Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Royal Barnes got up, and, for a moment, he stood listening.

  “Somebody’s on the trail now,” he said suddenly.

  That would be Steve. Instantly it came to Kilkenny with startling awareness that Barnes was waiting for something, some sound, some signal. If there was a spring gun on the main trail, it would stop Steve in his tracks.

  He drew deeply on his cigarette. Somewhere he could hear water dripping slowly, methodically, as though counting off the seconds. Royal Barnes dropped a hand to the deck of cards on the table, and idly riffled them. The spattering sound of the flipping cards was loud in the room.

  A heavy crash sounded again. That would be Mort Davis. Somebody else trying to get water. Somebody who wouldn’t try again.

  Gravel rattled on the trail, and Kilkenny saw Royal Barnes’s face tighten.

  Then in the almost complete silence: Bang!

  Royal Barnes dropped into a crouch and went for his gun with a sweeping movement. At the same instant, he dumped over the table and sent it crashing toward Kilkenny.

  Kilkenny sprang aside barely in time to escape the table, and a shot crashed into the wall behind him. His own gun was out, and he triggered it twice with lightning-like rapidity. Through the smoke he could see Royal Barnes’s eyes blazing with white light, and his lips parted in a snarl of killing fury.

  Then the whole room was swept up in a crashing roar of guns. Something hit him and he was smashed back against the wall. His own guns were bucking and leaping in his hands, and he could see bright orange stabs of flame shot through with crimson streaks. He stepped forward and left, then again left, then back right, and moving in. Barnes had sprung backward through a doorway, and Kilkenny crossed the room, thumbing cartridges into his six-guns.

  He went through the door with a leap. A bullet smashed the wall behind him and another tugged sharply at his sleeve. He stepped over, saw Barnes, and fired. The flame blossomed from Barnes’s gun and Kilkenny felt his legs give way as he went to his knees. Barnes was backing away, his eyes wide and staring.

  Slowly, desperately Kilkenny pulled himself erect and tried to get a gun up. Finally he did, and fired again, but Barnes was gone. Stumbling into the next room, he glared about. He was sick, felt himself weaving on his feet, and blood was running into his eyes.

  The room was empty. Then a shot crashed behind him. He turned in a loose, stumbling circle and opened up with both guns on a weaving target. Then he felt himself falling, and he went down, hard.

  He must have blacked out briefly, for when he opened his eyes he could smell the acrid smell of gunpowder, and it all came back with a rush. He turned over, and drew his knees under him. Then, catching the door frame, he pulled himself erect.

  Royal Barnes, his face bloody and ugly, was propped against the wall opposite, his lips curved back in a snarl. A bullet had gone through one cheek, entering below the nose and coming out under the earlobe. Blood was flowing down his side. Blood was soaking his shirt, too. Barnes was cursing slowly, monotonously, horribly.

  “You got me,” he mouthed viciously, “but I’m killin’ you, too, Kilkenny.”

  His gun swung up, and Kilkenny’s own guns bucked in his hands. He saw Barnes wince and jerk, and the bloody face twisted in pain. Then the outlaw lunged out from the wall, staggering forward, his guns roaring a crescendo of hatred as he reeled toward Kilkenny. His shooting was wild, insane, desperate, and the shots went every which way.

  He was toe to toe with Kilkenny when Kilkenny finished it. He finished it with four shots, two from each gun, at three-foot range, pumping the heavy .45 slugs into the outlaw. Barnes fell, and tumbled across Kilkenny’s feet.

  For what seemed a long time, Kilkenny stood erect, his guns dangling, empty. He stood staring blankly above the dead man at his feet, staring at the curious pattern of the Indian blanket across the room. He could feel his breath coming in great gasps, he could feel the warm blood on his face, and he could feel his growing weakness.

  Then suddenly he heard a sound. He had dropped one of his guns. Abruptly he let go everything and fell headlong to the floor, lying there across Royal Barnes, the warm sunlight falling across his bloody face and hair…

  A long, long time later he felt hands touching him, and felt his own hand reaching for his gun. A big man loomed over him, and he was trying to get his gun up when he heard a woman’s voice, speaking softly. Something in him listened, and he let go the gun. He seemed to feel water on his face, and pain throbbing through him like a live thing. Then he went all away again.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he was lying on a wide bed in a sunlit room. Outside there were lilacs, and he could hear a bird singing. There was a flash of red, and a redbird flitted past the window.

  The room was beautiful. It was a woman’s room, quiet, neat, and smelling faintly of odors he seemed to remember from boyhood. He was still lying there when a door opened and Nita came in.

  “Oh, you’re awake.” Nita laughed, and her eyes grew soft. “We had begun to believe you’d never come out of it.”

  “What happened?” he mumbled.

  “You were badly hit. Six times, in all. Only one of them serious. Through the body. There was a flesh wound in your leg, and one in your shoulder.”

  “Barnes?” Kilkenny asked quickly.

  “He’s dead. He was almost shot to pieces.”

  Kilkenny was quiet. He closed his eyes and lay still for a few minutes, remembering. In all his experience he had never known any man with such vitality. He rarely missed, and even in the hectic and confused battle in the cliff house he knew he had scored many hits. Yet Royal Barnes had kept shooting, kept fighting.

  He opened his eyes again. “Steve Lord?”

  “He was killed by a spring gun. A double-barreled shotgun loaded with soft lead pellets. He must have been killed instantly.”

  “The outlaw gang?”

  “Wiped out. A few escaped in the last minutes, but not many. Webb Steele was wounded, but not badly. He’s up and around. Has been for three days.”

  “Three days?” Kilkenny was incredulous. “How long have I been here?”

  Nita smiled. “You’ve been very ill. The fight was two weeks ago.”

  Kilkenny lay quietly for a while, absorbing that. Then he remembered.

  “But Calkins?”

  “He was killed. Jaime killed him, and two of his family. Steele put it up to the other Calkins boys to leave me alone and to leave Jaime alone or fight him and all the ranchers. They backed down.”

  The two weeks more that Kilkenny spent in bed drifted by slowly, and at the end he became restless, worried. He lay in Nita Riordan’s bed in her house, cared for by her, and receiving visits daily from Rusty and Tana, from Webb Steele, Frame, and some of the others. Even Lee Hall had come by to thank him. But he was restless. He kept thinking of Buck, and remembering the long, lonely trails.

  Then one morning he got up early. Rusty and Tana had come in the night before. He saw their horses in the corral when he went out to saddle Buck.

  The sun was just coming up and the morning air was cool and soft. He could smell the sagebrush and the mesquite blossoms. He felt restless and strange. Instinctively he knew he faced a crisis more severe than any brought on by his gunfight. Here, his life could change, but would it be best?

  “I don’t know, Buck,” he said thoughtfully. “I think we’d better take a ride and think it over. Out there in the hills where the wind’s in a man’s face, he can think better.”

  He turned at the sound of a footstep, and saw Nita standing behind him. She looked fresh and lovely in a print dress, and her eyes were soft. Kilkenny looked away quickly, and cursed himself under his breath for his sudden weakness.

  “Are you going, Kilkenny?” she asked.

  He turned slowly. “I reckon, Nita. I reckon out there in the hills a man can think a sight better. I got things to figger out.”

  “Kilkenny,” Nita asked suddenly, “why do you talk as you do? You can speak like an educat
ed man when you wish. And you were, weren’t you? Tana told me she picked up a picture you dropped once, a picture of your mother, and there was an inscription on it, something about it being sent to you in college.”

  “Yes, I reckon I can speak a sight better at times, Nita. But I’m a Western man at heart, and I speak the way the country does.” He hesitated, looking at her somberly. “I reckon I better go now.”

  There were tears in Nita’s eyes, but she lifted her head and smiled at him.

  “Of course, Kilkenny. Go, and if you decide you want to come back…don’t hesitate. And, Buck”—she turned quickly to the long-legged horse—“if he starts back, you bring him very fast, do you hear?”

  For an instant, Kilkenny hesitated again, then he swung into saddle.

  The buckskin wheeled, and they went out of Apple Cañon at a brisk trot. Once he looked back, and Nita was standing where he had left her. She lifted her hand and waved.

  He waved in return, then faced away to the west. The wind from over the plains, fresh with morning, came to his nostrils, and he lifted his head. The buckskin’s ears were forward, and he was quickening his pace.

  “You an’ me, Buck,” Kilkenny said slowly, “we ain’t civilized. We’re wild, and we belong to the far, open country where the wind blows and a man’s eyes narrow down to distance.”

  Kilkenny sat sideward in the saddle and rolled a smoke. Then his voice lifted, and he sang:

  I have a word to say, boys, only one to say,

  Don’t never be no cow thief, don’t never ride no stray.

  Be careful of your rope, boys, and keep it on the tree,

  But suit yourself about it, for it’s nothing at all to me!

  He sang softly, and the hoofs of the buckskin kept time to the singing, and Lance could feel the air in his face, and a long way ahead the trail curved into the mountains.

  A Man Called Trent

  Chapter I

  Smoke lifted wistfully from the charred timbers of the house, and smoke lifted from the shed that had been Moffitt’s barn. The corral bars were down and the saddle stock run off, and, where Dick Moffitt’s homestead had been in the morning, there was now only desolation, emptiness, and death.

  Dick Moffitt himself lay sprawled on the ground. The dust was scratched deeply where his fingers had dug in the agony of death. Even from where he sat on the long-legged buckskin, the man known as Trent could see he had been shot six times. Three of those bullets had gone in from the front. The other three had been fired directly into his back by a man who stood over him. And Dick Moffitt wore no gun.

  The little green valley was still in the late afternoon sun. It was warm, and there was still a faint heat emanating from the charred timber of the house.

  The man who called himself Trent rode his horse around the house. Four or five men had come here. One of them riding a horse with a split right rear hoof. They had shot Moffitt down and then burned his layout.

  What about the kids? What about Sally Crane, who was sixteen? And young Jack Moffitt, who was fourteen? Whatever had happened, there was no evidence of them here. He hesitated, looking down the trail. Had they been taken away by the killers? Sally, perhaps, but not Jack. If the killers had found the two, Jack would have been dead.

  Thoughtfully Trent turned away. The buckskin knew the way was toward home, and he quickened his pace. There were five miles to go, five miles of mountains and heavy woods, and no clear trails.

  This could be it. Always, he had been sure it would come. Even when happiest, the knowledge that sooner or later he must sling his gun belts on his hips had been ever present in the back of his mind. Sooner or later there would be trouble, and he had seen it coming here along the rimrock.

  Slightly more than a year ago he had built his cabin and squatted in the lush green valley among the peaks. No cattle ranged this high. No wandering cowpunchers drifted up here. Only the other nesters had found homes, the Hatfields, O’Hara, Smithers, Moffitt, and the rest.

  Below, in the vicinity of Cedar Bluff, there was one ranch—one and only one. On the ranch and in the town, one man ruled supreme. He rode with majesty, and, when he walked, he strode with the step of kings. He never went unattended. He allowed no man to address him unless he spoke first, he issued orders and bestowed favor like an Eastern potentate, and, if there were some who disputed his authority, he put them down, crushed them.

  King Bill Hale had come West as a boy, and he had had money even then. In Texas he had driven cattle over the trails and had learned to fight and sling a gun, and to drive a bargain that was tight and cruel. Then he had come farther West, moved into the town of Cedar Bluff, built the Castle, and drove out the cattle rustlers who had used the valley as a hide-out. The one other honest rancher in the valley he bought out, and, when that man had refused to sell, Hale had told him to sell, or else. And he had cut the offered price in half. The man sold.

  Cedar Bluff and Cedar Valley lived under the eye of King Bill. A strong man and an able one, Hale had slowly become power mad. The valley was cut off from both New Mexico and Arizona. In his own world he could not be touched. His will was law. He owned the Mecca, a saloon and gambling house. He owned the stage station, the stage line itself, and the freight company that hauled supplies in and produce out. He owned the Cedar Hotel, the town’s one decent rooming house. He owned 60,000 acres of good grazing land and controlled 100,000 more. His cattle were numbered in the tens of thousands, and two men rode beside him when he went among his other men. One was rough, hard-scaled Pete Shaw, and the other was his younger son, Cub Hale. Behind him trailed the gold-dust twins, Dunn and Ravitz, both gunmen.

  The man who called himself Trent rarely visited Cedar Bluff. Sooner or later, he knew, there would be someone from the outside, someone who knew him, someone who would recognize him for what and who he was, and then the word would go out.

  “That’s Kilkenny!”

  Men would turn to look, for the story of the strange, drifting gunman was known to all in the West, even though there were few men anywhere who knew him by sight, few who could describe him or knew the way he lived.

  Mysterious, solitary, and shadowy, the gunman called Kilkenny had been everywhere. He drifted in and out of towns and cow camps, and sometimes there would be a brief and bloody gun battle, and then Kilkenny would be gone again, and only the body of the man who had dared to try Kilkenny remained.

  So Kilkenny had taken the name of Trent, and in the high peaks he had found the lush green valley where he built his cabin and ran a few head of cows and broke wild horses. It was a lonely life, but when he was there, he hung his guns on a peg and carried only his rifle, and that for game or for wolves.

  Rarely, not over a dozen times in the year, he went down to Cedar Bluff for supplies, packed them back, and stayed in the hills until he was running short again. He stayed away from the Mecca, and most of all he avoided the Crystal Palace, the new and splendid dance hall and gambling house owned by the woman Nita Riordan.

  The cabin in the pines was touched with the red glow of a sun setting beyond the notch, and he swung down from the buckskin and slapped the horse cheerfully on the shoulder.

  “Home again, Buck! It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?”

  He stripped the saddle and bridle from the horse and carried them into the log barn, then he turned the buckskin into the corral, and forked over a lot of fresh green grass.

  It was a lonely life, yet he was content. Only at times did he find himself looking long at the stars and thinking about the girl in Cedar Bluff. Did she know he was here? Remembering Nita from the Live Oak country, he decided she did. Nita Riordan knew all that was going on; she always had.

  He went about the business of preparing a meal, and thought of Parson Hatfield and his tall sons. What would the mountaineer do now? Yet, need he ask that question? Could he suspect, even for a moment, that the Hatfields would do anything but fight? They were the type. They were men who had always built with their hands and who were beholden to n
o man. They were not gunfighters, but they were lean, hard-faced men, tall and stooped a little, who carried their rifles as if they were part of them. And big Dan O’Hara, the talkative, friendly Irishman who always acted as though campaigning for public office—could he believe that Dan would do other than fight?

  War was coming to the high peaks, and Trent’s face grew somber as he thought of it. War meant that he would once more be shooting, killing. He could, of course, mount in the morning and ride away. He could give up this place in the highlands and go once more, but even as the thought came to him, he did not recognize it as even a remote possibility. Like O’Hara and the Hatfields, he would fight.

  There were other things to consider. The last time he had been to Cedar Bluff, there had been a letter from Lee Hall, the Ranger.

  We’re getting along all right here, but I thought you would like to know: Cain Brockman is out. He swears he will hunt you down and kill you for killing his brother and whipping him with your fists. And he’ll try, so be careful.

  He dropped four slices of bacon into the frying pan, humming softly to himself. Then he put on some coffee water and sat watching the bacon. When it was ready, he took it out of the pan and put it on a tin plate. He was reaching for the coffee when he heard a muffled movement.

  Instantly he froze in position. His eyes fastened on the blanket that separated his bedroom from the living room of the two-room cottage. His guns were hanging from a peg near the cupboard. He would have to cross the room to them. His rifle was nearer.

  Rising, he went about the business of fixing the coffee, and, when close to the rifle, he dropped his hand to it. Then, swinging it hip high, he crossed the room with a bound, and jerked back the blanket.

  Two youngsters sat on the edge of his homemade bed, a slender, wide-eyed girl of sixteen and a boy with a face thickly sprinkled with freckles. They sat tightly together, frightened and pale.

  Slowly he let the gun butt down to the floor. “Well, I’ll be…! Say, how did you youngsters get here?”

  The girl swallowed and stood up, trying to curtsey. Her hair, which was very lovely, hung in two thick blonde braids. Her dress was cheap and cotton and now, after rough treatment, was torn and dirty. “We’re…I mean, I’m Sally Crane, and this is Jackie Moffitt.”