The Trail Ends at Hell

by John Benteen

  And sure, Kilpatrick thought. I could get my revenge against him then. I could go after him with guns like I promised. But what good would that do me when I got back to Texas with the herd sold at a loss?

  No, he thought savagely, reining around, sending the roan toward the wagon, there had to be a better way. He had fallen into the trap Jordan had set for the first herd to get to Gunsight. Somehow he had to get out of it — and with a fair price for his cattle.

  Panhandle looked up as Kilpatrick halted the roan by the fire. “Sell the herd?” he began. Then he broke off as he read his boss’s face.

  “No,” Kilpatrick said thinly. “Not yet. But I will. Somehow.” He dismounted, leaving the roan ground hitched. He got his gear from the hoodlum wagon, changed from range clothes to the clean ones he’d worn in town last night. Panhandle watched him curiously, as Boyd strapped his gun back on. “What’s up?”

  Boyd walked to the roan, gathered its reins. “You see that a double watch is kept on the herd. I’m going back in to Gunsight.”

  Chapter Six

  He had already come to hate the sight of the place. He rode tall in the saddle, head swiveling, eyes sweeping the sidewalks as the roan single-footed down the center of the main street, the reins in Boyd’s left hand, his right near the butt of his Colt. There was in him a savage desire to do what he had threatened — come in here at the head of his men, take this place apart and be done with it, then, with Jordan dead, drive on unmolested to Dodge. It would have given him great pleasure to cut loose his Texas wolves on everything south of the tracks. But satisfying as that might be, it was unprofitable — and he had come up the trail to make a profit for its owners and for himself.

  So he contented himself with keeping a close watch. Now that the gauntlet was down between himself and Jordan, anything could happen.

  Jordan had brought his men directly back to town. Boyd recognized some of them, staring at him from the sidewalks. One piled hurriedly inside The Waterhole, apparently to give Jordan word of Boyd’s arrival.

  Boyd smiled coldly. They would be watching him like so many hawks. Well, they had better not push him. He was in no mood to be pushed.

  He passed The Waterhole. Then, from behind him, a voice rang out.

  “Kilpatrick. You lost? If you want to see me, I’m always in there.” He pointed to the saloon.

  “I didn’t want to see you,” Boyd said. “If I’d had anything more to say to you, I’d have said it at the herd.”

  “Then what are you in Gunsight for?”

  “Maybe to find another buyer and beat your price.”

  Jordan stared at him a moment. Then he grinned. “Good hunting,” he said sardonically, turned and went back into the saloon.

  The roan crossed the tracks. Now Boyd relaxed a little. Ahead he saw a frame building that had caught his eye briefly the day before. The sign over its door said: James Watley, M. D. Doctor. Animals As Well. Hospital. Boyd swung the roan toward its entrance, climbed down, hitched the horse. A newspaper office would have been first choice, but there was none here. Lacking that, a doctor would know everybody in the town and everything about its affairs.

  He entered a neat room in which the reek of iodoform and whiskey were about equally mixed. Shelves along the walls held medicine and books. A door at the rear seemed to open into a larger room — the hospital, likely. Boyd’s lip curled. There was a good chance that Watley would be doing a land-office business before long.

  At the closing of the front door, a hulking man of middle age with hands like a blacksmith’s emerged from that back room. He wore a stained white shirt, the sleeves cuffed back; rumpled suit pants. Seeing Boyd, he ran one of those big hands across thinning brown hair and growled, his voice deep, “Howdy. You’re the Texas man, right? I’m Watley.” There was curiosity in his bulging brown eyes. “What can I do for you?”

  “Got time for a little consultation?”

  “The people that die here usually do it sudden. Not too many patients.” Watley sat down behind his desk, motioned Boyd to a chair. “What kind of ailment you got?”

  Boyd grinned wryly. “I guess you’d call it Jordan-itis.”

  At the mention of the name, the doctor’s face registered distaste. “Best cure for that would be a bullet, properly placed four centimeters to the left of the sternum.”

  “I take it you’re not on Jordan’s team.”

  Watley was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I’m in this business because I happen to place a little value on human life. While I’m trying to save it, Jordan’s busy destroying it, him and his gunmen. What’s your problem?”

  “A matter of selling my cattle.” Boyd told him what had happened so far. “I’m hoping there’s some way,” he ended, “to find another buyer and get those cattle shipped from here without having to drive ’em east and risk their being stampeded.”

  Watley looked thoughtful. “I figured you’d know everybody,” Boyd went on. “The doctor usually does. I thought you might be able to offer a suggestion or two. Or ... tell me that it’s hopeless.”

  “Hmmm.” Watley opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle and two glasses. “This calls for a drink while I consider.” He poured two massive ones, shoved one to Boyd, took a long swallow out of his own, leaning back in his chair, brow furrowed. Boyd waited tensely through the silence. Watley drank again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. At last he shook his head. “The only possible answer would be Isaac Gault.” Boyd’s heart sank. “Gault’s a drunk.”

  Watley nodded. “Right. A prime, first-class alcoholic. But until he fell off the wagon, he was quite a man. He started Gunsight almost single-handedly. He had good connections with the railroad, with the packing companies, with the big feeders, everybody who bought beef. They all trusted him, gave him backing when he came up with his idea for a new kind of trail town. Of course, that was all shot to hell when Tully Jordan made a rum pot out of him again. But if he ever sobered up, it wouldn’t take him long to build his fences back, so to speak, and get himself into position where he could make you a decent offer for your herd. Of course, he ain’t going to sober up. Not as long as Tully can keep getting to him, pouring whiskey in him.”

  Boyd sat up straight. “Wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me that if we could get Gault off the bottle, he could buy my herd? I understand he’s stony broke.”

  “Sure he is. He sank all his money in Gunsight and then went back on the booze before he could bring off the deals he had pending that would have made it back for him. Tully Jordan moved in, took over those. But I know enough from what Stewart’s told me — ”

  “You’ve talked with Stewart about this?”

  “Hell, yes. She’s worked with her father for a long time; she’s almost as good a businesswoman as he is a businessman — or was. The only trouble is, she doesn’t have the connections her daddy does. He’s a personal friend of the President of the railroad, knows all the bankers back in Kansas City and St. Louis and Chicago. She can handle the details, but he’s the one who has to arrange the financing, use his connections; and her whole problem has been trying to dry him out enough to get him back in business.”

  He finished his drink. “We’ve tried it two or three times, but every time we seem to make any progress, Tully Jordan has got to him and put him right back where he started from. Once Tully and Trask came in here and hauled him right out of a hospital bed. I was out on a call, and when I come back, he was gone. Stewart and I found him asleep in an alley behind The Waterhole, dead drunk. Then ... well, I guess we both sort of gave up. Neither of us could fight Jordan and Ike’s booze-craving combined.”

  He shoved back his chair. “What you need to do is see Stewart. If she and I and you get Ike Gault in here — ” He gestured to the hospital “ — and keep him in here for a week, he might get his senses back, figure out a way to buy your herd at a decent price, and get back on his own feet at the same time. But, of course, Jordan wouldn’t stand for that ...”

  Thoughtfu
lly, Boyd arose, hitching instinctively at his gun. “You know,” he said, “it just might not make any difference what Jordan would stand for.”

  “Look,” Watley said, getting to his feet. “Ike Gault and I’ve been friends for a long, long time. I’d take a certain amount of risk to bring him out of this downhill slide he’s in. Stewart and I couldn’t fight Jordan and all his men alone to do it, but if we had some help, some guns between Ike and Jordan while Ike’s coming out of it ... ”

  “I’ve got guns,” Boyd said tersely.

  “I know you have. That’s why I’m telling you this. Why don’t you go and talk to Stewart?”

  Boyd grinned, and it was like the grin of a wolf stalking prey. “That,” he said, “is exactly what I aim to do.”

  ~*~

  Stewart wrenched herself out of his arms, breathing hard. “Oh, Boyd, I worried about you all night. In a town like this — ”

  He smiled, slowly regaining self-control after the long kiss. “Don’t worry about me. Is your Dad around somewhere?”

  All the pleasure, the happiness, faded from Stewart’s face. “No. He’s probably down at The Waterhole or in some other honky-tonk swilling up free whiskey at Tully Jordan’s expense.”

  “Maybe just as well. I want to talk to you alone, anyhow.”

  In the kitchen, Stewart poured two cups of coffee and they sat at the table. She listened carefully, and before Boyd was through, her eyes shone and her breasts heaved with excitement. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Yes, it would work! While he was sobering up, I could write letters in his name, start lining up the backing, trying to rebuild all those connections he had ... and ... oh, Boyd, if we could just get him sober enough to swing this deal, arrange the financing to buy your cattle at a decent price, it would restore his faith in himself, make a new man out of him ...” Then she hesitated. “But after he dried out, he’d have to go east, talk to those people in person. It would take time, maybe three weeks, maybe a month.”

  “The grass is good here and there’s plenty of it. I could hold the steers here, put that much more beef on ’em. Just so long as I got paid for every pound.”

  “You would. I know cattle myself, I’ve helped Dad enough. I’ve seen your herd; with somebody honest as broker, you ought to get a price that’ll beat anything paid in Kansas up until now! But — Dad. That’s the problem.” Suddenly she looked discouraged. “How are we going to get him into the hospital keep him there? How’re we going to keep Tully Jordan away from him?”

  Boyd stood up. “Leave that to me. You start writing those letters.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But, oh, Boyd — be careful.”

  “Always am,” he said, grinning. Then he kissed her, very hard, and went out. As he came down off the porch, the grin was still fixed on his face. It reflected the curious exultancy he felt. If Jordan wanted battle, he’d get all he could handle. Boyd turned toward his roan, hitched at a rack by the sidewalk a few yards away.

  Then a voice froze him. “Kilpatrick,” it said harshly. “Stop where you are and don’t move. You’re covered by two guns, and if you reach, you’re dead.”

  Boyd Kilpatrick stared at the two men who came out from behind the shelter of the tethered horse. In shabby range clothes, they could have been brothers, each well over six feet, each wide across the shoulders, their faces furred with gingery beard. One chewed a wooden match; a cigarette dangled from the lips of the other. And both held Colts trained squarely at him.

  He fought back the temptation to draw; at this range, it would be suicide. “All right,” he said. “What’s this?”

  The one with the match grinned. “Mr. Jordan said he warned you to keep away from that Gault filly. Told you she was his private property. You ought to listen to what Mr. Jordan says.”

  “So Mr. Jordan sent you to bushwhack me,” Boyd said thinly.

  “Oh, no,” the other said, also grinning. “We don’t shoot you unless you go for your iron. We jest aim to beat the hell out of you, that’s all. Teach you to pay attention when Tully tells you to walk wide around his woman.”

  Then the first one said, “Raise your hands. High.”

  There was nothing to do but obey. They came up and the one with the match fished his gun from leather, threw it into the Gaults’ front yard. Then he holstered his own gun, still grinning behind the ginger beard. He spat out the match. “Now!” he said, and before Boyd could move, hit him in the belly.

  The blow was like a mule kick. It whirled Kilpatrick around, sent him sprawling in the street. Gasping for air, trying to rise, he saw them both coming after him. They would, he knew, stomp him to a pulp if he didn’t make his feet. He got as high as his knees before they were on him. Then booted feet slammed into him from both sides.

  His ribcage and his thigh both flared with agony. He reached out blindly, wrapped his arms around a pair of legs, jerked with all the strength of his hard-muscled body, ignoring the pain. Even as boots slammed into him again, the man he’d grabbed went down hard in the street on his back. Boyd was knocked forward on him by those boots in his back. Stunned, he nevertheless realized there was no time to lose, the next kick would catch him in the head and that would be the end of it. He rolled wildly, the boots missed, and then he was lurching upright, like the man he had thrown, and, as he put his head down and clubbed his fists, they were both coming after him. Grinning with eagerness and confidence, they had both sheathed their guns.

  Boyd didn’t wait. Eyes blurred with pain and rage, he charged them like a maddened bull. At the last second, he launched himself in a flying tackle, slid in under the fists of one and caught him around the waist. Locked, they crashed to the ground, and as they hit, Boyd struck his first blow. It was aimed at the most vulnerable part of the man’s body, and it connected with the force of a hammer. Boyd heard the scream, felt the body jerk beneath him, laughed harshly, and rolled. Changing direction, he was on his feet just as the second reached for him to drag him up and off. His right hand came through the spread arms, slammed into an unguarded chin. The man staggered back; Boyd moved in, still unmindful of the pain in his body, struck for the belly. His fist sank into beer-slackened flesh, drove deep; he felt the rush of foul breath in his face. “God,” the man groaned and sat down, holding his stomach. Boyd was reaching for his holstered gun when the other one, still whimpering with the agony of his injured groin, landed on his back and locked his arms around Boyd’s neck. Boyd didn’t hesitate; in one smooth motion, he fell forward, hauling at the fellow’s arms. The man on his back flew over his shoulder, victim of a practiced flying mare, crashed into his fellow on the ground. The two of them stretched out in a tangle of arms and legs, fighting each other to get up.

  Boyd gave them no chance. When they did, they’d come shooting. He charged in at them and this time he was the one who kicked. His right boot caught one of the men in the face, and the fellow’s nose seemed to dissolve in a red tide. He howled, rolled, as Boyd kicked the other in the ribs. That one rolled free, clawed at his gun. Boyd kicked him under the chin; as his head snapped back, the Colt fell from his hand. Boyd scooped it up, and there was a strange, maniacal sound in his ears, a terrible, insane laughter. It was an instant before be realized that he was the one making it. He grabbed the half-conscious man, whose jaw was almost surely broken, jerked him to his feet, swung him around as a shield between the one with the smashed nose and his own body, and then, coldly, methodically, Boyd gun-whipped him, the Colt barrel rising, falling, rising, falling, slashing skin and flesh.

  “Jesus,” the man groaned, and then he was unconscious. Boyd gave him one last slam, let him drop, turned on the other, who was scrambling to his feet, groping blindly for his gun, which, Boyd saw with exultation, had fallen from its holster, lay five feet away in the street.

  The man with the bloody face spotted it at the same time, threw himself toward it. Boyd was quicker. His boot toe kicked it away, skittered it across the street. Then he struck again with the gun barrel.

  It crunched ha
rd on the man’s face, ruining whatever had been left of nose and cheekbone. The man sighed, fell forward, lay motionless.

  Panting, ribs and thighs aching from their kicks, Boyd stepped back. For one moment of red insanity, he thought about killing both of them where they lay, in cold blood, executing them like vermin. He half raised the gun. Then another voice cut through the mist of rage and pain.

  “Kilpatrick!” it said coldly. “Drop it!”

  Boyd froze, breathing hard.

  “I said drop it.”

  And now he recognized that voice.

  He turned, slowly, the gun pointed downward. Rio Fanning stood there, covering him with both Colts.

  Boyd let out a long breath, made a determined effort to come back to rationality. There was no help for it; Rio had him with a dead drop. Slowly, he let loose of the gun and it fell to the dust. Boyd looked at Rio contemptuously.

  “All right,” he said defiantly. “Go ahead. Finish what they started. Make it three against one instead of two, you got the guts.”

  Rio stared back at him wordlessly for a moment. Then, moving forward, he kicked the fallen gun out of the way, his own weapons still centered on Boyd’s belly, which knotted involuntarily under that threat. Nevertheless, rage still wiped out all fear. “Well? Go ahead,” he snarled. “Add yourself a notch. What was it you said that night at the wagon? That if you could kill Boyd Kilpatrick, you’d be a big man? This is your chance ...”

  For a few tense heartbeats more, Rio’s unwavering ice-blue eyes and the dark bores of the Colts stayed fixed on Boyd. Then, swiftly, Rio holstered the guns.

  “No,” the boy said “No, not like that.” His eyes went to the two bodies sprawled on the ground. “What happened here?”