Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) (19 page)

Winding around a saddle trail leading into a deep gorge, they came out on the sandy bottom, and he speeded their movement to a rapid trot. Despite himself, he was worried. At the cup, there were only Jesse and Saul Hatfield, Bartram, and Jackie Moffitt. Suppose Hale had taken that moment to sweep down upon them and shoot it out? With luck, the defenders might hold the cup, but if the breaks went against them…?

He turned his horse up a steep slope toward the pines. Ahead of him, suddenly, there was a rifle shot, just one. It sounded loudly and clearly in the cañon, yet he heard no bullet. As if by command, the little cavalcade spread out and rode up through the trees. It was Kilkenny who swept around a clump of scrub pine and saw several men scrambling for their horses. He reined in and dropped to the ground.

A rifle shot chunked into the trunk of the pine beside
him, but he fired. One of the riders dropped his rifle and grabbed for the saddle horn, and then they swept into the trees. He got off three carefully spaced shots, heard Runyon, off to his left, opening up, and then, farther along, Parson himself.

He wheeled the buckskin and rode the yellow horse toward the cañon, yelling his name as he swept into the cup. What he saw sent his face white with fear! Jesse Hatfield lay sprawled full length on the hard-packed ground of the cup, a slow curl of blood trickling from under his arm, a bloody gash on his head.

As he reined in alongside Jesse, the door of the house burst open and Jackie Moffitt came running out. “They hit us about two hour ago!” Jackie said excitedly. “They nicked Bart, too!”

Kilkenny dropped to his knees beside Hatfield and turned him gently. One bullet had grazed his scalp; another had gone through his chest, high up. He looked at the wound and the bubbling froth on the man’s lips, and his jaws tightened.

Price Dixon swung down beside him. Kneeling over Hatfield, he examined the wound. Kilkenny’s eyes narrowed as he saw the gambler’s fingers working over him with almost professional skill. He quickly cut away the cloth and examined the wound.

“We’ll have to get him inside,” he said gravely. “I’ve got to operate.”

“Operate?” Parson Hatfield stared at him. “You a doc?”

Dixon smiled wryly. “I was once,” he said. “Maybe I still am.”

Ma Hatfield came to the door, bearing a rifle. Then, putting it down, she turned and walked back inside, and, when they brought the wounded man in, a bed
was ready for him. Her long, thin-cheeked face was grave, and only her eyes showed pain and shock. She worked swiftly and without hysteria. Sally Crane was working over a wound in Bartram’s arm, her own face white.

Kilkenny motioned to Parson and stepped outside. “I’ve got to go back tonight an’ get Nita,” he said quietly. “I’ll go alone.”

“You better take help. There’s enough of us now to hold this place. You’ll have you a fight down to Cedar Bluff. An’ don’t forget Cain Brockman.”

“I won’t. By night I can make it, I think. This is all comin’ to a head, Parson. They can’t wait now. We’ve called their hand an’ raised ’em. They never figured on me talkin’. They never figured on me winnin’ that fight.”

“All right,” Parson said, “we’ll stand by.” He looked down at the ground a moment. “I reckon,” he said slowly, “we’ve done a good day’s work. I got me a man back on the trail, too. Jackie says Jesse got one up on the rim. A couple more nicked. That’s goin’ to spoil their appetite for fightin’, an’ spoil it a heap.”

“Yeah,” Kilkenny agreed. “I’m ridin’ at sundown, Parson.”

Yet it was after sundown before he got started. Jesse Hatfield was in a bad way. Price Dixon had taken a compact packet of tools from his saddlebags, and his operation had been quick and skilled. His gambler’s work had kept his hands well, and he showed it now. Kilkenny glanced at him, curiosity in his eyes. At one time this man had been a fine surgeon.

He was never surprised. In the West you found strange men—noblemen from Europe, wanderers from fine old families, veterans of several wars,
schoolboys, and boys who had grown up along the cattle trails. Doctors, lawyers, men of brilliance, and men with none, all had thronged West, looking for what the romantic called adventure and the experienced knew was trouble, or looking for a new home, for a change, or escaping from something. Price Dixon was one of these. The man was observant, shrewd, and cultured. He and Kilkenny had known each other from the first, not as men who came from the same life, but men who came from the same stratum of society. They were men of the lost legion, the kind who always must move.

Despite his lack of practice, Dixon’s moves were sure and his hands skilled. He removed the bullet from dangerously near the spine. When he finished, he washed his hands and looked up at Parson.

“He’ll live, with rest and treatment. Beef broth, that’s what he needs now, to build strength in him.”

Parson grinned behind his gray mustache. “He’ll get it,” he said dryly. “He’ll get it as long as King Bill Hale has a steer on the range.”

Sally Crane caught Kilkenny as he was saddling the little gray horse he was riding that night. She hurried up to him and then stopped suddenly and stood there, shifting her feet from side to side. Kilkenny turned and looked at her curiously from under his flat-brimmed hat.

“What’s the trouble, Sally?”

“I wanted to ask…” She hesitated, and he could sense her shyness. “Do you think I’m old enough to marry?”

“To marry?” He stopped, startled. “Why, I don’t know, Sally. How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen, ’most nigh seventeen.”

“That’s young,” he conceded, “but I’ve heard Ma Hatfield say she was just sixteen when she married, an’ down in Kentucky and Virginia many a girl marries at that age. Why?”

“I reckon I want to marry,” Sally said shyly. “Ma Hatfield said I should ask you. Said you was Daddy Moffitt’s friend, an’ you was sort of my guardian.”

“Me?” He was thunderstruck. “Well, I reckon I never thought of it that way. Who wants to marry you, Sally?”

“It’s Bart.”

“You love him?” he asked. He suddenly felt strangely old, and yet, looking at the young girl standing there so shyly, he felt more than ever before the vast loneliness there was in him, and also a strange tenderness such as he had never known before.

“Yes.” Her voice was shy, but he could sense the excitement in her, and the happiness.

“Well, Sally,” he said slowly, “I reckon I’m as much a guardian as you’ve got now. I think, if you love Bar-tram an’ he loves you, that’s all that’s needed. I know him. He’s a fine, brave, serious young fellow who’s goin’ to do right well as soon as this trouble clears up. Yes, I reckon you can marry him.”

She was gone, running.

For a few minutes he stood there, one foot in the stirrup. Then he swung his leg over the gray horse and shook his head in astonishment.
That’s one thing, Lance
, he told himself,
you never expected to happen to you!

But as he turned the horse into the pines, he remembered the Hatfields digging the grave for their brother. Men died, men were married, and the fighting and living and working went on. So it would always
go. Lije Hatfield was gone, Miller and Wilson were gone, and Jesse Hatfield lay near to death in the cabin in the cup. Yet Sally was to marry Tom Bar-tram, and they were to build a home. Yes, this was the country, and these were its people. They had the strength to live, the strength to endure. In such a country men would be born, men who loved liberty and would ever fight to preserve it.

The little gray was as sure-footed as a mountain goat. Even the long-legged yellow horse could walk no more silently, no more skillfully than this little mountain horse. He talked to it in a low whisper and watched the ears flick backward with intelligence. This was a good horse.

Yet, when he reached the edge of Cedar Bluff, he reined in sharply. Something was wrong. There was a vague smell of smoke in the air, and an atmosphere of uneasiness seemed to hang over the town. He looked down, studying the place. Something was wrong. Something had changed. It was not only the emptiness left after a crowd is gone, it was something else, something that made him uneasy.

He moved the gray horse forward slowly, keeping to sandy places where the horse would make no sound. The black bulk of a building loomed before him, and he rode up beside it and swung down. The smell of wood smoke was stronger. Then he peered around the corner of the building. Where the Mecca had stood was only a heap of charred ruins.

Hale’s place—burned! He scowled, trying to imagine what could have happened. An accident? It could be, yet something warned him it was not that, and more, that the town wasn’t asleep.

Keeping to the side of the buildings, he walked forward
a little. There was a faint light in Bert Leathers’s store. The Crystal Palace was dark. He went back to the gray horse and, carefully skirting the troubled area, came in from behind the building, and then swung down.

A man loomed ahead of him, a huge bulk of man. His heart seemed to stop, and he froze against the building. It was Cain Brockman!

Watching, Kilkenny saw him moving with incredible stealth, slip to the side of the Crystal Palace, work for an instant at the door, and then disappear inside. Like a ghost, Kilkenny crossed the alley and went in the door fast. There he flattened against the wall. He could hear the big man ahead of him, but only his breathing. Stealthily he crept after.

What could Brockman be doing here? Was he after Nita? Or hoping to find him? He crept along, closed a door after him, and lost Brockman in the stillness. Then suddenly a candle gleamed, and another. The first person he saw was Nita. She was standing there, in riding costume, staring at him.

“You’ve come, Lance?” she said softly. “Then it was you I heard?”

“No,” he spoke softly, “it wasn’t me. Cain Brock-man’s here.”

A shadow moved against the curtain at the far side of the big room, and Cain Brockman stepped into the open. “Yeah,” he said softly, “I’m here.”

He continued to move, coming around the card tables until he stood near, scarcely a dozen feet away. The curtains were drawn on all the windows, thick drapes that kept all light within. If he lived to be a thousand, Lance Kilkenny would never forget that room. It was large and rectangular. Along one side
ran the bar; the rest, except for the small dance floor where they stood now, was littered with tables and chairs. Here and there were fallen chips, cards, cigarette butts, and glasses. A balcony surrounded the room on three sides, a balcony with curtained booths. Only the candles flickered in the great room, candles that burned brightly but with a wavering, uncertain light. The girl held the candles—Nita Riordan, with her dark hair gathered against the nape of her neck, her eyes unusually large in the dimness.

Opposite Kilkenny stood the bulk of Cain Brock-man. His big black hat was shoved back on his huge head. His thick neck descended into powerful shoulders, and the checkered shirt was open to expose a hairy chest. Crossed gun belts and big pistols completed the picture, guns that hung just beneath the open hands. Cain stood there, his flat face oily and unshaven in the vague light, his stance wide, his feet in their riding boots seeming unusually small.

“Yeah,” Cain repeated. “I’m here.”

Kilkenny drew a deep breath. Suddenly a wave of hopelessness spread over him. He could kill this man. He knew it. Yet why kill him? Cain Brockman had come looking for him, had come because it was the code of the life he had lived and because the one anchor he had, his brother Abel, had pulled loose. Suddenly Kilkenny saw Cain Brockman as he had never seen him before, as a big man, simple and earnest, a man who had drifted along the darker trails because of some accident of fate, and whose one tie, his brother, had been cut loose. He saw him now as big, helpless, and rather lost. To kill Kilkenny was his only purpose in life

Abruptly Kilkenny dropped his hands away from
his guns. “Cain,” he said, “I’m not going to shoot it out with you. I’m not going to kill you. I’m not even goin’ to try. Cain, there’s no sense in you an’ me shootin’ it out. Not a mite.”

“What d’you mean?” The big man’s brow was furrowed, his eyes narrowed with thought as he tried to decide what deception was in this.

“I don’t want to kill you, Cain. You an’ your brother teamed up with the wrong crowd in Texas. Because of that, I had to kill him. You looked for me, an’ I had to fight you an’ whip you. I didn’t want to then, an’ I don’t now. Cain, I owe somethin’ to those people up there, the Hatfields an’ the rest. They want homes out here. I’ve got a reason to fight for them. If I kill, it’ll be for that. If I die, it’ll be to keep their land for them. There’s nothin’ to gain for you or me by shootin’ it out. Suppose you kill me? What will you do then?”

Cain hesitated, staring, puzzled. “Why, ride out of here. And go back to Texas.”

“An’ then?”

“Go to ridin’, I guess.

“Maybe, for a while. Then some
hombre’
ll come along, an’ you’ll rustle a few cows. Then you’ll rob a stage, an’ one time they’ll get you like they got Sam Bass. You’ll get shot down or you’ll hang. I’m not goin’ to shoot you, Cain. An’ you’re too good a man to draw iron on a man who won’t shoot. You’re a good man, Cain. Just a good man on the wrong trail. You’ve got too much good stuff in you to die the way you’ll die.”

Cain Brockman stared at him, and, in the flickering candlelight, Kilkenny waited. He was afraid for the first time, afraid his words would fail, and the big
man would go for his gun. He didn’t want to kill him, and he knew that his own gunman’s instinct would make him draw if Cain went for a gun.

Cain Brockman stood stockstill in the center of the room, and then he lifted a hand to his face and pawed at his grizzled chin.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “I’ll be eternally damned.”

He shook his head, turned unsteadily, and lurched into the darkness toward the door.

Kilkenny stepped back and wiped the sweat from his brow. Nita crossed the room to him, her face radiant with relief.

“Oh, Lance!” she exclaimed. “That was wonderful! Wonderful!”

Kilkenny grinned dazedly. “It was awful…just plain awful.” He glanced around. “What’s happened here? Where’s Brigo?”

“He’s in my room, Lance,” Nita said quickly. “I was going to tell you, but Brockman came. He’s hurt, very badly.”

“Brigo? Hurt?” It seemed impossible. “What happened?”

“It was those two gunmen of Hale’s. Cub sent them here after me. Brigo met them right here, and they shot it out. He killed both Dunn and Ravitz, but he was hit three times, once through the body.”

“What happened to the Mecca? What happened in town?”

“That was before Dunn and Ravitz came. Some miners were in the Mecca, and they were all drinking. A miner had some words with a Hale gunman about the fight and about the nesters. The miner spoke very loudly, and I guess he said what he thought about Hale. The gunman reached for a gun, and the miner hit him with a bottle, and it was awful. It was a regular battle, miners against the Hale hands, and it was bloody and terrible. Some of the Hale riders liked your fight and your attitude, and they had quit. The miners drove the others out of the Mecca and burned it to the ground. Then the miners and the Hale riders fought all up and down the streets. But no one was killed. Nobody used a gun then. I guess all of them were afraid what might happen.”

“And the miners?” Kilkenny asked quickly.

“They mounted up and got into wagons and rode out of town on the way back to their claims. It was like a ghost town then. Nobody stirred on the streets. They are littered with bottles, broken windows, and clubs. Then everything was quiet until Dunn and Ravitz came.”

“What about Hale? King Bill, I mean?”

“We’ve only heard rumors. Some of the cowhands who quit stopped by here to get drinks. They said that Hale acts like a man who’d lost his mind. He had been here after the fight, before he went home. He asked me to marry him, and I refused. He said he would take me, and I told him Brigo would kill him if he tried. Then he went away. It was afterward that Cub sent the gunmen for me. He wanted me for himself. Something has happened to Hale. He doesn’t
even look like the same man. You won fifteen thousand dollars from him, and he paid you. He lost money to the miners, too, and to Cain Brockman. It hit him hard. He’s a man who has always won, always had things his own way. He isn’t used to being thwarted, isn’t used to adversity, and he can’t take it. Then before he left, Halloran told him he would have to let the law decide about the nesters, and Hale declared that he was the law. Halloran told him he would find out he was not and that, if he had ordered the killing of Dick Moffitt, he would hang.”

“And then?”

“He seemed broken. He just seemed to go to pieces. I think he had ruled here these past ten years and that he actually believed he was king, that he had the power and that nothing could win against him. Everything had gone just as he wanted until you came along.”

“You mean,” Kilkenny said dryly, “until he tried to turn some good Americans out of their homes.”

“Well, anyway, you’d managed to get food from here right under his nose. Then, when the attempt along the Blazer trail was tried, and he practically wiped your men out, he was supremely confident. But his attack on the cup failed. What really did it all was your defeat of Turner, and at the moment, when he had finished paying off, he was told for the first time of the death of Sodermann at Blazer. Then some of the cowhands who quit took the opportunity to drive off almost a thousand head of cattle. These defeats and what Halloran told him have completely demoralized the man.”

“What about Cub?”

“He’s wild. He hated you, and he was furious that some of the men quit. He doesn’t care about Halloran,
for he’s completely lawless. He’s taken a dozen of the toughest men and gone after the stolen cattle.”

“Good! That means we have time.” Kilkenny took her by the arms. “Nita, you can’t stay here. He might just come back. You must go to the cup and send Price Dixon down here. He can do something for Brigo. Tell him to get here as fast as he can. And you’ll be safe there.”

“But you?” Nita protested.

He smiled gently and put his hand on her head. “Don’t worry about me, Nita. I’ve lived this way for years. I’ll do what I can for Jaime. But hurry.”

She hesitated only an instant. Then, suddenly on tiptoe, she kissed him lightly on the lips and turned toward the door.

“Just take my horse,” he said. “It’ll be quicker. The little gray. Give him his head and he’ll go right back to the cup. I got him from Parson Hatfield.”

Nita was gone.

Kilkenny turned swiftly and took a quick look around the darkened room. Then he walked through the door and over to the bed where Brigo lay.

The big Yaqui was asleep. He was breathing deeply, and his face was pale. When Kilkenny laid a hand on his brow, it was hot to the touch. Yet he was resting and was better left alone.

Kilkenny walked back into the main room and checked his guns by the candles. Then he got Brigo’s guns, reloaded them, and hunted around. He found two more rifles, a double-barreled shotgun and many shells, and two more pistols. He loaded them all and placed the pistols in a neat row on the bar. One he thrust into his waistband, leaving his own guns in their holsters.

Then he doused the candles and sat down in Brigo’s chair by the door. It would be a long time until morning.

Twice during the long hours he got up and paced restlessly about the great room, staring out into the vague dimness of the night at the ghostly street. It was deathly still. Once, something sounded outside, and he was out of his chair, gun in hand. But when he tiptoed to the window, he saw it was merely a lonely burro wandering aimlessly in the dead street.

Toward morning he slept a little, only restlessly and in snatches, every nerve alert for trouble or some sound that would warn of danger. When it was growing gray in the street, he went in to look at the wounded man. Brigo had opened his eyes and was lying there. He looked feverish. Kilkenny changed the dressing on the wound after bathing it, and then checked the two flesh wounds.

“
¿Señor?
Is it bad?” Brigo asked, turning his big black eyes toward Kilkenny.

“Not very. You lie still. Dixon is coming down.”

“Dixon?” Brigo was puzzled.

“Yeah, he used to be a doctor. Good, too.”

“A strange man.” Sudden alarm came into Brigo’s eyes. “And the
señorita?”

“I sent her to the cup, to the Hatfields. She’ll be safe there.”

“
Bueno
. Cub, he has not come?”

“No. You’d better rest and lay off the talk. Don’t worry if they come. I’ve got plenty of guns.”

He put the water bucket close by the bed, and a tin cup on the table. Then he went out into the saloon.

In the gray light of dawn it looked garish and tawdry. Empty glasses lay about, and scattered poker
chips. Idly he began to straighten things up a little. Then, after making a round of the windows, he went to the kitchen and started a fire. Then he put on water for coffee.

Cub Hale would come. It might take him a few hours or a few days to find the herd. He might grow impatient and return here first. He would believe Nita was still here, and his gunmen had not returned. Or he might send some men. Nita would not go over the trail as fast as he or the Hatfields. If all was well at the cup, the earliest Price could get here would be midday.

No one moved in the street. The gray dawn made it look strange and lonely in its emptiness. Somewhere, behind one of the houses, he heard the squeaking of a pump handle, and then the clatter of a tin pail. His eyelids drooped and he felt very tired. He shook himself awake and walked to the kitchen. The water was ready, so he made coffee, strong and black.

Brigo was awake when he came in and the big man took the coffee gratefully. “
Bueno
,” he said.

Kilkenny noticed the man had somehow managed to reach his gun belt and had his guns on the table.

“Any pain?” he asked.

Brigo shrugged, and, after a look at him, Kilkenny walked out. Out in the main room of the saloon, he looked thoughtfully around. Then he searched until he found a hammer and nails. Getting some loose lumber from the back room, he nailed boards over the windows, leaving only a narrow space as a loophole from which each side of the building might be observed. Then he prepared breakfast.

The work on breakfast showed him how dangerously short of food they were. He thrust his head in the door and saw Brigo’s eyes open.

“We’re short of grub an’ might have to stand a siege. I’m goin’ down to Leathers’s store.”

The street was empty when he peered out of the door. He took a step out onto the porch. One would have thought the town was deserted. There was no sound now. Even the squeaky pump was still. He stepped down into the street and walked along slowly, little puffs of dust rising at every step. Then he went up on the boardwalk. There was still no sign of life.

The door to Leathers’s store was closed. He rattled the knob, and there was no response. Without further hesitation, he put his shoulder to the door, picked up on the knob, and shoved. It held, but then he set himself and lunged. The lock burst and the door swung inward. Almost instantly, Leathers appeared from the back of the store.

“Here!” he exclaimed angrily. “You can’t do this!”

“When I rattled the door, you should have opened it,” Kilkenny said quietly. “I need some supplies.”

“I told you once I couldn’t sell to you,” Leathers protested.

Kilkenny looked at him with disgust. “You’re a yellow-belly, Leathers,” he said quietly. “Why did you ever come West? You’re built for a neat little civilized community where you can knuckle under to authority and crawl every time somebody looks at you. We don’t like that in the West.”

He picked up a slab of bacon and thrust it into a sack, and then he began piling more groceries into the burlap sack, until it was full. He took out some money and dropped it on the counter. He turned then to go. Leathers stood watching him angrily.

“Hale will get you for this,” he snapped out.

Kilkenny turned patiently. “Leathers, you’re a fool.
Can’t you realize that Hale is finished? That whole setup is finished and you sided with him, so you’re finished. You’re the kind that always has to bow to authority. You think money is everything and power is everything. You’ve spent your life living in the shadows and cringing before bigger men. A good part of it’s due to that sanctimonious wife of yours. If King Bill smiled at her, she’d walk in a daze for hours. It’s because she’s a snob and you’re a weakling. Take a tip from me. Take what cash you’ve got, load up some supplies, and get out of here…but fast.”

“An’ leave my store?” Leathers wailed. “What do you mean?”

“What I say.” Kilkenny’s voice was harsh. “There’s going to be some doin’s in this town before another day. Hale’s riders are comin’ back, an’ Cub Hale will be leadin’ ’em. You know how much respect he has for property or anythin’. If he doesn’t clear you out, the Hatfields will. There’s no place for you in Cedar Bluff any more. We want to build from the ground up here, an’ we want men who’ll fight for what they believe. You won’t, an’ you were against us, so get out!”

He walked back down the silent street, went into the saloon, and stored his grub. Despite himself, he was worried. The morning was early yet, and he was expecting some of the Hale riders, and soon. The longer he waited, the more worried he became.

Brigo needed medical attention, and Doc Pollard, the Hale henchman, had gone to the Hale Ranch. He was little better than useless, anyway.

Seated at a table, he riffled the cards, and the sound was loud in the room. No one moved in the deserted street, and he played silently, smoking endless cigarettes and waiting. Again and again his thoughts
returned to Nita. After all, should he wait? Supposing he was killed eventually? Why not have a little happiness first? He knew without asking that she was the girl for him, and he knew she would marry him in an instant and be completely happy to live in a house built among the high peaks. She was lovely, tender, thoughtful. A man could ask no more of any woman than she had for the giving. Yet he remembered the faces of other gunmen’s wives when word came that their men had died. He remembered their faces when their men went down into the streets, when they waited through every lonely hour, never sure whether they would come back or not. Bartram had Sally Crane. He remembered her sweet, youthful face, flushed with happiness. It made him feel old and lonely.

He slipped his guns out and checked them once more. Then he took up the cards and shuffled them again. Suddenly an idea came to him. He got up and went to the back door, took a quick look around, and slipped out to the stable. There were still horses there. He had a hunch he might need them, and saddled two.

Then he went back inside and closed the door. The place was deathly still and the air close and hot. It felt like a storm was impending. He brushed the sweat from his brow and crossed to have a look at Brigo. The big man was sleeping, but his face was flushed and feverish. He looked poor.

He glanced out the door at the empty street. Clouds were building up around the peaks. If it rained, it was going to make it tough to move Jaime Brigo. Thunder rumbled like a whimper of far-off trumpets, and then deeper like a rolling of gigantic casks along the floor of a cavern. He walked back inside, and sat down.