The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

“Who is the artist you believe did this sketch?”

  “No one you’d have heard of,” Connery said, because he could hardly tell the truth without sounding insane.

  “I hope you find him, and hire him for your magazine. It would be wonderful to see this kind of work in it again … almost like having Kenton back again.”

  “There’s more truth in that statement than you can know.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind. The pie is good.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The waiter turned to walk away, but a stray thought came to Connery’s mind, a possibility that had been playing at the edge of his thoughts ever since he’d entered town, and he called the waiter back.

  “What can you tell me about that big mansion on the mountainside?”

  “Have you not heard of Jack Livingston, sir?”

  “Maybe I’ve heard the name. But I don’t know much about him.”

  “Not many do.… There are more rumors than facts.”

  “I heard he had died.”

  “Not that I know of, sir. There’s someone living up there now. I’ve seen lights at night.”

  “Does Livingston have family?”

  “His wife died. I think he had a son by a woman he was married to before…” The waiter lowered his voice. “Or maybe not really married to, if you know what I mean.”

  “How long have you been reading the Illustrated American?”

  The waiter lifted a brow; Connery knew his stream of shifting questions must seem odd. The waiter would think them worthwhile when he received his sizable tip. “A lot of years, sir.”

  “Do you ever recall Brady Kenton having done a story about Jack Livingston?”

  The other frowned, thinking back. “I don’t know that I do.”

  “Really? Because I have the notion that he did. But I’m not sure.” He paused and stared into his coffee cup. “If Brady Kenton knew Jack Livingston, then Jack Livingston might be just the kind of man who could help Kenton hide.”

  “Hide? But he’s dead.”

  “I know. But if he wasn’t, and if he wanted to hide, what better place than a place like that?”

  The waiter was looking increasingly uncertain about his customer.

  “I’ll finish my pie now,” Connery said, smiling.

  “Very good, sir.”

  When Connery left the cafe, he paused and looked up at the mansion. Just a feeling … and a fragment of something that might be a memory.

  The more he thought about it, the more sure he felt that Kenton had once done a story about an eccentric rich man who built a mansion for his wife above a Colorado mining town. It had to be Jack Livingston. How many others like him could there be?

  Connery would visit the local telegraph office very soon and send a wire back to the Illustrated American. A search of the magazine’s morgue would quickly answer the question.

  For now, though, there was another visit to make. Connery stepped off the boardwalk and set out to find Smith’s Hardware and Dry Goods.

  CHAPTER 12

  As soon as the door to the room above the hardware store opened, Billy Connery lost any possible doubt that the artist who had done the sketch on the envelope was Brady Kenton. The sketch had perfectly captured not only the image but also the very stance and impression of the man who stood before Connery in the open doorway.

  “What can I do for you?” Walter Wheelan asked. He was a little rumpled and weary-looking and surrounded by packed crates and boxes. The arm garters he’d worn in the sketch Kenton had done were not present now. The man had been packing up to move.

  “My name’s Billy Connery,” Connery replied, still suppressing his Irish accent, just in case Wheelan was another one of those who found Irishmen intolerable. “I wanted to meet you, just for a few moments, and ask you some questions about something.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Nothing to worry about. Just some personal business I’m conducting. Congratulations on your marriage, by the way.”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “A waiter at the Buckeye. One of your former coworkers.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Just this.” Connery produced the envelope and showed it to Wheelan.

  “I’ll be!” Wheelan said, looking at the image of himself. “Where’d you get that? Did you draw that?”

  “No. It was found in the Buckeye. Not by me, but someone who was there a while back, and who lent it to me. You haven’t seen it before?”

  “No. Who drew it?”

  “That’s the question I’m trying to answer. I’m a professional illustrator, and I’d like to find the one who did this. He’s quite good, as you can see. Excellent.”

  “I’d say so. Looks just like me.”

  “You never noticed a customer sketching you at one time or another in the last few weeks?”

  Wheelan thought a few moments. “Well, maybe I did, though I didn’t know he was drawing. There was a man with a pencil … I thought he was writing.”

  This didn’t necessarily mean anything. Any number of people probably jotted down notes or wrote letters in cafes. But just in case, Connery pressed on. “Do you recall what he looked like?”

  “Not really. I think he was a fairly tall fellow. Beard. That’s about all.”

  Maybe they were getting somewhere after all. “How old?”

  “Lord, I don’t remember. Not young, not old. Just a man.”

  “Tell me: have you ever seen this man before?” Connery pulled from under his vest a page torn from a magazine. He unfolded it and handed it to Wheelan.

  “I’ve seen this picture,” Wheelan said. “This is the picture of Brady Kenton that always ran in the Illustrated American, before he died.”

  “I need to ask you a question that may seem odd. Did the man you saw with the pencil in the café look like Brady Kenton?”

  Wheelan laughed. “What kind of joke is this? Brady Kenton’s dead!”

  “I know. But the man you saw … did he look like Kenton?”

  “I guess he could have looked like him. But a lot of people could. Kenton is dead. You’re not trying to say he isn’t, are you? Because … hey! Hey, you there! Get out of there!”

  Wheelan’s attention had suddenly been diverted by someone behind Connery. Connery turned and saw a boy of about ten come running out of a half-opened door of an apartment across from Wheelan’s room. The boy darted within a yard of Connery and down the stairs. He had something in his hands—a loaf of bread, Connery thought it was.

  “Damned little scoundrel!” Wheelan said. “Sorry thief! You leave a door unlocked around here and that little devil will be through it, taking whatever he can. I’ve caught him in here before! It taught me to keep my door locked, I’ll tell you.”

  “So he doesn’t live in those rooms?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “It looked like he’d taken bread.”

  “He lives on what he can steal half the time. I suppose I should feel sorry for him.”

  “If he’s hungry enough to steal bread, I think there’s no choice but to feel sorry for him. Is he an orphan?”

  “He’d be better off if he was. He’s got no mother, but his father’s still alive. But the sorry old devil drinks bad, and beats the boy so bad he has to spend a lot of his time in hiding. I really do suppose I should feel more sorry for him than I do. I just can’t abide a thief under any circumstance, that’s all. The people who live across the hall there have given that boy food, money, clothes, time and time again. And here he goes stealing from them!”

  Connery found this all dismaying and depressing. He’d spent enough time here. Taking back the picture of Kenton, he thanked Wheelan again and turned away.

  “Hey, you really weren’t trying to say that Kenton is still alive, were you?”

  Connery turned and looked at Wheelan a last time. “Why? Do you think he could be?”

  “Not if what I read in your magazine is true. He was k
illed along the railroad near Denver.”

  “Then I guess you answered your own question. Good day to you, Mr. Wheelan.”

  “Good day to you, sir. I hope you find your mysterious sketch artist.”

  “I intend to, sir.”

  Connery moved on, but Wheelan called to him one more time. “Hey, I think I just remembered something. That man writing with the pencil came back in later on. He looked around the table he’d been at, but wouldn’t stay to eat. I remember because I tried to seat him and he wouldn’t sit down.”

  “He was looking for this sketch, then.”

  “Assuming that man was the one who did it. It could have been somebody else. Like I said, I just figured the man was writing down notes or something. I didn’t really specifically notice him drawing.”

  Connery thought it all over as he walked slowly through town, looking for the telegraph office. If it had been Kenton that Wheelan saw laboring with a pencil and paper and if Kenton had returned to seek the envelope he’d left, then he must have been concerned that the envelope drawing would be found and serve to identify him.

  As fate would have it, that very thing had occurred.

  Connery found the telegraph office and sent a wire to the Illustrated American. After an hour of waiting the reply came back. Kenton had indeed done a story and series of sketches about Jack Livingston.

  Connery tucked the telegram into his pocket, beside the envelope bearing the sketch. He was now almost sure why Kenton had come to this unlikely town. He needed a remote, secure place to hide. And what more remote and secure place could there be than the mountainside mansion of Jack Livingston?

  * * *

  Connery walked out of the telegraph office into the midst of excitement in Culvertown: a crowd was gathering around a town marshal who was bringing in two dead bodies draped without dignity across the back of a mule, their arms dangling.

  “What happened, Marshal?” someone asked.

  “Shot dead,” he replied. “Both of them. A traveler coming in early this morning found them on the road, both shot square between the eyes.”

  “Between the eyes?” someone replied. “Executed?”

  “No powder burns on the face,” the marshal replied. “Whoever shot them plugged them from some distance away … some really accurate shooting, to hit them both like he did.” He touched his face directly between the eyebrows. “Hell of a time for it to happen, though. I’ve got a train to catch to Scallonville this afternoon, and now I’ve got to deal with this. I’ll be lucky to make it on time.”

  Connery was feeling a little queasy. The men on the back of the mule were the same ones who had followed him and camped on the road the night before.

  He remembered the popping sounds that had awakened him. Now he knew what those sounds had been.

  He listened to the general conversation around him. Someone noted that the two were a pair of common thieves who had plagued people in those parts for at least a year. Whoever had killed them had done the citizenry a favor, another person noted.

  Connery stared for a few moments at the blood dripping from the downturned heads of the dead men and listened to the talk around him. He was a little shaky. Though these men had been a threat to him and he certainly had no trace of affection for them, it was unnerving to see them dead when only last night he’d been hiding from them along the roadside.

  He turned away from the crowd and walked off, feeling the need for a change of scenery and a turn around town for some fresh air.

  Connery walked briskly, not noticing that another man had also stepped away from the crowd and was following him some distance behind.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Hey, you, mister!”

  Connery turned. The little bread-stealing boy he’d seen earlier was approaching him. He wore a cocky grin and had a hardened and mature aura about him that belied his years. The face was that of a boy, the glint of the eyes that of a man.

  The boy marched up to Connery and thrust his hand out, a gesture that surprised Connery. But he took the offered hand and the boy pumped it firmly.

  “You need to be a little more careful, mister,” the boy said. “You dropped something back there on the street.”

  He handed Connery both the return telegram he’d just received minutes before from the Illustrated American and the envelope bearing the sketch of Walter Wheelan.

  Connery was surprised. Both of these items had been thrust deep into his coat pocket … hadn’t they? He’d had his hands in his pockets back there while examining the dead men and supposed he could have accidentally dragged these items out when he withdrew his hands from his pockets.

  Then again, this little scamp might have picked his pockets while he was distracted. He’d be willing to bet a boy like this had that kind of talent. Well, at least he’d given them back. And a quick feel of Connery’s pockets revealed his wallet was still in place.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I know that man in the picture,” the boy announced. “That’s Walter Wheelan.”

  “That’s right. In fact, I was talking to him this morning when you came out of those boarding rooms and he shouted at you. Remember seeing me there?”

  “I remember. I remember what you two was talking about, too.”

  “You listened to our conversation?”

  “I listen to every conversation I can. You can learn a lot worth the hell knowing if you just listen to folks.”

  Cocky, sharp-tongued little street boy, Connery thought. But the thought bore no edge. Connery had been a sharp-tongued street boy himself some years earlier.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Stockton Shelley.” The hand came up again for another shake, which Connery found slightly amusing. “Pleased to know you, Mr. Connery.”

  “I’m impressed. You even know my name.”

  “I heard you tell it to Walter Wheelan. You came up to his door at just the wrong time, you know. I was just about to sneak out when you came up and brought him to his door. I couldn’t sneak out then.”

  “So why did you make a break for it?”

  “Because I looked out the window and saw the man whose apartment I was in coming back home. I had to get out before he got in.”

  “It’s not right to steal, you know.”

  “It was just a loaf of bread. And Walter Wheelan has stole enough food from the Buckeye during the time he worked there that I’ll be damned if I care what he thinks about me getting some food for myself. A man’s got to eat, after all.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Not no more. I ate a whole loaf of bread. Hey, will you give me some money for bringing you back them papers?”

  “To tell you the truth, it’d crossed my mind that maybe I didn’t drop those papers at all.”

  “What? You saying I stole them?”

  “If you’ll steal bread, you’ll pick pockets.”

  “You’re hurting my feelings, mister!”

  “Yeah, I imagine you’re quite a sensitive young man. But I tell you what: I will give you some money. Not for picking my pockets, but because I’m just a very nice fellow.”

  Stockton accepted the coin gratefully. After biting it, he bowed to Connery and said, “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, sir! A gentleman and a scholar!”

  “Kind of you to say so. Good day to you, young man.”

  “Hold up there, Mr. Irishman. I think you’ll be paying me a bit more than this.”

  “What? Are you going to rob me now?”

  “Oh, no. You’re going to want to pay me for what I’ve got to tell you.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “It’s who did this drawing of old Wheelan, that’s what.”

  “It may surprise you to learn that I’m already fairly certain who did it. The question is, where can I find him?”

  “Maybe I can tell you both things.”

  “I’m looking for more than maybes.”

  “I know for a fact who it is, and where he
is.”

  Connery pulled five dollars from his pocket and handed it to Stockton. “Five more if what you tell me proves to be right.”

  The boy took the money smugly, pinching it between thumb and forefinger and lifting it from Connery’s hand. “The man who drew that picture is Brady Kenton. Folks say he’s dead, but he ain’t, because I’ve seen him. He combs his hair different than in that picture of him in the magazine, and he’s got a longer beard. But it’s him.”

  “All right. You’ve told me what I already knew. Where is he?”

  The boy pointed in the direction of the Jack Livingston mansion.

  Connery nodded. “Somehow I had the feeling that might be the place.”

  “He may as well be on the moon, though, if you want to see him,” Stockton said. “Old Livingston ain’t going to let you in. He don’t let anybody in much.”

  “He apparently let in Brady Kenton. Or do you really know Kenton is there?”

  “I do know. I’ve seen him.”

  “Where?”

  “Sitting on a rain barrel out behind the saloon, drawing on a busted-off piece of a wooden crate. Then he got up and walked on up to the Livingston house.”

  Connery frowned. “Was he drinking out behind that saloon?”

  “Had him a bottle. I saw him take a swallow or two.”

  Gunnison would not be glad to learn this. But it was not unexpected, given Kenton’s history.

  “Was there a woman with him?”

  “No. He was alone. Where’s the rest of my money?”

  “You’ll get it when I’ve met Kenton face-to-face. I have to verify that what you’ve told me is true.” Stockton frowned, chewed on his lip, then said, “If I can bring Kenton to you will you make that other five into twenty-five?”

  “Why should I pay you when I can go up and knock on Livingston’s door myself?”

  “Livingston don’t answer his door … except with a shotgun, or a pack of biting dogs.”

  Connery found himself irritated by this manipulative, self-serving boy, even if he did sympathize for his poor situation in life. Stockton had probably overheard enough during the conversation with Wheelan to figure out what he needed to say to gouge money out of Connery.

  “I’ll take my chances. If I can’t get to Kenton, then maybe I’ll look you up.”