by Max Brand
When he passed the big woodpile, where the accumulated brush had been heaped, he was able to stand up and go more freely, for the shadow which it cast concealed him well enough.
So he came to the kitchen tent.
Outside of it was the well-built fireplace over which Bolony Joe gloomily performed his duties. The Kid gave a rather friendly glance at the dimly glimmering embers of that fire. Then he passed into the tent.
He was amazed by what he found within it.
Certainly Billy Shay and Dixon, in equipping this expedition, had not spared expense. They knew that high wages are the first requisite to keep men happy; and right after money comes food. There were rows of tins and heaps of boxed goods. There was a thin odor of hams and bacons, the rankness of onions; the peculiar, earthy smell of potatoes. A pang of hunger struck the Kid. It was so keen that he shook his head and smiled at himself.
From the last of the cook’s fire, he gained enough light to see a good deal of the interior.
Yes, every provision had been made. There was even an oil stove, in case there should be some interruption of supply of wood for the fire. To feed the oil stove, there were two ponderous tins of kerosene. And the clutches of the Kid were instantly upon them.
He had unscrewed the top of the first and begun to pour its contents over the boxes, when a sharp rattling of rifle shots to the east of Hurry Creek halted him.
He went to the door of the tent to watch and listen.
It might be that Milman had gone around by the distant road to the far eastern side of the creek, and from that quarter, was about to deliver a suprise attack with a rush.
If that were the case. Heaven help him and his men. They never could deal with these practiced ruffians!
The whole camp was instantly in an uproar, as the shots resounded. But the uproar did not last long. There were only a few shouts to make sure that every man had turned out for the alarm. And then came the bustle of quick, sure preparation. These men knew their posts and went instantly toward them.
Bad fortune was reasonably sure to come to all who tried to rush that fortified camp with those repeating rifles in sure hands! The Kid, gritting his teeth and grinning in impatient anger, waited there at the door of the kitchen tent, and gripped the handles of his Colt.
If the attack really were pressed home, he would have to strike in order to help Milman’s forces. He would have to strike, and then die like a rat in a trap.
A fine ending, indeed!
However, the rattling of the rifle shots suddenly ended, and then a voice was calling from the eastern fence of barbed wire.
Some one called for a lantern. There were shouts back and forth, but the Kid thought that these calls were signs of rejoicing, rather than of mere battle excitement.
The lantern was brought, on the run, setting the camp aswing with gigantic, grotesque shadows. Then back came the light, and a group of men with it. In the center of that group, the Kid saw a limping form—a tall, spare man.
It was Billy Shay!
Even from a distance the first hint of the long, white face was enough to make him guess the identity of the newcomer. He was being surrounded by rejoicing cohorts.
“I couldn’t get through with nothing, boys,” said he. “All I could bring you was myself, and I had a hard job of that. They shot my hoss from underneath me!”
“We got you, Billy, and that’s good enough for us,” said Boone Tucker. “We’d rather have your long bead around here than ten extra men, if it comes to a show-down of any kind.”
“I wanted to be in here with you boys,” said Billy Shay genially. “I didn’t want somebody else to be running into the danger for me. I wanted to be in the same pot and stew with the rest of you.”
“Yeah,” said Tucker, “You’re all right, Billy. None of the boys will ever forget this!”
“You got the right nerve, Billy.”
There was a chorus of appreciation.
In fact, the Kid was astonished by the risks which the gambler must have taken in order to get there. It was not like Billy Shay to run unnecessary risks, though he was known as a savage fighter in a pinch.
“How did you get through, Shay?”
“Why, I had a hard job. They’re watching the gap on both sides of the creek as though it were a bank. Then there were the cows between the Milman riders and the fence. Those cows were kind of shifting around, though. Pretty soon there was a gap opened up through them and I made a dive for it straight for the fence. A couple of the Milman punchers seen me and opened up. They can shoot, too, that crew. Even by night. Starlight is good enough for those gents.”
“They nick you, Billy?”
“No, not me, I guess. But they nicked the hoss. I almost got to the fence when I felt him sag one step, and the next step he went down. The sagging, it gave me a hint of what was likely to come, and I was riding loose and light, ready for a tumble. I guess I went a hundred feet, when he flopped. But I come up, all right. I was just a little dizzy from the whang as I first hit the ground.”
“You’ve got your coat about tore off.”
“Well, I’m here, and that’s the main thing.”
“Yeah, that’s the main thing. How’s everything in Dry Creek?”
“They’re still talkin’ about the Kid and what a fool he made of me,” said Shay, with astonishing frankness. “They dunno that the game ain’t ended.”
“Nope. It ain’t ended yet. That’s true, Billy!”
“When I heard that the Kid was out here with Milman, I decided that I’d better come out myself and get into the business. See the Kid?”
“Yeah. He come down with Bud Trainor. We tried to catch the two of them, when they wouldn’t join. But they got away, and they took off Chip Graham and the Silver King.”
“The heck they did!”
“The heck they didn’t. The Kid flipped Chip with a long distance shot. I seen the shooting. You wouldn’t’ve believed!”
“The Kid,” said Shay, “is gonna come to the end of his rope and bust his neck, pretty quick. Is this here the cook tent?”
“Yeah. You want some chow?”
“Is Bolony around?”
“He’s turned in, and the shootin’ didn’t turn him out.”
“Yeah, he’s ornery. But I’ll get along without chuck. I’ll just take a look inside of the tent, though, and see how things look.”
CHAPTER 37
One Match
The kid, when he heard this, looked desperately around the little tent, but he could think of nothing that would enable him to hide himself. He could only lie down on his face beside the row of boxes to the left of the entrance to the tent.
There he waited, gun in hand. If Shay looked down at him, it would be Shay’s last look in this world, to be sure, but it would also be almost the last moment in the life of the Kid.
Then, though there was no sound, he felt, like a mental shadow, that some one had leaned into the tent.
“Why, there looks to be a lot of stuff in here,” said Billy Shay. “Hand me a light, somebody.”
“Where’s that lantern?” said another. “Hey, Sam, bring the lantern back here, will you?”
“Does he feed you well?” asked Shay.
“Sure. There ain’t a better camp cook than Bolony Joe. Outside of his disposition, I mean, but cooks can’t help bein’ that way.”
The light of the lantern flickered closer to the entrance of the tent.
“Well,” said Shay, “if you boys are being treated right in the grub line, I won’t bother to look over Joe’s stores. He most generally has the right kind of a layout.”
The figure withdrew from the tent entrance, and the crowd moved off toward the camp fire again.
And the Kid waited for the thundering of his heart to quiet again.
At last, he resumed his work, methodically, where he had left off. The stores inside that tent were thoroughly drenched with kerosene, and still only one can was used.
The next can, he opened,
and carrying it around the side of the tent, he laid it on its side. At once the slim, silver tide flowed out, with a soft gurgling, in the direction of the big woodpile. On the other side of this, again, the fire had been built high, and the flames were wagging their heads wildly above the pile, above the wagon tops, so that an uncertain light began to flicker all over the near vicinity.
The Kid, when he saw that the oil was actually flowing on under the pile of wood, went back to the cooking tent and cast a fina! glance around him.
Between him and the eastern fence the horses were grazing, hobbled. They were in a close group, and the Kid, looking them over, could guess their quality by the length of their legs, if in no other way. They had not the roached backs and the stubby underpinnings of the usual mustang. No, such men as these whom Shay and Dixon had gathered were more likely to be mounted upon hot-blooded horses of price.
And a new thought came to him, wilder and more impracticable than the one which already had entered his mind. But suddenly he thought of all these men reduced to their own feet for Iocomotion. They would be like fish out of water—a hungry crew without means of attack or of retreat!
Like all men who rode through that country and sometimes wished to take short cuts across the open, he carried wire cutters with him. He went with them now straight to the nearest section of the fence. The guards who walked up and down, on that side, were not in motion just now. They were bunched, instead, at the place closest to the camp fire, so that they could overlook the celebration which, in a mild way, followed the arrival of Billy Shay.
So the Kid cut the wires. It was a thing that had to be done with care. For the wires were stretched tight, and were sure to spring back with a twang as loud as a bowstring if they were severed carelessly. Therefore the Kid first balled a handkerchief inside his hand and with this as a defense, gripped the top wire and gave it a strong pull. Then he used the pliers, cautiously, and made the snipping sound as faint as possible. The loosened wire, jumping hard against the pull of his arm, he held securely, and then coiled it back at the foot of the left-hand post. The second and third he severed in the same manner.
And here was the gap in the inside line of the Dixon fortifications!
Before it the cows wandered, their eyes lighted by the tossing and falling flames from the fire. They went slowly, hopelessly. Not far away he saw a group of several lying down, their heads dropped low. They might be dead, for al! he knew. Surging against this obstacle, stumbling and sometimes falling upon the prostrate forms, the main currents of the thirst-tormented beasts were moving.
He noted this and then, with a glance to the left, saw that two of the guards had resumed their beat and were coming rapidly toward him. The Kid melted back among the grazing horses.
He ground his teeth at the thought that there would not be time for the last maneuver which he had conceived. If only those guards had kept near the fire for a few more minutes.
But they came on, talking to one another. They reached the gap which he had cut in the fence—and they walked straight past it!
They, as well as the cows, seemed to take it for granted that nothing could be wrong with this fence, so lately strung! And the Kid fell instantly to work.
His knife was in his hand, and moving among the horses, he made that sound, half-humming and half-hissing, which seems to attract the attention and soothe the nerves of horses more than any other noise in the world. With one hand extended to touch them gently on hip, on neck, and on shoulder; the other hand bearing the knife went down, and one touch was enough, for the blade was as sharp as a razor edge. One by one, he carefully parted those bonds, until, at last, there was a free band of horses.
And now he was ready for the last work; the last touch. If he succeeded, it would be a feat which even the wild West would not soon forget, and it would wreck the proud hopes of high robbery which were now filling the brains of Dixon and Shay.
He went hastily back to the cooking tent. He did not stay there long, for he was in great haste. He must act before the horses had begun to scatter and attract attention. He merely scratched a match and tossed it, flaming into the interior of the cook tent.
An explosion followed, a muffled sound like the clapping together of two enormous pillows.
The tent lifted half a dozen feet, ripping away from its fastening ropes, as a puff of bluish flame accompanied the explosion.
This flame died down to a fierce weltering, which ran along the ground and instantly, reaching the spot where the oil had run under the big woodpile, converted that heap into a tower of shooting fire.
All of this happened in the first second. The Kid observed it on the run, for he had headed straight back toward the nearest flank of the horses.
They, astounded by the first explosion and the shooting fireworks, hesitated an instant in a blind terror before they fled. And still they were not under way when the Kid, like a panther, leaped upon the nearest back.
The firmness of the barrel under the grip of his knees, and the length of the animal’s neck told him instantly that he had made a wise selection. He whirled his hands above his head and gave an Indian yell. To the eyes of the horses, it was as though a second explosion had occurred in their very midst and had dropped a man on the back of the tall gray gelding. And this, in turn, plunged forward, and reared against the body of the animal which blocked its flight.
And, to spur them forward, from the men at the camp fire, amazed by this sudden disturbance, there went up first a wild shrieking of fear and bewilderment, and then a howling of rage.
That uproar frightened the half-maddened horses still more. And those nearest to the fence at this moment found the gap which the Kid had cut. And through it they went like wildfire!
They found their own free way through the herd of cattle like hawks through a flock of crows.
The thing was done. Dixon and Shay and all their men, without a single horse to back, without food of any kind, without even oil or wood for a fire, now had the tables turned upon them and were held in the hollow of Milman’s hand.
So the Kid saw it, and so it seemed to be. And still, as he waved his arms to steer the horses in front of him through the gap, he shrieked and yelled like an Indian on the warpath.
Rifles began to click and he heard the waspish sound of bullets kissing the air, but it seemed to him that the game was as good as over when, as if out of the bowels of the earth, the form of a cow heaved up before him.
The gray gelding, right gallantly, gathered and strove to clear the obstacle.
Had the warning been one hundredth part of a second sooner, he would have succeeded, but as it was, his forelegs touched the back of the steer. The gelding spun in a frightfully sudden somersault, and the face of the solid earth leaped up and struck the Kid so that he was senseless.
CHAPTER 38
The Verdict
When his senses came back to him, he felt warmth in his face, and then a dazzle in his eyes. There was a dull roaring, and through the roaring a voice was saying “He’s comin’ round.”
“Aye,” said another, “a little thing like havin’ a hoss fall on him and two or three thousand cows walk over him, that wouldn’t bother the Kid, much. Just sort of rock him to sleep.”
The Kid wakened utterly, and sat up at the same time.
He found that his hands were lashed together and his feet similarly secured, and he was sitting in the light of a towering mass of flames that seemed to split the dark of the heavens asunder. Every star was put out by this radiance.
It was the total supply of fuel for the Dixon camp. The incendiarism of the Kid had been even far more successful than he had expected to make it, for two of the wagons were rolling in sheets of fire and a third, badly damaged, had been partially salvaged by rolling it down the slope and into the shoal waters of Hurry Creek.
As for the wood, it could not be saved, for the oil, running out quickly on all sides of the pile, made a no-man’s land that weltered with fire and on which men dared not
step.
The Kid, wakening, saw these things, and one besides—this was the face of Billy Shay, white as the belly of a fish, with the little eyes glittering and fixed. They were not fixed upon the destruction around, but straight on the Kid himself.
It was a nightmare effect from which the Kid looked hastily away. He saw that the rest of the crowd stood around in attitudes of helpless surrender. There was only one figure in motion, and that was the lean form of Bolony Joe, striding up and down near the spot where the cook tent had stood, once so filled with camp necessitites and camp luxuries; now a charred and steaming mass of wreckage.
Certainly the blow had fallen with full weight, and the end had come suddenly to the hopes of Shay and Dixon and their crew.
Shay came suddenly to the Kid and stood before him. “You’ve won, Kid, and I’ve lost,” said he, “and I’ve won, and you’ve lost!”
The Kid said nothing. There was simply nothing to say. Dixon came up also, smiling. But there was something tigerish behind that smile of his.
“How did you manage to do it, Kid?” he asked.
“Oh, I just came down the canyon,” said the Kid. “That’s how I got inside the lines. If that’s what you wonder about.”
“You came down the canyon?” exclaimed Canuck Joe. “Nobody could come down that there canyon. The water’d kill a whole tribe of tigers in no time, inside the mouth of the canyon, and there ain’t any way along the walls of it.”
“There is a way, though,” said the Kid. “I found it. Mostly climbing with my hands.”
Canuck sharply turned his hack.
“He climbed along that wall with his hands!” said he.
And then he made a hopeless gesture of surrender with shoulders and arms.
“Then what did you do?” asked Dixon.
“I had a little chat with Jip. He found me crawling along from the edge of the water and when I stood up, he mistook me for Larry.”
Jip himself, his face suffused, his eyes brilliant, thrust out an accusing arm.