A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER
The trouble began in Laredo.It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans.But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.
It happened in old Justo Valdos's gambling house.There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops.There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder.For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and champions.His blunder in missing the Kid's right ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marksman.
The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied with personal admirers and supporters--on account of a rather umbrageous reputation, even for the border--considered it not incompatible with his indispensable gameness to perform that judicious tractional act known as "pulling his freight."
Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him.Three of them overtook him within a rod of the station.The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.
But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter that usually urged him on to battle.It had been a purely chance row, born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to brook that had passed between the two.The Kid had rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the first pride of manhood.And now he wanted no more blood.He wanted to get away and have a good long sleep somewhere in the sun on the mesquit grass with his handkerchief over his face.Even a Mexican might have crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.
The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger train that departed five minutes later.But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape.There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam.Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.
The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him.But the Kid knew that he was of the Coralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the punchers from that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Kentucky feudists when wrong or harm was done to one of them.So, with the wisdom that has characterized many great farmers, the Kid decided to pile up as many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear between himself and the retaliation of the Coralitos bunch.
Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among the mesquits and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers.Most of them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads.But one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf.Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently with the owner's own quirt.
If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his veiled his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute.On the Rio Grande border if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but if you take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders him poor, indeed, and which enriches you not--if you are caught.For the Kid there was no turning back now.
With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
After a five-mile gallop he drew it in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms.He knew the country well--its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where one might find safe entertainment.Always he bore to the east;
for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon the mane of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater waters.
So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and looked out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.
Captain Boone, of the schooner /Flyaway/, stood near his skiff, which one of his crew was guarding in the surf.When ready to sail he had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten.A sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo.Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.
A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's edge.
His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted at a man's experience.His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown.His hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue.He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled.45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one's vest.He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.
"Thinkin' of buyin' that'ar gulf, buddy?" asked the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.
"Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not.I never saw it before.
I was just looking at it.Not thinking of selling it, are you?"
"Not this trip," said the captain."I'll send it to you C.O.D.when I get back to Buenas Tierras.Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the chewin'.I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."
