The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

  Stockton pocketed his money. “I’ll be seeing you later, then.”

  When Stockton Shelley had gone out of sight, sauntering and swaggering like a miniature gunfighter, Connery looked up at the Livingston mansion and wondered if it really would be as challenging to get to Kenton as had been implied. And what if Livingston was a true lunatic, and dangerous?

  Connery stood staring up at the Livingston house, trying to decide exactly what he would say when he got there.

  CHAPTER 14

  On the other side of a white linen curtain that hung over most of one of the upper windows in the Livingston mansion, Brady Kenton gazed down at the lone figure of Billy Connery.

  Kenton had not met Connery and had no inkling of who he was looking at. It was not unusual, though, to see someone down below staring up at the house. It was, after all, quite an impressive structure, not typical of mountain mining towns. Long after Jack Livingston was dead and gone, Kenton figured, some canny community leader type would probably persuade the town leaders to make Livingston’s house into some sort of museum or historical attraction. Existing legends of the solitary eccentric would be enhanced and new ones created. Livingston would become the fictionalized symbol of a Culvertown of years past.

  But probably not much fictionalized. Livingston was enough of a true eccentric not to require much exaggeration. He was a rough man, a hard man, a man easy to come to hate … and sometimes a part of Kenton still did, despite himself.

  But thank God Livingston was here. Thank God he’d allowed his fortress of a mansion to become a refuge at a time Kenton had never needed a refuge more.

  While Kenton watched, the gazing man in the town below reached into a pocket and pulled out a pad. Producing a pencil, he began to write … no, to draw. Kenton was startled: it was like watching a reflection of himself at work.

  Could the man below be an illustrator, just as Kenton was? If so, why was he here, now, drawing this particular dwelling?

  Kenton had cause to be unnerved by this. He stepped away from the window.

  The room suddenly made him feel claustrophobic. He went out, into the hall, then down two more doors.

  He rapped lightly. “Come in,” a soft voice on the other side replied.

  Kenton opened the door and entered slowly. He closed the door behind him and smiled at a woman the sight of whom still made his heart hammer like a drum, though they’d now been together for many weeks.

  Victoria Kenton smiled back at her husband and lifted her hand, bidding him to come.

  Kenton walked across to her and knelt. She was in a wicker chair, a quilt across her legs, and though she looked weak and thin, she was yet beautiful.

  He was ever amazed, in fact, that years and the trials of injury and illness that this woman had suffered had not robbed her of more beauty than they had. Though she was in her fifties now and her hair abundantly touched with gray, her face was still the beautiful vision that Kenton had secretly buried in almost every illustration he had drawn … looking out a window, around a corner, sometimes actually embodied in the drawn lines and shadows of trees, buildings, mountains.

  She was still his Victoria, and after so many long years of separation, she was his again.

  “Did you rest?” he asked, holding her hand as he knelt beside her chair.

  “I did. I slept right here in this chair. I feel stronger now.”

  “I think your color is better. I wish you’d slept longer. Maybe if you’d lie down on the bed…” He glanced at the four-poster on the other side of the large room. Victoria’s bed, the bed he longed to share with her but which, for now, remained hers alone. They had been separated for too many years for her to welcome him instantly back into her bed. It would take time. They still had to come to know each other again. But it would happen. Every day Brady Kenton felt that Victoria was a little more his again; that little bit of the life and closeness they had lost had come back again.

  “The chair is comfortable enough for me. Back in England I spent most of my time in a chair. It was the dream that woke me.”

  Dear heaven, how good it was to hear her voice! Kenton drank in the melody of it like a perfect wine. “A good dream, I hope.”

  “No. It wasn’t. I dreamed he found us. I dreamed that he shot you.”

  “Victoria … don’t dwell on such things. It’s only your fear speaking. He’s not going to find us, not this far away. We’re a world away from him now.”

  “No, Brady. You don’t know him like I do. He will never abide that you took me away from him. He’ll search for us forever, until he finds us.”

  “He’ll not find us here, Victoria. I can think of no safer place for you.”

  She stroked Kenton’s face. “Oh, Brady … you’re so courageous and devoted and reassuring … but if only you knew David like I do! You would understand that in his own way, he is as devoted to me as you are. He loves me, just as you do … but his love isn’t the love of a normal man. He only knows how to love by possessing and controlling, and he can’t stand to lose. And he will especially not stand to lose me. He would rather kill me than lose me.”

  “He will never kill you. I’ll not allow it. I’d die myself before I’d let him near you.”

  She smiled, a sad smile. “Let me tell you what he will do, what I have no doubt he has already done,” she said. “He will not remain in England. He’ll follow us here.”

  “Nonsense, dear. Please don’t worry about—”

  “Listen to me, Brady! I speak as one who has known this man for many years. He will follow us to the United States. Once here, he’ll use his money freely, hiring the best investigators and the toughest hired gunmen he can to find our track. He will discover, eventually if not already, that I have a half brother, and that his name is Livingston, and that he lives in Culvertown, Colorado, in a strong but remote and seldom-visited mansion. He’ll consider that it may be a place we would come to take refuge … because he knows that I know he will come after us.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Though his husband’s instincts made Kenton want to tell Victoria that all this was nonsense and all was well, he knew she was right. Of course Dr. David Kevington would come after them! Kenton had known it all along. It was why they had come here, to this obscure, high mountain town, to take up hiding in the house of Jack Livingston, a place Kenton hoped that Dr. Kevington would never find.

  Victoria went on. “He’ll work as long as he has to, and spend as much as he has to, to make sure we are found. He’ll send men to kill you and to take me back to him … or maybe he’ll kill me as well, to punish me for having gone away with you.”

  “Don’t talk about such things, my dear.”

  “I have to. Because we have to face this, Brady. Our lives can never be normal lives until the matter of David Kevington has been dealt with. He stalked after me like a wild beast all those years ago and kidnapped me all the way to England and hid me away like his private treasure all these years, telling me you were dead and gone and that only he loved me … that he was my husband. He took away the child I bore to you, Brady, and gave her to a servant. He is an evil and desperate man. He will not let us be! Deny it if you will, but I know that you believe I’m right. If you didn’t believe it, you would have been in contact by now with your magazine, your partner, your friends. You know you dare not go to them because you know that if you do, you might bring danger upon them.”

  Kenton could not dispute this. He nodded, heavy of heart.

  Victoria, not used to much speaking, was growing weary. Despite the years that had passed since the railroad accident that had been the watershed event of both her own and Brady Kenton’s lives, she was still an injured woman. She had spent years in a comatose to semicomatose condition, even given birth to a daughter without knowing it. Victoria’s injuries had left her brain injured and her mind weakened along with her body. But she was stronger now, her mind focused and clear most of the time, the lies that her obsessed kidnapper had told her now seen for what t
hey were.

  There were periods, though, when her mind would grow cloudy. She would push Kenton away at those times, refusing to see him. Three times he had been so disheartened by her rejections that he had left the house and gone into Culvertown, where he would drink and sulk and work on idle and pointless sketches. It was foolish, he knew, because he ran the risk of being identified. He worried still about one sketch of a waiter he’d scribbled down for no good reason on an envelope at a local cafe. He’d left the sketch behind by accident and now worried that someone might recognize it as a Brady Kenton work.

  But it wasn’t likely, he told himself. All America believed Brady Kenton to be dead.

  “We can’t hide here for long, Brady. He’ll come, or he’ll send men to deal with us. And it isn’t fair to Jack. He’s endangered as well, as long as we’re here.”

  Kenton struggled against the sense of despair that so often threatened to overwhelm him these days. He’d not expected despair to be one of the emotions that would remain with him after reuniting with the wife he had loved and missed for so long.

  “I don’t think Jack worries about any kind of danger,” Kenton said, trying to sound brighter than he felt. “Jack rather likes a challenge, I think. He’d probably tell David Kevington to send in his little army, then laugh while he picked them all off through those rifle ports he’s built into the walls here.”

  “Don’t take what I say lightly, Brady. We must leave soon, or Jack may pay the price.”

  In his current state of mind, Kenton might have barked back that he hardly cared about any price Jack Livingston might pay. In his younger days, Livingston had treated his half sister, Victoria, very badly, cheating her out of an inheritance that should have been hers. Victoria had not cared much about the material loss, but the fact that her half brother had taken such advantage of her had hurt her so badly that she’d virtually disavowed his existence. Kenton himself had held a long grudge against Jack Livingston, though a few years back, in a time of personal reflection, he’d chosen to visit Jack and heal over the old wounds. At the same time, Kenton had written and illustrated a well-received story about his eccentric half brother-in-law and made Livingston a relatively famous figure.

  Even though the rift had ostensibly been repaired between Kenton and Jack Livingston, ghosts of the old ill feelings remained, and Kenton still believed that Livingston owed Victoria some recompense for the way he’d mistreated her years before.

  Maybe, Kenton thought, he’s giving that recompense by allowing us to hide here. I’ll try not hold ill will against him. Right now he may be saving our lives.

  “We will leave, then … when we can. But your health won’t allow it yet, Victoria. Our flight from England, the stress of travel all the way across the country, all our various worries … they’ve left you too weak for us to do anything but stay here for now. Besides, I’ve seen no indications at all that anyone has followed us.” He suddenly thought of the man he’d seen outside, sketching the mansion, and wondered … but then he dismissed it. Anyone sent by Dr. Kevington would be up to more nefarious stuff than standing in the open, sketching a mansion.

  “I’ll be able to travel soon. I don’t want to be a danger to anyone.”

  Kenton leaned over and kissed her cheek, thanking God deeply that she was alive and here to be kissed at all. He’d lived in a world that for year upon year had told him his wife was dead. Only he had stubbornly refused to accept that “fact,” and he had been proven correct.

  “We’ll find another place,” Kenton said. “I know people all over this nation who will be glad to help us.”

  The truth was, at the moment he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go at all.

  CHAPTER 16

  The door opened. No knock or forewarning.

  Jack Livingston appeared. He was on the short side but muscular, with silver-gray hair trimmed close to his head and a weathered face with intense dark gray eyes.

  “Well, Victoria, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m doing quite well, Jack,” she said, not quite truthfully. She was beginning to pave the way toward their exit from this place. “I had a good nap.”

  Jack walked over to them. By now Kenton had come to his feet. Jack gazed down at his half sister. “I still can’t believe you’re here, Victoria. Can’t believe you’re alive. All them years that old Brady here spent looking for you, I thought he was crazy. So did a lot of others.”

  Kenton smiled just a little. “I might note that there are plenty who think you’re a little crazy yourself, Jack. You live up here in this big house, run people off who come around, act like a hermit … then every now and then you take a notion to go to town and buy everybody a drink.”

  “It ain’t always that. Once I went into the Buckeye and bought everybody in the place a plate of flapjacks.”

  “You’re an odd man, Jack. Then again, so am I, I suppose.”

  Jack smiled at his half sister. “Your face is as pretty as ever, Victoria, but I can see the tracks of what you’ve been through in your eyes. What did this Kevington fellow do to you?”

  “He loved me, and he imprisoned me. He saved my life, then took my life away. He delivered my daughter while I lay unconscious, then gave her to a servant family to raise as their own. He declared that I would have all the good things life could offer, but denied me my freedom. He told me I was his wife, but treated me as his slave. In short, he subjected me to a life of contradictions, Jack. That was my life with Dr. David Kevington.”

  Livingston’s left cheek twitched. “I’d like to shoot the bastard myself.”

  “I’d like to beat you to it,” Kenton said. “I almost had the opportunity, you know.”

  “Did you? I wish you’d done it. Was that while you were spiriting Victoria out of his estate?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

  “Now’s as good a time as any, seems to me.”

  “Later, maybe.” Kenton wasn’t about to go into details on the spot of what had been a horrifying series of events for Victoria. His removal of her from the Kevington estate near London had been nearly fatal for both of them. When Kenton thought back on the rabid fury that Kevington had displayed when he caught Kenton smuggling away the woman he had in his snare for years, it was easy to realize that Victoria was right when she predicted that Kevington would surely come after them.

  “There’s things about this I have a right to know,” Jack said. “Is Kevington likely to show up here?”

  “I don’t believe Kevington is likely to find us easily … but eventually, yes, I think he will find us. We were just talking about that, Victoria and I, when you came in.” Kenton didn’t figure this was news to Livingston, who probably had been crouched with his ear to keyhole throughout the couple’s conversation.

  Kenton despised having to live under the protection of a man he never would really like.

  “Let him come,” Livingston said icily. “I’ll blow his candle out for him.”

  Kenton realized that Victoria had grown tense in the last few moments, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the armrest of the wicker chair. He felt a surge of mixed emotions. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he knew Victoria still held an affection of a sort for Kevington—who had, after all, nursed her away from the brink of death after her train accident. It was probably difficult for her to listen to him and Livingston talking about killing Kevington as if it would be a privilege.

  Victoria had made it clear that she hated Kevington, but Kenton knew that her hatred was not pure. For her there would always be a measure of affection mixed with her loathing. Kenton could not blame her for this. It was possible, maybe likely, that if not for Kevington’s intervention after Victoria’s railroad accident many years before she might not be alive.

  “Come to think of it, maybe it’s time to tell you the full story after all, Jack,” Kenton said. “Let’s go downstairs, leave Victoria in peace, and get ourselves a glass of that good whiskey of yours. Then we’ll
talk.”

  * * *

  Billy Connery had given up sketching the Livingston mansion only minutes after he started. He wasn’t in Culvertown to sketch but to find Brady Kenton … and now that he had a likely idea of where Kenton was, his courage was failing him.

  Part of it was simple fear over how the eccentric Livingston would react to a visitor at his door. But Connery was almost as worried about how Kenton would receive him. The man wasn’t hiding for no reason and surely would not be happy to be ferreted out.

  So Connery found himself unable just yet to force himself up to that big house on the hill.

  A beer was what he needed. Maybe two. A couple of beers, and he’d have the courage to do what needed doing.

  He headed for the nearest saloon and along the way chanced to pass the local undertaking parlor. The door opened as he passed; a man came out. Connery looked through the door before it could swing shut and was just at the right angle to see through a second, interior doorway, back into the rear room where the dirty work of undertaking was done.

  For just a moment he caught a glimpse of two bodies laid out, one on a slab, naked, the undertaker leaning over it, hard at work, with a cigar dropping hot ashes on the dead man. The other corpse was still clothed and waiting his turn on the floor. The outer door swung closed, and the vision of mortality was gone.

  But Connery was shaken. Maybe he’d have three beers instead of two.

  In the saloon with the first beer in hand, he further pondered the two dead highwaymen. Who had killed them? Whoever he was, he was a good shot to have plugged both so neatly, from a distance, with shots between the eyes. That was one man the pair shouldn’t have tried to rob.

  He wondered if the local law would spend much time investigating the deaths. He would be willing to wager that they would not. No one would be much inclined to punish men who had rid the region of two troublesome highwaymen.

  So here’s to you, whoever you are, he said mentally as he raised his glass to the unknown marksman. May you forever eliminate thieves and keep our roadways safe … and, just in case, may you forever keep your distance from me.