the Rider Of Lost Creek (1976)

by L'amour, Louis - Kilkenny 02

  Nevertheless, nothing could be gained by waiting and much might be lost. The time was now.

  Yet the raid on Apple Canyon might still leave the killer at large. As Kilkenny rode, his brain sifted the accumulated evidence, little though it was. Yet one idea refused to be denied, and it worried itself around hi his thoughts until he arrived in Botalla.

  He came up to the Trail House at a spanking trot Dropping from the saddle he flipped a dollar to a Mexican boy. "Pedro, take this horse and treat him right, oats, hay and water... and a rubdown."

  Pedro grinned. "Si, senor. It shall be done."

  Rusty Gates was inside the Trail House, holding himself stiff, but he was there, and he had a gun belted on.

  "If you're goin" after the Brockmans, count me in."

  "Abel's dead. Cain had a bad fall and was knocked out."

  "When he comes out of it, hell go crazy. Hell be after you."

  "Can't help it. We're riding to Apple Canyon."

  "Might be sixty, seventy men there ... Joe Frame said, "but we're ready."

  There was a pound of hoofs in the street, and then a man burst in the door. "Kilkenny! Chet Lord's dyin' an' he wants to see you!"

  "What happened?"

  "Gored by a mad steer. Hasn't got long, but he keeps askin' for you."

  "Steele, if you will, get the men together. Lots of ammunition and grub for three days. Post guards so nobody slips out of town to warn Apple Canyon. Start whenever you're ready, and IT-LIKE catch up!"

  The Mexican boy was busy with the rubdown. Together they saddled and bridled the buckskin.

  Riding to the Lord ranch, Lance wondered what it was that was on Chefs mind. That something was on his mind was obvious. The man had lost weight, he was drawn and pale, and it was obvious his nerves were on edge.

  Was Chet Lord the unknown killer? As soon as the idea came to him, Lance put it aside. The man was not the type. Bluff, outspoken and direct, he was a man who would shoot straight and die hard, but all his shots would be at a man's face, not his back.

  Letting the buckskin have his head, he hurried along the road. The buckskin knew his master well, and knew he would be called upon for many hard rides.

  He was ready for them.

  Although cow ponies were often held in slight esteem, most cowpunchers had their favorites. It was the gunmen and outlaws who cared for their horses, who worried over them, for a horse might spell the only difference between life and death.

  Buck was as keenly sensitive to danger as any wild creature. A flicker of movement anywhere and he was instantly alert which came of running wild in rough country.

  The Lord ranch was strangely still when they came into the yard.

  Steve met him at the door, his eyes filled with tears. His face was pale. "He wants you, Lance. He's been asking for you."

  Kilkenny went into the room where Chet Lord lay dying. A sharp-eyed man with a beard straightened up as he entered.

  "I'm Doc Wentlow."... He smiled wryly. "From Apple Canyon. He wants to talk to you . . The doctor glanced at Steve, "... alone."

  The doctor and Steve went out, and at the door Steve hesitated, as if loath to go. Then he went out and drew the door shut behind him.

  Kilkenny turned to the old man on the bed. His breath was slow and heavy, but his eyes were open. His face seemed to have aged ten years, and when he reached out he grasped Kilkenny's hand with trembling fingers.

  "Kilkenny ... He whispered hoarsely, *Tm dyin'. Promise me you'll do it. It's something you can do."

  "Sure. If it's anything I can do, I will."

  "Kilkenny ... He whispered, then his grip tightened on Kilkenny's hand. "Kilkenny, I want you to kill my son!"

  "What"..."... Kilkenny shook his head. "You can't mean that."

  "You've got to! I'm an old man, Kilkenny, and right or wrong, I love my boy.

  I love him like I loved his mother before him, but he's a killer! He's insane! Des told me before Steve killed him.

  Long ago Steve had a bad fall, maybe that done it. He acted queer after he began to straighten out, but I wouldn't believe it. He seemed to be all right, and then he started killing things. Annuals . . . chickens. Finally he stopped that and seemed to have straightened out Then the old Indian died, and others. I didn't see it, but Des did. I wouldn't believe Des when he told me, even though I could see it had to be true.

  "Des said he'd have to be put away, but he was all I had, Kilkenny. I just wouldn't accept it "I done wrong. I know I done wrong, and folks died because of it. Sometimes he was a good boy.

  Thoughtful, kind . . . then he'd go to moonin' around and one day he'd ride off ... An' somebody else would die.

  "Kilkenny, you got to kill him. I won't be around to protect him no more, or to slow him down from his bad ways. You'll shoot him so he won't suffer.

  You're good with a gun, and you'd do it for a horse with a busted leg.

  "I don't want him to suffer. He's a baby for pain. He can't suffer. I don't want him hung, neither.

  "Just shoot him down. Kill him before he does more harm. Joe Frame has got a paper. It's all wrote down. I can't die knowin' I left an evil thing behind me to do more evil. An' but for that, he's been a good boy."

  That was the last thing he said before closing his eyes. Of course, Kilkenny thought. It all fitted. The opportunity, the killing of Des . . .

  Everything. Kilkenny had even suspected something of the kind and that was why he had wired.

  Wired?

  Kilkenny clapped a hand to his chest. Why, the wires! He had forgotten, in the thought of the Brockmans coming, he had completely forgotten!

  Hurriedly, he dug into his pocket and took them out. The first was from San Antonio and it was a verification of what Chet Lord had said, a few scattered facts about his fall. That information would be unnecessary now.

  He unfolded the second message, from El Paso.

  TYSON SAW ROYAL BARNES AT

  APPLE CANYON. HE KNEW BARNES

  FROM HAYS CITY. BARNES MURDERED

  TYSON'S BROTHER AND TYSON HEARD

  BARNES SWEAR

  TO KILL YOU FOR KILLING THE WEBBRS.

  2 CAREFUL, KILKENNY! HE'S COLO

  AS A SNAKE AND LIGHTNINGPAST!

  Kilkenny crumpled the message and thrust it into his pocket. The third message no longer mattered. He had only tried to locate various gunfighters so he might decide who was at Apple Canyon, and now he knew.

  Royal Barnes!

  The name stood out boldly in his mind, for it was one he had long known. A man reputed to be boldly handsome, a cold, hard man, victorious in many gun battles, raids into Mexico, even raids against Indians. Some said, which Kilkenny doubted, that Wes Hardin had once backed down in front of Royal Barnes.

  Kilkenny opened the door and stepped out.

  Instantly, Doc Wentlow got up.

  "How is he?"

  "Low ... Kilkenny replied. "Where's Steve?"

  "Steve? You know, he's acting strange. He stood by the door a minute, apparently listening, then he ran out, jumped on a horse and took off, riding like the devil!"

  Kilkenny was relieved. He had never killed a man unless the man was attempting to kill him.

  To walk out and shoot Steve Lord dead would never have entered his mind. Just what he could do he was not yet sore, nor how to go about it He did know that Steve Lord must be stopped.

  Thinking back to that moment in the Trail House, he remembered the odd look hi Steve's eyes that day, yet Steve had not wanted to shoot it out His insane urge to kill might stem not from the fall but from some twisted sense of inferiority.

  What Steve would do now, Kilkenny could not guess.

  He knew killers, but those he knew were, by and large, sane men whose ways could be understood. Even the craziest of men had moments of sanity, and were often good men, given the chance.

  Now Steve had mounted and ridden away, to what? Where could he go?

  Suddenly, Lance had an idea. Steve Lord would go to Apple Canyon.<
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  However insane Steve might be, there was still some connection between him and Apple Canyon. Kilkenny suspected Steve had more than, a little interest in Nita Riordan, but he would now be riding with fear in his heart, with the desperate realization that his last refuge ... his father... was gone.

  Now Steve was out in the open, a place he had desperately feared. He must fight, and he might die, and Kilkenny knew such a man would fight like a cornered rat ... or simply fold up and not fight at all. Yet he, Kilkenny, had an obligation to a dying man, and he must do what he could... short of killing.

  Why should he feel depressed? Steve was a killer, a man who had slain the innocent, who shot from ambush, and he must be stopped. His own father, the man who sired him, had passed the sentence upon him.

  Kilkenny turned off into the brush, unrolled his poncho, and was asleep almost as soon as he hit the ground.

  Chapter XVII

  Botalla's man street was crowded with horsemen when Kilkenny rode back to town. They were in for the finish, these lean, hard-bitten, range-tried veterans of the Texas cattle country. Riders from the Steele and Lord ranches were there, men who had ridden the cattle trails north, men who had fought the Comanches and the Kiowas, men who were veterans of the War Between the States ... on one side or the other.

  Yet as Kilkenny rode up the street, his eyes searched for Steve Lord, and as he rode through the crowd he wondered how many of these men would be alive when the week had ended.

  They would be facing men as tough as themselves, men reared in the same hard school, desperate as men can only be when faced at last with the results of their own misdeeds.

  They would fight shrewdly and well, for they were uncommon criminals, tough young men who for one reason or another had found themselves on the wrong side of the law. With a different turn of events, they might be punching cows or trail-bossing herds.

  Certainly, they would ask no quarter or give none. A fight with them was a fight to the finish. They might have taken the wrong trail but they had courage.

  Kilkenny wanted none of that fight. He wanted but one man, Royal Barnes.

  How would he know him? Somehow, Kilkenny had the feeling he would know Royal Barnes when he saw him.

  This meeting would be different, just as the fight with the Brockmans was different. He had been fortunate in timing his meeting and his moves so Brockmans' combination would not work. He had killed Abel Brockman without having to fight Cain, too.

  That fight would come. Cain was around, and Cam had announced his intention of killing Kilkenny.

  Another thing he knew. He had never drawn against a man as fast as Royal Barnes ... with blinding speed, exceptional accuracy, and a coldness Kilkenny, himself, did not have. Barnes had killed Blackie Slade, and Kilkenny remembered Slade only too well. He had seen Slade in action and the man had been poison, pure unadulterated poison in a gun battle.

  Yet according to reports, Barnes had shot him down like he was an amateur.

  He swung down from his horse and walked into the Trail House.

  "We're all set ... Steele told him. "We've just been waitin' to see what shape Lord is in."

  "Chet Lord is dying ... Kilkenny said, "and he told me about the killings. Steve Lord has been dry-gulching those people. Des King uncovered it and told Lord, but then Steve killed Des, and the old man just didn't have the heart to take his own son up.

  But now Chet Lord knows he's got to be stopped."... M backslash Steele shook his head sadly. "Too bad! But, we T should have known. Steve was always a strange one."

  "There's something else, too. The man up in the cliff house that I was telling you about, the leader of all this trouble, is Royal Barnes."

  In the stillness that followed, men stared at one another. And into the minds of each came the stories they had heard of the man, stories told in barrooms and around camp fires on the range. It was said that Royal Barnes had killed thirty men, but nobody knew for sure. Yet in the mind of each was the realization that he himself might be the next to go down.

  Few killers had sought trouble. For the most part the gunfighters, while known to each other and with considerable mutual respect, had not hunted trouble. Royal Barnes had, both as a boy and as a man.

  He had been a fairly good hand with cattle, but he had not worked at it. He had ridden shotgun for a stage line when he was seventeen . . . and killed two men who had tried to hold up his stage. Then he had hunted down the man who got away.

  Only a few months later. Royal Barnes had received a tip that a holdup was to be attempted, so he followed the stage.

  There were four men there, all hi position, ready for the holdup.

  Royal came up on them from behind and opened fire.

  One survived to tell the story. Afterwards, there were no more holdups when Royal Barnes rode the stage..

  That had been the beginning. Then, for several months, he was marshal of a mining boom town hi Nevada, and was reported to have killed two men. But from that time on, he seemed to have gone to the side of the lawless. It was reported, but unproven, that he had himself held up a stage hi Montana. There had been several robberies on the trails of men who had struck it rich in the gold fields, and then Barnes had gone to Mexico.

  He had been seen hi Kansas City, had killed a gambler on a riverboat, had been hi Abilene and then in Ellsworth. The next report had come from Leadville, where he had killed a man reputed to have been a minor member of the James gang.

  Kilkenny was thinking fast of all these things when suddenly, the doors burst open. As one man, the men gathered in the Trail House turned to stare.

  A full step inside the door, his big head thrust forward, stood a huge, broad-jawed, unshaven man in a checked shirt, black jeans, and heavy cowhide boots.

  "Cain Brockman ... Old Joe Frame exclaimed.

  Brockman walked toward Kilkenny and stopped, three paces from him. He unbuckled his gunbelt and put his guns on the bar. "I'm goin' to kill you, Kilkenny, with my bare hands!"

  "Nothing doing ... Webb Steele said. "We've no time for that, Kilkenny! We've got a job to do!"

  "The job will have to wait ... Kilkenny said. "Cain has chosen his weapons. He'll have his chance."

  With a hoarse grunt, Cain Brockman lunged, swinging a ponderous right fist. Kilkenny stepped inside with a left to the face, then closed with the bigger man, slamming both fists to his midriff. Cain grabbed Kilkenny and threw him bodily across the room into some tables and chairs, then lunged after him.

  Kilkenny stepped away, stabbing a left that caught Brockman on the cheekbone. Then Brockman caught Kilkenny with a swinging right that knocked him to his knees.

  A kick aimed at Kilkenny's head just grazed his shoulder as he was starting to rise. He lost his balance, toppling over on the floor. But as Cain rushed in to put the boots to him, Kilkenny rolled over quickly and came up swinging.

  Brockman was savage, with a killing fury, and he was forty pounds the heavier man, with two inches of height and at least that much of reach. And he had before him the man who had killed his twin.

  Another right caught Kilkenny a glancing blow, which he partially evaded. He went under a swinging left and countered with a wicked right to the ribs. He then hooked a left to the chin and sprang back before Cain could grab him.

  It was toe-to-toe, slam-bang fighting then, with neither man taking precautions. They fought like savages. They stood wide-legged in the center of the floor and swung until it seemed impossible that they could continue. Then Kilkenny slipped under another left, and uppercut hard with both hands to the body.

  The bigger man backed off and Kilkenny hit him with a long left that split his swollen cheekbone, showering him with blood. They grappled, and went to the floor, kicking and gouging.

  Brockman was a brute for strength, and filled with so much hatred and fury that he was almost immune to pain.

  There were no rules here, none of the niceties of combat. This was fighting to maim or to kill, and all the spectators knew it.
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  Blood streaming from a cut on his own cheek, Kilkenny lanced a left to Cain's mouth, missed a right and took a wicked left to the body.

  He took the punch going in, and landed both hands to the face.

  Cain's head rocked with the force of the blows and he spat a tooth onto the floor. He swung hard to the head, staggering Kilkenny. But the gunfighter came back fast, ripping a short right uppercut to the chin, then a left and a right to the face.

  Kilkenny was boxing now. Long ago he had worked with some of the best boxers of the day. He needed every bit of his skill.

  It was not merely defeating Brockman. Kilkenny would soon be facing Royal Barnes as well, and his hands must be strong and ready. He stepped inside of a right and whipped a right to the heart, then hooked a left to the same place and battered away with both hands at the big man's torso, his head on Brockman's shoulder. Body punches had less chance of hurting his hands, and Kilkenny knew he must fight with care.

  He stepped around, putting Brockman offside, then crossed a right to Cain's bleeding eye, circled farther and crossed the right again. He stabbed three fast lefts to the face and men, as Brockman lunged close, he butted him under the chin with his head.

  Brockman let out a muffled roar and crowded Lance to the bar, but Kilkenny wormed away and slugged the big man in the ribs.

  Brockman seemed to be slowing down. His face was bloody and both eyes were swollen almost shut.

  He backed slowly away from a stabbing left and was suddenly brought up hard against the wall. Putting a boot against the wall, he shot himself off it like a battering ram, head down, and caught Kilkenny in the chest. Off-balance, Kilkenny went to the floor.

  Brockman rushed in, trying to kick him in the ribs, but Kilkenny got to hands and knees and hurled himself against Brockman's legs. The big man tumbled over him, and then spun around on the floor and grabbed Kilkenny's head, groping for his eyeballs with his thumbs.

  Mad with pain and fear for his eyes, Kilkenny tore loose and scrambled to his feet. Brockman came up swiftly and Kilkenny jabbed with a left to that wide, granite-hard face. Blood flew and he felt the nose crunch under the blow.