Return to Blood Creek

by Frank Callan

  Eddie was thinking about opportunities as he sat in the huge leather armchair his pa had bought for use at meetings, so he could head the groups of enterprising types who worked with and for him. He was thinking about just how all the plans had been coming together well, and the day when he and his brothers could ride into Long Corral and find that everything their gaze landed on was theirs, and theirs only. He tore off a broad sheet of paper from a heap on the desk and drew a rough outline of what was working out. He drew the main street and made squares to show the Silver Bullet, then the Kenny stables, and then opposite was the jailhouse and court room. That was surely going to be under their rule very soon. Up the street a-ways was the grand old building housing the Informer, and that was to be the Kenny Casino now. He smiled, feeling the good thrill of satisfaction he was working for, and then drew a rough track representing ten miles, and this led to the settlement at Blood Creek. That was holding out, and didn’t seem to have anybody under its roof who might be feeling some fear just now. They were the one big hurdle left. If he had Blood Creek, he had the best route to the north, and the riverside.

  There were homesteaders moving in, and they all wanted their patch of land. They would all challenge the herds the Kenny brothers had steadily bought, rustled and hemmed in for many years, and the new arrivals were not to be encouraged. If he had a base at Blood Creek he could easily worry out the new faces and send them back East or further north, though the tribes close by were likely to put the fear of God into the greenhorns trying to learn about cattle or mining.

  His mind was sifting all this thinking when there was a knock at the door and in came Jim. He was the tallest and thinnest of the brothers, and also the kid, just making up the numbers. and he had become tired of living with that inferiority. He wore his distinctive black, a colour he had been drawn to ever since he first saw himself as a gunslinger rather than a cowherd. He was red-haired, and the shiny rust hues of hair and beard contrasted sharply with the black shirt, vest and pants. His guns were fancy, the grips carved with his initials, and he had a knife in a sheath rammed through his belt at his back.

  ‘Eddie, I know you’re in the Den, and we usually leave you there, but look, I’ve come to offer to take a little problem off your back.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning the nuisances at Blood Creek. I told you before . . . now I want to do it. I’ll take ’em off the board and out of the game. I know you was down to do it, but you got Stile to attend to, right? So let me and Coop see to the folks out at the Creek. What do ya say? I said before, I can keep him sober.’

  ‘I say Coop is unreliable. First, he’s got sixty years on his back, and second, he’s too fond of the bottle, not to mention the leg he drags around. He was pa’s right-hand man and we’ve kept him for that. But well, he’s nothin’ under his hat but hair, and even that is thin as a runt calf. You can see his head’s stuck in the past with that damned white Texas Ranger hat . . . he won’t part with it, and he’s got the damned feather in it so he looks like some kind of Indian fighter.’

  ‘Eddie . . . he’s not what you think. He’s not drinkin’ so much. I can vouch for the man. As for the leg, well he’s been dragging that most of his life and he’s done fine! What he does have is guts. He don’t shrink from any fight.’

  ‘You sure, Jimmy? Because we can’t easily forget the fiasco at Fuller’s Crossing. Damn nearly got me killed. He was unreliable as a steer with a touch of loco root. I’ve seen infants in school who could shoot better!’

  Jim pulled a grimace, as if there was a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Aw, look, brother, I’ll keep him on the level, I promise. Who is there to take on anyways? I heard there was an old soldier and a sweet young couple more innocent than a babe in the cradle.’

  Eddie screwed up his drawing and threw it across the room and into the waste basket. Then he stood up and walked across to Jim.

  ‘Look, Jim, little brother, maybe the time has come for me to trust you. I’ll let you take this job, and you can prove yourself. Fine. But promise me one thing: you’ll take no whiskey with you. Yes, you’re right. There’s a young man and a very pretty woman there, fussed over by a lame old man with a tedious sense of chatter. The world wouldn’t miss them, you see what I mean?’

  Jim beamed with delight and slapped his brother on the shoulder. ‘You won’t regret this, Eddie. You’ll see, you’ll be proud of me.’ As he walked out he whooped his happiness like a child set free from the schoolroom on a summer’s day.

  Eddie went to the window and watched his brother walk across to the stables, where Coop was waiting for him, and he saw the two men shake hands. He was thinking he should have let Coop go months back, as he was a liability. But he was Pa’s old compadre and there was some sentiment involved. The only problem was, that sentiment was like an arrowhead in a wound. You wanted rid of the damned thing, but then you had lived with the wound so long it had stopped hurting.

  That morning, sitting up in bed after eating porridge followed by some eggs and bread, Cal was feeling a lot better. The pain had eased a mite, and his head had stopped throbbing with the ache that the crack on the wood had caused. Emilia left him with the food and went to busy herself, working for her brother, but when she returned he was itching to get up and she could see it on his face.

  ‘You’re restless, Mr Roney. I know what you want to do. I’ve seen your type before. You want to take down the scenery in this strange play called life. . . take down the scenery and put on another story because you’ve no time for this one.’

  ‘I lie to myself, I know, but yeah, I want to get on my feet, dress myself and ride on out of this town, though leavin’ you will be sad indeed, nurse Stile! You’re the best company I’ve had in years – since I was billeted with a company of comedians and jokers down South! But now, you know, I could ride a horse . . . I could move around . . . in spite of what you say.’

  ‘Well, forget that. You’re not well enough. This is a serious wound you got. I mean, the bullet very nearly caused a bleed we couldn’t have stopped. You do see that? All this infatuation with your nurse has softened your brain. If you want to live, then stay as still as a babe in a cot.’

  ‘But you patched me up . . . there’s a tight bandage on now . . . you strapped the pad on . . . I can move.’

  Emilia gave him a pitiful look and tutted. ‘Really, Mr Roney! If you swung a leg over a horse and kicked on out of here, you would bleed again. You understand? I’m losing my temper now, and a nurse should never do that.’

  Cal lay back with a sigh of boredom. She had brought some coffee, and she put the cup down on a little table. She saw the paper opened out on the bed and asked if he had read it, and did he want more reading matter?

  ‘Nurse Stile . . . words on paper is as tedious as a hot Sunday sermon. But I have to admit, I enjoyed the letters. Folks around here are opinionated all right. You seem to be educatin’ everybody so they be contradictory and political. Or maybe Wyoming folk just like a good altercation.’

  ‘Are you a man of politics, Mr Roney?’

  ‘It’s about power, and so of course I am. But I’m more a man of justice . . . it comes from my own experience. People has to have their just desserts, and a man who has done some wrong has to have a chance to put things right.’

  ‘You referring to what happened here all that time ago?’

  ‘Sure. That was what set my mind on this path today, working for what’s right. People forget that I didn’t shoot the man facing me . . . I spared the man. I spared Nathan Kenny, but his sons don’t see that. I know what they’ll be thinking . . . they see only humiliation, Emilia, and I’ve learned that humiliation is what wounds a man the deepest. He can’t take it, and he lashes out. As to the woman that day . . . until my dying day I’ll see that woman fall down, full of my lead . . . and I’ll see the poor man she left widowed, down on his knees, giving me a look that had more despair in it than a convict’s on a scaffold!’

  Emilia saw to the pillow and the bedc
lothes, and then offered her patient more coffee. They both were aware how much he winced in pain as he moved the weight of his body around. ‘See?’ she said, ‘Delicate . . . still in a delicate condition.’ She had ignored his comments on the shooting of so long ago, ignoring it because it was too painful to recall and to think about, now that her own brother was in danger of a similar death.

  There was a knock on the door, and then a woman’s voice was heard shouting Emilia’s name. She came in and apologised for disturbing them. ‘Emilia. . . your brother . . . he’s real het up. I left him cleaning his gun and cursing the sheriff.’ She was Meg Carson, and she was what society saw as a poor widow, but in fact she ran her bed and board so well that she was one of the richest people in Long Corral. Meg was nearly fifty, wrapped in a plain blue dress and shawl, and her healthy red face was creased from worry. Her brown hair flicked across her face as she spoke.

  ‘How are you doing, mister?’ She saw Cal and heard his moans as she had walked in.

  ‘I’m doing fine . . . thanks so much for the use of this place. I wouldn’t be welcome here if folk knew who I was . . . and I’m aiming to leave tomorrow. You’ll soon be rid of me. Now what about Ben . . . he’s in trouble I guess?’

  ‘Seems there’s been somebody calling him out. There are men around here who still think the rule of the bullet is the law.’

  Cal made a supreme effort to push himself to the edge of his bed, swung a leg out on to the floor and then forced himself to his feet, but with a yelp as he did so. Emilia went to him and tugged at his shirt sleeve, shouting at him for being stupid, but he replied: ‘Just bring my rifle from over there . . . I can cover him from inside!’

  Both women took hold of him now and carefully pushed him back down into the bed.

  ‘You will do no such thing!’ Meg said, sounding like a schoolma’am.

  ‘My brother needs me, so I’m going out there. Thanks for coming, Meg. You stay right there, mister!’ The women left, leaving Cal panting and feeling foolish. But there was a rage in him, a frustration that he was finding very hard to resist.

  Gibbs now had Charlie checking through the archives of the Informer. They were looking for every accusation about Eddie Kenny, every negative report and every brush he had had with the law or with decent citizens.

  ‘Bring it all out, Charlie, and everything on his pa while you’re at it. We’re doing a Kenny Special Issue, designed to rouse the nest of snakes out there at the Double T,’ Gibbs said, as he made ready for the material. Charlie was only thirty, but had been with the paper for ten years, after knocking on the door one day in search of some work. He was still the thin youth who had arrived, carrying no flesh and immaculately groomed and dressed. He wore sober dark clothes, kept his hair short and his face clear of hair. A stranger seeing him would have thought him a lawyer or something similar. The one thing he wanted more than anything was Emilia Stile as his wife. He had almost asked her once, but had decided to give her some more time to maybe miss him. They had walked out a few times, eaten together and enjoyed a concert. But she was as dedicated to her work as he was to his own.

  After an hour, the broad table in the room was stacked with papers. The two men sat down and sifted through them, pulling out the best, the meatiest reports, the ones that showed the dark brutality of the Kenny clan. When Gibbs started writing up the extracts they were going to use, and Charlie made some coffee, they sat there, looked over the copy, and finally Gibbs said, ‘This should fill four pages. It’s shorter than usual, but it’s a farewell paper, and it’s going to have some impact, Charlie, believe me!’

  It was late afternoon before the frames were filled and the composition of the letters and boxes was done. They were close to print, and at their last coffee break, Gibbs sat back and said, ‘Now, Charlie, read me that leader.’ Charlie put his long legs up on a chair and read:

  Black deeds of the Kenny Men. . . . In saying farewell to its loyal readers, the Informer bows out with a reminder of the questionable past of the man who is to run Long Corral, and his deadly inheritance from his father, a man known across the territory as the ‘Land Grabber with the Gun’. The Kenny story includes bullying, fraud, robbery, blackmail and assault. Have the good citizens of the place forgotten the accusation of arson that Edward faced? Or the vicious assault on a visiting businessman at the Heath Hotel last year? The brothers who escaped from the town jail and nobody is interested in arresting them? When will right prevail?

  ‘Excellent!’ Octavius Gibbs felt a glow of satisfaction. But as they were enjoying the moment, Charlie realized that he had not given Gibbs the news he had received early that morning.

  ‘Hey, Mr Gibbs . . . we’ve been so busy I forgot to tell you the news that came this morning . . . our sheriff ain’t coming back! News is that Sheriff Capp went to Cheyenne and then decided to go back to Illinois where he’s from. He can’t face the challenge here any longer. A letter came on the stage, and I should have said . . .’

  ‘Oh . . . so there’s Ben Stile, on his own, to face the damned clan out there.’

  ‘Yeah, unless we do somethin’, Mr Gibbs,’ Charlie said, with no idea of what exactly two pen-pushers could possibly do.

  Cal, holed up and in pain, had no idea that another note had arrived from Calero, urged on by Lerade, who was worrying again. Calero had asked Macky for news of whether he had heard anything that might be happening at Blood Creek, or whether the agent had made contact with him. Macky, of course, had nothing to report, and sent a brief note to Calero telling him that.

  Both Calero and Lerade now felt that something had gone wrong. They met to decide what action should be taken.

  ‘Look, boss, he’s so far away he can’t get a note to us. It looks like he by-passed the town and went straight out to the Creek. That’s my hunch, so that’s why we’ve heard nothing.’ Calero was convincing. Still, thought Lerade, for all they knew there could be ten men out there at the Creek, and there was just Cal Roney facing them.

  ‘Two days . . . two days more, Matt, then I want you to go and head for the Creek. I just think it’s best to cover each other. . . play safe. I’d do the same for you. It’s not just because he’s new.’

  Calero knew that it was the opposite of what Lerade said. Of course he was thinking that Roney was in trouble and that he should have sent someone else. But Roney knew the land there better than anyone else. What neither of the Pinkerton men knew was that Macky had far more on his mind than watching out for detectives in disguise.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The newspapermen were so busy at their office, half a mile from the end of town where the Heath Hotel faced the jail, that they had no idea what was happening as they sat back, feeling pleased at their handiwork. They rolled the press and its rumble covered any sound from outside, so they were cocooned in their own workplace, unaware of what Ben Stile was faced with that late afternoon. Charlie, who had been ambitious to follow in Gibbs’ footsteps and run a newspaper himself, had brushed aside the disappointment of the paper being bought out, and put all his energy into hitting back in this way at Kenny.

  His dream had been to marry Emilia and dig in somewhere with a new homestead, him being a printer and writer, and she being a medicine woman. They were not short of skills to sell. Now he was rethinking, but she was still at the centre of his plans for the future.

  Ben had waited all day, after opening the foul parcel the day before, revealing to him the fatty heart of some beast. All he knew was that he would have to face a gun, or guns, on the next day. Sheriff Capp was expected back, and so as the day wore on, and there was no sign of any Kenny riders, he felt that Capp would arrive and join him. But when it turned five, and he sat outside his jailhouse looking east, he saw the dust and heard the sound of horses coming his way. He went back inside and took his Henry rifle from its rack. He had sixteen rounds in it, and he had the advantage of cover. Kenny and his boys would have to come and get him.

  But to his surprise, as he watched from his doorway, a g
ang of around six riders came in, but they all dispersed into the buildings opposite except one man, who rode to the middle of the road, dismounted and tethered his mount across the road, then walked back to stand alone in the afternoon sun and shout Ben Stile’s name.

  ‘Just me and you, Stile . . . get out here like a man.’

  It was Jake Kenny. Ben put down his rifle. In his belt he had his two Remington Army cartridge pistols. He liked the length of the barrel, but they weren’t too long for gun-fighting, and he was comfortable with them.

  He called out from his doorway, ‘Jake . . . I thought our days of playing this dangerous game were over. Your pa nearly died doing this foolhardy gun-play.’

  ‘It ain’t playin’, Stile . . . get out here or live in shadows like a coward!’ Jake shouted.

  He would have to face Jake, and everybody knew how much Jake Kenny bruited round the streets that he was slick with a rifle and even more impressive with his six-guns. There he was now, staring at the jail, his hat tipped back and his hands suspended over the holsters.

  ‘Well, Stile, you a man or a weasel? You got the message yesterday, and you ain’t run for it, so I guess you’re not a complete coward!’ There was laughter from across the road. His men were expecting to have a dead deputy in the dry earth before long.

  From somewhere behind the main street, out of the shadow, Emilia Stile came running, shouting her brother’s name – but two of the Kenny gang went and held her, pulling her back into the shadows. All Ben could hear was her voice yelling his name. ‘Don’t you dare harm her, Kenny!’ He bawled out, his words carrying a rage as well as a threat. It was time to step out and face the man. As he walked into the light, Jake replied, ‘We don’t hurt women, Stile . . . she’s safe.’

  ‘No living thing is safe while you’re above the dirt, Kenny. I’m gonna put you under it. Best use for a Kenny I guess, feedin’ the vegetation. All you feed now is your greed, your crazy need to run the world. I got news for ya, Jake . . . ya can’t run the law.’