Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  The Dog was a broncho Indian. Like Geronimo, he was not a chief, merely a warrior who attracted to himself the unsettled youngsters, eager to make themselves big Indians, the malcontents, and the hardheads who refused to know when they were whipped. The Dog was tough, mean, and cunning as a wolf, dangerous as a prairie rattler.

  Nothing was ever simple any more. Hank Laban would have liked to ride with Mellett. Mellett was a soldier, pure but far from simple. He was smart and direct, and when he hit he hit hard, and no nonsense. Paddock was a good enough man when sober, and he was sober now, but Paddock wasn’t simply riding after Indians, he was riding after a reputation. Laban was an old coon from the high-up creeks, and he knew the signs.

  Young Pryor was riding for the same reason, only where Paddock was desperate and at the end of his tether, Pryor was bursting at the seams to fight somebody, anybody. He wanted glory—or what he thought would be glory—and he wanted promotion. He wouldn’t even mind a scar if he got it in a romantic-seeming place. Pryor was impatient with all of them—with Mellett, with Paddock, with Webb. Ride right out and ride the Indians into the ground—that was his idea. What he wanted was a cavalry charge, and he bitterly regretted that the saber was no longer used on the western prairie.

  Hank Laban continued to sip his coffee, and he speculated on his horse. That was a fast-running horse he had. Come to the worst, he might make it out…and if it came to the worst, he was going to try. He did not like to ride with ambition. He wanted to ride with soldiers, with fighting men doing a fighting job, solid, steady men who fought to win, but fought with common sense, not bravado and dash. That sort of thing could get a man killed.

  In a lifetime on the frontier Hank Laban had managed to keep his scalp. He had held onto his hair by fighting when he could, running when he could no longer fight, or lying quiet when outnumbered. He was a disciple of the philosophy that nothing has to be done all at once.

  The fact that they were riding away from where he believed most of the Indians to be made him no happier. He had never gotten used to seeing the ravished and scalped bodies of men, and especially those of women and children. In his own mind he was gospel sure that was what they would find on returning to the post. He was not reconciled to the idea of riding where they were riding; he knew they’d find Indians enough themselves, and they’d find them when they least wanted them.

  The canyon of the Owyhee was rough and rugged. This whole country was rough. Earthquakes and volcanoes in prehistoric times had had their way with the land, and they had upset it here, ruptured it there. It was ambush country, no mile of it safe. Hank Laban had lost nothing on the North Fork, and he wanted to lose nothing there, least of all, his scalp.

  The risks he had accepted when he took the job. He had ridden with good men, and he had ridden with the glory-hunters and the hardheads. A man had to take it as it came.

  Paddock walked back to the fire and sat down on a rock, stiff and saddle-sore. He looked over at Laban. “You think we’re on a wild-goose chase?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “We won’t find any Indians?”

  “Oh, you’ll find Indians, all right. You’ll find a passel of them when you want ’em least. Only you won’t find the Dog. Right about now he’s burning your post.”

  “Nonsense!” Pryor said sharply. “No Indian would dare attack an army post!”

  Hank Laban did not bother to reply. He almost never bothered to reply to Lieutenant Eden Pryor, and the Lieutenant was growing irritated. He resented Laban’s attitude and his own inability to impress the scout. Pryor disliked Laban’s careless, almost slovenly appearance as much as he disliked the respect that all the older soldiers gave to his opinions.

  Paddock smoked in silence for a few minutes and then suggested, “Laban, why don’t you sketch out the route for me? I’ve never been over this trail before.”

  Laban hunched forward and took up a twig from the edge of the fire. He poked in the ground. “Here we are. We’ll cross the upper canyon of the Little Owyhee right about here,” and he drew the line in the sand. “Then we’ll strike out for Pole Creek. Over yonder there’s a travois trail and we’ll follow it right up into the corner here where the Owyhee and the Little Owyhee join up.”

  He made a cross in the sand “Right there, Major, we may run into plenty of grief. There’s an Injun trail down the cliffs—the boys will have to hoof it and lead their hosses. Now, I say there’s a trail. It’s just a rock slide, and if the shelf along there should topple over some of that trail would be gone. I mean, if the trail’s still there we’ll take it. Ever’ time I go that way I expect to find it gone.

  “That’s rough country with a lot of weathered rock,” he went on, “and if a few feet of it should go we’d be up the creek. Well, we go down that slide, an’ we’ll have a time. What we’d best do is put a few men on the rim and then send a few more down below to cover us. If those Injuns catch us on that slide they’ll cut us in half.”

  “Then why do we go that way?” Pryor interrupted.

  “After we cross the plateau between the rivers, we’ll still have the Middle Fork to cross. From there on it’s ten, twelve miles to where Mellett will be.”

  “I asked you why we didn’t go around.” Pryor’s tone was coldly furious.

  Paddock looked up sharply. “Lieutenant Pryor, Mr. Laban is explaining a route to me. I would be pleased if you would not interrupt.”

  Pryor started to reply, then stood up and turned away abruptly. Corporal Steve Blaine, who had no particular liking for Pryor, nonetheless felt sorry for him now. “Long way around,” he commented to nobody in particular; “might be fifty miles further.”

  “I didn’t ask you!” Pryor snapped, and was immediately sorry. He strode off into the darkness, feeling like a spanked schoolboy.

  By the Lord Harry, he was thinking, if he had that Laban in his command for just one week! Just one week! The trouble was, Hank Laban was a civilian employee and able to quit whenever he liked; and as Pryor had been given to understand before this, he was inclined to do just that on the slightest provocation. And Colonel Webb had assured Pryor only a week before that such men were hard to get.

  Later, after Laban had disappeared to his blankets somewhere out in the dark, Frank Paddock explained to Pryor: “There aren’t many trails in this country, Eden, and Laban knows them. There are very few men who do. We need him very badly.”

  After that Paddock went to his bedroll and stretched out. He was dead-tired, and every muscle ached. He was confused as well, for now that he had gone too far to turn back he was attacked by doubts. When he had made his decision he had been positive it was the right one, and he still told himself this was so. But what if he was wrong? What if the post, so ill-defended, was attacked?

  He sat bolt upright, and for a moment was in a state of blind panic, on the verge of ordering the command to return to the post. Then he fought back his fears, and presently he lay down again.

  Maybe he had been a fool to go. So why had he gone? Was it really because he could trap Medicine Dog and score a decisive victory? Or was it to settle once and for all his situation with Denise? If Denise and Kilrone took this opportunity to leave together…But if they did not?

  He turned restlessly, unable to relax, driven to wakefulness by the ghosts of his fears and doubts.

  He was right, he decided finally. They would not attack the post. The major Indian force was here, lying in wait for M Troop and Mellett.

  At last he slept. The firelight flickered against the rocks and on the faces of the sleeping men.

  *

  MILES AWAY TO the south, Barney Kilrone awakened with a start. Only a faint glow from the stove illuminated the office of the post commander, where he was. In a corner, on a pallet, were Denise Paddock and Betty Considine. Stella Rybolt lay against the inner wall, and Hopkins and his wife not far away.

  For several minutes Kilrone lay quietly, wondering what it was that had wakened him.

  And then he heard
it again.

  Somebody outside was digging, digging under the wall, under the floor where he lay.

  The sound was faint but unmistakable; it was a whispering sound of movement, and the rustle of dirt falling in a narrow space. Somebody was trying to undermine the back wall of Headquarters building.

  Under mine…mine!

  Explosives…

  Swiftly, silently, he got to his feet.

  Chapter 10

  *

  THERE WAS NO sound inside the building, nor did Kilrone make any in his passage. Tiptoeing, he moved as one accustomed to a need for silence. The firelight from the grate of the stove gave a faint red glow in the room, showing here and there the face of a sleeper—child, woman, or man—each seeming to rest in the comfort of a dream.

  For a moment Kilrone looked on them, careful not to fix his eyes long on any one of them, for such an intent look, he knew, seemed to have a way of making a sleeper awaken. He looked on them with gloom, for what lay before them in a few hours might be violence and death; some of these had seen violence and death before this, and might again if they survived. He could not promise anything, either for them or himself.

  In the outer room Draper, one of the teamsters, sat reading a battered magazine. He was bearded and somewhat bald—a tough, strong man, and a veteran of several Indian fights. He sat near enough to the wall to hear anything stirring outside, and his rifle was close to his hand. He looked up when Kilrone came into the room. “Quiet so far,” he said, “but that means nothing.”

  “There’s something out back,” Kilrone said. “I’m going to have a look.”

  “Guards just came in,” Draper commented. “Gittin’ near the time.”

  “All right. Watch for me.”

  Kilrone eased the door open, listened, and then was gone into the darkness. Draper stared at the closed door a moment, and picked up his magazine again. But he did not read; he simply held it in his hands, listening.

  Kilrone had moved only a step after closing the door. The night was dark, overcast, and cool. After the stuffy atmosphere of the building the outside air felt wonderful. He took time to fill his lungs a time or two while he listened for movement.

  Then he went to the corner of the building, cast a quick glance around the corner, then stepped past, careful not to let his clothing brush the wall. He wasted no time, but moved on cat feet to the further corner and peered around.

  A man was crouched in the darkness at the foundation, working stealthily. But even as Kilrone saw him, the man got up swiftly and moved away, stringing something out behind him.

  Kilrone waited, watching him slip into a ditch that drained runoff water away from the buildings and the parade ground, and then he waited a little longer. He saw the man move away, and he was lost in the darkness.

  Kneeling where the man had been, Kilrone dug carefully into the loose earth. His hands found a box and a fuse leading from it. Gingerly, he lifted the box from its hole. The cover was merely laid on, and he lifted it. Inside were three cans of black powder, blasting powder.

  Placed as they had been, there was enough to have blasted a good-size hole in the back wall of the building, and to have stunned or killed anyone in the room. For an instant he crouched there, considering. Then, with the box under his left arm, his six-shooter in his right hand, he followed the fuse.

  It ended beside a rock at the edge of the ditch. The idea was clear enough. Once the attack began, the fuse would be fired and the resulting explosion would come close to putting anybody inside the Headquarters building out of action.

  How about the other buildings? There was little time, but they must be checked.

  Who had done this? It was no Indian trick, he was sure of that; and the man he had seen, although he had seen no more than his bulk in the blackness, had been no Indian.

  He knelt beside the rock and moved some of the stones where the fuse had been waiting for the match. Then he dug out a chunk of sod with his bowie knife and quickly dug further into the soft earth beneath. When he had hollowed out a hole there, he cut the fuse to six inches, replaced it, and buried the box in the bank, as carefully as he could in the darkness. The rest of the fuse he left as it had been, trailed out upon the ground.

  He went first to the warehouse. The back wall was the likely place, but he found nothing there. Undoubtedly the ground had been too hard to dig there without making noise, for a path led right along that wall. On the far end, however, he found another box, this one containing only one can of powder. He followed it out and did the same thing as before.

  Next he went to the hospital, but after searching for a few minutes he found nothing. By now it was growing light, and he did not dare to search any longer.

  Draper was at the door to let him in. Kells and Hopkins were standing by, and Rudio was at the stove, making coffee.

  Betty Considine was waiting for him. “Where would you like the children to be?” she asked. “Over in the corner?”

  “We’ll pull that desk over and turn it on its side,” he said, “and put the filing cabinet there, too. Drape what bedding you can spare over the desk and the chairs. I’ve seen a folded letter stop a spent bullet.”

  “I’d like to feed the stock,” Kells suggested.

  “Stay where you are. It’s my guess you’d never make it. Anyway, they’ll take the horses if they haven’t already.”

  No doubt the Indians were waiting for just that sort of thing. Lying in wait, they could attack the force remaining inside with small risk to themselves.

  The fire in the stoves—there was one in each room—had been built up. Outside, the sky was faintly gray; the shapes of the buildings were taking form. No lights appeared anywhere.

  Men moved to each of the windows, where they crouched, waiting. Stella Rybolt took over serving coffee and preparing breakfast, and Rudio took up his rifle. No lights were lit. Stella Rybolt worked by the glow from the grate of her stove, and as the food was prepared, carried it to the men at the windows.

  Under the low clouds of morning the parade ground looked gray and forbidding. The buildings, standing silent and unlighted, were bleak. Nothing stirred.

  Betty brought coffee to Kilrone and sat down on the floor beside him “Are they out there?” she asked.

  “You can bet on it.”

  She spoke softly then, that only he might hear. “Did you love her very much? Denise, I mean?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? It was Brittany, in the spring, and we both were young.”

  “I somehow thought it was Paris.”

  “Paris was in the fall…By that time we were older.”

  “You are cynical.”

  “No…just wise enough to know that all loves do not last out the summer. And many of them should not. Let that be a lesson to you, Daughter of the General.”

  “And when you saw her again she was married to Frank Paddock?”

  “Yes…and I was courting a dancer from Vienna.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Somebody talked to Frank, and he believed there was more than there was. Apparently the idea became something of an obsession with him.”

  “Kilrone?” Hopkins spoke from his window. “Something moving down there.”

  He got up and went to the window, but stayed well back where he could not easily be seen. Looking down the length of the parade ground, he at first saw nothing. And then he saw a slight stir of movement in the shadows near a barracks. One, then another.

  “Hold your fire,” he said; “so far they’ve done nothing.” He went to the window that looked toward the warehouse across a few feet of intervening space. He opened the window and called, “McCracken?”

  “There’s about a dozen of them in the brush along the creek.,” McCracken answered.

  “Well, hold your fire.”

  The post, which was usually stirring with soldiers and military activity by this time, was all dark and still. The Indians would have seen or smelled the smoke from the stoves, but nothing moved about
the post buildings. They had waited and watched, planning their attack, but nothing happened. Now they had come to see.

  One by one they appeared, disappeared, then appeared again. They walked a few steps, paused to listen and to look, then impelled by a curiosity that robbed them of caution, they came out further on the parade ground. Undoubtedly this was the culmination of several hours of waiting and listening, for it was a certain thing that the Indians had been out there for some time.

  “Teale,” Kilrone said, “you and Ryan keep a sharp watch. When that explosion goes off, somebody is going to jump and run. I don’t want them to get away.”

  “What explosion?”

  “Don’t worry, Teale. There’ll be one. Right out there in front of you.” He explained quickly what he had done, and Teale grinned at him.

  Kilrone knelt at the window. His mouth was dry and he kept wiping his palms on his pants. It was very still out there in the growing light. Two of the Indians had turned and were walking up the parade ground toward Headquarters. Another one was trying the door of a barracks, but the door had been locked. He went to the window, put his face against the glass, and peered in.

  Every moment of delay, Kilrone was thinking, was a moment won, for it was a moment closer to the return of the troops. He could hear his own heart beating. Within the room, nobody stirred, or even seemed to breathe.

  “Just wait,” he said aloud, “let them look around.”

  There were several Indians around the corral, picking up what they could use. The horses had been gone before daylight. Including his own. A man didn’t have to have much in this country, but without a horse he had nothing at all.

  The sky remained gray and sullen, and over the mountains the overcast had shrouded the peaks. The color of the trees was beginning to be clear now, a deeper green, more somber somehow.

  How did a man feel when he was about to die, Kilrone wondered. And it might come to just that. Any Indians out there at all, meant that there would be several hundred.