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*In 1893 Andy Bowen and Jack Burke fought 110 rounds, in seven hours and nineteen minutes in New Orleans. It was called a draw when neither man could continue. But this was after the conversation above.
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A Gun for Kilkenny
Nobody had ever said that Montana Croft was an honest man. To those who knew him best he was a gunman of considerable skill, a horse and cow thief of first rank, and an outlaw who missed greatness simply because he was lazy.
Montana Croft was a tall, young, and not unhandsome man. Although he had killed four men in gun battles, and at least one of them a known and dangerous gunman, he was no fool. Others might overrate his ability, but Montana’s judgment was unaffected.
He had seen John Wesley Hardin, Clay Allison, and Wyatt Earp in action. This was sufficient to indicate to him that he rated a very poor hand indeed. Naturally, Montana Croft kept this fact to himself. Yet he knew a good thing when he saw it, and the good thing began with the killing of Johnny Wilder.
Now, Wilder himself was regarded as a handy youngster with a gun. He had killed a few men and had acquired the reputation of being dangerous. At nineteen he was beginning to sneer at Billy the Kid and to speak with a patronizing manner of Hardin. And then the stranger on the black horse rode into town, and Johnny took in too much territory.
Not that Johnny was slow—in fact, his gun was out and his first shot in the air before Croft’s gun cleared leather. But Johnny was young, inexperienced, and impatient. He missed his first shot and his second. Montana Croft fired coolly and with care—and he fired only once.
Spectators closed in, looking down upon the remains. The bullet had clipped the corner of Johnny Wilder’s breast pocket, and Johnny was very, very dead.
Even then, it might have ended there but for Fats Runyon. Fats, who was inclined to view with alarm and accept with enthusiasm, looked up and said, “Only one man shoots like that! Only one, I tell you! That’s Kilkenny!”
The words were magic, and all eyes turned toward Croft. And Montana, who might have disclaimed the name, did nothing of the kind. Suddenly he was basking in greater fame than he had ever known. He was Kilkenny, the mysterious gunfighter whose reputation was a campfire story wherever men gathered. He could have disclaimed the name, but he merely smiled and walked into the saloon.
Fats followed him, reassured by Croft’s acceptance of the name. “Knowed you right off, Mr. Kilkenny! Only one man shoots like that! And then that there black hat, them black chaps—it couldn’t be nobody else. Sam, set up a drink for Kilkenny!”
Other drinks followed … and the restaurant refused to accept his money. Girls looked at him with wide, admiring eyes. Montana Croft submitted gracefully, and instead of riding on through Boquilla, he remained.
In this alone he broke tradition, for it was Kilkenny’s reputation that when he killed, he immediately left the country, which was the reason for his being unknown. Montana Croft found himself enjoying free meals, free drinks, and no bill at the livery stable, so he stayed on. If anyone noticed the break in tradition they said nothing. Civic pride made it understandable that a man would not quickly ride on.
Yet when a week had passed, Montana noticed that his welcome was visibly wearing thin. Free drinks ceased to come, and at the restaurant there had been a noticeable coolness when he walked out without paying. Montana considered riding on. He started for the stable, but then he stopped, rolling a cigarette.
Why leave? This was perfect, the most beautiful setup he had ever walked into. Kilkenny himself was far away; maybe he was dead. In any event, there wasn’t one chance in a thousand he would show up in the border jumping-off place on the Rio Grande. So why not make the most of it?
Who could stop him? Wilder had been the town’s toughest and fastest gun.
Abruptly, Croft turned on his heel and walked into the hardware store. Hammet was wrapping a package of shells for a rancher, and when the man was gone, Croft looked at the storekeeper. “Hammet,” he said, and his voice was low and cold, “I need fifty dollars.”
John Hammet started to speak, but something in the cool, hard-eyed man warned him to hold his tongue. This man was Kilkenny, and he himself had seen him down Johnny Wilder. Hammet swallowed. “Fifty dollars?” he said.
“That’s right, Hammet.”
Slowly, the older man turned to his cash drawer and took out the bill. “Never minded loaning a good man money,” he said, his voice shaking a little.
Croft took the money and looked at Hammet. “Thanks, and between the two of us, I ain’t anxious for folks to know I’m short. Nobody does know but you. So I’d know where to come if it was talked around. Get me?” With that, he walked out.
Montana Croft knew a good thing when he saw it. His first round of the town netted him four hundred dollars. A few ranchers here and there boosted the ante. Nobody challenged his claim. All assumed the demands were for loans. It was not until Croft made his second round, two weeks later, that it began to dawn on some of them that they had acquired a burden.
Yet Croft was quiet. He lived on the fat of the land, yet he drank but sparingly. He troubled no one. He minded his own affairs, and he proceeded to milk the town as a farmer milks a cow.
Nor would he permit any others to trespass upon his territory. Beak and Jesse Kennedy discovered that, to their sorrow. Two hard cases from the north, they drifted into town and after a drink or two, proceeded to hold up the bank.
Montana Croft, watching from the moment they rode in, was ready for them. As they emerged from the bank he stepped from the shadow of the hardware store with a shotgun. Beak never knew what hit him. He sprawled facedown in the dust, gold spilling out of his sack into the street. Jesse Kennedy whirled and fired, and took Croft’s second barrel in the chest.
Montana walked coolly over and gathered up the money. He carried the sacks inside and handed them back to Jim Street. He grinned a little and then shoved a hand down into one of the sacks and took out a fistful of gold. “Thanks,” he said, and walked out.
Boquilla was of two minds about their uninvited guest. Some wished he would move on about his business, but didn’t say it; others said it was a blessing he was there to protect the town. And somehow the news began to get around of what was happening.
And then Montana Croft saw Margery Furman.
Margery was the daughter of old Black Jack Furman, Indian fighter and rancher, and Margery was a thing of beauty and a joy forever—or so Montana thought.
He met her first on the occasion of his second decision to leave town. He had been sitting in the saloon drinking and felt an uneasy twinge of warning. It was time to go. It was time now to leave. This had been good, too good to be true, and it was much too good to last. Take them for all he could get, but leave before they began to get sore. And they were beginning to get sore now. It was time to go.
He strode to the door, turned right, and started for the livery stable. And then he saw Margery Furman getting out of a buckboard. He stared, slowed, stopped, shoved his hat back on his head—and became a man of indecision.
She came toward him, walking swiftly. He stepped before her. “Hi,” he said, “I haven’t seen you before.”
Margery Furman knew all about the man called Kilkenny. She had known his name and fame for several years, and she had heard that he was in Boquilla. Now she saw him for the first time and confessed herself disappointed. Not that he was not a big and fine-looking man, but there was something, some vague thing she had expected to find, lacking.
“Look,” he said, “I’d like to see you again. I’d like to see more of you.”
“If you’re still standing here when I come back,” she told him, “you can see me leave town.”
With that she walked on by and into the post office.
Croft stood still. He was shaken. He was smitten. He was worried. Leaving town was forgotten. The twinge of warning from the gods of the lawless
had been forgotten. He waited.
On her return, Margery Furman brushed past him and refused to stop. Suddenly, he was angered. He got quickly to his feet. “Now, look here,” he said, “you—!”
Whatever he had been about to say went unsaid. A rider was walking a horse down the street. The horse was a long-legged buckskin; the man was tall and wore a flat-brimmed, flat-crowned black hat. He wore two guns, hung low and tied down.
Suddenly, Montana Croft felt very sick. His mouth was dry. Margery Furman had walked onto her buckboard, but now she looked back. She saw him standing there, flat-footed, his face white. She followed his eyes.
The tall newcomer sat his buckskin negligently. He looked at Croft through cold green eyes from a face burned dark by the sun and wind. And he did not speak. For a long, full minute, the two stared. Then Croft’s eyes dropped and he started toward the buckboard, but then turned toward the livery stable.
He heard a saddle creak as the stranger dismounted. He reached the stable door and then turned and looked back. Margery Furman was in her buckboard, but she was sitting there, holding the reins.
The stranger was fifty yards from Montana Croft now, but his voice carried. It was suddenly loud in the street. “Heard there was a gent in town who called himself Kilkenny. Are you the one?”
As if by magic, the doors and windows were filled with faces, the faces of the people he had robbed again and again. His lips tried to shape words of courage, but they would not come. He tried to swallow, but gulp as he would, he could not. Sweat trickled into his eyes and smarted, but he dared not move a hand to wipe it away.
“I always heard Kilkenny was an honest man, a man who set store by his reputation. Are you an honest man?”
Croft tried to speak but could not.
“Take your time,” the stranger’s voice was cold, “take your time, then tell these people you’re not Kilkenny. Tell them you’re a liar and a thief.”
He should draw … he should go for his gun now … he should kill this stranger … kill him or die.
And that was the trouble. He was not ready to die, and die he would if he reached for a gun.
“Speak up! These folks are waitin’! Tell them!”
Miraculously, Croft found his voice. “I’m not Kilkenny,” he said.
“The rest of it.” There was no mercy in this man.
Montana Croft suddenly saw the truth staring him brutally in the face. A man could only die once if he died by the gun, but if he refused his chance now he would die many deaths.…
“All right, damn you!” he shouted the words. “I’m not Kilkenny! I’m a liar an’ I’m a thief, but I’ll be damned if I’m a yellow-bellied coward!”
His hands dropped, and suddenly, with a shock of pure realization, he knew he was making the fastest draw he had ever made. Triumph leaped within him and burst in his breast. He’d show them! His guns sprang up … and then he saw the blossoming rose of flame at the stranger’s gun muzzle and he felt the thud of the bullet as it struck him.
His head spun queerly and he saw a fountain of earth spring from the ground before him, his own bullet kicking the dust. He went down, losing his gun, catching himself on one hand. Then that arm gave way and he rolled over, eyes to the sun.
The man stood over him. Montana Croft stared up. “You’re Kilkenny?”
“I’m Kilkenny.” The tall man’s face was suddenly soft. “You made a nice try.”
“Thanks …”
Montana Croft died there in the street of Boquilla, without a name that anyone knew.
Margery Furman’s eyes were wide. “You … you’re Kilkenny?” For this time it was there, that something she had looked for in the face of the other man. It was there, the kindliness, the purpose, the strength.
“Yes,” he said. And then he fulfilled the tradition. He rode out of town.
Monument Rock
CHAPTER 1
Lona was afraid of him. She was afraid of Frank Mailer, the man whom she was to marry. She realized that it was not size alone that made her afraid of him, but something else, something she saw in his blue, slightly glassy eyes, and the harshness of his thin-lipped mouth.
He was big, the biggest man she had ever seen, and she knew his contempt for smaller men, men of lesser strength and lesser will. He was five inches over six feet and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Whenever he stood near her, the sheer mass of him frightened her and the way he looked at her made her uneasy.
Her father looked up at him as he came in. “Did you get that north herd moved before the rain set in?”
“Yeah.” Mailer did not look up, helping himself to two huge slabs of beef, a mound of mashed potatoes, and liberal helpings of everything else. He commenced his supper by slapping butter on a thick slice of homemade bread and taking an enormous bite, then holding the rest of it in his left hand, he began to shovel food into his mouth with his right.
Between bites he looked up at Poke Markham. “I saw the Black Rider.”
“On our range?”
“Uh-huh; just like they were sayin’ in town, he was ridin’ the high country, alone. Over toward Chimney Rock.”
“Did you get close to him? See what he looks like?”
“Not a chance. Just caught a glimpse of him over against the rocks, and then he was gone, like a shadow. That horse of his is fast.” Mailer looked up and Lona was puzzled by the slyness in his eyes as he looked at her father. “You know what the Mexican boys say? That he’s the ghost of a murdered man.”
The comment angered Markham. “That’s foolishness! He’s real enough, all right! What I want to know is who he is and what he thinks he’s doin’.”
“Maybe the Mex boys are right. You ever see any tracks? I never did, an’ nobody else that I ever heard of. Nobody ever sees him unless it is almost dark or rainin’, an’ then never more than a glimpse.”
“He’s real enough!” Markham glared from under his shaggy brows, his craggy face set in angry lines. “Some outlaw on the dodge, that’s who he is, hangin’ out in the high peaks so he won’t be seen. Who’s he ever bothered?”
Mailer shrugged. “That’s the point. He ain’t bothered anybody yet, but maybe he wants one certain man.” Mailer looked up at Poke, in his malicious way. “Maybe he’s the ghost of a murdered man, like they say, an’ maybe he’s tryin’ to lure his murderer back into the hills.”
“That’s nonsense!” Markham repeated irritably. “You’ll have Lona scared out of her wits, ridin’ all over like she does.”
Frank Mailer looked at her, his eyes meeting hers, then running down over her breasts. He always made her uncomfortable. How had she ever agreed to marry him? She knew that when he drank he became fiercely belligerent. Nobody wanted to cross him when he was drinking. Only one man ever had tried to stop him when he was like that. Bert Hayek had tried it, and Bert had died for his pains.
His fighting had wrecked several of the saloons in town. All, in fact, except for the Fandango. Was it true, what they said? That Frank was interested in that Spanish woman who ran the place? Nita Howard was her name. Lona Markham had seen her once, a tall young woman with a voluptuous figure and beautiful eyes. She had thought her one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Lona’s intended was often seen visiting with a beautiful woman who ran a saloon and gambling hall and Lona found she didn’t care … not at all.
When supper was over Lona left hurriedly. More and more she was avoiding Frank. She did not like to have him near her, did not want to talk to him. He frightened her, but he puzzled her, too. For more and more he seemed to be exerting authority here on the Blue Hill ranch, and more and more her father was fading into the background. People said that Poke Markham was afraid of no man, but of late she’d begun to wonder, for several times he had allowed Mailer to overrule him.
She crossed the patio through a light spatter of rain to her own quarters in the far wing of the rambling old house. Once there, she hung up her coat and crossed to the window, looking off over the ma
gnificent sweep of land that carried her eyes away to the distant wall of the mountains in the southwest. It was over there the strange rider had been seen.
Suddenly, as if in response to her thoughts, a horseman materialized from the rain. He was out there, no more than a hundred yards from the back of the house, and scarcely visible through the now driving rain. As she looked she saw him draw up, and sitting tall in the saddle, he surveyed the ranch. Under his black flat-brimmed hat nothing of his face was visible and at that distance she could not make out his features. He was only a tall horseman, sitting in the rain, staring at the ranch house.
Why she did it, she never knew, but suddenly she caught up her coat, and running out into the rain, she lifted her hand.
For a moment they stared at each other and then suddenly the horse started to walk, but as he moved, the Black Rider raised a hand and waved!
Then he was gone. One instant he was there, and then he had vanished like a puff of smoke … but he had waved to her! Recalling the stories, she knew it was something that had never happened before. She returned to her room, her heart pounding with excitement. She must tell Gordon about that. He would be as surprised as she was. In fact, she paused, staring out at the knoll where the Rider had stopped, Gordon Flynn was the only one who seemed to care much what she thought or how she felt. Gordon, and of course, Dave Betts, the broken-down cowhand who was their cook.
Mailer dropped into a big chair made of cowhide. He rolled a smoke and looked across at Markham. The old man was nodding a little, and it made Frank smile. Markham, if that’s what he wanted to be called, had changed. He had aged.
To think how they all had feared him! All but he himself. All but Frank Mailer. Markham had been boss here for a long time, and to be the boss of men like Kane Geslin and Sam Starr was something, you had to admit. Moreover, he had kept them safe, kept them away from the law, and if he had taken his share for all that, at least he’d held up his end of the bargain. He was getting older now, and he had relinquished more and more of the hard work to Mailer. Frank was tired of the work without the big rewards; he was ambitious. Sure, they had a good thing going, but if one knew the trails, there were easy ways out to the towns and ranches, and a man could do a good job on a few banks, along about roundup time. It beat working for money, and this ranch was as good as his, anyway, when he married Lona.
The Kilkenny Series Bundle Page 51
