Instantly he clapped the spurs to his mount and went ghosting through the trees. The others, as if on command, spread out in a long skirmish line, each finding his own way through the forest.
Before him the Cup suddenly opened wide, and then he was coming down a little-used trail. He heard another shot and then saw a bunch of men scrambling for their horses. He slid to the ground and dropped to one knee. He fired as his knee touched the ground, and he saw one rider grab for the saddle horn, his shirt suddenly blossoming with crimson.
He fired three rapidly spaced shots, and down the line he heard others opening up as well. Then he was in the saddle and racing up to the house.
Jack Moffit lay sprawled on the ground, the rifle near his hand.
Sally ran from the house to him, and Ma Hatfield came out. “Hit us ’bout an hour back, maybe less. Jack, he’d been taking care of the stock when we heard them coming. Jack got off a shot and then run for the house. They nailed him before he made more’n three or four steps. I cut loose at them, and they holed up right quick. Bart, he rode in about that time and joined us. They nicked him, too.”
Kilkenny dropped to his knees beside Jack. The boy had been grazed along the scalp, but the bad one was through his chest, high up.
Price Dixon dropped down beside him. Kneeling over the boy, he conducted a swift, professional examination. “We’ll have to get him inside on a table. That bullet has to come out.”
Parson spat. “Ain’t nobody here good enough to do that,” he remarked, “although Ma’s had a sight of experience.”
“I’ll do it,” Dixon said. “I was a doctor once. Maybe I still am.”
When they had the boy inside, Kilkenny went to the door with Parson. “This changes everything, Parson. I’d better go back in and get Nita. She won’t be safe there now. This is wide-open war, and it has Cub’s mark on it.”
“You’d better take help. There’s enough of us now to hold this place.”
“I’ll go alone. It is better that way, and I can move quieter and don’t have to worry about where anyone else is.”
“Don’t you go to forgettin’ Cain Brockman.”
He glanced at Dixon. The man had taken a small, compact kit of tools from his saddlebags.
Parson jerked his head in Dixon’s direction. “Says he’s a doc. I hope he is.”
“He is. I knew it the minute he went to work on my cut eye. I’ve seen professional handlers who were good, but not that good.”
“You surely whupped Turner!” Hatfield said. “I d’clare, you surely did.”
“I was lucky,” Kilkenny said honestly. “I’m not as good a fighter as he is. It was simply that he wasn’t expecting me to be as good as I was, and the fact that I had seen him fight before. If we fought again, Parson, he’d probably beat me.”
“You whupped him.”
“I whipped him today. I got him irritated there at the start, and he was too anxious to teach me a lesson, so I got in several good solid punches at the beginning before he was warmed up. Then he had the idea that I was just some husky cowhand, and he did not fight me as he would have a professional . . . and I’ve had professional training.”
Kilkenny shook his head. “I’m no fool, Parson, and I know something of fighting. If we fought again, he’d beat me.”
“You’d better get some rest, boy. That’s a hard ride down an’ back, and you’ve been through a lot. Let the doc there, if that’s what he is, work over your face a mite, then you’d best catch some shut-eye. Won’t do no good to go hightailin’ it down there ready to drop out of the saddle. If the time comes when you face up to Cub Hale, you’d best be ready.”
It made sense, and he took his blanket roll out under the trees again and stretched out. Until that moment he had not realized how thoroughly exhausted he was, but he had scarcely stretched out before he was asleep, and when he awakened, it was hours later and the sun was already down behind the mountains.
He rolled his bed and took it to his saddle. From long and grim experience he knew that whatever a man’s plans might be, events can change them on the spur, and it paid to be ready. He never left a friend without the awareness that he might never see him again.
Price Dixon had operated, removing the bullet that endangered Jack Moffit’s life. Constant manipulation of cards had at least kept his fingers deft and skillful, and from time to time in mining camps and elsewhere he had worked at his profession.
Kilkenny was not surprised to learn that he had been a skilled surgeon. The West was a haven for many kinds of people, and from all walks of life. Doctors, lawyers, judges, businessmen, European nobility, all thronged west looking for escape from what they had become or were becoming, or for adventure, quick wealth, whatever the West had to offer, and its promises and gifts were many.
Price Dixon and Lance Kilkenny had recognized each other from the first, not from any past experience together but as men from the same level, men of education and background, men of the lost legion of drifters, of whom there were many.
“The boy will live,” Price told Kilkenny. “The bullet was dangerously near the spine, but it’s out, and what he needs now is simply rest and plenty of good beef broth.”
Sally Crane found him at the corral when he was saddling the gray horse he was riding that night. She came up in a great hurry and then suddenly stopped and stood silent, shifting her feet from place to place. Kilkenny glanced at her curiously from under the flat brim of his hat.
“What’s the trouble, Sally?”
“I wanted to ask . . .” She hesitated shyly. “Do you think I’m old enough to marry?”
“To marry?” He straightened up, surprised. “Why, I don’t know. How old are you, Sally?”
“I’m sixteen, nigh to seventeen.”
“That’s young,” he conceded, “but I heard Ma Hatfield say she was just sixteen when she married, and in Kentucky and Virginia many a girl marries at that age. Why?”
“I reckon I want to marry,” Sally said. “Ma Hatfield said I should ask you. Said you was Daddy Moffit’s best friend and you was sort of my guardian.”
“Me?” The idea startled him. “Well, I never thought of it that way, Sally. Who do you want to marry, Sally?”
“It’s Bart. Mr. Bartram.”
“Do you love him?” He suddenly felt strangely old, and looking at Sally, standing there so shy and yet so eager, he felt more than ever the vast loneliness that was in him, and also a tenderness such as he had never known before.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Well, Sally,” he said, “I expect I am as much of a guardian as you have, and Moffit and I saw things pretty much alike. He would want the best for you, Sally, and if you love Bart and he loves you, I guess that’s all that’s needed, as he is a fine, straightforward sort of man. As soon as this trouble is cleared up, he will do all right. Yes, you can marry him.”
She turned to start away.
“Sally?” She stopped, turning to face him. “Sally, remember one thing. Bart is a man who is going to grow. He will not stay the man he is, so if you marry him and want to be happy, you will have to grow with him.
“I’ve seen a lot of Bart, and he is a young man on his way. You can’t just settle down and be blissfully happy and in love with him, because he is going to grow and he will be an important man in the community sometime. You will have to learn more and be more and be a credit to him.”
“Oh, I will! I will!”
She was gone, running.
For a few moments he stood there, hands on the saddle, ready to mount. Then he stepped into the stirrup and threw his leg over the saddle. “Now, that is one thing you never expected to happen, Lance Kilkenny. Somebody asking you for permission to marry! Next thing I know, I’ll have to give the bride away!”
He turned his horse into the trail. Men had died here. Men had built homes here. Now Sally and Bartram would be married. This was the country, and these were its people. They had the strength to live, to endure, to be. These were
the people of simple tastes and simple virtues who were the backbone of the country, and not those vocal ones who were quick with words and prided themselves on their sophistication.
The little gray horse he was riding was as sure-footed as the buckskin. He spoke to it in a low whisper, and it flicked an ear to listen. This was a good horse, a steady, and quiet one.
He came up to Cedar in the darkness, with the stars about. He reined in, sensing something wrong, some change. The gray horse had its ears pricked, nostrils flaring. The smell of wood smoke was in the air, and a tension, an uneasiness. He looked down upon it, seeing only vague outlines, no lighted windows visible from where he sat. Something had changed, something was wrong.
He walked the gray horse forward, keeping to sandy or dusty places where it would make no sound. The black bulk of a building loomed before him, and the smell of smoke was stronger.
The Mecca was gone! Where Hale’s place had stood was a heap of charred ruins.
What could have happened? An accident? No . . . it was something else, and behind the doors and windows he seemed to sense movement. The town only appeared to be asleep.
Keeping in the shadow of the barn, he moved forward. A faint light showed from Leathers’s store, but the Crystal Palace was dark. Carefully keeping to the deepest shadow, he worked his way to the back of the Crystal Palace, leaving the gray under the trees near the abandoned building next door.
He had started out from the trees when a movement made him stop dead still.
A man was moving ahead of him, unaware of him, a huge man. He stopped, easing into the deeper shadow. It was Cain Brockman!
Watching, Kilkenny saw him moving with incredible stealth, saw him move to the door, work for a moment at the lock, then disappear inside.
Kilkenny crossed the intervening space in swift, soundless movement and went into the door after Brockman. Once inside, he flattened against the wall to present as small a target as possible for any possible shot.
He heard the big man ahead of him. On cat feet he moved after him.
What could Brockman want here? Was he after Nita? Or hoping to find him, to catch him off guard?
He moved along, closed a door behind him, lost Brockman in the still darkness. Suddenly a candle gleamed from an opening door. Nita was there in riding costume.
“You’ve come, Lance? It was you I heard?”
“It was not me,” he said aloud, “it was Cain Brockman. He’s here.”
A shadow moved, and Cain Brockman said, “You bet I’m here.”
Cain came back toward them, weaving among the card tables until he was scarcely fifteen feet away. The heavy drapes at all the windows were drawn, keeping all light within, but there was only the light of the candle. If he lived to be a thousand years old, Lance Kilkenny would never forget that room or that moment.
Brockman was there, huge, invulnerable, ominous.
It was a large room, and rectangular. Along one side was the bar; the rest of the room, except for the small dance floor across which they now faced each other, was littered with tables and chairs. There were the usual brass spittoons, fallen cards, scattered poker chips, cigarette butts, and glasses, all awaiting the cleanup man who would come at daybreak.
A balcony surrounded the room on three sides, a balcony with curtained booths.
Only the one tall, flickering candle. And Nita, her black hair gathered against the nape of her neck, her eyes unusually large in the dim light.
Facing him was Cain Brockman. His black hat was pushed back on his head, his thick neck descended into powerful shoulders, and a checkered shirt was open to expose a hairy chest. He wore crossed gun belts and his thumbs were tucked behind the belt within easy reach of the guns.
His flat face was oily and unshaved, his stance was wide, his feet in their boots seemed unusually small for such a large man.
“That’s right,” he said, “I’m here, Kilkenny.”
Kilkenny drew a deep breath. A wave of something like hopelessness swept over him. He could kill this man. He knew it. Yet why kill him? Cain Brockman had come hunting him because it was the code of the life he lived and because the one anchor he had had been pulled loose, his brother, Abel.
At that moment Kilkenny saw Cain Brockman as he had never seen him before, a big, simple man, an earnest man who had drifted down the darker trails behind his brother. That one tie had been cut, and he stood here now, a lost man, with no destiny, no future. To kill Kilkenny was now his only purpose.
Kilkenny spoke calmly. “Cain, I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to shoot it out with you. Cain, there’s no sense in you and me shooting things up, no sense at all.”
“What do you mean?” Brockman’s brow furrowed. This was a puzzle. He knew Kilkenny too well to believe he was afraid.
“I don’t want to kill you, Cain. You’re too good a man. You and you brother teamed up with the wrong crowd down in Texas, and because of that we got into a shooting match. You looked for me, and I had to fight you. I didn’t want to then, and I don’t want to now.
“Cain, I owe something to those people in the mountains. I’ve a reason to fight for them. They are good, honest people and they are trying to build something. If I kill, it will be for that. If I die, I’d prefer it was in trying to keep their land for them. There’s nothing to gain for either of us in a shoot-out. Suppose you kill me? What will you do then?
Cain hesitated, puzzled. “Why, I’d go back to Texas.”
“And then?”
“Go to ridin’ for somebody, I guess.”
“Maybe, Cain. And maybe some old acquaintance would come along and you’d rustle a few head or rob a stage. Then they’ll get you like they did Sam Bass.
“You’re a good man, Cain, and I’m not going to draw on you, and you’re too good a man to shoot a man who won’t fight. You’ve got too much good stuff in you to live the way you’ll live and to die as you’ll die, with a bullet or at the end of a rope.”
Cain Brockman stared at him, and in the flickering candlelight Kilkenny waited. For the first time he was really afraid, afraid his words would fail and the big man would go for his gun. He honestly did not want to kill him, but his own instinct for self-preservation would make him draw if Cain did.
Suddenly Cain’s hand went to his face, rubbing his grizzled chin. “Well, I’ll be . . . I’ll be eternally damned!”
He turned unsteadily and walked past Nita toward the door. He blundered into the doorjamb, then went out.
They heard his feet on the gravel, heard him pause, then walk slowly away into the night.
CHAPTER 19
KILKENNY STEPPED BACK and wiped the sweat from his brow. Nita crossed the room to him, her face radiant with relief.
“Oh, Lance! That was wonderful! Wonderful!”
“It was awful,” he replied. “Just plain awful! I never want to go through that again.”
He looked around. “Nita? Where is Brigo?”
“He’s in my room, Lance. I was going to tell you when Brockman came. He’s hurt, very badly.”
“Brigo?” It seemed impossible. “How?”
“Two of Hale’s gunmen, Dunn and Ravitz. Cub sent them after me. Brigo met them right here, and they shot it out. He killed both of them, but he was shot . . . three times.”
“What’s happened here, anyway? The Mecca has been burned.”
“That was before Dunn and Ravitz came. Some miners were in the Mecca drinking. One of the miners had some words with a Hale gunman about your fight and about the nesters, and the miner proceeded to say what he thought about Hale.
“The gunman reached for his gun, and the miner hit him with a bottle, and that started it. Miners against the Hale riders. Oh, it was awful, Lance! It was bloody and terrible.
“Several of the Hale riders liked your fight and your attitude, and they quit. The miners outnumbered the others, and they drove them out of the Mecca, and in the process a lamp was knocked over and the place caught fire.
�
�Fighting continued in the street, but nobody used a gun. It was all rough-and-tumble, and by the time it was over, the Mecca had burned to the ground and the miners got into wagons and started back for Silver City or wherever they were from.
“For the next few hours it was like a morgue. Nobody was on the streets. They were littered with broken bottles, smashed chairs, and torn bunting. Everything was quiet then until Dunn and Ravitz came.”
“Have you seen Cub?”
“No, but they say he’s wild. He hated you and was furious when some of the men quit. He doesn’t care about Halloran, for he’s completely lawless. Also, he doesn’t realize what Halloran can do to his father, or what all of this means. He cannot remember a time when his father was not a big man and able to do whatever he wanted.
“He’s taken a dozen men and gone out after stolen cattle.”
“Good! That means we have some time. Nita, you can’t stay here. Ride to the Cup and send Price Dixon down here. If anybody can do anything for Brigo, he can. And you will be safe there.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be all right. Just send Dixon down here. Meanwhile, I’ll get a buckboard and we’ll be ready to take Brigo back with us.”
They were silent, listening. There was no sound. The town had the silence of a grave.
“What about King Bill?”
“There are only rumors, Lance. Some of those cow-hands who quit stopped in here for drinks. They said he acts like a man who’s lost his mind. He was in here after the fight, but then he went to the Castle.
“He asked me to marry him, and I refused. He said he would take me anyway, and I told him Brigo would kill him if he tried. He went away, and it was then Cub sent those men after me.
“But something has happened to Hale. He’s not the same man. He lost money to you, to the miners, and to Cain Brockman. He paid all his bets, even those for which he had not put up money. I don’t believe the money mattered, but the losing did. He’s never lost, he’s never been thwarted, and he doesn’t know how to cope with adversity. He was never a strong man insofar as character is concerned, and suddenly he has just seemed to come apart.
The Kilkenny Series Bundle Page 48
