Behind them trailed the so-called Gold Dust Twins, Dunn and Ravitz, gunmen.
The man who called himself Trent rarely visited Cedar Bluff. The supplies he required were few, the two packhorses more than adequate to carry all he needed for three or four months, and he knew that sooner or later there would be someone from the outside who would say, “That’s Kilkenny!”
Men would turn to look, for the stories of the strange, drifting gunfighter were many, although few men lived who could describe him or knew the way he lived. He had no desire for notoriety, no need to be known as a gunfighter, and that he had become so was through no choice of his own but rather a simple combination of traits such as a natural skill with weapons, a cool head and steady hand, as well as remarkable coordination and the experience of years in judging both men and situations.
Mysterious, solitary, and shadowy, he had literally been everywhere. He drifted in and out of cow camps and mining towns, usually unknown, and often a subject of discussion around campfires where he was himself present. Occasionally the moment would come when for one reason or another he must draw a gun, and then for one brief and bloody moment Kilkenny stood revealed for who he was and what he was.
His activities had been many and varied, but no more so than those of many another man of his time and situation, for most men did what was necessary at the time and most were skilled at a variety of trades. He had been a trapper and a buffalo hunter, an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War, a stage driver, a shotgun guard on stages, a cowhand, foreman on a cattle ranch, a tie cutter, a track layer, and a variety of other things. Once involved in a shooting, he never remained in the area, but was gone within the hour if his presence was not demanded at an inquest, and such affairs were few.
In Cedar Bluff he used the name of Trent, and in the high peaks he had found the lush green valley where he built a cabin, ran a few head of cattle driven in from Oregon, and broke wild horses that roamed the utterly wild country to the westward. It was a lonely place, so when he arrived he hung his gun belts on a peg in the cabin and from that time on carried only his rifle.
When in Cedar Bluff, he went only to the general store and occasionally to a small boardinghouse where meals were served, avoiding the Mecca. Most of all he avoided the Crystal Palace, the new gambling house and saloon owned by Nita Riordan.
The cabin in the pines was touched with the red glow of a setting sun when he stepped down from the buckskin and slapped the horse cheerfully on the shoulder.
“Home again, Buck! Feels good, doesn’t it?”
He stripped the gear from the horse and turned him into the corral, then carried saddle and bridle into the log barn. He forked hay to the horse, and the marmot in the pile of rocks near the entrance to the trail chewed on some tidbit and paid him no attention. After the first few weeks the marmot had ceased to whistle his warning when Trent approached, no longer considering him a potential danger but rather as part of the normal activity on the mountain. Occasionally Trent placed bits of bread or fruit on the rocks and the marmot ate them, obviously accepting them as tribute from this more or less silent invader.
It was a lonely life with which Trent was content, although from time to time he found himself thinking of the girl in Cedar Bluff.
Did she know he was here? Remembering her from the Live Oak country of Texas where they had first met, he decided that she did, for Nita Riordan had her own ways of knowing all that went on. He did not allow himself to think that she had come here because of him, yet it could scarcely be coincidence that she would arrive in this rather lonely part of the country shortly after his own arrival.
She knew how he felt.
As he went about the business of preparing a meal, he thought of Parson Hatfield and his tall sons. What would the old mountaineer do now? Moffit had been their very good friend, and each had helped the other build when they first filed on land in the mountains. They were hard-working people, intensely loyal to each other and to their friends. Above all, they had a very strong sense of what was right and wrong. If King Bill Hale tried to drive them out, they would fight.
They were the type. They were men who had always worked with their hands, and were beholden to no man. Not one of them was a gunfighter, but each had used a rifle or a short gun all his life and would have been lost without one or the other.
Big Dan O’Hara was another one. A big, bluff Irishman who had been a track worker, a policeman, and a railroad man back east, always acting as though campaigning for public office. He would fight, of course. No one knowing Dan could believe otherwise.
Hale had shown no interest in the high country until the settlers had moved in. Once it was occupied, it immediately seemed to become valuable to him, or at least to Cub Hale. The fact was that in this country, cut off as it was from other settlements, King Bill wished to be ruler of all that lay about him.
Without doubt war was coming to the high peaks, and the man called Trent thought bitterly of all that would entail. He could not walk out and leave all he had here, any more than he could abandon his friends in their hour of need. Like himself, the others had come to build homes. One and all they meant to remain where they were, each knowing he was unlikely to find anything so lovely again, or with so many possibilities.
There were other things that must be kept in mind. The last time he had visited Cedar Bluff there had been a letter for him from Ranger Lee Hall.
We’re getting along all right here, but I thought you should know: Cain Brockman is out and swears he will hunt you down and kill you for killing his brother and whipping him with your fists. And you can be sure he’ll try. Be careful.
He dropped four slices of bacon into the pan, humming softly to himself. Then he put on some coffee water and sliced a couple of pieces of bread. He was putting the bacon on a tin plate when he heard a muffled sound from the bedroom.
Instantly he was still. A blanket hung over the door into the bedroom, and his guns hung on a peg across the room. His rifle was nearer.
He went about the business of preparing his meal until close to the rifle, then dropped his hand to it and brought it hip-high. Holding the rifle in his right hand, ready to fire pistol-fashion, he stepped over and jerked back the blanket.
Two youngsters sat on the edge of his bed, a wide-eyed girl of about sixteen and a freckled-faced boy at least two years younger. They stared at him, frightened and pale.
He lowered the muzzle of the gun toward the floor. “How in blazes did you youngsters get here?”
The girl stood up and managed a curtsy. Her hair was very beautiful, hanging in two thick blond braids. Her cheap cotton dress was torn and dirty now after the rough treatment of travel.
“I am Sally Crane and this is Jackie Moffit.”
“Them Haleses done it! They kilt Pap and burned us out.” His features were pale and tense. “I didn’t have no gun. I couldn’t do anything!”
“I know. I came by that way. You youngsters wash up and we’ll have something to eat. Then you can tell me about it.”
“They came in about sunup this mornin’,” Jack said later. “They tol’ Pap he had two hours to git loaded an’ git movin’. Pap allowed as how he was on government land, filed on an’ settled legal, an’ he wasn’t movin’ for no man.”
“And then?” Trent asked.
“The young un, he shot Pap, shot him three times before he could move, then after he fell the young un stood astride Pap’s body and emptied the gun into him.”
That, of course, would be Cub Hale. He remembered the slim, pantherlike young man in white buckskins riding his white horse, that handsome young man who liked to destroy anything that thwarted him.
Yet it was not his fight. Not yet it wasn’t.
“How’d you kids happen to come here?”
“We had to get away. Sally was gatherin’ wood for the fire, just like me, an’ when I come up with her, we both started back. Then we heard the talk, and when I started out, Sally, she held me back. I had no gun
, and there was nothing I could do but get myself killed, she said.”
“Did they look for you?”
“Uh-huh. We heard one of them say he wanted Sally. But they surely couldn’t find us, as we knowed that place too well.”
“You came here on horseback?”
“Uh-huh. Pap always kept some horses corraled back in a canyon, so we caught us up a couple of them and come over here bareback, ridin’ with a mane-holt.”
“Pa said,” Sally intervened, “that if anything ever happened to him, we were to come to you. You were the closest one, and he said you were a good man and could be trusted.”
“Pap said he figured if the truth was known, you were somebody who was almighty good with a gun,” Jackie interrupted. “He said you might be on the dodge, but if you were, he’d bet it was nothing you had to be ashamed of!”
“All right,” Trent conceded, “you can stay here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll ride with you over to the Hatfields’. It’s about time the Parson and I had a talk, anyway.”
He turned back to the stove. “Looks like I’d best cook up some more grub. I wasn’t planning on company.”
“Let me do it,” Sally suggested. “I can cook.”
“She surely can!” Jack said enthusiastically. “She cooked for us all the time.”
A horse’s hoof clicked on stone, and instantly Trent doused the light. “Down!” he said sharply. “On the floor!”
They could hear the horses coming closer. From the sound, Trent could tell there were at least two and they had split apart to provide less of a target.
“Halloo, the house! Step out here!”
“Who’s asking? And what do you want that can’t be done better by daylight?”
“It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference who it is! We’re speakin’ for King Bill Hale! You’ve got until noon tomorrow to get out. You’re camping on Hale range!” There was a moment’s silence. “We’re moving everybody off!”
“Except those you’re murdering, is that it?” Trent commented. “You trot right back and tell Hale we’re staying. This land was filed on, all fitting and proper, and Hale is bucking the United States government on this, and anybody who helps is a party to it.”
He glimpsed the shine of a rifle barrel. “Don’t try it, Dunn! If you weren’t such a damned fool, you’d know you were outlined against the sky. A blind man could put a hole in you.”
Dunn cursed bitterly. “You’ll see, Trent! We’ll be back!”
“Tell Hale to send me enough men to start a graveyard. And, Dunn, you be sure and come, d’ you hear?”
When they had gone, Trent turned to Sally and Jack. “Time for bed. Sally, you take my room, and Jack and me, we’ll bed down out here.”
“But I don’t want to take your bed,” she protested.
“Go ahead. You will need all the sleep you can get. This trouble has just started, and it will be a long time before it’s over. Get some sleep, now.”
“I’m not afraid.” Sally looked at him with large, serious eyes. “You’ll take care of us, I know.”
He stood for a long moment, staring after her. It was a strange feeling to be trusted so implicitly. The childish sincerity of the girl stirred him as nothing ever had. He recognized the feeling for what it was—the need within himself to protect and care for something beyond himself. It was that, in part, that had led him into so many fights that were not his; and yet, was not the cause of human freedom and liberty every man’s trust?
There was something else, too, that was not generally recognized—that just as the maternal instinct is the strongest a woman has, just so the instinct to protect is the strongest for a man.
Jack was going about the business of making a bed on the floor as though he had spent his life at it. He was pleased with this chance to show some skill, some ability to accomplish.
Trent checked his guns as he had checked them every night of his life, and for a minute after the checking, he held them, thinking. Then he hung the gun belts on the peg once more.
The time was not yet.
CHAPTER 2
THE EARLY-MORNING sun was just turning the dew-drenched grass into settings for diamonds when Trent was out of his pallet and roping horses. Yet, early as it was, when he returned to the cabin the fire was lit and Sally was preparing breakfast. She smiled bravely, but he could see she had been crying.
Jack, only now beginning to understand what had happened, was showing his grief through his anger, but was very quiet, moving about the business of taking up the pallets and stowing them away. Trent was less worried about Jack than about Sally, for he knew her story.
According to what Dick Moffit told him, he had found Sally Crane hiding in the bushes some six years before, after he and those with him had come upon a few burned-out wagons. Her family had been murdered by a party of renegades posing as Indians, and she had been picking wildflowers when the attack came, suddenly and without warning.
Dick Moffit and his wife made a home for her, and when Dick’s wife had died a year before, Sally had quietly taken over the cooking and housekeeping, which she had only shared before. She had shown herself a cool, competent girl, but two such tragedies were shock enough for anyone to stand.
“You’re being a very brave girl, Sally. You’ll make some lucky man a good wife.”
“I hope to,” she said.
“Anybody can take the easy times,” he said. “It’s when the going gets rough that the quality shows. Now, when we’ve had breakfast, we’re riding over to the Hatfields’. You already know them, so there’s nothing I can say except that they are the salt of the earth.
“The Hatfields know who they are, they know what they believe in, and their kind will last. Other kinds of people will come and go. The glib and confident, the whiners and complainers, and the people without loyalty, they will disappear, but the Hatfields will still be here plowing the land, planting crops, doing the hard work of the world because it is here to be done. Consider yourself fortunate to know them.”
When breakfast was over he took them to the saddled horses. Then he walked back inside, and when he returned he carried an old Sharps rifle. He held it in his hands for a moment, looking at it, then he held it up to Jack.
“Jack,” Trent said, “when I was fourteen I was a man. Had to be. Well, it looks like your father dying has made you a man, too.
“I’m giving you this Sharps. She’s an old gun but she shoots straight. I’m not giving this gun to a boy, but to a man, and a man doesn’t ever use a gun unless he has to. He never wastes lead shooting carelessly. He shoots only when he has to and when he can see what it is he’s shootin’ at.
“This gun is a present with no strings attached except that any man who takes up a gun accepts responsibility for what he does with it. Use it to hunt game, for target practice, or in defense of your home or those you love.
“Keep it loaded always. A gun’s no good to a man when it’s empty, and if it is settin’ around, people aren’t liable to handle it carelessly. They’ll say, ‘That’s Jack Moffit’s gun and it is always loaded.’ It is the guns people think are empty that cause accidents.”
“Gosh!” Jack stared at the Sharps. “That’s a weapon, man!” He looked at Trent with tears of gratitude in his eyes. “I sure do promise, Mr. Trent! I’ll never use a gun unless I have to.”
Trent swung into the saddle and led the way into a narrow game trail through the forest. He was under no illusions as to what lay ahead. In this remote corner of southwestern Idaho the law was far away and Hale was a widely known and respected man. The natural assumption of any law officers would be that Hale was in the right. He was known as a respectable, law-abiding citizen always prepared to help with any good cause. Those opposed to him would have to prove their case.
“You know, Jack,” he commented, “there’s a clause in the Constitution that says the right of an American to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged. The man who put that clause there had just completed a war that they
won simply because seven out of every ten Americans had their own rifles and knew how to use them. They wanted a man to always be armed to defend his home or his country.
“Right now there’s a man in this area who is trying to take away the liberty and freedom from some men. When a man starts that, and when there is no law to help, a man has to fight. I’ve killed men, Jack, and it’s a bad thing, but I never killed a man unless he forced me into a corner where it was me or him.
“This country is big enough for all of us, but some men become greedy for money or power and come to believe that because they have the money and the power, whatever they do is right. Your father died in a war for freedom just as much as if he was killed on a battlefield.
“Whenever a brave man dies for what he believes, he wins more than he loses. Maybe not for him but for men like him who wish to live honestly and decently.
“Hale showed no interest in this land until we moved in here. He’s got plenty of land, and every man jack of us filed on our land and we have all built cabins and put in crops. Our part of the bargain with the government has been fulfilled so far, and we have legal right to our land, and Hale has no claim on it except that he wants it. He’s never run stock up here and he has never used any water here.”
The trail narrowed and grew rough, and there was no chance for conversation. Trent felt the quick excitement he always felt when riding up to this place. It was a windy plateau among the tall pines, and when they topped out he drew rein as he always did at that point to look out over the vast sweep of country that lay below and around.
On one side lay the vast sweep of country in which Cedar Valley was a mere fleck on the great page of the country. A blue haze seemed always to hang over that distant range and those that succeeded it. Here the air was fresh and clear with all the crispness of the high peaks and a sense of limitless distance.
Skirting the rim, Trent led on and finally came to the second place where he always stopped. Westward and south lay an enormous sweep of country that was totally uninhabited so far as anyone knew. Avoided even by the Indians, it was in part a desert, in a greater part merely a wilderness of rocks and lava. Gouged out and channeled by no man knew what forces, there were the beds of long-vanished rivers, craters, weird formations of rock, and canyons impossibly deep and not even to be seen until one reached the very rim. There were places where a reasonably strong man could pitch a rock across a canyon that was two thousand feet deep. It was a vast, unbelievable wilderness, ventured into by no man.
The Kilkenny Series Bundle Page 32
