The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

  Stockton still led the way, being familiar with this house.

  “There’s all kinds of other passages and tunnels and such,” he said, much like a tour guide. “Old lady Livingston was crazier than her husband and liked stories about tunnels and towers and passageways and all. That’s what everybody says, anyway.”

  “Honestly, young man, I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about the history of this house or the relative sanity of those who built and occupied it,” Kevington said. “I want to know only two things: whether Brady Kenton was here alone, or with my Victoria, and where the pair of them are now.”

  The stairs led them into a rear hallway. Stockton led them to the main room. “There’s some lamps and candles around if you want light.”

  “Candles will suffice,” Kevington said. “I don’t want much light to draw attention from the outside.”

  They lit three candles among them and moved through the room, examining the bloody places on the floor where the bodies had lain. Though Stockton found it fascinating, the men weren’t much stirred by the sight. They’d drawn enough blood themselves over the years to take little interest in it now.

  “Where are the bedrooms?” Kevington asked.

  “Upstairs,” Stockton replied.

  They climbed and began to explore the rooms. It was evident which one had been Livingston’s. It was packed and dirty and disordered, the room of a man who had lived for a long time without the organizing influence of a female. They found the room Kenton had been in as well but did not realize it because he had left no identifying traces behind.

  In the largest of the bedrooms, however, they found two items of significance: a woman’s brush and a ruby-tipped hairpin that Kevington recognized as Victoria’s. He held it in his hand and for the first time exhibited visible excitement.

  “She was here,” he said firmly, then repeated it twice, each time with more emphasis on the final word. “That bastard Kenton took her all the way from England, took her from me, and thought he could hide her here in this damned little mountain mining town … but he failed to take into account the determination of his adversary. I’ve tracked them down! He thought he could hide from me, but I’ve tracked him down like a hound on the trail of a fox! Ha!”

  “Seems to me that some of us had a bit to do with tracking him down, too,” muttered Evaline, with a glance at Kendall Brown.

  Kevington paced about the room, brows knit and mind racing. “I think I know what has happened here. Kenton is so desperate to hide his trail that he’s taken to killing. He’s murdered his own host and taken away Victoria to an even more remote hiding place. He’s so determined to keep Victoria for himself that he’s killing anyone who knows he has her. But I’ll track him down. And when I do, it will be Kenton who dies.”

  “Begging your pardon, Doctor, but Kenton may already be dead,” said Graham. “Remember that there were two men killed in this house. I figure the second one was Kenton. Almost nobody knows that Kenton didn’t really die last year, so nobody would recognize the dead man as Kenton even if it was Kenton. They’d just assume it was somebody who happened to resemble him. All we’ve got is this boy’s word that he’s seen Kenton alive since then. And I figure this boy is saying whatever he thinks will make him a dollar. I’ve been thinking, and I’ve got a theory. I believe McCurden tracked down Kenton and your woman, murdered Kenton and the man who owned this place, and took Victoria away somewhere else to hold her for ransom. I expect you’ll hear from him before long, making a big demand.”

  Kevington thought about this, eyes glaring in anger. “If he’s done such a thing, I’ll see him suffer a good long while before he dies.”

  Evaline spoke. “Seems to me what we’ve got to find out is who this second dead man is. If it’s Kenton, then we can assume that McCurden’s probably got the woman with him somewhere. If it’s McCurden, then we can figure the kid here is probably telling us the truth, and Kenton’s gone with his woman to the ghost town.”

  Kevington wheeled and faced him. “Don’t ever refer to Victoria as Kenton’s woman. Don’t ever say that again. Do you understand me?”

  “Mighty sorry, sir. I misspoke.”

  Kevington nodded. “Yes … but you have a point. We need to learn who died here besides this Livingston gent.”

  “They got a morgue in this town, boy?” Brown asked Stockton.

  “Just the undertaking parlor.”

  “Maybe the corpses are still there,” Kevington said.

  Graham stepped forward. “I’ll go see. I’ve seen Kenton’s picture enough to know his face, and I met McCurden when you hired him. I’ll go and settle this matter for us … if the bodies are still in the morgue.”

  “A good idea, Graham,” Kevington said. “We’ll await you.”

  “At the hotel?”

  “Right here.”

  “What about the boy?” Evaline asked.

  “He stays with us, until we’re through with him.”

  This was fine with Stockton, who spent many nights away from home when his father was drinking. It usually took three or four nights away from home before his father came looking for him. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t come looking tonight. Stockton right now had one goal: to do whatever it took to see this through to the end and get his hundred dollars.

  “I’ll be back,” Graham said, readying to go.

  “Don’t rouse too many questions,” Kevington said. “Attention is not what we want.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Graham replied.

  CHAPTER 28

  Graham walked slowly through the darkening town, smiling and tipping his hat at the women he saw and nodding politely to the men. Rough and rugged as he looked, he was in fact quite smooth in his manners, even charming when he wanted to be.

  His charm vanished, though, when he rounded a corner and was run into by a staggering drunk who carried a glass of beer in his hand, taken from a nearby saloon when the barkeep wasn’t looking. The beer splashed down Graham’s front—and the drunk roundly cursed him, as if it were all Graham’s fault.

  Graham smiled, but it was a smile to put fear into the heart of the man on the receiving end of it. The drunk found himself grabbed by the collar, his face dragged close to that of Graham.

  “My good friend,” Graham growled in his English accent, “I suggest you voice your apologies for your bad behavior right away, or I’ll draw out my knife, gather a crowd to watch the show, and castrate you right out there on the street. And my knife is a very dull knife, I might add.”

  The drunk stared into the Englishman’s fierce eyes, slobbered down his chin, and nodded. “All right, mister. All right. I’m mighty sorry.”

  “Are you now? Sorry, might I ask, for spilling your beer all down me or sorry for making such an ass of yourself immediately thereafter?”

  “Uh … both.”

  “Not good enough, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to show me you’re sorry. See that puddle of beer at my feet?”

  The eyes shifted down, then back up. “Yeah.”

  “Lap it up. Like a dog.”

  “There’s … there’s folks watching.”

  “Indeed there are.” Graham shoved him away, then drew his pistol. “Would you prefer those folks see you cleaning up your spilled beer or bleeding out your last moments with a bullet in your belly?”

  The drunk, trembling, slowly got on his knees. He glanced around, humiliated, then lowered his head and began to lick lightly at the puddle of beer on the boardwalk.

  “Oh, come now!” Graham said. “You can do better than that! Lick that boardwalk like you mean business!”

  “Folks spit down here,” the drunk murmured.

  Graham put his foot on the back of the man’s neck and shoved his face down so hard onto the walk that it almost broke his nose. “Drink, you cur!”

  The drunk licked the boardwalk with full swipes of his tongue while men gathered around and laughed.

  Graham was satisfied. �
��Keep at it until it’s all cleaned up,” he instructed his victim. Then he turned to the nearest watcher and said, “Might you point out to me where the mortician’s establishment is?”

  The drunk pulled up and back clumsily, almost rolling over. “Don’t kill me!” he begged.

  Graham looked at him with disgust. “Get on with you, you miserable sod. I’ve had all I can stand of looking at you!”

  The drunk somehow made it to his feet and headed off down the boardwalk, then cut left into the dark safety of the nearest alley. Catcalls and laughter followed him.

  Graham received directions to the undertaking parlor, but the man added, “The place is probably closed right now. But the undertaker lives in rooms up above it.”

  “Then I’ll roust him out if need be. Thank you, sir, for your aid.”

  Graham walked on, whistling, receiving wide berth from those he passed.

  * * *

  Now that he was alone, the drunk in the alley got his courage back. “Reckon you’ll not do that to me again!” he muttered beneath his breath. “Reckon next time I’ll know how to deal with you, you damned foreigner!”

  But he knew that it would be for the best if there wasn’t a next time. The Englishman had a dangerous manner about him.

  As he calmed down, the drunk’s anger began to change to maudlin sorrow. He’d been humiliated before the people of his own town! Forced to lap up spilled beer off a filthy boardwalk! He even had a couple of splinters in his tongue.

  There was surely no one in the world more miserable than he, no one more despised by man and God. He began to sniff and whimper and wish he had more beer … in a glass rather than spilled, preferably.

  He began to think back on the times his family had been together and his home was happy. Now his wife was gone, his life was miserable, and most of the time he didn’t even know where his son, Stockton, was or what he was doing. The boy would wind up a convict one day with his roaming, stealing ways! Just another reason to feel sorrowful and self-pitying.

  He decided to find Stockton. Bring him home. Maybe they could sit and talk or play a game of cards or do something like fathers and sons are supposed to do together. He hoped Stockton never found out that his father had been forced to drink beer off the boardwalk.

  Josiah Shelley exited the alley by its rear entrance and vowed that he would not go home again until he’d found Stockton. He and the boy would have a good time together … and if Stockton had something cocky to say about it, he’d quick learn the better of it! Sometimes the only way to do good for that boy was to beat it into him.

  Josiah wandered through the dark streets, trying to think of the various places Stockton liked to hide.

  * * *

  Graham returned to the mansion an hour later.

  “Well? Did you see the bodies?” Kevington asked.

  “Both already buried,” Graham replied.

  Kevington swore.

  “But I know who the second dead man is, anyway. I persuaded the undertaker to show me his personal effects … including this. Recognize it? I managed to sneak it away unnoticed.”

  He held out a brass matchbox with initials engraved on its top. Kevington took it and studied it.

  “McCurden’s. So our agent in Culvertown is dead,” he said. “Killed, no doubt, by Brady Kenton, who then fled with Victoria.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Tomorrow morning we travel to this ghost town across the mountain. And before the sun goes down tomorrow, I will have Victoria with me again, and Brady Kenton in his grave.”

  “What about tonight? Do we return to the hotel?”

  “The accommodations here are much more comfortable. We spend the night right here in this house … where Victoria has been.”

  “I left some things at the hotel,” Brown said.

  “Then go back and get them … cautiously. Don’t let anyone see you leaving or reentering this house. Bring back everything any of us have left at the hotel, then try to get some rest. I want us all to be at our best tomorrow. Kenton will resist. He’ll not surrender Victoria lightly.”

  “He can resist all he wants. It won’t do him any good in the end,” Graham said.

  “No,” Kevington agreed. “It won’t. I’ll not leave this country without her. Either Victoria is mine … or she is no one’s.”

  “And what if she doesn’t want to go back with you?” It was a question only Graham was bold enough to ask.

  Kevington glared at him. “She will see what she should do when the time comes. She’ll come back.”

  “And if she didn’t … you’d kill her?”

  Kevington had nothing further to say.

  CHAPTER 29

  Josiah Shelley was growing tired. And for the first time in a long time, he was worried about Stockton. Usually Josiah never bothered to think about him, much less worry about him … but never before had he been quite so hard to find.

  Over time Josiah had learned most of the places Stockton frequented when he was away from home—at least half the time anymore. Tonight he’d checked all of those places, and no Stockton. Where could the boy be?

  He paused, looking up at the Livingston mansion, and realized there was one place he hadn’t yet looked. Stockton had been known to hole up sometimes in one or the other of the tunnel entrances to the mansion. Maybe he was there.

  If so, Josiah was almost inclined to leave him. He’d always thought the mansion was a dismal and haunted-looking place; he seldom looked at it by night without feeling a chill on the back of his neck. Now that the place had been sullied by two shooting deaths, it seemed even more frightening.

  But he screwed up his courage and strode off toward the house anyway. His resolve to find his missing son was high tonight, heightened because of the humiliation he’d experienced earlier. Tonight he needed to do something he could be proud of, even if only finding his straying boy.

  He circled around the back of the mansion, heading for the root cellar that was actually the entrance to the tunnel Stockton seemed to favor most as a hiding place.

  * * *

  Stockton Shelley was asleep, curled up on a sofa in the big parlor of the Livingston mansion, and dreaming that his father was calling him.

  He cowered deep into the soft sofa. When his father called, it usually meant a beating was soon to come. Stockton murmured in his sleep and actually, through some subconscious awareness that he was dreaming, tried without success to wake up.

  “Stockton! Are you here?”

  His father’s voice was closer now, louder, more vividly imagined than before. Stockton’s heart raced.

  “Stockton! Boy, are you hiding in this house? I believe you’re here! Did you think I wouldn’t find you? I know about the tunnels as well as you do, boy! Don’t forget it!”

  Stockton opened his eyes, then sat up.

  Something large and dark passed him, a shadow sweeping past the sofa.

  “Stockton, is that you?”

  Stockton could not speak. He was terrified, and not of his father. The shadow he’d seen was actually the big Englishman Graham, who had risen from his own bed on another sofa and was moving through the darkness toward the place from which his father’s voice came …

  Stockton’s mind surged ahead, putting the pieces together and sensing what was about to happen. It horrified him so much he froze, unable to move or call out.

  Pa’s come looking for me again.… He’s come in here ’cause he knows there ain’t nobody living here no more … but he don’t know that there are folks here tonight after all … bad folks … dangerous folks—

  He heard the sound of struggle, a yell of fright from his father, a curse from Graham. A match flared, struck by Graham, and for a second Stockton saw light play across his father’s face, looking startled and bewildered by the sight of Graham before him.

  “You again!” Graham declared.

  Josiah Stockton tried to speak, but his voice was cut off suddenly, and Stockton knew Graham had grabbed him
by the throat.

  A hundred past fantasies of seeing his cruel father die faded away for Stockton Shelley. This was his father, and a bad man was hurting him …

  “What the hell’s going on down there?” Evaline called from above.

  Stockton leaped up and ran to Graham, whom he began pounding and kicking as hard as he could. Graham swore but just kept on choking Josiah Shelley.

  It registered with Graham that apparently this was the boy’s father. But it did not matter. Graham had never been one to abide trouble with the same man twice, no matter what the circumstances. The second time was the last … every time.

  “Let him go!” Stockton screamed, frantic, still fighting. “He’s my pa! Let him go!”

  Without even looking, Graham punched a fist backward and struck Stockton right on the mouth, knocking him down, making blood spurt from a cut lip.

  Stockton was up again at once, fighting Graham once more. Then strong hands pulled him away—Brown, grabbing him from behind.

  “He’s killing my pa!” Stockton screamed. “Let me go!”

  Brown dragged him backward across the room. Stockton watched in horror as Graham brought out a knife. As dark as the room was, Stockton could make out the shape of Graham’s arm rising and the blade gripped in his fist.…

  It swung down and Josiah Shelley gasped, then moaned. Then he made no more sound at all, and Stockton knew he was gone.

  “No!” he screamed. “No, no, no, no.…”

  Somehow he managed to pull free of Brown. He lunged toward Graham, fists flailing, feet kicking.…

  Graham cursed and brought up his knife again, then swung it down once, twice.…

  Bleeding and hurting, Stockton staggered away, back into a dark hallway. There was the sound of a door opening and closing again.

  “Hell, Graham, you stabbed the boy!” Brown exclaimed.

  “He was annoying me,” Graham replied, very calm. “But confound it all, go bring him back. I’ll patch his wounds. I didn’t cut him severely.”

  Swearing, Brown went into the hallway after Stockton.

  “Graham, he ain’t here.”