“I should think you’d—” he paused. For the first time it dawned on him what Rusty had said. “What’s your interest in Miss Riordan?”
“None at all,” Kilkenny replied. “Rusty is showing me the sights, and from all I hear, she’s one of them.”
“She is beautiful,” Steve agreed, “but I’m not sure she would appreciate being considered one of the ‘sights.’ ”
“No offense meant,” Rusty said cheerfully. “But any man who wouldn’t ride a hundred miles just to be in the same room with her is no kind of man. She’s a woman!”
Kilkenny glanced at Steve, who obviously agreed but was somewhat disturbed by this talk about her. Was he infatuated? Well, it would not be surprising. He was young, very good-looking, and obviously very concerned with himself.
“You know, Steve,” he suggested, “I had a talk with Webb Steele last night. And if we’re going to avoid a war that will do nobody any good, we’ve got to get your father and Mort Davis together with him.”
“Mort Davis?” Steve exploded. “Why, Dad’s threatened to shoot him on sight! They’d never dare get in the same room!”
“I’ll be there,” Kilkenny commented grimly. “And if there’s any shooting done, I’ll do it.”
Steve was doubtful. “I’ll talk to him, but it won’t do any good. He’s pretty hard-headed.”
“So’s Webb Steele,” Rusty added, “but we’ll bring him around.”
“Did you ever see a cattle war, Steve?” Kilkenny asked.
“No, I never did,” he admitted. “But we heard about the Sutton-Taylor fight and the trouble between the Regulators and the Moderators.”
“Well, then you know how many men can die. Most younger men think they’re going to live forever, but there’s no guarantee of that. The young can die as quickly as the old, and if there’s a shooting war started you’d be sitting up there as a first-rate target. And nobody’s even going to hesitate about shooting.”
“I’m not afraid,” Steve protested.
“Not now … Nobody is shooting at you. Surprising how quick a man’s feeling can change when lead starts flying. Because a bullet doesn’t care who it hits. A man always has the idea that it’s the others who will die, not him. But all the dead men thought that, too.”
“You think that? You … Kilkenny?”
“Of course,” Lance said simply. “Any man is vulnerable. And I think a man who knows he can die is a more dangerous antagonist than one who believes he cannot. Fearlessness is often the very thing that gets a man killed.”
“Anyway,” Rusty said, “why fight when it’s in somebody else’s interest?”
Steve turned sharply around to look at him. “What does that mean? Whose interest?”
Kilkenny let his horse walk on a few steps before he replied to the question. Rusty had made a sort of gesture implying that he should explain.
He glanced over the country before him from a bit of a rise. He was riding into unknown country and he did not really like traveling with others. Any conversation was distracting, and to one who lived his kind of life, such distractions could be a matter of life and death.
Yet the years had tuned his ears for the slightest sound—and his eyes to any change in the terrain, or any flicker of light or dust.
“Because somebody else is involved,” he said then. “Somebody who wants Lord and Steele out of the way, somebody who stands to win a good deal if they kill each other off or weaken themselves for him to move in.
“Your father and Steele think that they are the movers and shakers of things around here, but they aren’t. They are being moved like a couple of pawns on a chessboard—and for the advantage of some player whom we do not know.”
“I don’t believe it! That’s all poppycock!”
“The fact remains that the men who killed Sam Carter and Joe Wilkins, and the men who attacked Davis the other night, were not either your men or Steele’s. Find out who is behind those shootings and you’ll find out who is stirring up this fight.”
“You won’t find anybody at Apple Canyon who knows anything about it,” Steve Lord said irritably. He looked from Lance Kilkenny to Rusty Gates. “And you’d better watch your step! The Brockmans are there!”
Steve Lord suddenly spurred his horse and rode rapidly off down the trail ahead of them.
“Now what’s bitin’ on him?” Gates asked.
Kilkenny shrugged, but he had an idea. Yet as he rode he was not thinking of that, but of himself—something he rarely permitted. Beyond seeing to the few essential details of living, he lived a Spartan existence, and he permitted himself few luxuries, few friendships. It was a hard and lonely life, one that had grown more so as he had grown older, for the life of a man known to be good with a gun is never a secure one, never an easy one.
There were always the few would-be tough kids who wanted to prove something, and Lance avoided them, for he had nothing to prove. He had never wanted to be known as a gunfighter. It had simply happened to him.
In a land and a time when all men carried weapons, and when they were essential to survival, some men were killed by those guns. It was, and had been for many years, the accepted manner of settling disputes, not only in the West but in the East as well.
Nor was it only in America that insults or disputes were settled with weapons, for it had been the practice over most of the world, recorded since time began. Senators and Congressmen, members of the cabinet and generals, captains and midshipmen on warships, all had settled their disputes with swords or pistols. In the West it was simply more casual, more offhand, less formal.
Yet in a land where all men carry weapons, some men are sure to be more skillful and adept than others. Some have that dexterity in handling a pistol, that coolness of nerve and steadiness of hand that allows them to win when gunshots are exchanged. And after a few of these battles, a man would become known. If he emerged a victor three or four times, he was certain to be considered a “gunman” or “gunfighter.” It was as simple as that.
Kilkenny had known many, and among them were lawyers and gamblers, doctors and businessmen, cattlemen and farmers. Oddly enough, except for the few who had been outlawed for killing the wrong man or killing too many, few of the men who were on the dodge were actually gunfighters. Among cow thieves and bandits, really good men with guns were few.
His own case had been like the others. He had been hunting since childhood, had grown up with guns and respected them. He had no desire for reputation. Yet there had been certain difficulties, certain situations, and he had won. He could use guns as few men could—two guns at once, yet it was something he rarely did.
What was happening hereabouts he had seen happen elsewhere, and he knew it would happen over and over again in the years to come. Struggle was the law of growth, and the West was growing up the hard way.
The very nature of the men involved made such troubles inevitable. Each was strongly individualistic, each was proud, and each demanded respect. They were strong men living a rough life, taking on in the process much of the culture of the Indian through whose land they were passing or settling. The Indian warrior was also a proud man, with his own standards of behavior, and his status as a fighting man was all-important.
In the immediate fight that Lance Kilkenny saw as inevitable—unless something could be done immediately—good men would die. And the West needed its strong men. And here in this wild borderland, such men were even more essential.
As for himself, he was tired. Young in years, he had ridden the long trails for much of his life, and knew only too well what such a fight entailed.
He had wanted none of this, but Mort was a friend, a man who had risked his own life when Kilkenny was in trouble. And being the man he was, Kilkenny could do nothing else but come to the help of Mort Davis.
And then another long trail, and perhaps death at the end. That was always the way.
CHAPTER 8
THERE WAS MUCH that was familiar about this ride. He had taken many such
rides into unknown country, with known trouble at the end.
He knew all about the Brockmans. They were huge, enormous men, muscular and strong. They were feared as fistfighters as they were with guns, aggressive and quarrelsome rowdies in their own country and here. They picked fights, hunted trouble, and often hired themselves out as thugs or gunmen.
Huge as they were, and skillful with weapons, they went about where they liked and did as they pleased, approaching the inevitable time when they would cross the wrong man and die. Sooner or later, it always came.
It had been the way of Kilkenny to go right to the heart of any trouble, and Apple Canyon looked to be in the very center.
Lance did not underrate Bert Polti. The gunman was quick as a cat, as dangerous as a weasel. He would kill and kill until he finally went down. He would kill from ambush, but there wasn’t a cowardly bone in him. He would simply kill in the most efficient way. He had faced many men with guns and no doubt he would again, if that was the only way.
Neither Webb Steele nor Chet Lord were killers. They were rough, tough men, a bit on the bullheaded side, no doubt, but probably kindly men on most occasions. Lance had known many of their kind, and in fact, Mort Davis was very much like them in every sense.
Bert Polti, however, could only be a tool. His was not the mind to plan what seemed to be happening. He was a keen-edged tool, but a tool nonetheless. Whose tool he was, Kilkenny could not guess.
Whoever was behind this was a man or woman relentless and evil, someone with intelligence and skill, someone who knew the country, the situation, and the elements involved.
Someone also, who knew Lance Kilkenny. Or knew about him.
Above all, somebody who did not fear him.
If he came out of this alive there would once again be the long night rides, the scant food, brackish water, and the harsh living of the fugitive—or one who was almost that—and then a new attempt to find new peace in new surroundings. Sometime he might succeed, but sooner or later his past always seemed to catch up with him.
Several times he had considered leaving the West and going back East, but he was no longer fitted for that life. The skills needed for life in the East had left him; his knowledge of their ways had been blunted. Nor could he bear to leave the lands of immense distances, the purity of the air, the vast sweep of the mountains, plains and forests, the smell of his lonely campfires, the feeling of a good horse under him, and the song of the lonely winds. It was in his heart now, in his blood and bones, and in all the convolutions of his brain. Lance Kilkenny was a western man, and he would stay a western man until one day on some lonely mountainside, or on some lonely western street, he would die with a bullet in him.
Even now he was in danger. By now the person he opposed, a man or woman unknown to him, would be aware that he had taken cards in the game, and the greatest risk lay not in what Steele or Lord might do, but what he, Kilkenny, would almost certainly do.
He must force the play. He must keep moving. He must try to get his enemies off-balance. His approach to Steele had been the real beginning of this ride to Apple Canyon.
The direct attack. It was always best with the plotter, the conniver, the adroit man. Such a man wanted time in which to plot, to make his moves upon the board, and the best way was simply to keep pushing. To attack, always attack, until the unknown man was forced to reveal himself and come out into the open.
Kilkenny had foiled such plots before, but could he break this one?
Looking over the situation, he realized he was not entirely sure. His enemy was cool, deadly, and dangerous. Knowing Kilkenny, while he himself was not known, he could see or anticipate Kilkenny’s moves. And, from the shelter of his ghost-like existence, could hunt him down … or have him hunted.
Kilkenny looked thoughtfully at the country before and around him. Without doubt this would be an easy route by which to take cattle into Mexico, and if one man controlled the way south, he could appear an innocent rancher, with no stolen stock ever appearing on his range.
With millions of cattle on the range in Texas, many could be stolen and taken out of the country before anyone realized what was going on, and then if due precaution was taken to cover the trail left by the moving cattle, it might be months, even years before it was realized.
It was midafternoon when the two riders rounded a rocky bend and looked down the street of the rickety settlement of Apple Canyon, so named because of an orchard once planted, and now almost gone.
There were four buildings on one side of the street, three on the other.
“The nearest one is where the doc lives. He’s a mighty good sawbones, but a renegade from somewhere and something. Next is the livery stable and blacksmith shop, all in one. That long building next door is the bunkhouse, and Bert Polti’s place is just beyond. He lives there with Joe Deagan and Tom Murrow.
“On the right side is Bill Sadler’s. Bill is a gambler. He did a couple of stretches for forgery, and he’ll cook up any kind of documents you want. Right alongside is the big joint of Apple Canyon … the Border Bar. That’s Nita’s place and she runs it herself.
“The last house, the one with the flowers, is Nita’s. They say no man has ever entered the place.” Rusty glanced at Kilkenny. “Nita’s straight, though from time to time some have had their doubts. Nita soon sets ’em right on that.”
“And the place on the hill beyond the town?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Kilkenny pointed. On a rocky hill beyond the town, in a place that seemed secure from all but circling eagles, he could dimly perceive some kind of a structure. Even with the sunlight falling on the cliff it was but a suggestion, yet as he looked he could see a flash of light reflected from something.
“Whoever lives there is mighty careful,” Kilkenny commented. “He’s looking us over with a field glass.”
“I’ll be damned!” Rusty was disgusted. “I been here three or four times an’ stayed five days once, and I never knew that place was there!”
Kilkenny nodded. “I’ll bet a pretty penny it can’t be seen from the town. I’m just wondering who it is that wants to be so careful? Who is it who watches all who come to Apple Canyon? Who can manage to live up there and remain unknown?”
“Do you think—?”
“I don’t think anything yet. There’s just somebody up there with a glass, far as I know. But I’m a kind of curious man, Gates, and I mean to find out.”
He glanced right and left, and spotted a dim trail off to the right. “Let’s just kind of circle around, Gates, and keep something between us and that man up there.”
“Take a good rifleman to hit anything that far, and especially when we’re so much lower down.”
“But he might be a good rifleman, Gates, and he might have fired some test shots at one time or another. I think I’ll suppose he could cover the entering of the town from up there.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Ride right in … but not on the trail. We’ll just circle those rocks and hit the street from back of that barn.”
They turned their horses and rode down through the rocks by a dim trail obviously made by cattle and into the arroyo, then across it into the mesquite that lay beyond. Kilkenny led the way, and he took his time.
Of course, they had seen him, and of course they’d be ready for him. But he didn’t believe they’d try to dry-gulch him as he rode into town.
He walked the buckskin past some old corrals and the barn and then turned into the street.
They came in together but Kilkenny was a dozen paces in the lead as the two men rode slowly along the street. A man sitting in front of the Border Bar turned his head to say something through an open window, but aside from that there was no immediate movement.
A man loafing in front of the Border Bar had a rifle in his hand. And in the rocks at the end of the street there was another. “This ain’t just for us,” Rusty commented. “This here’s the way it is. There’s some folks hereabouts wh
o don’t wish to be caught with their chaps down.”
At the hitching rail, Kilkenny swung his horse and stepped down quickly, rifle in hand. He looked across his saddle at the man loafing by the window. The fellow was a sandy-haired man with a rough look about him, but a half-humorous glint in his hard blue eyes. “Howdy,” he said. “You boys passin’ through?”
“Depends on the climate. Maybe we’ll set a spell.”
“Gets right chilly around here sometimes,” the fellow said cheerfully. “Right chilly. I’ve heard some folks just can’t stand it.”
“Well, now. Do tell.” Kilkenny grinned at him. “Lucky I brought my gun along to keep me warm, ain’t it?”
“Lots of guns around here, amigo. Big ones and little ones. They don’t count for much, most times.”
“Here an’ yonder I’ve found things warm up considerable,” Kilkenny said, “given the chance. Seems a right nice little valley, and the folks here seem to be mighty friendly, country-like people. I figure I could probably get to like it.”
“Your funeral,” the puncher said, shrugging.
Kilkenny grinned at him again. “Most generally,” he said, “it isn’t.” And he walked inside, letting the doors swing to behind him.
Rusty Gates paused on the walk. “Travelin’s a dry business,” he commented.
“Risky, too, when you’re in the wrong comp’ny. You’re askin’ for trouble comin’ here with him. The words out.”
“They better take it in again,” Rusty replied shortly. “As for me, I’m ridin’ with him.”
“On your own then. Can’t help you none.”
“Ain’t asked. Now you just stay out of the way.”
Rusty stepped inside to see Kilkenny standing at the bar. The bartender was idling down the bar, doing nothing, paying no attention.
In a deceptively mild voice, Kilkenny said, “I’d like a drink.”
The bartender did not move, nor give any indication that he had heard.
“I’d like a drink,” Kilkenny said, just a shade louder.
The Kilkenny Series Bundle Page 22
