by Max Brand
In the meantime, the inferno of flame continued to whirl upwards into the air from the camp of Dixon, throwing out long arms which vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.
“It’s the Kid’s work,” said Milman suddenly. “No other man could have done so much, and the fire and the escape of the horses cannot both be accidents!”
“But where’s the Kid now?” demanded Bud, excited. “He ought to’ve been on the back of one of those horses. And where’s Davey? Davey, you little fool, where are you?”
But Davey was gone!
CHAPTER 40
For the Sake of Cows
He had gone off, perhaps, to the top of one of the nearer hills in order to get another view of the camp fire and to strain his eyes toward the figures which were near it. For, from that distance, they could see forms indistinctly, moving about in the yellow red of the firelight.
Those who waited in that excited group had something else to think of, a moment later, for a rider came up to them at wild speed, and young Georgia Milman’s voice called out frantically to know if her father was there.
“Aye,” said Milman, after a moment of hisitation. “I’m here, Georgia. What brought you out?”
He rode out to meet her, and she, wheeling her horse, went with him a sufficient distance to cover the sound of their voices from the ears of the others.
“What is it, Georgia?” he asked her.
She was half weeping with relief at finding him.
“I’ve come like mad all the way from the house,” she said. “I saw Tex Marshall on the other side of Hurry Creek and he said that you’d come around here. Father, I’ve come out to tell you that Mother and I don’t care what’s happened in the past. We don’t care. You’re ours.”
He reached for her through the starlight and found her hand in his with a strong grip, worthy of a man.
“Your mother, too, Georgia?” he asked her.
“Yes, Mother, too. Of course!”
“She’s always known that there was something wrong,” said Milman. “But—I can only thank God and the two of you. Georgia, some day I’ll be able to tell you a story that will be hard to believe. So hard that I couldn’t try to tell it today, when you taxed me.”
“I believe it already,” she told him loyally. “Oh, Dad, it’s the three of us against the world. D’you think Mother or I could fail you now, when the bottom is falling out of everything?”
Something like a groan welled up in the throat of Milman. He crushed Georgia’s hand and then let it fall.
“I’m going to talk it all out to the two of you,” said he. “But not now. There’s something else to think about now. You saw the explosion?”
“Where?”
“In the hollow there in Dixon’s camp.”
“Explosion?”
“Doesn’t that camp fire look big to you?”
“Yes it does. What happened?”
“That’s what we don’t know. We only know that the Kid left Bud Trainor and lowered himself by Trainor’s lariat into the gorge of the upper creek. He was trying to get to the camp of Dixon, inside the fence lines where they’ve been keeping watch. We don’t know, but we suspect that the Kid may have caused the explosion that we saw in the camp—and the woodpile caught fire from it. Then there was a stampede of the horses from the same direction. They broke out through the herds. We don’t know what to make of it—”
“And the Kid didn’t come out with the horses?” asked the girl.
“No.”
“Then he’s back there in the camp!”
“We’ve no proof at all that he ever reached the camp. It seems humanly impossible that he could have got down the wall of the ravine and—”
She cried out, choking away the sound miserably at the end. And that cry stabbed her father with a quick and frantic pain.
“You care a frightful lot about him, Georgia?” said he.
“Aye,” said she. “A frightful lot!”
“He’s tried this crazy thing for your sake, Georgia?”
“For me? For me?” said the girl, agony in her voice. “No, no! Don’t you see that what he means to do is to smash you as he smashed the other four? How could he try to do anything for my sake, then? It’s not for me. It’s the misery of the poor dumb cows that’s making him try to do what no man can win through to!”
“I don’t know what to make of him,” declared the father. “There never was another man like him. Who else in the world would try such a thing—for the sake of dumb beasts?”
“There are no other men like him,” she said. “But what will become of him and all of us, I don’t know. I don’t dare to guess. But he’s down there in that camp, I’ll swear.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because he couldn’t fail. There’s no failure in him. He could die. I know that. But it will take men to kill him. It’ll certainly take men to kill him!”
They went back to the rest of the watchers and all stared anxiously down toward the fire. It no longer threw up flames so brilliantly. The strength of the burning had rotted away the woodpile and allowed it to spill out on the side. A strong glow, constantly reddening, was thrown up from this mass, but the light was much less clear and far-reaching.
“Who has a strong pair of glasses?” asked Milman.
“I have a pair,” said a puncher, “but they really ain’t any good for night work.”
Then a rider came up to them, sweeping from the hollow at a gallop, in spite of the slope.
And, as he came in, the shrill, piping voice of Davey Trainor cried out: “He’s in there! He’s in there! I seen him!”
They swarmed suddenly around the boy. Here was excitement. The passion that was in him seemed to illumine his face far more than the starlight.
“What did you see, Davey? Where’ve you been?”
“I wanted to go look. I couldn’t stay out here with the rest of you just millin’ around and doin’ nothing’. I went and had a look. You can get through the cows. The worst ones is out on this side. The ones inside is pretty nigh dead with the thirst. I got through, anyway. I got through, and I seen him!”
“Who, who? Davey, who d’you mean?”
“Who do I mean? I mean him that started the fire, and that busted the fence, and that burned up their chuck and that burned up their wagons and their wood supply, so’s they’re as bare as my hand of everything that folks would need. The Kid—the Kid, of course! There ain’t anybody else that could do such things, is there?”
“He’s there!” cried Bud Trainor. “I might’ve knowed that it was him. I did know it. I felt the ache of it in my bones!” Tears began to stream down the face of Georgia.
She pressed her hands against her eyes, but the tears pressed through and her hands were wet.
It was the end, she felt. Yet she controlled the throes of her sobbing. Dimly, she heard the voices of the men.
“Who’s gonna do something?” demanded the voice of Davey Trainor, sharp and biting as the noise of a cricket on a hearth. “Who’s gonna get started and do something for the Kid? He wouldn’t leave a partner down there with them crooks! He wouldn’t just sit around and look and talk. He’d be down there sure raisin’ hell for the sake of his bunky! Who’s gonna start something up here, for him? I’ll make one!”
This fierce and piping voice silenced them, for a moment.
“There are twenty men down there,” said one of the punchers, sullenly. “I’d take a chance for the Kid. But not no chance like that. It ain’t a lot of wooly lambs that are down there with Dixon.”
Milman took charge of the cross-questioning of the lad. “Tell me, Davey, just what you saw?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Davey. “When I got through the cows, I come to a place where I seen that there was three or four gents workin’ to patch up a gap that had been broke through the wire fencing. They was cussing a good deal.
“I worked along, keepin’ on the edge of the darkness, which wasn’t none too hard, because th
e light of that fire’s so bright that all of them that are near it are sort of blinded, I reckon. Fifty feet from the fire, it’s like they was lookin’ at black windows. They couldn’t see out no farther. Anyway, I worked down the line.
“That camp is sure a wreck. The cook tent is just a black mess, that’s all. Everything is gone, includin’ their hosses. All that they got on their hands, it’s a pile of saddles and such.”
“But the Kid, the Kid!” exclaimed Milman impatiently.
“Yeah, and I’m coming to that. I got up the line, closer to the fire, and there I seen a lot of the men standin’ around, and whisperin’, and shakin’ their heads at each other. You’d think that they was standin’ around and lookin’ at the devil or a ten-foot rattler. But it was the Kid. He was stretched out, there. They had his hands and his feet tied. I gathered from what I heard them say that he’d ’ve got clean away on the back of one of the hosses, if it wasn’t that the one he was ridin’ bareback had had a tumble and broke its own neck, and dropped the Kid. He was senseless, but while I was there, he woke up, and sat up. Jiminy, before that, I pretty nigh thought that he was dead!”
“What else?” asked Milman. “What else did you see?”
“D’you think I’d wait there?” demanded the youngster. “D’you think that I’d wait there till they murdered him?”
“Murdered him?” cried out Georgia Milman suddenly, and her voice rang sharp and thin in the air, almost like the excited yipping of Davey himself.
“Sure they’ll murder him,” said Davey, “unless we do something about it. Surely they’ll murder him. D’you think that that bunch of yeggs would ever let the Kid loose to go wanderin’ around and pickin’ ’em off? Why, it would be pretty jolly for the Kid, wouldn’t it, to have that many gents to trace down and bump off? It would keep him happy pretty night all the rest of his life, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose that it would,” said one of the punchers. “What can we do?”
“Ride down, ride down!” said Davey desperately. “Ride down and make a try. They’s five of you here. You’re something. You can make a try for him. You can sure make a try to help him. You wouldn’t be letting the Kid get bumped off, Buck, would you? You wouldn’t let the Kid go like that, Charlie? I know you wouldn’t. Mr. Milman, you say something to ’em!”
“There’s nothing for me to say,” said Milman, after a moment of quiet. “I know that I’m going down to do what I can!”
“There are twenty of them, father!” cried Georgia. “What could you do? It’s a lost cause. You’re only throwing yourself away!”
But her heart leaped in her throat, and she knew the answer almost before she heard it.
“It may be a lost cause,” said Milman, “but it’s my cause. And if the Kid is brave enough to die for us, we’ll have to die for him. Georgia, so long for a little while!”
He rode off.
“I’m number two in this party!” said Bud Trainor, and instantly his horse was beside that of the rancher.
CHAPTER 41
Two Against Twenty
But the other three cow-punchers did not move to join the two. Two against twenty! Aye, or even five against twenty, considering who the twenty were, seemed sickening odds. Besides, these were not gunmen or professional fighters. They had been hired to ride range, not to shoot it out with such as the Dixon crowd. They milled about a little, uneasily, until one of them said: “I got a wife and two kids that live on what I make. I reckon that I ain’t afraid to be ashamed:”
The other two said nothing, but they seemed willing to allow the other’s speech to stand as a lead for them.
Little Davey Trainor suddenly cried out:
“You ain’t punchers! You ain’t Westerners! You’re a bunch of yaller-livered, no-good skunks! I’m gonna tell every man on the range about you! I know your names, and I won’t forget ’em. The Kid’s down there doin’ your work. The Kid’s gonna die for what you should’ve died for—”
He looked about him, and suddenly he saw that the girl had ridden off into the dark of the night.
Instantly he pulled his own mustang about and was beside her.
“Whatcha gonna do? Where you headin’?” asked the boy.
“Go back, Davey,” said she. “Never mind where I’m going.”
“You’re gonna go in there!” exclaimed Davey. “You figger on follerin’ your daddy.”
“It doesn’t matter what I figure on. This is no place for you, Davey! Go back, and try to talk those three punchers into coming along.”
“They can’t be talked into nothin’! They wouldn’t budge. You couldn’t pray ’em into budgin’. Dog-gone it, though, you can’t go in there! D’you think that those thugs’ll be able to see that you ain’t a man? D’you think that they’d care, much, even if they knew? They’ll shoot at everything that budges, after a while!”
“Davey,” said the girl, “I know that you mean well, but don’t try to persuade me any more. There’s no use. I’m going to ride in there. Nothing can stop me. Go back and try to find some of the other men. We have something besides cowards on our ranch!”
“Ride back for ’em yourself,” said Davey. “You ain’t a man, and I am. I’m gonna go in there and see what happens!”
“Davey! Davey!” she cried at him. “You silly child—you great, silly baby, what can you do?”
“I’ve got a gun, and I can use a gun,” declared Davey. “That’s what I can do. Is that enough?”
And then, as they entered the outer fringe of the cattle, there was too much work for them to allow further talk.
It was no easy thing.
Wandering on the outer edges of the hollow, masses of the cattle stirred here and there, wakeful with thirst, uneasy, prevented from getting on by the more solid masses of living flesh which barred the way toward the desired creek.
Among those crowds they had to go. It seemed impossible, at first, but they knew that a recruit to the Dixon crowd had gone through, and they knew that the boy himself had gone back and forth, and that the horses had burst through the mass.
What was the fortune of Milman and Bud Trainor, they could not guess. The double dark of the night and of the dust clouds shut them from sight as soon as they entered the herds.
Now and then, with a loud bellowing, a section of the herd would loom at them, with vaguely glistening horns, and terrible eyes, but the sight of the mounted men made them turn back.
It was as though they passed into a whirlpool of many currents, conflicting, and the waves of it armed with horns that looked long enough to impale horse and rider with a single thrust.
So they went on, the girl holding her breath with fear; then half choking in the dust.
She arranged a bandanna over her mouth and nose and breathed through this with an effort. Yet the choking effect of the dust was thereby much lessened.
It was a nightmare, and beyond this evil dream lay another far more horrible, toward which she was going. What she could do, she could not guess. To see the tragedy that must occur was abhorrent to her, but yet she was drawn on as by a magnet of an overwhelming power.
On the whole, the problem of getting through was not half as desperate as it looked from a distance. The courage of the lad in first facing that tangle of dust and stamping hoofs and horns staggered her, however. He was before her, now, leading the way, parting the currents of danger, as it were.
And, with another leap and ache of her heart, she knew that here was the promise of such another manhood as the Kid’s. Something great for good, or for evil. No man could tell for which.
But goodness began to appear to her struggling mind in a new light. It seemed not so very difficult to dodge all evil by denying all temptation. Good women did that, closing their eyes upon what is dreadful and horrible, what is wild and enchanting in its wildness. Good men did it, also, keeping to a straight and narrow path, and blinding themselves to the possibilities which lay right and left. Yonder three punchers, for instance, were good men, who wo
uld have died rather than not do their duty. But for this thing which lay outside and above their duty, which was extra reasonable and had nothing to do with law, that wasn’t business for them. It was the business of the professional gambler, the gunfighter, the manslayer. It was the business of the Kid!
How to rearrange her ideas she could not tell, but she knew that the Kid began to appear before her mind luminously, a moon of brightness among starry mankind, making them very dim indeed.
And then, the dust mist before her began to be stained by the faint rose of the firelight. The dusty herds grew more dense. They would never have gotten through had it not been for the tactics of the mustang on which the lad was mounted before her. That mustang had been trained for many a long year in the ways of the range and of range cattle. He went at the steers and the cows with teeth and striking forehoofs. He went through them as a sheep dog goes through a well-packed flock of sheep, making them crowd to either side and leave a narrow channel through which he runs. In that thin wake she followed, taking advantage of it by pressing up close to Davey. And, now and then, she could hear his thin, piercing voice, shouting cheerfully back to her above the mighty thunder of the lowing.
There were waves of that sound, and then moments of almost utter silence, except for the melancholy music from the hills-that rimmed the hollow.
In one of those spells of silence, they came through to the final rim of the cattle, and saw before them, here and there, the gleam of the triple rows of barbed wire, and the dul! silhouettes of Milman and Bud Trainor just before them, very close to the rim of the encampment.
Now the girl could see the blackened debris of what had once been the excellent camp of Dixon and Shay. Yes, that was the work of the Kid. There was a thoroughness about the destruction which seemed to identify it as his, immediately.
She looked to the left. Two men walked up and down the fence, with black-snake whips, striking at the faces of the cattle which came too close. The two men were so near that it seemed miraculous that they did not see the four interlopers out there on the rim of the cow herds.
