Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) (15 page)

When he rode into the cup that night, Parson looked up from the rifle that he was cleaning. “Howdy, son! You look done up!”

Kilkenny nodded and stopped beside the older man. He was tired, and his shirt stuck to his back with sweat. For the first time he wondered if they would win. For the first time, he doubted. Without food they were helpless. They could neither escape nor resist. He doubted now if Hale would ever let them go, if he would ever give them any chance of escape.

They ate short rations that night. He knew there was still a good deal of food, yet fourteen men, if he included those who were gone, and six women had to eat there. And there were nine children. Yet there was no word of complaint, and only on the faces of those women who had men with the food wagon could he distinguish the thin gray lines of worry.

“Any sign from Hale?” he asked O’Hara.

The Irishman shook his head. “Not any. He’s got men out in the rocks. They ain’t tryin’ to shoot nobody. Just a-watchin’. But they’re there.”

“I don’t think he’ll try anything now until after the celebration,” Bartram said. “He’s plannin’ on makin’ a lot of friends with that celebration. It means a lot to him, anyway.”

Jesse Hatfield pushed back his torn felt hat. “I took me a ride today,” he said. “Done slipped out through the brush. I got clean to Cedar Bluff without bein’ seen. I edged up close to town, an’ I could see a lot of workin’ around. They got ’em a ring set up out in front of the livery stable near the horse corral. Ropes an’ everythin’. Lots of talk around, an’ the big wonder is who’s goin’ to fight Tombull Turner.”

Kilkenny listened absently, not caring. His thoughts were back on that ragged rim, working along each notch and crevice, wondering where that road reached the top of the plateau.

“This here Dan Cooper was there, an’ he done some talkin’. He looked powerful wise, an’ he says Turner ain’t been brought here by accident. He’s been brought to whip one man…Kilkenny!”

“Did he say Kilkenny?” Kilkenny looked around to ask. “Do they know who I am?”

“He said Trent,” Jesse drawled. “I don’t reckon they know.”

Tombull Turner to beat him? Kilkenny remembered the bullet head, the knotted cauliflower ears, the flat nose and hard, battered face of the big bare-knuckle fighter. Tombull was a fighter. He was more; he was a brute. He was an American who had fought much in England, and against the best on both continents.
He had even met Joe Goss and Paddy Ryan. While he, Kilkenny, was no prize fighter.

An idle rumor. It could be no more, for he was not in Cedar Bluff, nor was he likely to be. Studying the faces of the men around him, he could see what was on their minds. Despite their avoidance of the subject, he knew they were all thinking of the wagon on the road to Blazer.

The food was necessary, but four men were out there, four men they all knew, men who had shared their work, their trials, and even the long trip West from their lands in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. Lije Hatfield was gone, and, knowing the family, Kilkenny knew that, if he were killed, no Hatfield would stop until all the Hales were dead or the Hat-fields wiped out.

Knowing the route, he could picture the wagon rolling slowly along over the rocky road, horsemen to the front and rear, watching, hoping, fearing. They, too, if still alive and free, would have their worries. They would know that back here men and women were getting close to the end of their food supply, that those men and women were depending on them.

On the morning of the third day, Kilkenny mounted again and started for the rim. He saw Parson Hatfield staring after him, but the old man said nothing.

This time Kilkenny had a plan. He was going back where he had been the day before, and by some means he was going down the face of the cliff to the wagon. Then he would backtrack. If there was no trail back, he would have to come up the cliff. Well, that was a bridge to be crossed later. Somewhere in that jumble of broken cliffs, great slabs of jagged
rock, and towering shoulders of stone, there must be a trail down which that wagon had gone.

It was almost seven o’clock in the morning before he found himself, two ropes in his hands, at the tapering edge of the trail along the face of the cliff. Lying flat, he peered over the edge. The rock on which he lay was a bulge that thrust out over the face of the cliff, and, if he dropped over here, he must use the rope purely as a safety precaution and work down with his hands. There were cracks and knobs that could be used. The depth below was sickening, but partially obscured by the strange thickness of the air.

A gnarled cedar grew from the face of the rock, and he tested it for strength. The thing seemed as immovable as the rocks themselves. Making his first rope fast to the cedar, Kilkenny knotted the other end in a bowline around himself. Then he turned himself around and backed over the edge, feeling with his feet for a toehold.

For a time, he knew, he would be almost upside down like a fly on a ceiling. Unless he could find handholds where he could get a good grip and, if necessary, hang by them, there was small chance of making it. But there were, he had noticed, a number of roots, probably of rock cedar, thrusting out through the rock below.

Forcing himself to think of nothing but the task at hand, he lowered himself over the edge, and, when he got the merest toehold, he swung one hand down and felt around until he could grasp one of the roots. Then he let go with his left hand and let himself down until he was half upside down, clinging by a precarious toehold and his grip on the root.

Finding another hold for his left hand, he took a
firm grasp, and then pulled out his left toe and felt downward. He found a crack, tested it with his toe, and then set the foot solidly. Carefully he released a handhold and lowered his hand to another root, lower down. Then, sweating profusely, he lowered his weight to the lower foot.

He resolutely kept his thoughts away from the awful depths below. He had a chance, but a very slim one. Slowly and with great care he shifted himself down the bulging overhang. Every time he moved a foot or hand, his life seemed about to end. He was, he knew, wringing with perspiration, his breath was coming painfully, and he swung himself precariously toward the sheer cliff below. Even that great height of straight up and down cliff seemed a haven to this bulge of the overhang.

Clinging to a huge root and pressing himself as tightly to the face as he could, he turned his head right, and then left, searching the face of the bulge. There were handholds enough here. The roots of the cedars that had grown on the ledge above thrust through the bulge. Yet that very fact seemed to indicate that at some time in the past huge chunks of rock had given way, leaving these roots exposed. It had happened once, and it could happen again.

Far out in the blue sky a buzzard whirled in great, slow circles. His fingers ached with gripping, and he lowered himself away from the face of the cliff and looked down between his legs. A notch showed in the rock, and he worked his toe loose, and then lowered it with care until he could test the notch. He tried it.

Solid. Slowly, carefully he began to settle weight on the ball of his foot. There was a sudden sag beneath his foot and then a rattle of stones, and the notch
gave way under him, forcing him to grip hard with his hands to catch the additional weight.

His right foot hung free. Carefully he began to feel with his toe for another foothold. He found it, tried, and rested his weight again, and the stone took it. Slowly he shifted hands again, and then lowered himself down a little more.

Glancing down again, he found himself looking at a stretch of rock at least fifteen feet across that was absolutely smooth. No single crack or crevice showed, no projection of stone, no root. His muscles desperate with weariness, he stared, unbelieving—to come this far and fail.

Forcing himself to think, he studied the face of the cliff. There was, some twenty feet below and almost that far to the left, a gnarled and twisted rock cedar growing out of the mountainside. It was too far to the right, and there was no way of reaching it. Yet, as he stared, he could see that a crevice, deep enough for a good foothold, ran off at an angle from the cedar. If he could reach it—but how?

There was a way. It hit him almost at once. If he released his grip on the roots, he would instantly swing free. As he had worked himself far to the right of the cedar to which his lariat was tied, his release would swing him far out from the cliff, and then, as he swung back, for an instant he would be above the clump of cedar. On each succeeding swing he would fall shorter and shorter, until finally he was suspended in mid-air, hanging like a great pendulum from the cedar above.

Then all his efforts would be vain, for he would have to catch the rope over his head and go up it, hand over hand, to the cedar above, and he would
have failed. On the other hand, if he could release himself above the cedar, he would fall into it, and unless some sharp branch injured him, the chances were the limbs would cushion his fall.

He had his knife, and it was razor sharp. Even as these thoughts flitted through his mind, he was drawing the knife. Luckily, before leaving his horse, he had tied a rawhide thong over each six-shooter, so his guns were secure. Yet the rope was rawhide and tough. Could he slash through at one blow?

The answer to that was simple. He had to. If he swung out over the void below on half or less of the strength of the lariat, there was small chance it would not break at the extreme end of the swing, and he would go shooting out over the deadly waste of the Smoky Desert to fall, and fall—over and over into that murky cloud that obscured the depths.

He let go and shoved hard with both feet and hands. His body swept out in a long swing over the breathtaking depths below. Then, hesitating but an instant as the rope tore at his sides, he swept back like a giant pendulum, rushing through the air toward the cliff! It shot toward him, and he raised his arm, and, seeing the cedar below and ahead, he cut down with a mighty slash.

He felt himself come loose, and then he was hurled forward at the cedar. He hit it, all doubled into a ball, heard a splintering crash, slipped through, and felt the branches tearing at his clothes like angry fingers. Then he brought up with a jolt and lay, trembling in every limb, clinging to the cedar.

How long he lay there, he did not know. Finally he pulled himself together and crawled out of the tree and got his feet on the narrow foothold. He worked
his way along until the ledge grew wide enough for him to walk. His breath was coming with more regularity now. He felt gingerly of his arms and body where the rawhide rope had burned him.

The path, if such it might be called, slanted steeply away from him, ending in some broken slabs. He stopped when he reached them. He was, at last, on the Smoky Desert.

Lance Kilkenny stood on a dusty desert floor littered with jagged slabs of rock, obviously fallen from the cliff above. There was no grass here, no cedar, nothing growing at all, not even a cactus. Above him, the dark, basalt cliff lifted toward the sky, towering and ugly. Looking off over the desert, he could see only a few hundred yards, and then all became indistinct. The reason was obvious enough. The floor of the desert was dust, fine as flour, and even the lightest breeze lifted it into the air, where it hung for hours on end. A strong wind would fill the air so full of these particles as to make the air thick as a cloud, and the particles were largely silicate.

One thing he knew now. Crossing the Smoky Desert, even if there was a trail, would be a frightful job. Unfastening the thongs that had held his guns in place, he walked on slowly. It was still, only a little
murmur from the wind among the rocks, and nothing else.

The cliff lifted on his right, and off to the left stretched the awful expanse of the desert, concealed behind that curtain of dust. He stepped over the dead and bleached bones of an ancient cedar, fallen from above, and rounded a short bend in the cliff. As he walked, little puffs of dust lifted from his boot soles, and his mouth grew dry. Once he stopped and carefully wiped his guns free of dust, and then lowered them once more into the holsters.

Then he saw the white scar of the road, tracks of vehicles filled with fine white dust, and the rough, barely visible marks of what had been a fairly good road, dwindling away into the gray, dusty vagueness that was the desert. He looked up and saw the trail winding steeply up the cliff’s face through a narrow draw.

Turning, he began to climb the trail. Several times he paused to roll boulders from the path. He was already thinking in terms of a wagon and a team. It could be done. That is, it could be done if there was still a way of getting a team onto this trail. That might be the catch. What lay at the end?

Sweat rolled down his face, making thin rivulets through the white dust. White dust clung to the hairs on the backs of his hands, and once, when he stopped to remove his sombrero and wipe the sweat from his brow, he saw his hat was covered with a thin gray coat of it.

He looked ahead. He could see the road for no more than 100 yards, but the cliff to his right was now growing steeper, and, glancing down, he could see the trail was already far above the valley floor. He walked, making heavy work of it in his riding boots,
sweat soaking his shirt under the film of gray dust, and the draw was narrowing.

The rock under the trail sloped steeply away into a dark, shadowy cañon now over 200 feet down. He walked on, plodding wearily. For over an hour he walked, winding around and around to follow the curving walls of the cañon. Then he halted suddenly.

Ahead of him the trail ended. It ended and explained his difficulties in one instant. A gigantic pine, once perched upon the edge of the cliff, had given way, its roots evidently weakened by wind erosion. The tree had blown down and fallen across the trail. Pines had sprung up around it and around its roots until the trail was blocked by a dense thicket that gave no hint of the road that had once run beneath it.

Crawling over the pine, Kilkenny emerged from the thicket and walked back to his horse. Mounting, he rode slowly homeward, and, as he rode, he thought he had never been so utterly tired as he was now. But there was coolness in the breeze through the pines, and some of their piney fragrance seemed to get into his blood. He looked up, feeling better as he rode slowly along the grassy trail, through the mountain meadows and down through the columned trunks of the great old trees toward the Hatfield cup.

Yes, it was worth fighting for, worth fighting to keep what one had in this lonely land among the high peaks. It was such a country as a man would want, a country where a man could grow and could live, and where his sons could grow. Even as he thought of that, Kilkenny found himself remembering Nita. King Bill Hale wanted her. Well, what would be more understandable? Certainly she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman in Cedar Valley and many
other valleys. And what did she think? Hale had everything to offer: strength, position, wealth. She could reign like a queen at the Castle.

And Hale himself? He was a handsome man. Cold, but yet, what man ever sees another man as a woman sees him? The side of himself that a man shows to women is often much different from that seen by men. Worry began to move through him like a drug. Nita nearby was one thing, but Nita belonging to someone else, that was another idea. He realized suddenly it was an idea he didn’t like, not even a little bit. Especially he did not want her to belong to the arrogant King Bill.

Hale wanted her, and, regardless of what she thought, he could bring pressure to bear, if his own eloquence failed him. He was king in Cedar Valley. Her supplies came in over the road he controlled. He could close her business. He could even prevent her from leaving. He might. Jaime Brigo was the reason why he might not succeed. Brigo and himself, Kilkenny.

King Bill’s lack of action disturbed him. Hale had been beaten in a fist fight. Knowing the arrogance of the man, Kilkenny knew he would never allow that to pass. He had refused them supplies, and they had come and taken them from under his nose. Was Hale waiting to starve them? He knew how many they were. He knew the supplies they had were not enough to last long. And he held the trail to Blazer. Did he know of the trail through the Smoky Desert? Kilkenny doubted that. Even he did not know if it were passable. The chances were Hale had never even dreamed of such a thing. Aside from the Indian
to whom he had talked, Kilkenny had heard no mention of it.

Saul Hatfield walked down from among the trees as he neared the cup. “Anything happen?” Kilkenny asked.

Saul shook his head, staring curiously at the dust-covered Kilkenny. “Nope. Not any. Jesse took him a ride down to town. They sure are gettin’ set for that celebration. Expectin’ a big crowd. They say Hale’s invited some folks down from Santa Fé, some big muckety-mucks.”

“From Santa Fé?” Kilkenny’s eyes narrowed. That was a neat bit of politics, a good chance to entertain the officials, and then tell them casually of the outlaws in the mountains, the men who had come in and tried to take away valuable land from King Bill. Lance knew how persuasive such a man could be. And he would entertain like royalty, and these men would go away impressed. That King Bill didn’t intend to strengthen his position very much would be foolhardy to imagine. Hale would know how to play politics, how to impress these men with his influence and the power of his wealth.

The audience would all be friendly, too. They would give the visiting officials the idea that all was well in Cedar Valley. Then, when the elimination of some outlaws hiding in the mountains was revealed, if it ever was, the officials would imagine it was merely that and never inquire as to the rightness or wrongness of Hale’s actions.

In that moment, Kilkenny decided. He would go to Cedar Bluff for the celebration. Yet, even as the thought occurred to him, he remembered the thick
neck and beetling brow of Tombull Turner. For the first time he began to think of the prize fighter. He had seen the man fight. He was a mountain of muscle, a man with a body of muscle and iron. His jaw was like a chunk of granite. His flat nose and beetling brow were fearsome.

Kilkenny rode down into the cup and swung from his horse. Parson walked slowly toward him, Jesse and O’Hara beside him. They stared at the dust on his clothes.

“Looks like you been places, son,” Parson drawled.

“I have.” Kilkenny removed the saddle and threw it on the rail. “I’ve been down into the Smoky Desert.”

“The Smoky Desert?” O’Hara stepped forward. “You found a way?”

“Uhn-huh. Take a little axe work to clear it.”

“Could a wagon get across?”

Kilkenny shrugged, looking up at the big Irishman. “Your guess is as good as mine. I know I can get a wagon into the desert. I know there used to be a trail. I could see it. There’s parts of a wagon down there. Somebody has been across. Where somebody else went, we’ll go.”

“How about gettin’ out?” Parson drawled.

“That,” Kilkenny admitted, “is the point. You put your finger right on the sore spot. Maybe there’s a way, maybe there isn’t. There was once. But I’m a-goin’. I’m goin’ over, an’ with luck I’ll get back. We’ll have to take water. We’ll have to tie cloths over our faces and over the nostrils of the horses. Otherwise that dust will fix us for good.”

“When you goin’?” Jesse demanded.

“Right soon. We got to make a try. If we could
make it soon enough, we might bring the others back that way. I’ll start tomorrow.”

“Leave us short-handed,” Parson suggested.

“It will.” Kilkenny nodded agreement. He looked at the old mountaineer thoughtfully. “The trouble is, Hale has time, an’ we haven’t. I’m bankin’ that he won’t try anything until after the celebration. I think this is not only his tenth anniversary but a bit of politics to get friendly with them down at Santa Fé. He’ll wait until he’s solid with them before he cleans us out.”

“Maybe. Ain’t nobody down to town goin’ to tell our side of this. Not a soul,” Hatfield agreed.

“There will be.” Kilkenny stripped off his shirt and drew a bucket of water from the well. His powerful muscles ran like snakes beneath his tawny skin. “I’m goin’ down.”

“They’ll kill you, man!” O’Hara declared. “They’d shoot you like a dog.”

“No, not while those Santa Fé officials are there. I’ll go. I hear they want me to fight Tombull Turner. Well, I’m goin’ down an’ fight him.”

“What?” Runyon shouted. “That man’s a killer. He’s a ringer.”

“I know.” Kilkenny shrugged. “But I’ve seen him fight. Maybe I’m a dang’ fool, but I’ve got to get down there an’ see those Santa Fé men. This is my chance.”

“You think you can do any good against Hale?” Parson asked keenly. “He’ll be winin’ and dinin’ them folks from Santa Fé. He won’t let you go nowhere close to ’em.”

“But they’ll be at the fight,” Kilkenny told him. “I’m countin’ on that.”

At daybreak the labor gang had reached the thicket of pines covering the entrance to the road. Axes in hand, they went to work. Other men began bucking the big fallen tree into sections to be snaked out of the way with ox teams.

Once, during a pause when he straightened his back from the saw, Quince looked over at Kilkenny. “They should be there today,” he drawled slowly. “I sure hope they make it.”

“Yeah.” Lance straightened and rubbed his back. It had been a long time since he’d used a cross-cut saw. “You know Blazer?”

“Uhn-huh.” Hatfield bit off a chew of tobacco. “Man there named Sodermann. Big an’ fat. Mean as a wolf. He’s Hale’s man. Got a gunman with him name of Rye Pitkin.”

“I know him. A two-bit rustler from the Pecos country. Fair hand with a six-gun.”

“There’s others, too. Ratcliff an’ Gaddis are worst. We can expect trouble.”

“We?” Kilkenny looked at him. “You volunteerin’ for the trip?”

“Sure.” Quince grinned at him. “I need me a change of air. Gettin’ old, a-settin’ around. Reckon the bore of that Kentucky rifle needs a bit of cleanin’, too.”

They worked on until dark, and, when they stopped, the road was open. O’Hara, who had done the work of two men with an axe, stood on the edge of the cañon in the dimming light and looked across that awful expanse toward the distance, red ridges touched now with light from a vanished sun. “It don’t look good to me, Kilkenny,” he said. “It sure don’t look good.”