The Kilkenny Series Bundle

by Louis L'Amour

  What had happened?

  Kilkenny arose swiftly from behind the shrub and moved with swift, silent strides to the wall of the building and along the wall to Lona’s window, from which he had seen the girl’s shadow on that first day before she emerged to wave to him. The window was open, and the lace curtain hung limp and lifeless in the dead, still air.

  Inside the room a mirror hung on the wall, and from the side he could see it, and it gave him a view of most of the inside of the room. There was nothing. He had left his Winchester with the horse, but now he slid a Colt into his hand and stepped quickly past the window to get the view from the opposite side. The room was empty. He stepped over the sill and stood inside.

  There was some blood on the sill where Flynn had been shot the previous night. The door was open on the silent, sunlit patio. Kilkenny returned his gun to his holster and crossed to the door, studying the patio.

  Under the eaves of the porch hung an olla, its sides dark with the contents of clear, cold water. Several strings of peppers hung from the eaves across the way and a spring bubbled from the ground into a tiny pool in the center of the patio, then trickled off through a stone pipe to empty into the water trough away at the corral.

  Listening, he heard nothing. Yet within any one of the half dozen windows or two doors, a gun might wait. Back inside the window where he would be invisible, either Dunning or Mailer might stand, gun in hand. A gourd dipper hung near the olla and another at the spring. Kilkenny’s mouth was dry and he longed for a drink. His ears straining with the effort to hear some sound, he waited a moment longer, then stepped out into the patio, and crossed it, to the door opposite. As he walked he glanced sharply right toward the open side from which he could see the corrals and the stable. All was bright and still.

  The kitchen was empty. He placed a hand on the coffeepot, and it seemed to be vaguely warm. Lifting the lid of the stove, he saw a dull red glow among the few coals atop the gray of ashes and the grate. He stepped past the stove and walked into the dining room, and then he stopped.

  In a doorway on his left a hand was visible, lying flat and lax, palm down on the floor. It was an old hand, worn and brown.

  Stepping quickly around the table, Kilkenny saw the man who lay there, his bald head rimmed with a fringe of graying hair, his shirt dark with blood, and the floor beneath him stained with it.

  A six-shooter lay near his hand and he still wore the apron that marked him for who and what he was. Dave Betts was dead. He had been shot twice through the chest.

  Stepping quickly past him, Kilkenny looked into the room from which Betts had apparently emerged. It was definitely bachelor quarters. Turning to the room beside it, he found a mussed bed, and bending over, he sniffed the pillow, detecting a faint perfume. This, then, was where Lona had spent the night, but where was she?

  And where were they all?

  Stepping past the old man’s body, Kilkenny moved the length of the long table and stepped through the open door into the large living room.

  No one. This, too, was empty and still.

  Somewhere, thunder rumbled distantly, mumbling in the far-off hills like a giant disturbed in his sleep. A faint breath of wind coming alive stirred out over the desert, and he heard the rustle of the peppers on their strings in the patio, and the curtain stirred faintly as though moved by a ghostly hand.

  Kilkenny mopped his face of sweat and moved carefully across the room. The wind stirred again, and suddenly he heard another sound, a sound that sent a faint chill over him, making his shoulders twitch with the feeling of it. It was the sound of a strained rope, a rope that hung taut and hard, creaking a little, with a burden.

  He stepped quickly to the door, his mouth dry. As though drawn by foreknowledge, his eyes went to the stable, whose wide-open door he could now see. From the cross beam over the high door, made high to admit racks of hay, he saw a long and heavy form suspended by a short rope.

  Nearer, sprawled upon the ground in the open, lay an outstretched body. Gun in hand, Kilkenny stepped quickly outside, his eyes shooting right and left, then he ran across to the stable. One glance at the face, and he straightened, sorely puzzled. The man was a total stranger!

  Crossing to the barn, he found where the rope was tied and unfastened it, lowering the man who had been hanged. His spurs jingled as the dead man’s heels touched the ground. One glance at the blue face and he knew. It was Socorro.

  Walking to the bunkhouse, he hesitated, for the steps were bloodstained. Then he moved inside. On the floor before him lay another stranger, his body fairly riddled with bullets, and against the end of the room sat Sam Starr, his head hanging on his chest, guns lax near his hands, and his shirt and trousers soaked in blood.

  Crouching beside him, Kilkenny lifted Starr’s chin, and miraculously, the man’s lids stirred, and his lips worked to form words. “Shot … me,” he whispered, his lips working at the words he could not shape, “Mulhavens.”

  Kilkenny motioned to the dead man inside the door. “Is that a Mulhaven?”

  Starr indicated assent. “Tough,” he said, “plenty … tough.”

  “Where’s Dunning?”

  Starr shook his head.

  Kilkenny grasped the dying man’s shoulder. “Tell me, man! Where’s that girl! Where’s Lona? Dammit, speak up!”

  Starr’s eyes forced themselves open and he struggled to speak. “D … d … don’t know. Poke, he … away.”

  “Poke Dunning has her,” Kilkenny said. “Is that it?”

  Starr nodded. “Mailer’s craz … y. Plumb gone bats …” Sam Starr’s voice trailed away, and he fainted.

  Carefully, Kilkenny eased the man to a prone position and grabbed a pillow for his head from the nearest bunk.

  Swiftly, he worked over the dying man, doing what he could to ease his position and his pain. Then he hurried from the bunkhouse and made a quick survey of the ranch.

  He found no one else. Four dead men and the dying Sam Starr. Dunning, Mailer, Lona, Rusty Gates, and Gordon Flynn were all gone.

  Hurrying back with a bucket of cool water, he found Starr conscious. Holding a gourd dipper to the man’s mouth, he helped him drink. Starr looked his gratitude. “Mailer’s gone after … after your girl,” he gasped. “He’s crazy!”

  “My girl?” Kilkenny was dumbfounded. “At Salt Creek?”

  Starr nodded weakly. “An’ … an’ the Mulhavens are after G … G … Gates.”

  “What?” Kilkenny sprang to his feet. “But he wasn’t an outlaw!”

  “You try tellin’ ’em that!” Starr’s face was turning gray.

  Kilkenny stood flat-footed and still above the dying man. Frank Mailer, kill-crazy and full of fury, was gone to Salt Creek after Nita. Somewhere, Poke Dunning was escaping with Lona, and his friend Rusty Gates, the man who had come into this only to help him, and probably with a wounded man for company, was riding to escape a blood-hungry posse whose reason had been lost in a lust for revenge for the killing of their own friends and brothers!

  Kilkenny knew of the Mulhavens. A family of tough Irishmen, three of them veterans of the Indian wars. Hard, honest, capable men. He knew, too, the men of Aztec Crossing, and they were not men to take the blood-letting Mailer had visited upon them without retaliation. If they had trailed those men to this ranch, they would regard all upon it as tarred with the same brush and would make a clean sweep. Two of their group had died here, and that would make matters no easier.

  Leaving Starr, he dashed outside and stopped in the sunlight. Where to go? Nita was in danger. Rusty was being pursued by a hanging mob, and Lona …

  Kilkenny forced himself to coldness. Brigo was at Salt Creek with Nita, and so was Cain Brockman. He would have to gamble that they were protection enough. Lona, wherever she was, must wait, for it was not immediately apparent what danger she might be in. Rusty had evidently taken Flynn and somehow managed an escape, knowing that the wounded Flynn would certainly be taken as one of the outlaws. Rusty had come into this only to help
him, and to have him hanged by mistake would be a horrible responsibility.

  He took swift strides toward the corral, glancing over the remaining horses. Rusty’s mount was not there.

  Turning, he whistled shrilly, and in a moment saw Buck come trotting around the building toward him.

  Again in the saddle, Kilkenny began a painstaking sweep of the ranch, yet his job was in a measure simplified by knowing that Gates must make his escape by some route that would take him from the rear of the buildings. Forcing himself to take his time, Lance Kilkenny soon found the tracks of Gates’s horse and another. He studied the hoofprints of this other horse carefully, then mounted and worked the trail out of the brush and rocks to a shallow dip south and west of Blue Hill.

  Apparently, Rusty was heading for the rough country of Malpais Arroyo, and walking his horses. Was that because of the wounded Flynn? Or to keep from attracting attention?

  He was something over a mile south of the ranch when a bunch of tracks made by hard-running horses came in from the north. Lance felt his stomach turn over within him. The Aztec posse! They had seen them and were in pursuit. Touching a spur to the buckskin, he went into a lope, then a run. The tracks were easy to follow now. The wind whipped at his face, and thunder rumbled over the mountains beyond Monument Rock. The brim of his hat slapped back against his skull, but the buckskin, loving to run, ate into the distance with swiftly churning hoofs.

  The trail dipped into the arroyo and led along it, and heedless of ambush, thinking only of his friend, Kilkenny rode on, his face grim and hard. He knew mobs and how relentless and unreasoning they could be. There would be no reasoning with this bunch. If he met them, it could well be a payoff in blood and bullets. He had never, to his knowledge, killed an honest man, but to save his friend he would do just that.

  Suddenly he saw that the pace of the horses he followed had slowed, and he drew up himself, walking his horse, and listening. Then, carried by the echoing walls of the arroyo that had now deepened to a canyon, he heard a yell. Soon somebody called, “Boost him up here, durn it! Let’s get this job over with!”

  The voices were just around a bend in the rocks ahead. His stomach muscles tight and hard, his mouth dry, Kilkenny slid from his horse. His hands went to walnut-butted guns and loosened them in their holsters, then he moved around the bend and into sight.

  There, beneath a huge old cottonwood, stood Rusty Gates, and beside him, Gordon Flynn. The wounded man was being held up by a man who stood directly in front of him. There were seven men here, seven hard, desperate men.

  Flynn’s eyes went past them and he saw Kilkenny.

  “Kilkenny!” he yelled.

  As one man, the posse turned to face the owner of that dread name.

  He spoke, and his voice was clear and strong. “Step back from those men, damn you for a lot of brainless killers! Get away, or I’ll take the lot of you!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Surprise held the men of the posse immobile, and in the moment of stillness Kilkenny spoke again. His voice was sharp and clear. “You’ve got the wrong men there! While you try to string up a couple of honest cowhands, the real killers are gettin’ away!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Terry Mulhaven’s voice was sharp. He had suddenly decided he was not going to be bluffed, Kilkenny or no Kilkenny. “You keep out of this! Or maybe,” he added, his voice lowering a note, “you’re one of them?”

  Kilkenny did not reply to him. Instead, he asked quickly, “Did any of you see the holdup? Actually see it?”

  “I did,” Worth said sharply. “I saw it.”

  “All right, then. Look again at these men. Were they among those you saw?”

  Worth hesitated, glancing uneasily at Terry Mulhaven. “The redhead wasn’t. I saw no redheaded man, but we wounded two of them, anyway, and this man is wounded.” He gestured at Flynn. “That’s enough for me.”

  “It’s not enough!” Kilkenny returned crisply. “If all you want to do is kill, then kill each other or try killing me. But if you want justice, then try thinking rather than stringing up the first men you meet!”

  “All right, mister. You tell us how we should be thinking. You talk quick, though.”

  “That man was shot by Poke Dunning when he tried to help a girl get away from that bunch of outlaws.” Kilkenny spoke swiftly, for he had them listening now, and he knew western men. Quick to anger and quick to avenge an insult or a killing, they were also, given a chance, men of good heart and goodwill, and essentially reasonable men. They were also men of humor. Such men had been known to let a guilty man go free when he made some humorous remark with a noose around his neck, or under a gun. They respected courage, and given a chance to cool down, they would judge fairly.

  He had them talking now, and he meant to keep them talking. “The men who rode to the Crossing were led by Frank Mailer, the worst of the lot,” he continued rapidly, arresting and holding their attention by his crisp, sharp speech and the confidence of his knowledge. “With him rode Geslin, Sam Starr, Socorro, an’ Scar Ethridge.

  “Ethridge never came back. You hanged Socorro and killed Starr at the ranch. You also killed an honest man, Dave Betts.”

  “We got Ethridge at the Crossin’,” Mulhaven said, “but if that honest man was the hombre on the floor inside the house, we didn’t kill him. He was dead when we got there!”

  This was news to Kilkenny. Apparently Dave had given his life in trying to protect Lona Markham. Dunning had evidently carried her off.

  “Mailer’s still loose and I’m after him myself,” Kilkenny added. “These two men were the only honest hands on the place aside from that old man you found dead.”

  Bill Worth walked over to Flynn and took the noose from his neck, then he removed the loop from Rusty’s neck. “Glad you showed up,” he said shortly. “I tried to tell these hombres that redhead wasn’t among ’em!”

  Kilkenny had no time for conversation. “Rusty,” he said swiftly, “get Flynn back to the ranch. I’m ridin’ to Salt Creek after Mailer. Then we’ll have to hunt Poke Dunning.”

  Turning abruptly, he swung into his saddle, and with a wave at the posse and his friends, he was off at a dead run.

  Terry Mulhaven stared after him, then mopped his brow. “Man!” he said. “When I turned around an’ looked into them green eyes, I figured my number was up for sure!” He glanced at Rusty. “Is he as fast as they say?”

  “Faster,” Gates said wryly.

  Bill Worth looked at the Mulhavens. “Let’s pick up the bodies,” he said gently, “and head for home. The folks will be worried.”

  “Yeah”—Terry nodded—“we better.” He glanced sheepishly at Rusty and Flynn. “No hard feelin’s?”

  Gates stared at him, then his red face broke into a grin. “Not right now,” he said, “but a few minutes ago I was some sore!”

  In a tight knot, the posse headed north for the ranch, and later, with the bodies of the two fallen men across their saddles, they started toward home. They rode slowly and they talked but little, and as a result they were startled by a sudden grunt from their Apache tracker. “Look!” he said. “Big red hoss!”

  They looked, and the tracks were there. Terry Mulhaven glanced at his brother, then at Worth. “Well,” he said, “we know that track. We followed it all the way from Aztec. Let’s see what we find this time!”

  Grimly, they turned their horses down the trail made by Frank Mailer’s horse. This time somebody would pay the cost of the heavy burden the two lead horses carried, the burden left upon them by the murdered men in the bank.

  Due east of Monument Rock and the hideout used by Kilkenny was an old prospector’s cabin. This adobe shelter had been used by drifting cowhands, by rustlers and sheepherders as a temporary shelter, but for some years now it had been passed by and forgotten. It was huddled in a tight little corner of rock far down one of the southern-reaching tentacles of Salt Creek Wash, and here Poke Dunning had taken Lona Markham.

  She had not gone willingly. In the confu
sion of the Blue Hill ranch gun battle, Poke had made his move. His first thought had been to try to put a bullet in Frank Mailer, but as he moved to the window that faced the bunkhouse and the ongoing fracas, rifle in hand, he’d spotted big Frank sliding down the side of the wash that ran across one side of the ranch yard. He had a set of saddlebags over his shoulder and was out of sight before Dunning could shoot. Poke figured that the saddlebags probably held the loot from Mailer’s robbery.

  Realizing that no matter what happened during the shoot-out, he’d still have Mailer to deal with, Dunning headed for Dave Betts’s room and Lona. Knowing that he had only moments before the posse turned its attention on the main house, he plunged into the room.

  “Out the window, quick!” he snapped. “We’re gettin’ out of here.”

  “You go. I’m staying here.” Lona had made the mistake of thinking that Kilkenny had come, and although she had been afraid because of all the shooting, she was now sure that if Poke was running, then Kilkenny must be winning.

  “Dammit, girl!” He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the window.

  “You hold up there, Mr. Markham!” Dave Betts was frightened by the fear he saw in Lona’s eyes … something was wrong here. He grabbed Poke’s shoulder.

  Turning, Poke drew his right-hand gun and shot Dave twice in the chest; then, as Lona opened her mouth to scream he knocked her unconscious with a diagonal swipe of the barrel. He shoved her out the window, and then dropping out after her, he headed for the corrals.

  In the remote cabin, never visited in these days by anyone, he left Lona tied securely.

  He had not been able to escape the ranch on either his or Lona’s personal mount. Her horse, Zusa, was essential to his new plan. He was tired of playing games with Mailer and Lona and everybody else. Lona was going to die. The two of them escaped the confusion back at the ranch. Frank Mailer would be revealed to be the vicious bank robber that he was, but in their escape there would be a tragic accident … a riding accident. His daughter would pass away and no one would ask any questions about his continuing to live on the ranch. There might eventually be some documents to be filed, but the right kind of lawyer could handle that.