Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “They’ll burn me out,” Hopkins remarked gloomily.

  “You’ll be alive,” Kells said. “How about that?”

  But would he? At least, he would have a fighting chance here, and so would his wife.

  Betty was suddenly beside Kilrone. “Barney, where’s Mary?”

  “The Indian girl? I haven’t seen her.”

  “They’ll kill her, Barney.”

  Would they? One never knew about Indians. She had been one of them, but was no longer. Or had she gone back to them? Many an Indian had, returning to her own or his own people even after every opportunity to stay among the whites. And wild Indians had been known to treat such Indians as they would a white man…or worse.

  “She’s out, Barney. We’ve got to help her.”

  “How? We haven’t seen her. And where would a man look?”

  “She’d go to the sutler’s store. She lived there, you know. She’d feel responsible, I am sure.”

  He looked down the length of the parade ground. It was about 500 feet to the sutler’s store, and the parade ground measured slightly over half of that. He felt something grow cold within him. To walk down there under the guns of the Indians, and then to return with Mary Tall Singer—if, indeed, she was there.…

  “Do you have any idea how much chance a man would have to make it?” he said.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Maybe I should go.”

  “You’d have no chance at all,” he said. “You wouldn’t get halfway.”

  They stood silent, and he looked down the field and measured it in his mind with his strides. How many strides before a bullet struck? How long would they wait before striking? The Indian is a warrior, and a warrior respects the brave…would they wait to see if a man could walk that distance disdaining the danger? Would they be curious enough to test his courage? And did he have the courage to make that walk?

  How far was it? How many steps?

  A slow lift of smoke came from the store’s chimney. “She’s there, then,” Hopkins said. “She stayed to watch my goods.”

  “Or for some other reason,” Kells said. “You’re forgettin’ she’s an Injun.”

  Denise had come from the back of the building. “She is an Indian, but she is loyal to us, too. I would not want her to turn against her own people, but I would never doubt her loyalty to us.”

  “You don’t know Injuns, ma’am. They have no loyalty for a white man…or woman.”

  Kilrone continued to look down the parade ground and felt the devil rising in him. He knew it was a wild and crazy feeling, but the urge was there. It was a challenge.…Could he make it? Could any man? If he started and then showed the least hesitation, the least sign of fear…Hell, they’d shoot him anyway. He wouldn’t get ten feet. It was a fool idea, the sort of idea that could get a man killed. But there was a girl down there in that store, a girl the Indians might be likely to kill.

  If he started, how long would he have before somebody got trigger-happy and started blasting? How long before somebody back in the ditch behind the building decided to light a fuse? Or would they check that fuse and find out what he had done?

  Nobody said anything, but they were looking down the same stretch that he was, and every one of them was thinking of Mary Tall Singer, a girl who had tried to go the white man’s way, and whom they had deserted. It would look that way, wouldn’t it?

  Kilrone got to his feet. He stood his rifle beside the window. “I’ll go get her,” he said.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Kells said, getting up.

  “You boys stand pat,” Kilrone said. “Don’t start any shooting unless you have to.” His hand was on the door-knob.

  “Barney…Mr. Kilrone,” Betty said, “don’t.”

  He opened the door and stepped outside and began walking toward the sutler’s store. He kept his eyes straight ahead, and as he walked he ran through his mind the words and tune of an old marching song. He knew the Indians were all around him, that they might at any moment decide to shoot, and that at any sign of hesitation they certainly would.

  He knew they were moving out from the buildings onto the parade ground. One dashed his horse across in front of Kilrone, but he kept marching. Not far ahead of him now was the sutler’s store, and when he was about fifty steps away, the door suddenly opened and Mary Tall Singer stood there, waiting for him.

  He walked up to her. “I have come to take you with me,” he said. “Will you come?”

  She looked at him with dark, enigmatic eyes, then she walked down the steps. Coolly, he offered her his arm, and they started back up the parade ground. The distance seemed twice as far now. Suddenly half a dozen Indians on ponies raced across the field toward them. Kilrone walked straight on, looking neither to right nor left, and the Indians, whipped by within inches of them. Yet he went on, unflinching, the dark-haired girl at his side keeping pace. Again and again the Indians raced their horses at them, wheeling not a foot away.

  Then all of a sudden an armed Indian stepped directly in front of Kilrone, lance drawn back, and Kilrone walked right straight at him, looking into the cold black eyes. The point of the lance touched his breast, and he moved it lightly aside with his left hand, brushing it away as he might have brushed a cobweb or a leaf in the forest.

  Ahead of him Kilrone saw the door open a crack, the merest crack. It would not be long now. He felt cold and the hair on the back of his neck prickled; the muscles between his shoulder blades seemed to tighten with the expectation of a shot or an arrow. But still he kept on.

  Suddenly, from behind the Headquarters building there came a tremendous explosion, an explosion followed by three quick, barking shots.

  Kilrone turned sharply on the Indians behind him. “Inside!” he hissed to Mary Tall Singer. “Get in…quick!”

  An Indian threw a rifle to his shoulder and instantly Kilrone palmed his pistol and fired from the hip. The bullet smashed the Indian in the chest a split second before his own shot went off, but the rifle tilted with the bullet’s impact and the Indian’s shot sailed off into the air.

  Kilrone backed to the door, holding his fire, and then all the Indians seemed to be shooting at once. From the time of the explosion until now was no more than a few seconds, but time had seemed to lag. Kilrone fired, saw an Indian stagger, and then he leaped backward. Stumbling over the step, he went through the door and it was slammed and barred behind him.

  He went quickly through the room to the back. Teale looked at him, his eyes glinting with hard humor. “Well, well That’s more’n I’d have done for an Injun gal!”

  Kilrone glanced at him. “Teale, you don’t fool me a bit. You’d have done it, and to hell with the price. I know your kind.”

  He gestured toward the ditch where he had planted the explosive. “What happened?”

  “Plenty…that explosion scared ’em more’n it hurt, but I reckon it did for one, maybe two of the Injuns…and a white man tried to get away. He didn’t make it.”

  “Good.”

  The shooting was general now. There were no Indians in sight, however. All were skillful fighters, and would not waste themselves in any useless effort. They wanted victory, but they meant to win it without too great a cost.

  Kilrone made the rounds, looking out of the windows. The parade ground was empty. The Indian he had killed and at least one other killed or wounded had been carried away. So had any others who had been hurt. A shot came from a window of the nearest barracks, another from the corner of a building.

  Beyond the parade ground and barracks clouds hung low around the mountain shoulders, and within the buildings was the smell of powder smoke. Now there was silence…no targets, no Indians only stillness.

  Kilrone could see the corral, and the horses were gone. Had he noticed that before? He had, he was sure, but he could not remember when. He knelt by the window, waiting, rifle in hand, but nothing stirred. Once a bird flew down and lighted on the parade ground, pecking at something in the dust. After a moment or two, taking ala
rm at something, it flew away.

  They waited…and waited…

  Half an hour went by…an hour. The Indians were looting the barracks. Somewhere they heard the crash of glass, a window breaking.

  Betty came with coffee and Kilrone sat down with his back to the wall and cupped it in his hands. Never had coffee tasted so good.

  “That was wonderful,” Betty said. “I mean, to go and get Mary.”

  “She had nerve. You know her hand on my arm never so much as trembled.”

  He had been doing some calculating. Unless Rybolt was shrewd, or shot with luck, he and his payroll escort were gone. Caught out in the open they wouldn’t have a chance…and the Indians would know they were coming.

  What he was thinking about, however, was not so much Rybolt as Major Paddock, Captain Mellett, and the cavalry. They could not very well get back in less than two days, and more likely it would be three…could they hold out that long here at the post?

  But supposing they, too, had been attacked? Suppose they had been wiped out? It would be weeks before help could come from elsewhere, even if their predicament was realized.

  For the first time Kilrone began to think seriously of escaping from the post.

  Chapter 11

  *

  THROUGHOUT THE MORNING the firing was sporadic, with little result on either side. Fire from the three buildings kept the Indians out of range most of the time, but not without cost. One child was cut, not badly, by flying glass, and in the warehouse Mendel was wounded.

  He was standing at a broken window trying to get a shot, when an Indian hidden nearby put a bullet into his hip, turning him for the second shot, which entered near his spine and emerged near the belt buckle.

  Early in the afternoon there was a sudden explosion on the hospital side…a mine that Kilrone had not found, or one hidden since his exploration. The explosion knocked a hole in the wall of the building and killed Olson. For several minutes the Indians concentrated a hot fire on the hole and then tried a rush.

  Two Indians fell from shots by Lahey and Ryerson, and the attack broke. One of the Indians dropped near the wall, and with a sudden rush got close enough to be out of range.

  “We’ve got to get him,” Ryerson said. “He’s right alongside that hole. Any time we stop watching he can shoot right into us.”

  “You mean stick your head outside?” Lahey said. “You try it, Sarge. Not me.”

  Barney Kilrone crouched by the window. Somebody was moving around in one of the barracks about a hundred and fifty feet away. He could occasionally see a swift shadow against the window, and from time to time he heard a yell from Indians who were looting there.

  He waited, biding his time. Then he saw the shadow again and lifted his rifle, taking a careful sight. He took up slack on the trigger, and felt the rifle leap in his hands as the shot went off. There was a crash of glass and the Indian fell backward through the window, one arm flailing wildly as he tried to catch the corner to break his fall.

  Kilrone worked the lever on his gun and as the Indian hit the ground he fired into him. The Indian half rose, and then fell back.

  “Watch him,” Kilrone said to Ryan. “They’ll try to get him away.”

  He went back, staying close to the floor because of the powder smoke in the room. Denise came to him when he entered the back room. “Are you all right, Barnes?”

  “Where’s Rybolt’s wife?” he asked. “I want to talk to her.”

  “You sit here and I’ll get some coffee. She’ll be right over.”

  Stella Rybolt crawled over to him. He gestured toward the partition. “Sit down here with your back against that and have a rest. I want to talk to you.” He took the coffee from Denise. “Tell me about your husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “I never met him, and I’d like to know how he thinks. He must have talked a lot to you. I’m not promising anything, but I may try to get out and warn him.”

  “Don’t try it, Mr. Kilrone. Gus would be the last to expect it.”

  “Tell me about him,” he repeated.

  “Well,”—she hesitated—“Gus is a soldier, first, last, and always. He’s strict, but no martinet. He puts his duty ahead of everything.” She turned her head to look hard at Kilrone. “That’s why you shouldn’t worry. His job is to protect that payroll and to bring back his men, as many of them alive and able as he can manage.”

  “Does he know Dave Sproul?”

  She gave him a sharp look. “Now, how d’ you mean that? Of course he knows him. I know him, too, and I’m not proud of it. Gus doesn’t like him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not exactly. Mrs. Rybolt, if Dave Sproul came riding up to him out there on the prairie, what would Gus do?”

  “Do? I don’t know what you mean. Talk to him, I guess. What else could he do?”

  What else? She was right, of course. There was nothing else he could do, and that was the trouble, for the moment they stopped there would be danger. Kilrone could not believe that Sproul, being the man he was, would leave that payroll to chance.

  If it vanished now it would be laid to an Indian attack, and any investigation would start with that in mind. But how would Dave Sproul manage it? And where?

  The closer by, the better. He would need to be away that much less time from Hog Town and his alibi, and it would be in territory he knew well. But the risk was greater nearby in some ways, too. And who would he use? Some of his own men?

  Yet why should Sproul go himself? He was, as Kilrone knew from bitter experience, a man more than careful to keep himself in the clear. It was not likely that he would himself ride out to stop Rybolt when he could have one of his men do it, someone known to Rybolt or the others, and whom they would greet without suspicion.

  But Sproul would be close by…trust him to keep an eye on any gold. He would be close enough to watch, to oversee the job. There must be many suitable places along the route, but Sproul would choose a place reached by the payroll guard late in the afternoon, or at least after the noon halt. He would want them to have eaten, to have ridden off any immediate zest they may have had, and be tiring. Sitting sleepy in the saddle, expecting no danger, the guard would be glad of the short halt, and they would be sitting ducks for an ambush.

  “What I mean is, would Gus be suspicious?”

  “I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at. No, he wouldn’t be suspicious. Sproul’s out prospecting a good bit. That is, Gus wouldn’t be more suspicious than usual. Gus Rybolt isn’t a very trusting man when he has charge of government property.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Mr. Kilrone, what is it you’re getting at?”

  “Call me a fool, if you like, but I would not be surprised if, under the cover of this Indian fight, somebody doesn’t try to get that payroll.”

  “You mean Dave Sproul? He’d never dare. He knows Gus. He wouldn’t dare try it.”

  “I don’t want to worry you, but I think Sproul would try if he thought he could get away with it. He wouldn’t try though, unless he had what he believed to be a foolproof plan.”

  She considered the idea. “I really don’t know. As I said, Gus isn’t trusting about government property, I know that, and he’s very conscientious, but I really doubt that he’d suspect Dave Sproul of attempting a holdup.”

  Kilrone went on talking quietly with Stella Rybolt. She was a competent, rough-fibered woman and he had an idea that Gus Rybolt was the same—a good, sincere, and competent officer, but not one capable of matching cunning with Sproul. Yet Rybolt might be just the man to defeat Iron Dave. He might do it because of his very virtues, because he was tough, disciplined, and no gambler. He might just not give Sproul that inch of leeway he would need to pull it off.

  Suddenly Stella Rybolt said, “I wish he did know. I just wish something would make him suspicious. Now you’ve got me worried.”

  “I didn’t want to do that, Mrs. Rybolt. I wanted to get some idea of what to expect. If there’s a chance, and if every
thing is going all right here, I might try to get down the trail to warn him.”

  “You mustn’t try. You’d be killed.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Kilrone went to the back window to relieve Teale for a spot of rest. As he watched out the window, he was trying to picture the route that Rybolt would follow to reach the post. He would be careful, but would not really be expecting trouble. Any white man he met would probably be considered a bearer of news, and Rybolt would certainly want information from him.

  Sproul would choose a spot where the payroll guard would be out in the open, but where there would be concealment for the attacking party, and concealment for himself as well. For after due thought, Kilrone did not believe Sproul would approach the party himself. There was even the chance that the bearer of news would know nothing of the plot, and might himself be marked for death.

  Nothing stirred out back. When Teale returned, Kilrone moved on and relieved another of the men, and so through the long, slow day he worked his way around the building, checking all the windows, relieving each of the men in turn.

  In the hospital, the hole had been partly blocked up by overturning a table across it and piling furniture and cases behind it, but the wounded Indian was still there against the wall just outside the hole, and there was no way to get at him. As long as he remained there he meant danger to them.

  Far down the parade ground an Indian showed near the sutler’s store. There was a crash of glass, and then a smashing of wood. Hopkins swore. “There goes my business,” he said gloomily, “and I never cheated an Indian in my life!”

  The Indian showed again, and Hopkins took a long time sighting before he squeezed off his shot. The brave jumped as if stung, then disappeared around the corner of the building. “Good shot,” Ryan said.

  In mid-afternoon a ricocheting bullet scratched Draper, drawing blood but doing no real damage.

  Within the buildings they waited for the night, waited in fear and apprehension. More Indians have arrived…Kilrone figured there were at least four hundred now. Just before sundown the sutler’s store burst into flames, lighting the clouded sky with weird effect.