The Max Brand Megapack (431 page)

He jerked his horse around and made off at once along the trail toward Dry Creek, while the Kid looked after him with a certain combination of pity, contempt and kindness. Then he mounted and went in the opposite direction, riding slowly, with a thoughtful cant to his head.

CHAPTER 10

Handmade Shoe

For not more than a half mile did the Kid keep along the trail, and then, so seriously did he take the friendly warning of Champ Dixon, that he turned aside and cut through the open country, winding up and down through the ravines and over the hills patiently. There was a great deal to occupy his mind during this ride, and chiefly the figure of Champ Dixon.

That man had been famous in story and legend and fact for many a day. But now, like many another legend of the Far West, the Kid had met it, mastered it, put it behind him. It did not seem to him a thing entirely of rags and tatters. It was merely the boiling down of a great, great giant into a quite ordinary man.

And yet he could see the other side of the chance, as well.

As, for instance, if the mare had not spotted the approach of Dixon in the distance, and that red Indian of a man had found the Kid before the Kid found him. Then, there was a little doubt. Dixon would have increased his fame endlessly by a good, well-aimed bull’s-eye, the center of the target being the forehead of the Kid. That was the sort of a man Dixon was. He lived for glory. And, beyond question, he had needed nothing but an audience, this day, to force him to take the most hopeless chances and fight out the battle against the Kid and all the odds of circumstance.

A comfortable warmth was in the heart of the Kid, as he thought of this.

The next instant the mare limped, and he dropped down from the saddle instantly to see what was wrong.

He found the trouble in a moment. She had cast a shoe.

This made him shake his head. For the terrain over which they were traveling was very bad, constant outcroppings of rock making the way dangerous for a shoeless horse. Even the regular trail was bad enough, but the cross-country work much worse.

From his saddlebag, with a buckskin string and a flat, thick piece of leather, he improvised rapidly, a sort of moccasin, and mounting again, he rode on through the broken sea of hills.

He went more carefully now, however, and studying the landmarks before him, he presently turned down a ravine that pointed to the left of his way. He wound the bend of this in the dusk of the day, while the sun was still rosy on the upper mountains, but here in the heart of the narrow valley the twilight was already so deep that he could see the faint shining of a light before him, dull as the evening star just after the sun is down.

Toward this he went, the mare picking her way adroitly. She seemed to realize as well as her master that that naked foot might be a cause of trouble in the future.

As he came near the house, he heard a clattering of hoofbeats, and looking up the hill, he saw a couple of riders coming over the crest, horses and men outlined like black, strangely moving cardboard figures against the red of the western sky.

This made him rein up, but, as he studied the horsemen, he made out that only one was a man. The other form was certainly no more than a small boy.

The Kid went on, more at ease, and now he could see the flat shine of the pool beside the cabin, the dim image of the tree at its verge, the straggling march of the shrubbery up the slope, and the little squat cabin itself, looking too small for human habitation.

It grew a little on nearer approach. He saw the woodshed, and the little corral. But the whole place had an air not of habitation so much as an accidental touch of human life in the midst of the wilderness. Men who lived here remained not for what they won from the soil, but for the freedom which they breathed in from the ground. They might be either thoroughly fine fellows, beyond price, or rascals not worth their salt.

When the Kid was close he called out: “Trainor! Trainor!”

A loud voice whooped instantly in answer: “Who’s there?”

“A friend!”

“Come on in, friend!”

The swinging light of a lantern appeared outside of the door of the shack, and into the uncertain circle of this light rode the Kid.

He found that the lantern was held by a big bearded fellow with shoulders wide enough to have lifted the whole house behind him, it seemed. He was not more than thirty, but he looked older. Frost in winter and burning sun in summer put their mark on the skin of a man, and all the beards in the world cannot mask the pain of labor which appears in the eyes.

“I nearly forgot where your place was, Bud,” said the Kid.

At his voice, Trainor lifted the lantern high—and then almost dropped it.

“It’s the Kid!” he exclaimed.

“Shut up!” cautioned the latter, swinging down from the saddle, nevertheless, and grasping the hand of the other.

“It’s all right,” said Trainor. “There ain’t nobody here but pa and ma and my kid cousin, that I’ve just fetched out from Dry Creek. Davey’s been talkin’ about nothin’ but you. He’s the kid that you give the ride to in Dry Creek. Here, Davey. Here’s a surprise for you!”

Davey came, hurrying. And as he rushed into the lantern light, and blinked at the face and form of the Kid, his eyes opened and his mouth also.

“By golly,” said Davey. “It’s the Kid. Hello, Kid. You ain’t forgot me, have you?”

“I haven’t forgotten you,” said the Kid. “I don’t forget your kind, old-timer, to the end of my days. Bud, I’ve lost a shoe off this mare somewhere on the way across.”

“On the trail?”

“No. I would have gone back for it, if I had. Have you anything in the way of shoes around here?”

“I’ve got some that the rust has been gnawin’ at for a long time. You take a look. Hey, Davey. You fetch out that bunch of shoes that’s hangin’ agin’ the wall of the shed. I got a kind of a forge, Kid, besides. You come to the right place.”

“Aye,” said the Kid. “I remembered that forge when I was five or six miles away. It’s a forewitted fellow who has a forge on his place, Bud.”

The latter accepted the compliment with a grunt.

“The old man done the thinkin’ about that. He got it in the days when he had an idea that he was gunna be a cattle king. He started with more tools than cattle. He drawed the plans for his ranch house before he staked out his claim, and he wanted to start buildin’ a mill before he put up a cabin!”

“A mill for what?” asked the Kid.

“For what? Why, to grind all of the wheat into flour.”

“What wheat, Bud?”

“Why, ain’t you rode up through the fields of it. Thousands of acres, over in yonder. Irrigated, too, from the dam up there in the middle of the ravine. And the mill runnin’ with the overflow water. You must of seen all of them things! Or maybe they’re just an idea that the old man had. Forewitted is what the old man is, and was. Me, personal, I’d rather have the cows and the wheat than the wits. I’d do my thinkin’ behindhapd, if I had something to think about. C’mon in, Kid, and rest yourself.”

“No,” said the Kid, “I’m making a long march. Here’s Davey with the shoes.”

The dozen or so shoes were cast down in the dust in the circle of the lantern light, and from the lot, the Kid instantly picked out two. At his word, the mare lifted her foot, the moccasin was removed, and the old, rusty shoes were measured against it. One of them came near fitting.

“There you are,” said Bud. “That shoe’s made for her.”

“That’s a rough cast for her,” answered the Kid. “She’s a tailor-made lady, the Hawk. She won’t have any of these quick-fits, old son. Where’s that forge?”

There were chickens roosting on the forge, but they were scattered, squawking loudly, the dust was puffed from the old, tattered bellows, and the charcoal raked together, while they lighted the shavings above the draft.

The family came out to see the famous wanderer at work as a blacksmith. Old Mr. Trainor stood by, offering advice. Young Davey worked the bellows. Bud held the lantern in the right place, and his mother came out with dough on her hands and flour on her nose to give the Kid a withered smile and the promise of a hearty meal.

Old Mr. Trainor could not keep his hands away from the work. As he saw the fire glow and heard the light cracking of it at work, with the upward curling of the fumes, he began to spit on his hands and shake his head. And as he did so, he picked up an eight-pound hammer. He looked like a sheep, a shaggy, long-haired, tangled, unclean sheep of the west coast of Scotland. For he was bearded almost to the forehead, and from the tangle, as through a mist, his eyes looked out with an uncanny brightness.

“I’ll hold and strike. You can tap if you will, man,” said he.

He took charge of the business completely, while his big son snarled at him viciously: “Leave it be, will ya? The Kid knows his own mind about the makin’ of that shoe!”

“A fitted shoe is a right good shoe,” said the old man, enthusiastically. “I’ll fit that shoe to the breadth of a hair.”

“And you’ll be all the night about it,” declared the son.

“Better a late start than a never ending,” said the father.

“There he goes with his blamed proverbs,” said the other. “There’ll be no stoppin’ him now, Kid, unless you take the hammer out of his hand!”

The Kid, however, said nothing at all, but looked at the old man with a singular fascination, as though he saw a story in his bushy face.

In the meantime, old Trainor fell to shaping the shoe. He worked fairly slowly, to be sure, but with the utmost nicety. And even-when the critical Kid declared that all was well and that the shoe would do perfectly, still the old fellow labored, with sweat running brightly down his nose and his eyes agleam.

“A thing half done is a game not won,” said he. “If there’s only one window in the house unlocked the devil may fly through it as easy as if the whole place was open.”

“Hark at him,” said the son. “Now he’s well started, and there’ll be no stopping of him, as I told you before. That’s why we’ve gone to pot out here. He never could finish the first thing to his own content, and so he never got through to the end of anything.”

The old man, shaping the shoe with many light, delicate blows, and drawing out a small nose calk in the front of the bend, on either side, regarded his work with a most judicious eye. Now and then, holding the shoe on a cold chisel, he stooped above the foot of the mare and she, nervously aware of every movement, would raise her leg to show the hoof. Over it, making the shoe hover closely, he strained his eyes.

“Oh,” said old Trainor, “I’ll tell you what, Kid, it takes a wise man to learn from a fool, and that’s what my son would never do. I been a failure and a great failure. I’ve kept his ma and him cooped up in a shed all their lives. Well, I ain’t proud of it. I’m ashamed. But I’ve ate honest bread, and—”

“Shut up, will you?” shouted the son, savagely, so that Davey winced with fear at the bellows, where he watched all with great eyes.

The Kid waved his hand, for he saw that this last interpolation was to save his own feelings.

“It’s all right,” said he. “The whole world knows that I’ve been a thief. You don’t hurt my feelings, Dad.”

At this, old Trainor stepped from the anvil a short pace and dropped a hand upon the shoulder of the other.

“Good lad!” said he. “As if I would ever harm you, even with talk. But then, there’s a thing that’s harder to watch than a sword or nitroglycerin. It cuts and it tears—a tongue does!”

He struck himself lightly across the mouth with the back of his hand, and then shook his head as he turned back to the fitting of the shoe.

“Polite, you are,” said Trainor to his father. “Always thinkin’ about the right thing to make folks comfortable.”

“I’ve spoke of the wrong that I’ve done him,” said the other patiently. “What more can I do, son?”

“Keep your face shut, is what you can do!” thundered the other.

At this, the Kid lifted his brows, and suddenly looked down again, as though he saw that the business of his were done.

And old Trainor, bending over the hoof of the mare for the last time, began to trim it to a smooth, fiat surface, using the knife gingerly, as though he were afraid that blood would follow the least touch that went too deep.

“Aye,” said he. “Shut my mouth and be still. Listen to them that have made money, that ride fine hosses and wear fine clothes. Listen to them that have a big purse and something in it. They can talk, but old Trainor is not a long step ahead of a beggar. And therefore, he has no right. Let him talk to the prairie dogs and the squirrels, and the hens in the yard, but not man talk to men—not man talk to men!”

His mutterings did not force him to neglect his work, however, and finally he nailed on the shoe, cutting and clinching the nails with as much care as he had shown through all the rest of the work.

“A good handy blacksmith would of shod a boss all around in the time you’ve took to fix one foot,” said the son, growling as usual.

Then the Kid interrupted.

“He wouldn’t have done a job to suit me,” said he. “Not if he’d gone a bit faster. She’s worthy of good shoes to stand in, is the Hawk. I’m thanking you, Dad.”

Dad Trainor smiled suddenly on him, like a light shining through a fog.

“Aye,” said he, “for them that has diamonds won’t set them in brass. You understand, son! It ain’t every hand that can move as fast as the eye can jump, and faster. But patience climbs the highest hill and—”

“And finds it bare at the top!” broke in the angry son. “I’m tired of hearin’ such rot!”

He left the shed suddenly and strode off into the night in the direction of the house.

CHAPTER 11

Callers

Young Davey, leaving the bellows, remarked: “It sure fits her to a turn. That’s what I’m gunna be when I grow up. I’m gunna make things. I’m gunna be a blacksmith.”

“Don’t go makin’ no mistake,” said Dad Trainor. “Hands that are strong enough to work in iron ain’t strong enough to work with people. Don’t you aim to work with iron. Aim to work with men. They’re what need the bendin’. They’re what it pays to shape. Heat ’em and temper ’em. Hammer ’em and form ’em. If you break one of ’em, here and there, it don’t make no difference. Throw the pieces outside the shop. Leave ’em there to be tramped in the dirt by everybody that goes by. Go on with your hammerin’ and shapin’. If you break two for every one that you shape for yourself, you’re a mighty successful man. You’ll have money in the bank. Pretty soon, folks that hated you for meanness will be glorifyin’ you for strength. They’ll take their hats off and when they shake hands, their palms will be turned up. Be a man-handler, not a blacksmith, Davey!”