Return to Blood Creek

by Frank Callan

  Eddie Kenny reached out a hand and said, ‘Look, put the knife down and shake my hand . . . please?’ But the instant his hand stretched out, a bullet whistled past it and slammed into a rock. Eddie darted back and rolled in the dust towards cover, in case another bullet came his way.

  In a matter of seconds, Cy stood over him, pointing his rifle barrel down so that it almost tickled Eddie’s chin.

  ‘You eager to die today, mister?’ Cy asked, ‘Now if that is the case, carry on annoying me. Otherwise, explain yourself.’

  ‘He says he’s Eddie Kenny,’ Lizzie said. ‘But I think he’s a thieving tramp.’

  Eddie looked up now and said his name again. ‘I pay a neighbourly call and this is what I get!’ He got to his feet and held out a hand. When Cy saw that the man had no gun, he lowered the barrel and walked the visitor towards the house, with some prods from the gun. Lizzie picked up the gunbelt. She found Eddie’s horse nearby and led that homewards.

  A while later they were all sat in the house, with Sedge offering Eddie some coffee.

  ‘Kenny, hey? Well, everybody knows that name. You do look as though you got money, I’ll say that!’ Sedge said, shoving the coffee in front of the visitor, who kept up his polite front, smiling and saying nothing but polite words.

  ‘I’m awful sorry I crept up on you, ma’am . . . I was coming to see you all when I heard the singing and I just had to see who it was. . . it was wrong of me to do that. I don’t make a habit of scaring women! I really am the boss of the Double T.’

  Then he started asking the kind of questions that Cy didn’t want to hear, like where had they come from and did they have any plans – and the questions met with no answers that would give information to anyone. So, he didn’t count, didn’t deserve no explanations? That was about the size of it. Eddie was frustrated, and he finally asked straight out, ‘Mister and Mrs whatever you are, you’re real concerned about privacy out here. You told me nothin’, and so a man might think that you’ve somethin’ to hide!’

  ‘A man might think you could get out and stop blocking out the light from my table, mister,’ Sedge said, running his fingers over the Bowie knife he kept handy in his belt.

  ‘The thing is, Mr Kenny, if that’s who you are, you’re welcome to drink our coffee and talk a little, but we have a peaceful life here, and we like our own company, so you should go now. Take your gunbelt and go annoy some other folks.’ Cy said this without a trace of humour. He was in deadly earnest. Eddie Kenny did smile, and stood up, again offering to shake hands, but was refused a response.

  ‘Just go home, mister,’ Lizzie said.

  When Eddie was riding home he was burning inside with hatred. They had humiliated him. Who the hell were those people? He hated being made to feel small: he hated it like he hated warm beer or cold stew. They would be wiped out, those ragged drifters – wiped out so there was no trace left of them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Octavius Gibbs slammed his fist on the table, and his suited friends seated around the large mahogany table felt their hearts miss a beat. ‘No, no. . . we will not accept the offer. The paper was established by me, and it stays a Gibbs paper . . .’

  ‘But Octavius, old friend, the other shareholders want to sell. They have offered enough cash up front for the five of us to put our feet up and never work again! How can we resist that. . . what do you say, you men?’ This was Sam Dolan, and he looked around at the faces of his partners for a reply. They all made sounds of agreement. ‘You only have forty per cent, Sonny . . . you have to listen to the board here,’ Dolan said, staring straight at Gibbs, making an appeal to common sense.

  ‘Yeah, you have to see, we’re not young any more . . . it’s time to hand the thing over to new blood. Mr Holden will be here any time now and he expects an answer, Sonny.’ This was another shareholder, the mayor himself, Pat Grisham.

  Gibbs got to his feet now and looked around at all the faces staring at him. Once they had been determinedly behind the Informer, and it had been wonderful to be part of such a group of ambitious men. But time had gone on and worn them down. He felt it was time to give them one last lecture, in the hope that they would see the folly of their defeat.

  ‘Look, Pat . . . everybody here . . . this is not only a newspaper. It might look like a few sheets of paper and a gathering of small print features. It might look like letters and opinions of folk sounding off, expressing their dissent, but believe me, it’s far more. It’s the spirit of the frontier! It’s in a local newspaper that we may see, clearer than a mountain stream, the preoccupations of the men and women who are making this territory into the enterprising young settlement that it deserves to be. Only seven years ago the law was passed to open up this vast, beautiful country, and your fathers and mothers came out here, not so long back really, in wagons, facing the Arapaho and any number of renegades. . .We’re still living in a young, burgeoning place, and it’s a land that needs talented men like us. . . age don’t matter! It’s the fire in your belly that counts, I tell you. If we give in now, we’re inviting in the barbarians. That’s what they are, this clan, barbarians. I thought you were learned men, men of taste . . . and here you are letting Mammon lead you into a deal with the devil!’

  ‘What’s your point, Sonny?’ Pat Grisham asked.

  ‘My point is that a periodical is the only way, and the best way, to see and understand the spirit of a society. You know that ever since I created it, the notion in my head was to make some place where ideas could be exchanged . . . basic politics is what it is, but also the spirit of this frontier and these honest, working folk. But there is more to life than bread and whiskey. There are the finer things.’

  ‘But Sonny, it’s time for some new blood. I’m seventy years old and I want to put my feet up on the table and dream, smoke a cigar, watch my grandchildren play . . .’ This was Pat again, and Gibbs could see that he was speaking for all of them, because they nodded and made supporting noises. ‘I’m too old to fret about the finer things, Gibbs. Life has worn us down and . . .’

  ‘Worn you down and made you softer than a blanket in a whorehouse! Fine, then Isaac Holden will come in here, ask us to sign that paper, and you know what’s happening then? The Kenny brothers will shut it down and build a new casino. The only business they know is gambling. Their pa was a gambler, a drifter from down the South looking for an easy buck and a fool to rob. Do you want to be more fools they can rob?’ As he said all this, Gibbs went red in the face and had to dab off the sweat from his eyes with his handkerchief.

  ‘So, I’m asking you again,’ Gibbs pleaded, ‘Will you say “No” and keep the paper away from Kenny?’

  Before anyone could answer, a very fat man in a dark suit, having the appearance of an undertaker, walked in. In fact he was an undertaker, but he also did some legal work to keep the cash flowing in. ‘Isaac Holden at your service, gentlemen!’ He laughed as he spoke, as if the whole world entertained him. ‘Mind if I rest my body here?’ The board kept silent, but Pat told him to make himself comfortable, and he sat on one chair and put his legs up on another. He was what everybody’s idea of an undertaker would be, apart from his pleasant disposition: gaunt face, long black coat, and beneath it a suit, shirt and bow tie. In his coat lapel was a freshly picked rose. ‘Now, I have the necessary papers.’ He opened his bag and brought out several sheets of paper. ‘You have received copies of this . . . and you have all read the text, I trust?’

  Everyone mumbled their response. They were familiar with the terms.

  ‘Before we discuss the price, Mr Holden,’ Sonny asked, ‘I would like some reassurance that Mr Kenny will continue the paper and employ an editor.’

  Holden was sweating now, and he wiped his brow with a bandanna that had been stuffed into his pocket some time back and never been washed. ‘If you read the papers, Sir, you would know that the Informer will be discontinued. My clients want to buy the building and everything in it. Now, please would you all sign this sheet?’ He slid a sheet of paper
on the table and slid it along to the nearest man.

  ‘If you sign this, then you curse this place with more Kenny destruction . . . give them power and they will turn it to destroy you! I’m not signing it.’

  ‘Now Octavius Gibbs, my client Mr Kenny has nothing but good in mind for his town!’

  ‘His town! The damned cheek of the man!’ Gibbs felt like kicking the table, but he had to watch the paper circulate, each man signing it and passing it on. ‘We need the money, Sonny, sorry . . . we just need the money . . .’ Pat said, grimly.

  As Holden gathered in the papers and then shook hands with those who had signed, Gibbs stamped out, vowing to see them all in hell, because he would never spend time with them in their town again. ‘I’ll fight back. . . I got friends!’ he yelled. But the others all muttered that Octavius Gibbs had just lost his last few remaining friends.

  It didn’t take long for him to come up with one last thing he could do, something to stir things up a little out at the Double T. He could print one last issue of the Informer. It would be the perfect way to put a rattler in the road the Kenny brood appeared to be riding on. He went straight from the meeting to the Informer print shop to see Charlie, his production man. ‘Charlie . . . we need to throw some mud at the very perdy portrait of our old foe, Kenny. We’re doing one last issue of the best paper this side of the Rockies!’

  It was dusk when Emilia led Cal across the back road, from the rear door of the Heath Hotel. He had very little to carry, and she brought her medicines and bandages. No one saw them leave, and it was such a quiet yard behind the main buildings that, as they trod carefully and stealthily to the shack, even the dogs didn’t sense any movement.

  ‘Now get into that bed and I’ll get you some food,’ Emilia said, tucking him in. Cal hated the need to be mothered and fussed over, and he was not a good patient. But now, feeling about her as he did, it wasn’t so bad, and he didn’t have to force a smile when she was there.

  ‘You are surely the kind of sick man that doctors and nurses complain of . . . now shut up and take this.’ She made him drink a brew that Doc Heath had given her for him.

  ‘When will I get out of this hole? I feel better.’ But as he said this he winced in pain as he moved his arm.

  ‘You see, you’re not right . . . two more days of rest and then we’ll see.’

  Cal’s life had never given him the opportunity to spend time with what he thought of as a real, fine womanly kind – a wifely kind, in fact. Now he had no choice but to look at her, and he loved the fall of her long dark hair as it lay on his chest as she attended to him. There was the smell of a woman too: her delicate scent, that indefinable presence of a gentle, soft-hearted and caring person. One time, as she reached over him to take hold of a dirty glass, his face was so close to hers that for an instant their eyes looked into each other, and then she moved swiftly away and Cal said, ‘Beg pardon, Ma’am . . . but you are a real attractive woman, that’s all!’

  ‘You can shift any of that kind of talk right out of your head now, do you hear? I been nursing men for a few years, Mister Roney, and they all get smitten, as I told you, by a nurse’s motherly care . . . now you read this, to pass the time!’ She picked up a copy of the Informer that had been lying around, and dropped it on his face.

  ‘I have no time for flirting with men . . . particularly them with bad reputations . . . such as you, Mister Roney!’ She busied herself cleaning and tidying the place, as it had been used as a dump for old tools and furniture, and there was only just room for the single bed, which Cal now filled so well that his feet were dangling out the end of it.

  ‘Now you read that, and I’ll be back with some warm food, very soon. I’ve told the landlady here that I’m using it while my own room is being decorated . . . everybody knows that Ben’s home is a wreck, in need of some rebuilding, to say the least!’

  ‘Does Ben know he has a sister with all your talents – I mean, does he treat you well?’

  ‘None of your business, Cal Roney . . . now read that till I get back.’

  There was nothing else to do. Cal was aware that boredom was now the order of the day – two days, in fact. Reading had never troubled him, and he had never troubled books and papers, but now here were some words in print and little else to occupy him so he determined to read on. At first there were articles about petty theft, the need to clean the walkways, the noise at the Silver Bullet, the Kenny saloon up the road. It was clear that the staff of the paper, and the high-minded folk who bought it, had no time for Eddie Kenny. This caught Cal’s attention and raised a smile:

  Dear Editor,

  I write as a concerned citizen of this town: one who has tolerated for too long the extremes of iniquity perpetrated by the customers of the Silver Bullet, and notably by Mr Edward Kenny and his family, the owners, who seem incapable or unwilling to take some kind of legal role in containing the nuisance created by the roisterers and drifters who gamble, sing, shout and shoot at the moon almost every night both inside the building and out on the streets when the place closes. I demand that the forces of the law apply themselves to quelling this disturbance, and threaten to shut down this revolting fragment of Gomorrah which has been tolerated here for far too long.

  Jeremiah Blake, Blake General Store.

  This is very entertaining for a sick man, Cal thought, smiling at an attitude he had met with much too often in the new settlements. It was hardly a matter for the Pinkertons, but more seriously he reflected, no Silver Bullet was the right outfit for any town struggling for a peaceful existence. From what he had heard of the Kenny brothers, though, this Mr Blake had better watch his back.

  The paper was a much better provider of entertainment than Cal had thought, and time passed quickly. Emilia was soon back. She had food, but she also had news, and it was news that Cal didn’t want to hear. ‘Mr Roney, I’m sorry to come back in here with a long face, but my brother has some trouble on hand. Seems his enemies are too restless to give him time. . . .’

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘Time for walking across to see the world from their point of view. In short, Eddie Kenny sent a messenger to him today – threw a package into the jailhouse, which is all but a ruin, as you know.’

  ‘What kind of package? Something dangerous?’

  She pulled a face, showing disgust. ‘Mr Roney. . . . It was . . . it was a heart, most likely a steer’s heart. And there was a note, which said “For a coward. Come out in the mornin’ if you dare”.’

  ‘I don’t even have to ask . . . it was a challenge. They want a gunfight?’

  She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘Mr Roney, you saved him, but we’ll need a regiment to protect him now!’

  ‘I’m heartily sick of hearing the name Kenny! Who do they think they are . . . God’s representatives on His earth?’

  ‘No . . . Satan’s, Mr Roney. They are Satan’s brood, those boys. They’ve got cash enough to bribe an army and guns enough to supply an army. Their father started a war, and they want to finish it. Before this year’s out, I reckon this place will change its name to Kenny Corral. They won’t rest until they have the whole town, from roofs to rat-alley.’

  Cal had plenty of time to think about the situation of these townsfolk. Never before had he appreciated just how much they were up against. He knew what the weather could do. They were pitted against that, whether it was storms, floods, blizzards, drought and such, but they were facing greedy monsters like Kenny as well. What was worse was this gunfight frame of mind. It was rife wherever a man set down after a journey from back East. In his experience, from Texas to Wyoming, and across from the Goodnight and Loving trail over to Missouri, a man could be called out, sometimes because his reputation was sounded before him, or maybe there had been some cheating at the card table.

  Cal had known it. He had moved around in that circuit when he was younger and foolish as a maverick kicking up dust. Sure, he had called a man out. He had been called out. It was all a mindless game, a trial o
f wills and courage. But for what? For a hollow reputation and a free drink or two when the bucks all patted your back in the saloon.

  It was much worse when the man challenged was a lone star such as Ben Stile. The man had courage enough for a regiment. But he stood alone. Cal damned his wound and his bed-ridden state. Something had to be done.

  But when Emilia came back in and checked his condition, then wiped his head with a cool wet cloth, he felt the rage ebb away, and the faintness overwhelmed him again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At the Double T, Eddie Kenny was in what the family referred to as his Planning Den. It was a long room with enough wall space to take as many framed pictures as a municipal museum and gallery, and he was proud of it. The Den was the Kenny family history, stretching way back to rural Ireland a century earlier. The Den had been built up into a gallery and a store of all the memories of the family, from their first shack to the wide, powerful establishment it was today. It was all the work of Nathan and his father before him, followed by some help from cousins and friends arriving from their homes back in Ohio, all going out there for a new life and for new riches. He would sometimes walk along past all the drawings and pictures, reminding himself of what the place was like twenty or thirty years back, and then he felt the warm glow of satisfaction as he took his seat again and felt proud, rich and successful.

  There they all were, the Kenny ancestors, their portraits in gilded frames, and every one of them looking like successful men: suited, bow-tied and self-satisfied, some smoking cheroots and some holding fat accounts books. Mixed in with these were old drawings of the old home in the Emerald Isle and farmland, all from Galway. They were from a tough, exposed land, facing the mighty Atlantic, and when the hunger for adventure and wealth had led the first men over that great ocean to the New World, the journey had brought them opportunities – and that was the watch-word of the Kenny story.