The Kilkenny Series Bundle

by Louis L'Amour

  Overhead, an optimistic buzzard circled in widening sweeps. Far away over the valley that lay in the distance was Blue Hill. Almost due west was Salt Creek. A thin trail of smoke lifted near the town. Below, the terrain was broken into canyons and arroyos, and the color shaded from the deep green of the juniper to the gray-green of sage, and from the pale pinks and yellows of the faded sand to the deep burned reds and magentas of the rock.

  Some thirty yards away a tree had died and the dry white bones of its skeleton lay scattered in a heap. Nearby a pack rat had built a mound of branches in a clump of manzanita. Kilkenny pulled his hat brim down to shade his eyes and moved out cautiously, walking on his cat feet across the mountainside.

  Ahead of him a startled jackrabbit suddenly sprang from the ground and charged full tilt right at him. Kilkenny whirled aside and felt the blast of a bullet by his face. He started forward, running swiftly, and saw Frank Mailer spring up, gun in hand. Mailer fired and missed, and Kilkenny’s shot blasted … too quick, but it cut through Mailer’s shirt and then the man dove for him.

  Kilkenny fired again, but whether he scored or not he had no idea, for he sprang forward and smashed a driving blow to Mailer’s face. The punch was a wicked one and it caught the big man lunging in, caught the corner of his mouth and tore the flesh, so that Mailer screamed. Then he wheeled and grabbed Kilkenny’s throat, wrenching him backward. Lance Kilkenny kicked his feet high and went over with Mailer, the sudden yielding carrying the big man off balance. Both went down and Mailer came up, clawing for his pistol, and Kilkenny drew his left-hand gun and fired. Mailer went to his knees, then grabbed wildly and caught Kilkenny’s ankle. As Lance came down he lunged to his feet and dove for shelter in a nest of boulders. Flat on the ground, Kilkenny crawled to retrieve his gun, then loaded the empty chambers. Then he saw blood on the ground, two bright crimson stains, fresh blood!

  A shot kicked dirt in his teeth and he spat it out and shot back, then lunged to his feet, his own position being too exposed, and sprang for the rocks and shelter.

  He lit right into Mailer and the big man came up with a grunt and chopped for Kilkenny’s skull with a pistol barrel. Bright lights exploded in his head and he felt his knees melting under him and slashed out with his own pistol, laying it across Mailer’s face. He hit ground, heard an explosion, and Mailer fell on him.

  Panting, bloody, and drunk with fury and pain, Frank Mailer leaped to his feet and stood swaying, a thin trickle of blood coming from a blue hole under his collarbone. He lunged at Kilkenny.

  Exhausted, beaten, and punch-drunk himself, Kilkenny swung wildly and his fist connected with a sound like a rifle shot striking mud, and Mailer stopped, teetered, and fell.

  Kilkenny backed up, his chest heaving, his lungs screaming for air, his skull humming with the blow he had recently taken. He caught up a gun and turned just as Mailer rolled on his back, a gun also in his hand. Both guns bellowed at once, and Kilkenny was knocked back on his heels, but as he staggered he pulled his gun down and fired again.

  Where Mailer’s ear had been there was blood, and the big man, seemingly indestructible, was getting up. With a wild, desperate kind of fury, Kilkenny flung himself on the rising man, and he heard guns bellowing, whether his own or Mailer’s or both, he did not know, and then Mailer rolled free and fell away from the boulders. Slowly, ponderously, at each roll seemingly about to stop, the big man’s body rolled over and over down the slope.

  Fascinated, Kilkenny stared after him. Suddenly the man caught himself, and then, as if by magic, he got his hands under him. Something inside of Kilkenny screamed, No! No! and then he saw Mailer come to his feet, still gripping a gun.

  Mailer swayed drunkenly and tried to fire, but the gun was empty. His huge body, powerful even when shot and battered, swayed but remained erect. Then, fumbling at his belt for cartridges, he began, like a drunken man trying to thread a needle, to load his gun. Kilkenny stared at him in astonishment, his own mind wandering in a sort of a sunlit, delirious world. Mailer faced him and the gun lifted, and Kilkenny felt the butt of his own gun jump and Mailer’s hips jerked back grotesquely and he went up on his tiptoes. Then his gun spat into the gravel at his feet and he fell facedown on the slope.

  When Kilkenny opened his eyes again, it was dark and piercing cold. A long wind moaned over the mountaintop and he was chilled to the bone. He was very weak and his head hummed. How badly he was wounded he had no idea, but he knew he could stand little of this cold.

  Near the pack rat’s nest he found some leaves that crackled under his touch. And shivering with such violence that his teeth rattled and his fingers could scarcely find the matches, he struck and pushed the match into the leaves. The flames caught and in a moment the nest was crackling and blazing.

  He knew he had been hit once, and perhaps twice. He had a feeling he was badly wounded, and how long he could survive on this mountaintop he did not know. He did know that it was in view of Salt Creek, if anyone happened to be outside. The flames caught the gray, dead wood and blazed high and he lay there, watching the inverted cone of flame climbing up toward the stars, filled with a blank cold and emptiness.

  Finally, as the fire died and its little warmth dissipated, he turned and crawled back among the boulders and lay there, panting hoarsely and shivering again with cold.

  When he got his eyes open again, the sky was faintly gray. He could distinguish a few things around him and there were here and there a few scattered sticks. He got them together with a handful of grass and put them on the coals of last night’s fire, then cupped his hands above the small flame. He felt a raw, gnawing pain in his side and his face was stiff and his hands were clumsy. Overhead, a few stars paled and vanished like moths flying into smoke, and he added another small stick and felt for his gun. It was gone. He moved, scraping the fire along until he was beneath the dead tree. Slowly he built up the fire around its dried-out trunk, and as it caught he rolled backward, away from the flames. He lay there as the white branches went up in a rush of smoke and flame, and as he passed out he prayed for help.

  His eyes flickered open again at a sun-brightened world and he saw a huge turkey buzzard hunched in a tree not fifty yards away. He yelled and waved an arm, but the buzzard did not move. It sat there, waiting, and then its head came up, and it launched itself on lazy wings and floated off over the desert.

  Kilkenny lay still, staring up into the brassy vault of the sky, his mind floating in a half-world between delirium and death. Out of it floated a voice, saying, “Here’s a hat!”

  And then another voice. “They can’t be up there! It ain’t reasonable!”

  There was a long silence, and suddenly his eyes flashed open. That was no delirium! Somebody was searching! Hunting for him! He tried to call out, but his voice would muster no strength, and then he gathered himself, and picking up a small stick from near the fire, he threw it.

  “He’s got to be here. You saw all that smoke an’ that’s Buck down there, an’ where you find that horse he ain’t far away!”

  “Do you see him?” The voice was unfamiliar, sarcastic. “I don’t.”

  Then the other. “I’m goin’ on top!”

  “You’re crazy!”

  A long time later a loud whoop and then running feet. “Here’s Mailer! Hey, would you look at that? Man, what happened up here, anyway?”

  He tried to call out again, and this time they came hurrying. Cain Brockman, Rusty Gates, Gordon Flynn, his head bandaged and his face thin, and with them several men from town. “You all right, Lance?” Gates pleaded, his face redder still with worry.

  “What do you think?” Kilkenny muttered.

  And when he opened his eyes again, he was lying in darkness between clean white sheets and he felt vastly relaxed and comfortable. And Nita came in, walking softly, and sat down beside him. “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered. “As long as when I’m well we’re goin’ to California to sit by the sea.”

&nb
sp; She smiled. “There’s a little port town called San Pedro, and I expect the railroad workers and dock men will want a gambling hall as much as anyone.” She kissed him gently. “When I see you’re better, I’ll have Cain start packing the wagons.”

  West of Dodge

  Lance Kilkenny looked across the counter at the man with the narrow face and the scar on his jaw. “Watch yourself,” Hillman said. “This is Tom Stroud’s town. He’s marshal here, and he’s poison for gunfighters.”

  “I’ll be all right.” Kilkenny paid for his shells and walked to the door, a tall, spare man looking much less than his two hundred pounds. His was a narrow, Hamlet-like face with high cheekbones and green eyes.

  His walk was that of a woodsman rather than a rider, but Hillman had known at once that he wore the two Colts for use rather than for show.

  It disturbed Kilkenny to find himself known here, as a gunfighter if not by name. Here he had planned to rest, to hunt a job, to stay out of trouble.

  Of Marshal Tom Stroud he knew nothing beyond the bare fact that some two months before, Stroud had killed Jim Denton in a Main Street gun battle.

  Yet Kilkenny needed no introduction to reputation-hunting marshals. There had been Old John Selman and others who fattened their records on killing gunfighters—and were rarely particular about an even break.

  At the hitch rail Kilkenny studied his gaunt, long-legged buckskin. The horse needed the rest, and badly. Torn between dislike for trouble and consideration for his horse, the needs of the horse won.

  He headed for the livery. Glancing back at the store, he saw a slope-shouldered man with dark hair and eyes step awkwardly into the doorway to watch him ride away. Something about the way the man stood, one hand braced against the wall, made Kilkenny think that he was a cripple.

  Hillman had not guessed his name. That was fortunate. A man of his sort might guess if given time … of his sort … now where had that thought come from? Rubbing down the buckskin, Kilkenny gave consideration to the idea. What was Hillman’s sort?

  Something about the storekeeper had marked him in Kilkenny’s mind, and it left him uneasy that he could not make a proper estimate of his instinct about the man, yet something disturbed him, left him wary and uncertain.

  Hillman was a man in his thirties, as tall as Kilkenny, and only a little bulkier, but probably no heavier. He had a careful, measuring eye.

  From the door of the livery stable Kilkenny studied the street, still thinking of Hillman and Stroud. Usually, a storekeeper would want to avoid trouble in a town. Maybe he believed a warning would cause Kilkenny to move on. Building a smoke, he considered that.

  Like many western towns, this one was divided into two sections. One was a rough collection of saloons, shanties, and bawdy houses along the railroad and backed by a maze of corrals and feed sheds where cattlemen put up their herds while waiting for shipment east. This was the old town, the town that had been built by the hard-drinking track crews and cattle buyers in the wild days before the town had ever thought to build a church or a schoolhouse.

  Running at right angles to the tracks was the newer Main Street. Away from the smell and the flies of the holding pens, it had been built by the merchants who came as the town grew. There were carefully built buildings made of whitewashed planks or brick, with boardwalks connecting one to the next so that the shopper or businessman only occasionally had to brave the rutted mud of the street. There was only one saloon in this part of town, and it was a pretentious affair situated on the ground floor of the new two-story hotel. Behind the stores of the street were grids of one-to five-acre lots where the townspeople lived. Most of the houses had vegetable gardens growing corn and tomatoes, and each had a carriage house, stable, or barn. At the bottom of Main Street was the livery, where Kilkenny now stood, and opposite him, the marshal’s office … a bridge, or a barrier, separating one world from the other.

  Kilkenny crushed out his cigarette. He wore black chaps and a black, flat-crowned, flat-brimmed hat. Under his black Spanish-style jacket he wore a gray flannel shirt. They were colors that lost themselves in any shadow.

  He was weary now, every muscle heavy with the fatigue of long hours of riding. His throat was dry, his stomach empty. His mind was sluggish because of the weariness of his body, and he felt short-tempered and irritable because of it.

  Normally, he was a quiet, tolerant man with a dry humor and a liking for people, but in his present mood he was wary of himself, knowing the sudden angers that could spring up within him at such times.

  Darkness gathered in the hollows of the hills and crept down into the silent alleys, crouching there to wait its hour for creeping into the empty streets. Kilkenny rolled another smoke, trying to relax. He was hungry, but he wanted to calm himself before walking into the company of strangers.

  A stray dog trotted up the street … a door slammed. The town was settling down after supper, and he had not yet eaten. He dropped his cigarette, pushing it into the dust.

  There was a grate of boot soles on gravel. A low sentence reached his ears from the bench outside the door. “Reckon Stroud knows?”

  “Who can tell what he knows? But he was hired to keep the peace, an’ he’s done it.”

  “In his own way.”

  “Maybe there ain’t no other.”

  “There was once. Stroud shut down the gambling and thievin’, but he stopped the Vigilance Committee, too. They’d have strung the worst of them and burnt the old town to the ground. There’s some say we’d be better off.”

  As he crossed the street Kilkenny did not turn to look at the men who had spoken behind him. He could feel the rising tensions. Something here was still poised for trouble. Alive to such things, currents that could mean death if unwatched, he was uneasy at remaining, yet he disliked the idea of going on. Towns were scarce in this country.

  It was no common frontier-style boardinghouse he entered, but a large, well-appointed dining room, a place suited to a larger city, a place that would have a reputation in any city.

  There was linen on the tables and there was silver and glass, not the usual rough wood and crockery. A young woman came toward him with a menu in her hand. She had a quiet face and dark, lovely eyes.

  He noticed the way her eyes had seemed to gather in his dusty clothes and rest momentarily on the low-hung guns. She led him to a corner table and placed the menu before a place where he could sit with his back in the corner, facing the room.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled a little. “Does it show that much?”

  Her own eyes were frank, not unfriendly. “I’m afraid it does.”

  “This,” he indicated the room, “is a surprise.”

  “It is a way of making a living.”

  “A gracious way.” She looked at him more directly as he spoke. “It is a way one misses.”

  A small frown gathered between her eyes. “I wonder—why is it that most gunfighters are gentlemen?”

  “Some were born to it,” he said, “and some grow into it. Men are rude only when they are insecure.”

  He was eating his dessert when the door opened and a man came in. It was, Kilkenny guessed at once, Tom Stroud.

  He was a square-faced man with the wide shoulders and deep chest of mountain ancestry. He was plainly dressed and walked without swagger, yet there was something solid and indomitable about him. His eyes were blue, a darker blue than that usually seen, and his mustache was shading from brown to gray.

  Stroud seated himself, glanced at the menu, and then his eyes lifted and met those of Kilkenny. Instant recognition was there … not of him as a name, but as a gunfighter. There was also something else, a narrow, measuring gaze.

  The slope-shouldered, limping man that he had seen at Hillman’s earlier entered the room and crossed to Stroud’s table. Stroud’s face indicated no welcome, but the man sat down and leaned confidentially across the table. The man talked, low-voiced. Once, Stroud’s eyes flickered to Kilkenny. Deliberately, Kilkenny prolonged h
is coffee.

  The woman, Laurie Archer, walked over to him. “Will you be with us long?”

  “A day … perhaps two.”

  “You would be wise to move on—tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you would take a job outside of town? I have cattle, and I need a foreman.”

  “How many hands?”

  “Two … now.”

  In reply to his unspoken question she added quietly, “I had a foreman—Jim Denton.”

  Neither spoke for several minutes and then, knowing he needed the job, he said, “I would only hire to handle cows. Denton was none of my affair.”

  “I want it no other way.”

  “My name’s Lance. By the way, what about him?” He indicated Stroud. “What will he think about you hiring me?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  At the ranch two men awaited him, a capable, tough-looking man of past fifty named Pike Taylor, and a gawky youngster of seventeen, Corey Hatch. There was a small cabin where Laurie Archer stayed when on the ranch, a bunkhouse, a stable, and corrals. There was a good bit of stacked hay, and several thousand acres of unrestricted grazing, much of it bottom land.

  For a solid week, Kilkenny worked hard. He rode the fence, repaired broken stretches, put in new posts. He fenced off some loco weed, cleaned several water holes, dug out a fresh one where the green grass indicated water near the surface. He found some fifty head of mavericks and branded them, moving all the cattle to lower ground for the best grass. And he thought about Laurie Archer.

  Corey Hatch liked to talk. “Some folks don’t take much to Stroud,” he said. “Hillman an’ them, they hired him to clean up the town, but some figure he done too good a job. The gamblers an’ them, they’d like to get a shot at him.”