Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

by Johnstone, William W.

  The old man took in at a glance what had happened.

  His son was groaning on the floor, his face covered in blood, and Trace’s face was swollen, his shirt torn, and his knuckles scraped.

  “Get back to work, Trace,” he said.

  Alec Lundy heard his father’s voice and stumbled to his feet.

  He cast a glaring, hate-filled eye on Trace then lurched to the door.

  “Alec, come back,” Arthur said. “We must talk, son.”

  “We’ve nothing to talk about, old man,” Alec said.

  He threw open the door and vanished into the street.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “And then what happened?” Kate Kerrigan said, dabbing something that stung on Trace’s swollen eye.

  Shannon sat on her mother’s lap and Ivy and Niall stared at Trace with fascinated, hero-worshipping eyes as he told his story.

  Quinn had not yet returned home from his job at a private library.

  “Well, after the fight I worked for a while, but Mr. Lundy didn’t speak to me. He seemed very upset, but with me or Alec or both of us I couldn’t say. Finally I walked back to the old man’s workbench and said to him, ‘Mr. Lundy, I see you’re still working on the Colt revolver.’ Now I expected to be rebuffed, but to my surprise he smiled at me.”

  “So he wasn’t mad at you, Trace,” Ivy said.

  “No, I guess not. Mr. Lundy had been piecing together good parts from several scrapped Colts for weeks now, fitting and grinding and polishing to create a customized revolver he said would be unlike any other in the world, a gun as fine as any could be.”

  “And was it?” Kate said.

  “I’m coming to that, Ma.”

  Trace gingerly fingered the swelling on his eye and winced.

  “Poor Trace,” Ivy said.

  “Now I supposed that Mr. Lundy was gunsmithing the Colt to give himself a reward for his lifetime of hard work, and a compensation for some of the difficulties he had to endure these days. I did not blame him at all. The old man, alone in the world except for a drunkard son who showed no love for him, deserved something good.”

  “And so he did, I suppose,” Kate said. “But just wait until I see that no-good Alec Lundy. He’ll rue the day he was born, I swear you that.”

  “No, Ma,” Trace said. “I gave him a terrible beating and we’ll let it go at that.”

  “But he harmed one of mine,” Kate said.

  “And paid for it,” Trace said.

  “Well, if you say so, Trace,” Kate said. “But I’d still like to take a stick to him.”

  “And what about the gun, Trace?” Niall said, his young face eager.

  “Well, Mr. Lundy said the revolver was finished and he’d just put the final touches to the polishing. Says he, ‘All I did today was to make this Colt look the best it can when I present it to you.’”

  “Now I was struck silent—surely I’d misheard. But Mr. Lundy saw my confusion and said, ‘Yes, Trace. I’ve not smithed this revolver for myself, but for you.’”

  “‘Sir . . . but . . . why?’ I said. ‘I have done nothing to deserve such a fine thing!’”

  “Indeed you have, Trace,” Kate said. “Up at five every morning, rain or shine, to go work in his slave shop, and him not paying you half the time. Don’t sell yourself short, son.”

  Trace smiled at that and said, “‘You’ve been the brightest light in a life growing steadily darker,’ Mr. Lundy said. ‘You’ve worked faithfully and worked hard, and in seven months you have learned more of the gunsmith’s art than many manage in seven years.’”

  “No more praise than you deserve, Trace,” Kate said. “The old skinflint.”

  “Well, Ma, he did say that I’d patiently endured even when he was unable to pay me. ‘Even now I cannot pay you,’ he said. ‘Not your back wages nor your current wages. Money has constantly gone missing from the cashbox, and I can’t make it up again.’”

  “‘Because that drunken son of yours has taken it all,’ you should have told him,” Kate said.

  “Ma, I was honest with Mr. Lundy and I did tell him that the Colt revolver was surely worth more than I was owed. But he said if he could double its value, triple it, he’d gladly give it to me and consider himself on the better end of the bargain.

  “‘Then I don’t have the words, sir,’ I said. And says he, ‘Has that fine mother of yours not taught you the value of a simple, Thank you? That’s all that is needed.’”

  “Well, let’s see it, Trace,” Niall said.

  Trace reached into the oily, burlap sack at his feet and produced the revolver.

  “Is it not a beauty?” he said.

  The modified .36-caliber revolver possessed a balance unlike any other Trace had held. He lifted the empty weapon and sighted down its gleaming barrel, noting how easy it was to maintain a steady hand and light-but-firm squeeze on the polished wooden grip.

  He was unsure of all that the gunsmith had done to perfect the revolver’s balance, but the work would have impressed Sam’l Colt himself.

  Its appearance was substantially that of a Colt 1861 Navy, the type of revolver upon whose frame Lundy’s modifications had skillfully been added.

  “Mr. Lundy told me the gun will aim and shoot like the glory of God,” Trace said.

  “Trace, please don’t take the name of our Creator in vain,” Kate said.

  Her son grinned.

  “Ma, you’re not familiar with guns. If you were, you’d know what Mr. Lundy meant.”

  Trace held the Colt out to Kate.

  “Do you want to hold it? Don’t worry, it’s not loaded, but be careful not to drop it on your toe.”

  “I can see from here that it’s a finely crafted weapon,” Kate said.

  “But you must test the action, Ma. Feel how silky smooth it is.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Trace,” Kate said.

  She remembered another Colt in another place and time.

  Shannon . . . Ben Hollister . . . the flash and bang of a gun in the dark . . . the faces of dying men . . . the urge to kill and kill again . . .

  “It’s a fine revolver, Trace,” Kate said, blinking away visions. “And please tell Mr. Lundy that I said so.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “My mother presents her compliments and says the revolver you built for me is a fine gun,” Trace said. “She’s not much used to firearms but seemed to appreciate the workmanship.”

  “I hope it will give you much good use, and protection, and enjoyment,” Lundy said.

  “Thank you, sir. Again.”

  “Enough, I grow weary of thanks. But there is one thing. Don’t speak of this to Alec. I know that he anticipated being the owner of the Colt. He will not be happy to know you have it.”

  “I will say nothing about it to him, Mr. Lundy. I seek no more trouble with your son.”

  “There’s no point in me putting a false face on it. Alec does not like you. He sees in you all the things he is not. You’re young, strong, handsome as the devil himself, and above all talented. I have tried to teach Alec my craft, and he has faltered and fumbled and failed.”

  “Perhaps with time . . .” Trace said.

  “There is no more time. Though he is my own son, my flesh and blood, his manner and rudeness and lack of character offends me. I celebrate in my heart every time he leaves this place and I can do my work without having to endure him.”

  “I’m sorry things are like that with you,” Trace said. “Him being your son and all. Will it cause you to be angry with me if I confess to you that I don’t like to be around Alec, either?”

  The old man’s smile was as cold as frost on a tree limb.

  “It would surprise me to hear anything else,” Lundy said. “He treats you with much contempt and meanness. I see him and his ways more clearly than he realizes.”

  It was pure impulse, not thought out, but Trace decided to tell his employer what he knew about Alec’s theft from the shop and how he’d confronted him. As soon
as the words were out he wondered if he’d done the right thing to speak.

  Lundy looked at him with no change of expression.

  “You’re telling me nothing I didn’t know, Trace. I saw Alec in the act of theft not two weeks back with my own eyes. So drunk was he that he didn’t realize I had seen him. Does he think me such a dolt, that he can help himself to the meager profits of this enterprise and think I will never realize it?”

  The old man stared out the dusty window into the busy street, the expression on his wrinkled face both sad and angry.

  “Damn! There are times I hate him, as I know he hates me!”

  He turned to Trace again.

  “Is it a sin, a great sin, for a father to hate his own son?

  “I don’t know, Trace said. “Tonight I will ask my mother. Sometimes she has answers for such questions.”

  Until that moment, Trace had not realized the depth of antipathy between father and son and how deep and black went their hatreds.

  Lundy came to his feet and paced stiffly about, looking distraught.

  “Trace, tell, me why it must be this way. A man’s only son, born of his loins, yet nothing comes of it but sorrow and loathing. I wanted a son who would make a father proud, a boy who would grow strong and straight and be a man of honor. And look what I sired, Trace. A thief, a liar, a drunkard, a whoremonger, and a fool.”

  “Mr. Lundy, I’m just a young sprout and I have little knowledge of the world, but I beseech you not to utter words you’ll later wish you hadn’t. My father always said to remember that words unleashed from the lips can never be reclaimed again.”

  It felt odd to Trace, a callow youth giving counsel to a man decades his senior.

  Lundy muttered a few profane words beneath his breath.

  He turned to a seldom-used desk in the corner of the room and from a drawer produced a brass flask embossed with scenes of some desperate naval battle.

  The old man pulled the stopper and hefted the flask to his lips.

  “Half gone, by God. He’s stolen even my whiskey, and good bonded bourbon it was.”

  Lundy lifted the flask and drained it dry.

  Trace was deeply disturbed.

  He’d seldom seen Arthur Lundy drink, and never had he seen him display such raw emotion.

  It made him realize just how fortunate he was to come from a family that, despite a world of troubles, managed to make its way through life without any fighting beyond the usual day-to-day disputes and quarrels that came along with simply being kin.

  “Damn him to hell!” Lundy bellowed.

  He threw the empty flask so hard against the brick wall it clattered, dented, onto the floor among the dust, grit, waste lead and metal shavings common to all gunsmith shops.

  Trace urged Lundy toward his chair again and desperately tried to calm him down.

  But the old man wheeled and faced him with a wild and glaring eye. Lundy lifted a trembling forefinger and aimed it at Trace.

  “Do you know what I wanted, Trace? Do you know what I hoped for from the first moment I learned I had a son? Answer me, damn you, do you know?”

  Alarmed, Trace shook his head but said nothing.

  “I wanted you! From the very moment Alec came into the world I wanted Trace Kerrigan. But what did I get? Tell me what I got? It’s obvious to the world, so why not to you? Tell me. Tell me.”

  Lundy’s eyes were frantic, shot through with crooked scarlet veins.

  “Mr. Lundy . . .” Trace began, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “I’ll tell you what I got . . . I got trash. Yes, Trace, trash I named Alec and learned to despise more with each passing year, as he has come to despise me.”

  Lundy finally sat in the chair, spent.

  “When Alec was grown he showed his true colors. Oh, but they were dark colors, dark as the lowest pit of hell. No wonder I welcomed you so happily into this place! You were what I had wanted all along, not the wastrel hellhound I was given.”

  Lundy looked at Trace with dead eyes.

  “Alec will kill me one day,” the old man said. “That’s how it will end. It’s the only way it can end.”

  Trace had long known the relationship between Lundy the father and Lundy the son was not a good one, but he’d never fully realized until now how deep and dangerous their mutual hatred had become.

  He took a knee beside the old man.

  “Perhaps if you and Alec lived apart for a while and let old wounds heal? Perhaps—”

  “Trace, some wounds can never heal and that’s the truth of it,” Lundy said.

  He motioned to his desk, dusty and little used.

  “In there, second drawer, there’s another bottle, unless Alec has emptied it as well. Fetch it here to me.”

  The bottle was half-full of whiskey. Trace did as he was told and handed it to his pathetic employer. He wished Alec had emptied or taken this bottle, too, so old Lundy couldn’t hurt himself with its contents.

  The gunsmith put the bottle to his lips and slugged down the raw whiskey, bottled in a slum saloon, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You want some, boy?”

  “No, sir. Thank you.”

  “Huh! You know, I forget how young you are sometimes. You have the look of an older young man about you. You could pass for twenty, no lie told.”

  “I’ve been told that often, sir.”

  “Stay away from strong drink and you’ll always look years younger,” Lundy said. “That’s a fact.”

  The old man drank again. A little color tinged the cheekbones of his ashen face.

  “I was speaking to a cattle broker the other day, a Texan by the name of Harry Cribbs. Ever hear tell of him?”

  Trace Kerrigan shook his head.

  “Well, he was speaking about Alec but I think his words more apply to you. After my discussion with Cribbs, you know what a young and able fellow like you should do, or at least give it some consideration?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Hear me, then. I would turn my eyes west, and go out to the vast plains and learn the cattle trade. Mark my words, it’s cattle that will build many an empire out beyond America’s great river.”

  “My mother has often said that such would be a fine life for the Kerrigan family,” Trace said.

  “A wise woman is Kate Kerrigan,” Lundy said. “Cribbs, a man I don’t like, but I listened to him because what he says makes sense. He said the North needs beef to keep the populations of their vast cities fed. Texas can supply that beef, and many a cattle rancher will make millions out of filling Yankee bellies.”

  Trace let his interest show and Lundy was happy to continue.

  “Cribbs says that countless numbers of longhorn Texas cattle were left to roam as free as wild beasts during the war years, and have bred themselves into vast herds that cover the plains as far as a man can see. Any man with courage and determination can build and brand his own herd. With the railroads expanding day by day and cattle to be had for the taking, think what an able young fellow like you could do for himself, Trace.”

  “It is a thought, Mr. Lundy,” Trace said.

  “Thinking about a thing never made it so,” the old man said. “Go to Texas and you can become a cattleman of means and influence, a man who means something, who is somebody . . . not just a waste like some old gunsmith in a back-alley shop, with a worthless son as his only legacy.”

  Trace might have spoken up and countered the old man’s self-deprecating words, but he was taken by what Lundy had just said about the possibilities looming in Texas cattle.

  He’d heard others say similar things, and the thought of heading into that great and opening land and forging a life there resonated in his very soul.

  Yes. That could be the future for Trace Kerrigan.

  Lundy said, “Now why don’t you take that fine revolver out back to the range and fire it a little? Get used to how it feels to shoot, because that’s the belt gun you’ll take to Texas.”

&nb
sp; “You don’t mind me doing that even though I’m here to work?”

  “Holy martyrs, didn’t you just hear me suggesting it? A gun is little good to a man who doesn’t know how to use it well. Load it light to spare what powder you can, but spend some time with it. Learn to shoot it as a fighting revolver should be shot.”

  “I will, then, straightaway.”

  After gathering paper cartridges, Trace headed out back to the enclosed rear lot, where a row of stout painted-circle targets was in place, up against a fence built from squared lumber so thick no ball could penetrate and do harm to others.

  The shooting range was there primarily for the benefit of customers who wanted to test-fire their prospective purchases. There were no customers at the moment, though, so Trace had an excellent opportunity to test out the customized Colt, and set about it at once.

  “Well, lad, what think you of it?” Lundy said.

  Trace was so intent on aiming his new gun at the target that he had not heard Lundy exit into the rear lot and come up behind him.

  Trace jumped at the sound of Lundy’s voice, and fired a wild shot that thudded into the heavy rearward fence two feet to the right of the target.

  “Well! We’ll put that one down to me startling you,” Lundy said. “I see from the other prior bullet holes that you’d done better before I came out here.”

  “The Colt is a dream to shoot,” Trace said. “That balance is perfect, it feels good in the hand, and it shoots to the point of aim.

  “Except for that last one, I’d say.”

  “Make fun if you want,” Trace said, “but watch this first.” He aimed again, carefully, and fired a shot dead center into the bull’s-eye.

  “Your point is made,” Lundy said. “And it gladdens my heart to see you taking so well to my masterpiece.”

  “It’s the best gift ever given to me,” Trace said.

  “And damn you, it should be mine, and I’m taking it back.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The voice came from behind Arthur Lundy, from the rear shop doorway. Trace and the old man both knew at once whom it belonged to.

  “That ain’t his gun,” Alec said.