Читать книгу The Hair-Trigger Kid - Max Brand - Страница 8

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The Kid had stopped with red-headed Davey Trainor long enough to give him a ride on the Duck Hawk. Then he brought from one of his pockets a small knife. It had three blades of the finest steel, which he displayed and illustrated their uses. Then he mounted.

Davey stood by him, bending back his head and looking up at the picture of the hero against the blue sky.

"You wouldn't be comin' back here one of these days?" he asked.

"Sure I would," said the Kid. "Don't you be forgetting me."

"Me?" said Davey. "Golly, I should say not. So long, Kid."

"So long," said the Kid.

Then he took off his hat and waved it toward the window of a neighboring house, over which honeysuckle vines descended in a thick shower.

"Ma'am," said he, "you've been aiming too low."

With this he rode off down the street whistling.

Old John Dale saw him go by, with the Duck Hawk cakewalking in time and rhythm with the whistled tune. They seemed to be having a gay time of it, these two.

They crossed the bridge over the creek, and there they were seen by the Warner boys, Paul and Ned, who were fishing off the old ruined landing which had been built there in the placer days. They both got up and shouted—regardless of spoiling their fishing prospects for the rest of the morning. And the Kid turned in his saddle and waved down to them. He seemed in the highest and most childishly gay spirits, for he made the Duck Hawk rear so that she stood with her forehoofs resting on the edge rail which guarded the bridge.

That rail was made of old and time-rotted wood, and the boys held their breath at this madness of the Kid's.

Then he whirled the Duck Hawk away, and with a wave of his hand he disappeared, taking the Langton Trail through the hills.

That trail the Kid followed until after noon. By this time he had climbed the trail to a height above Dry Creek. He paused at a point where the trail looped out around the shoulder of a hill, so that he had a clean view of the path for a distance, going and coming. Moreover, this was a spot from which he could survey all the country lying back toward Dry Creek.

He watered the mare at a small creek, which had been one of his reasons for pausing there, and then he took out a pair of field glasses and first picked out the northerly hills, the mountains behind them, finally moving his view down again to Dry Creek, and its shining windows.

He smiled a little when he saw this town, as though of itself it were something of a joke; then he shifted his view out into the desert, lingering his eye along the smoky foliage of the draws, and particularly studying certain dust clouds which, by careful observation, he discovered were not wind pools, but clouds in slow motion toward Dry Creek.

There were three of these dust clouds. They might be riders, freighters, almost anything. Carefully estimating distances from point to point, away out there on the plain, he then timed each of the three dust clouds across certain stretches.

This had to be inaccurate work, for he could not estimate with any surety the distances over which the clouds were passing. Yet he knew that those draws were of about such and such dimensions. He could see, also, that two of the dust clouds slanted back, and one rose straight up like smoke from a chimney on a windless day.

He decided that the two slanting clouds were made of horsemen traveling either at a fast trot or at a gallop. The other dust cloud might be either quite a large party with their horses at a walk, or, more probably, it was the sweating team and the rumbling wagon of a freighter.

He put up his glasses and looked more intimately around him. This was the sort of country that he loved. It was neither the eye-hurting sweep of the dusty desert, nor the damp gloom of the great forests. It was a broken sweep of hills, pouring away in a pleasant variety of shapes, and dressed with patches of high shrubbery and low, while the forest proper was chiefly confined to the gulleys and the ravines between the hills. In such a region as this there were a thousand cattle trails weaving through the maze of hills; there were ten thousand modes of being lost in every ten miles of travel. It was a place where one needed to know the lay of the land, and have under one a good horse, with sure footing and a wise way of taking the ups and downs of a hill journey. The Kid knew this region well, and he had a wise horse beneath him, that knew how to take the constantly recurring slopes easily, but at a brisk walk, with a trot on the summit, and a break into a rolling lope on the downward slope, moving all the time so softly that there was no danger of battering shoulders to pieces. Such a horse can cover not twice, but three times as much ground as an animal not accustomed to the hill country.

But though the Kid knew this country well, he did not know it well enough to suit him. He never knew any stretch of land well enough. Nothing could exhaust the patient, the almost passionate interest with which he studied a landscape in detail. The position of every tree might be worth knowing, if he had time to get down to the most minor details.

This was almost his profession. The thick roll of his memory could unfold a scroll which was an endless map of desert, rolling plain, hills, mountains, wilderness of trees, the courses of rivers, the sites and the street maps of towns, dottings of ranches and ranch houses, intimate details of confused trails.

Like a hawk, when he flew into a new region, he first flew high, and from the summits of the high places he charted the lower regions with an exquisite precision. The result was that hardly any district could be strange to him for more than a day, and he had amazed certain ardent pursuers, over and over again, by his ability to disappear from under their very noses in a region where they knew, or thought they knew, every gopher hole.

So the Kid, as the mare grazed eagerly on the fine grass of that hillside, with the saddle and the bridle both removed, looked carefully and lovingly over this landscape. There were many creeks where one could find water, and by those creeks were many dense thickets where man and horse could hide—particularly a horse taught to lie down in time of need.

There were high points for spying in this landscape, and there were crooked and straight ways across the country. That is, there were safe and leisurely ways, and there were short trails which condensed many miles of distances into a certain amount of eerie twisting through ravines and flirting with precipices.

All in all, he felt that this district was made for him. It was "home" to the Kid.

He had other homes, of course, but they were not quite so satisfactory for many reasons.

He took out his lunch. It consisted of a ration which an Arab would have known and appreciated. That is to say, his food was simply dates and old, stale, tough bread. A morsel of bread, a morsel of date, he chewed them slowly, with the enjoyment of a hungry man, for already he had ridden far on this day.

When he had finished his lunch, which was a meager one even for such simple fare, he drank from the cold water of the creek, and then sat beside it for a time watching the rippling shadows which flickered over the sandy bottom, or the flash and paling of the sun upon a quartz pebble.

It did not take a great deal to interest the Kid. He never had found a desert so thoroughly devoid of life that it was dull to him. Now, when he turned from the gazing at the creek, it was to watch the arduous way of an ant through the grass, lugging with it the head of a beetle twice its own size and four times its own weight. Ten times the head fell as the Kid watched. Ten times the ant picked up the burden and pushed ahead, forcing between narrow blades and climbing then up and then down, like a monkey struggling with a vast weight through an endless forest.

Eight feet away lay the nest which was the goal! To the ant it was eight miles of fearful labor.

A light, quick stamp of a hoof made the Kid look up to the Duck Hawk, to find her standing alert, with tail arching into the wind, and ears pricked.

The Kid did not delay. He slid bridle and saddle onto her with practiced speed, and, running hastily down the trail, he came to a rocky stretch, turned up among the rocks until he came to a thick place of shrubbery and trees which perfectly concealed him and the mare.

Here he waited, and after a time, sure enough, from down the trail, traveling south, he heard first the distant ring of an iron-shod hoof, striking against hard rock, and then the faint snort of a horse. Such sounds grew nearer and nearer, and around the corner of the mountain rode a man on a fine gelding of the mustang type, with two lead horses behind him.

This man carried a short-barreled repeating rifle, or carbine, which he balanced across the pommel of his saddle. He had two saddle holsters, from which the butts of revolvers appeared, and a capacious cartridge belt girded him.

On each of the two led horses there were small packs, but these were so light that it was obvious that he was using them as extra mounts rather than as pack animals.

The man himself was what one might call the true Western type; that is to say, he was tall, rather bony and thin from much exercise, and little fat from leisure. He had one of those thin, dark faces which one often sees, with a truly grand forehead, wide and high, and a little puckering at the corners of his mouth which made him appear to be smiling a great part of the time. But smiling he was not, as one could guess by a second glance.

This fellow was forty years old, with a back straight as an arrow, a head carried like a king, and a glance as bright as' the Kid's own.

The latter smiled a little and watched with careful attention until the other reached that point along the trail where the Kid had lunched and where the mare had grazed.

The instant he came to these signs the rider slumped lower in the saddle, and tightening the reins, he slipped the carbine under his arm and whirled his horse about, scanned the rocks and the trees near him with the eagerness of a hawk and something of a hawk's hungry and fierce manner.

He seemed to content himself a little with this first survey, and then jumped from his saddle to the ground and carefully examined the grass that had been trampled down by his predecessor. By the movement of it, as it gradually was rising, he seemed able to tell that his forerunner had been there a very short time ago indeed. Therefore he straightened again, and scanned all that was around him suspiciously. Finally he leaped into the saddle again, and went on a tour of inspection.