Monument Rock (Ss) (1998) (31 page)

Dunning appeared in the door. He was wearing two guns, Kilkenny noticed, wherea
s
he had worn but one heretofore. "Come on in!" Poke said, and turned and walked bac
k
into the room.

Lance followed him across the porch, then stopped, closing his eyes for an instan
t
so he would see better inside away from the sunlight. He took in the room with on
e
quick glance. A glance that gauged the distance to all the doors and placed the mai
n
articles of furniture. A lot might happen before he left this room.

"You wanted to see me?"

Poke Dunning looked up from under shaggy gray brows. His eyes were hard, measuring.

"You're Kilkenny?"

"That's right."

"You whipped Frank Mailer the other evening. You reckon he will take it lyin' down?"

"He can take it as he chooses."

"He'll meet you with a gun, Kilkenny, and he's fast as greased lightnin'."

Kilkenny waited, saying nothing. This old man wore his guns with the butts well forward.

Some gunmen liked them that way.

"You can't get away from meeting him unless you run
,
an' you don't set up like a running man. I want you to meet him right away. Soo
n
as he comes back."

"Where's he gone?"

"How'd I know? Don't care, neither. He's a bad hombre, that one, and he's got t
o
be killed. You got to kill him, anyway, but if you hunt him down or kill him as soo
n
as he gets back, any way you like, I'll give you five hundred dollars!"

The way he said it made the sum sound big ... but was it big enough? What were th
e
stakes to Poke Dunning?

"No. I'll meet him when I have to. I won't hunt him down." Kilkenny pulled out hi
s
tobacco and began to build a smoke. "Nice place you've got here. Had it long?"

Dunning tightened up inside. The old fear was always on him. "Quite a spell," h
e
replied. "Been some changes made."

"I heard it belonged to your daughter, to Lona."

"Well, you're right. I gave it to her when she was just a child."

"You going to start another place someday?" Kilkenny touched the tip of his tongu
e
to his cigarette, then placed it in his mouth. He dug out a match and lit up, glancin
g
through the first smoke at Dunning. "Let her have her inheritance?"

"Maybe," Poke said flatly. "Someday." Poke Dunning stared at Kilkenny. What was this
,
anyway? He had the man out here to try to hire him, and now he was asking questions.

Too many questions.

"I was wondering. . . . Why is it that they call you 'Poke,' Mr. Markham? What wa
s
your given name?"

He faced Kilkenny. "What's it to you?"

"Just curious."

"Too durned curious! You ain't takin' me up on Mailer?" Poke wanted to change th
e
subject.

"No." Kilkenny moved a step toward the door. "But I'll be back to see you, 'Poke.'

" He stopped at the door. "You see, Ike Markham was a friend of mine!" As he spok
e
he stepped quickly back into the shadows, dropped a hand to the porch rail, and vaulte
d
it neatly. "Buck!" he called.

The horse came to him, holding his head high and to one side so as not to step o
n
the trailing bridle reins. Catching them up, Lance Kilkenny wheeled the horse an
d
vanished into the darkness.

He need not have hurried. In the big room of the old ranch house, Poke Dunning wa
s
standing where Kilkenny had left him, his face ashen, his cheeks sunken and old.

For all these years he had been afraid of just this. A dozen times he had though
t
of what he might do if ever faced with somebody who knew Markham, and now the momen
t
had come and gone, and he had let the man get away. He should have killed him! Bu
t
why, if someone had to come, did it have to be Kilkenny, of all people?

Alone in his room, he paced the floor. After all these years! Why, there had to b
e
a way out! There had to be! There was no justice in it!

Mailer! If he could only steer Mailer into Kilkenny! They might kill each other off
,
or at least make it easy for him to kill the survivor. In that case, there migh
t
still be a chance.

He paced the floor, cursing Mailer's absence as once he had blessed it, eager fo
r
the man to return.

It was this fear that had caused him to keep the gunmen on the payroll even afte
r
he had given up banditry and rustling. This fear that someday, someone would com
e
over the Old Mormon Trail who knew the truth. He had made a bold play, that long-ag
o
night in the dark shadow of Thieving Rock. . .. Markham had been a friendly man whe
n
they met, and he had talked cheerfully of the ranc
h
he had for his young daughter, and little by little Poke had worked the informatio
n
out of him, that his wife was dead, that he had no near relatives but Lona. Pok
e
Dunning could see his big chance, and in the following nights he sat across the fir
e
from the man who was carrying him west, and waited for his chance. It came, finally
,
only a day's drive from the ranch itself. It came when he was growing desperate wit
h
anxiety, and he knew that Mark-ham had begun to suspect him, that the man moved hi
s
bed at times, shifting it from one place to another after they had turned in.

Yet, in the accomplishment, it had been easy. He had tossed a stone into the darknes
s
near the horses, and Markham, seeing him lying there, apparently asleep, had rise
n
and walked out to the horses, fearful that a mountain lion might come down on them.

Poke Dunning had slid out of his blankets and followed him in his sock feet. He ha
d
used a pick handle, and it was only after the third and last blow had fallen tha
t
little Lona called from her blankets and he had replied that everything was all right
,
keeping his voice low.

The next day he told the child her father had gone on ahead to make ready for them.

Later he told her that he was off doing business for the ranch and made arrangement
s
to send her to school. Once she was gone, he had gambled that she would not remembe
r
after the years. He had even gone so far as to change his own ways, to use gesture
s
and mannerisms the father had used, and even grow a beard in the same style as he
r
father. It had been a bad moment when she returned on her first holiday, but afte
r
eleven years the memory had dimmed, and although he saw doubt in her eyes, he soo
n
managed to make her forget those doubts. When she finally came home after many years
,
the memories from when she was five o
r
almost five had been erased but for a few moments. The rest was a
shadow land
wher
e
memory and fantasy mingled, where the face of her father was never quite distinct.

Poke Dunning had made his big gamble, and he had won. Now he might lose. He woul
d
lose if something was not done. For years he had built up the ranch. Though Lon
a
was the actual owner, in his mind the ranch was his and his alone. And now he wa
s
threatened.

When she had first returned from school, Poke had been worried and he had starte
d
planning how to take back control without raising a lot of questions. Frank Maile
r
had been his first hope.

He had hoped that Frank Mailer, the outlaw that owed him for so much, would be
a
fitting partner in the ranch. But now he was increasingly sure that Frank had hi
s
own plans and that Poke Dunning did not figure in them. Mailer could be handled
,
but somehow he must stall him on marrying Lona until after Kilkenny was out of th
e
way. Then he could take care of big Frank, and he would enjoy doing it. He was goin
g
to make sure that Mailer died. He was going to make sure that Kilkenny died. An
d
now that his long-held plan to legally wrest ownership of the ranch from Lona ha
d
fallen apart, he would kill her, too. If she died, wouldn't he, as her only survivin
g
relative, inherit the ranch? After all, wasn't he supposed to have given it to her?

Only Lona'
s
death had to look like an accident. Gunmen like Kilkenny and outlaws like Maile
r
were always dying violently. He could shoot Mailer himself, and if he carefully reveale
d
what he knew about the big man's outlaw past and various aliases, no one would thin
k
twice about it. But killing a woman, a girl, was another thing entirely.

As if his murderous fantasy was echoing in his mind, Dunning suddenly heard her voice.

She was in the kitchen talking to old Betts, and something was said about coffee.

At this hour on nearly every night Dave Betts made coffee for the two of them. Dunnin
g
suddenly heard a new voice, Flynn's, making some laughing comment.

Poke's eyes narrowed. What was going on here? What was Flynn doing in the house s
o
late at night? The hands rarely came for coffee this late unless working cattle clos
e
by, and they were not now. He turned and started for the kitchen.

Voices suddenly stilled as he opened the door. He glanced at Lona, her face brigh
t
with laughter, the light catching in her auburn hair, and then at Flynn. Dave ha
d
drawn back near the big cooking range, his face drawn.

"What's goin' on here?" Dunning demanded. "Flynn, you should be in bed asleep. Ain'
t
nothin' for you at the house this time of night."

"I was just palaverin'," Flynn replied.

"We was havin' coffee," Betts offered. "You want a cup?"

"Yes, won't you have some?" Lona looked up at him, and there was something leve
l
and hard in her eyes that he had never seen there before. "I like to talk to Gordon."

"So it's Gordon, is it?" He glared balefully at the puncher. "Get out!" he growled.

Flynn hesitated, and Dunning's gun flashed in his hand. He was thinking that somethin
g
else had been going on behind his back, that this Flynn . . . "Get out!" he sai
d
quickly.

Gordon Flynn backed to the door. Never before had he seen the old man go for a gun
,
and on his best day he could not have come within twice the time to match that draw.

He was no gunfighter. On the other hand, his eyes met Lona's. "Go, Gordon. I'm al
l
right." She spoke softly and he opened the door and backed out, his face white.

Poke Dunning stood very still, first glaring at Dave
,
then at Lona. "You come in here!" he said. "I want to talk to you!"

"All right." Lona got to her feet. She felt a queer, frightened sensation insid
e
her, yet in another sense she was perfectly calm, her thoughts working carefully.

Kilkenny had come to see Dunning. The man might know his secret, kept for so long
,
was now about to be exposed. What would he do? What would he try?

She stepped past him into the big room and walked past the long dining-room tabl
e
in the huge old parlor of the ranch house. She crossed to the fireplace, and stoo
d
there straight and looking suddenly taller than she was as she awaited him.

Poke Dunning slammed the door behind him and crossed the room. He dug his pipe int
o
a can of tobacco and tamped it home. Then he looked up, his eyes bitter and hard
,
like flecks of steel under his shaggy brows. "We've got to have a talk. Sorry I go
t
sore out there. Don't like to think of you wastin' time on those cowhands. You'r
e
too good for them."