbed-wire fences. Mighty bad thing to use so much barbed wire around horses. You tell your dad that for me, will you?”

  He stepped back, replacing his hat upon the tangled, curly hair of his head. Georgia had nodded and smiled faintly, without embarrassment.

  “He admits what he is,” she said. “Don’t your hands simply itch to jam him into that jail, Lew?”

  “Yeah,” said the sheriff, “and they’d itch a lot more if I had a bigger life insurance.”

  The Kid, in the meantime, had stepped down from the veranda again, and, breaking two matches, slipped them into his spurs so that the golden bells were wedged and silenced.

  He talked to this curious and rather breathless crowd as he did this.

  “Anybody know if my friend Shay is at home?”

  “Yeah. He’s at home,” said one.

  “He likes a quiet step,” said the Kid, “because he says it’s a sign of culture. A cultured fellow, is Billy Shay, you know. So I mustn’t play bellwether when I go to call on him. I’ll see you-all later on.”

  He walked across the street and through the front gate of Shay’s house before the spectators realized, suddenly, what it was apt to mean.

  Georgia phrased it in one gasping sentence.

  “It’s the fear of the Kid that’s cornered Shay!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Battle Royal

  The same idea came suddenly home to all of the watchers, and there was a stir and a bustle on the hotel veranda. Newcomers were running from either side to get to this natural grand stand.

  “What about it, Lew?” asked Milman.

  “I only got one thing to say,” answered the sheriff dryly. “They both got only one life to give to their country, and they might as well do the giving today. Why, Milman, if you was to see a wasp and a hornet start a fight, which would you want to see win?”

  This seemed the attitude of nearly all the watchers. They looked on with a smiling content.

  “He don’t know that they’s half a dozen thugs in the house there with Shay,” said one.

  Georgia Milman grew excited.

  “Lew, that ought to be stopped!” she declared to the sheriff.

  “Because of the Kid’s blue eyes, honey?” asked the grim sheriff. “No, ma’am. I ain’t gunna stop it. If they was to blow the tar out of each other, it would simply save the State from lodgin’ and boardin’ ’em a good many years, or else usin’ up a good rope to break their necks with.”

  Every one grew silent now. For the Kid had come to the porch of Shay’s house, and was going swiftly up the steps. He went, not to the door, but to a window at one side.

  There he worked for an instant.

  It seemed to Georgia Milman that the windows of that house were so many eyes, peering out at the stranger with serpentlike content.

  “He’s read the mind of that latch already,” said the sheriff, for at that moment the Kid pushed the window up so softly that certainly no sound floated across to the people who waited and watched from the hotel.

  “What are they doin’ inside?” said some one.

  “When you got a trap set, don’t you wait for the critter to get inside before you spring it?” said another.

  The Kid did not hesitate. The moment that the window was open he slipped inside—and then closed the window behind him.

  They could see the glimmer of his raised hand and ann.

  “He’s latched it behind him!” gasped Georgia. “What possesses that madman?”

  “Why, honey,” said the sheriff, “he’s as happy right now as you would be when you stepped into a dance hall and all the boys popped their eyes at you, and the music started up and you figgered that you had all of the other girls in that hall stopped four ways for Sunday. The Kid is just spreadin’ his elbows at the board!”

  There was not a sound from the house. The Kid had disappeared. The sun poured strongly and steadily down upon the roofs and raised from them a thin stream—the last moisture of the winter. Down the street rushed a whirlwind, white with circling dust. It passed rapidly, but the crowd on the veranda stirred and shifted uneasily and peered through the passing veil, as though they dreaded lest it might shut them off from some sight of importance.

  But there was nothing to be seen. The house stood there, bald and open of face, with its windows black or bright in shadow or sun. The silence continued.

  Said a voice: “Aw, it’s a joke. Nothin’ ain’t gunna happen!” And a whisper answered: “Shut up, you fool!”

  For every one felt like whispering. The stillness in a church was noise, compared with this. Suspense drew every nerve taut. Georgia gripped the arm of her father; her face was cold, and by that she knew how pale she must be. Covertly she rubbed her cheeks and looked guiltily askance at the sheriff. He had prophesied that she would be interested in the Kid. She was ashamed even then of the depth of that interest.

  She kept saying to herself over and over again: “He’s just a bad one. He’s no good. Everybody knows that he’s no good!”

  But the words had little meaning. They seemed to be brushed away by the bright beauty of the Duck Hawk, as the lovely mare lifted her head and listened to some far-off sound. She, it seemed, loved and trusted her master. Therefore he could not be all bad.

  Then the silence of the Shay house was broken, and broken in no uncertain manner. Guns boomed hollowly and heavily within the walls, and a voice was heard screaming in pain, or fear, or both.

  “Thunderation!” said the sheriff.

  He burst through the crowd and started across the street, but Milman and two or three others grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “You said the right thing before,” said Milman. “It doesn’t matter what happens to the rats in that den. We’re not going to let you chuck a useful life away, Lew, old fellow.”

  “There’s murder being done in there!” shouted the sheriff. “You fools, leave go of me, I’m gunna—”

  “You’re gunna stay here and stand quiet,” said one of the men who held him. “If they’s a murder in yonder, it’ll be only a murderer that’s killed! And what’s the difference, as you was sayin’ before?”

  In spite of himself, the sheriff could not budge. He had to submit to the strong hands which restrained him.

  The uproar in the house of Shay continued. Vaguely they could follow it. It seemed to dip from the first floor to the cellar. Then it climbed again.

  Through the window by which the Kid had entered a man burst. Literally, he dived through.

  He struck the porch, rolled headlong across it, and picked himself up from the ground. His face was a red mask, as he had been badly cut by the glass through which he had burst. Apparently he was half-blinded, for he stretched his hands out before him as he started running, and when he carne to the side fence he collided heavily with it.

  The blow knocked him down. He got up, climbed the fence, and ran on, out of sight.

  “He’s had enough,” said the sheriff grimly. “That’s Lefty Bud Gray. He’s the one that killed Tucker and Langton on the Pecos. Governor Chalmers pardoned him—the fool!”

  A frightful crashing and dashing now came from the second floor of the house as though furniture were being hurled about. Georgia Milman suddenly regained her breath and her color.

  “Mother!” she whispered. “It’s like seeing the rabbits come out when a weasel has gone down into the warren!”

  Like rabbits, indeed!

  And they came in a frantic haste! For now a door crashed at the back of the house, and an unseen man rushed out, screeching at the top of his voice.

  The yells diminished as he turned a corner, but still they sounded, far off, floating like a wailing spirit in the air.

  “I never seen nothin’ like it!” said a puncher. “What’s he done? Dynamited that old shack?”

  Again the door at the back of the house slammed, and this time a doub
le footfall could be heard rattling down the board walk at the rear.

  The sounds of these fugitives diminished more quickly. “That’s four gone,” said some one.

  Silence came in the house of Shay.

  And then, low at first, but more distinctly as their ears grew attuned to it, they could hear the groaning of a badly hurt man.

  Mrs. Milman sagged suddenly on her daughter’s arm, but Georgia caught her close.

  “Steady, mother! Steady, dear!” said she. “It’s not the Kid—I think!”

  “That boy?” gasped Mrs. Milman. “Of course it’s not he, but what’s happening to the poor creatures in that house? That tiger—and those wretches who—”

  At the very top of the house there was another wild outburst of gunshots, a continuous peal of them. Then the distinct sound of a door being slammed, and the dormer window from which the signal had flashed not long before was cast open.

  Out at that opening slid the long, gaunt person of Billy Shay himself, and at this sight a whoop went up from the spectators across the street.

  Billy was in a frightful haste. He acted as though he would die if he did not reach the ground.

  He slid down the sharply shelving roof. There, at the eaves, he hung by his hands, swinging back and forth like a pendulum of a clock.

  “Lemme go!” shouted the sheriff. “I gotta get there and—”

  But still they held him helpless, for it seemed to all of those men a most foolish thing to risk such a life as the sheriff’s in order to enforce the law among the lawless.

  Billy Shay, twisting his legs in, got hold on a ledge below the eaves and climbed down like a great cat, reached the window beneath, and so down until he slid the length of one of the porch pillars.

  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?”