“Why all this sudden worry about me?” He was sincerely puzzled. “We’ve met only once, and we seem to have different ideas about things.”
“Don’t stand there and argue! Tom, I mustn’t be seen talking to you…not by either side. Come with me and get away from here until this is all over. I’ve seen Dornie, and he hates you, Tom. He hates you.”
“He does, does he?” He patted her arm. “Run along home now. I’ve things to do here.”
“Oh?” Her eyes hardened a little. “Is it that woman? That Duane girl? I’ve heard all about her, how beautiful she is, how... how she... what kind of girl is she?”
“She’s a lovely person,” he said gravely. “You’d like her, Sue.”
Sue stiffened. “Would I? I wonder how much you know about women, Tom? Or do you know anything about them? I could never like Connie Duane!” She shook his arm. “Come, if you’re coming. I just heard this last night, and I can’t... I won’t see this happen.”
“What? What’s going to happen?”
She stamped her foot with impatience. “Oh, you fool, you! They plan to kill you, Tom! Now, come on!”
“Not now,” he said quietly. “I’ve got to get this fight settled first, then maybe I’ll ride your way. Now run along. I’ve got to look around.”
Impatiently she turned and walked to her horse. In the saddle she glanced back at him. “If you change your mind…”
“Not now,” he repeated.
“Then be careful. Be careful, Tom.”
He watched her go, then happened to glance toward the house. Connie Duane stood in the window, looking down at him, but as he looked up, she turned sharply away. He started for the house, then hesitated. There was nothing he could say now, nothing that would have any effect or do any good at all.
He started toward the front of the house again, then stopped. On an impulse he turned and walked swiftly back to the little old building and caught the latch. The door was weathered and gray. It creaked on rusty hinges and opened rheumatically. Inside, there was the musty odor of decay. Kedrick stood there for a minute watching the sunlight filter through the cobwebbed window and fall in a faint square upon the ancient straw that littered the earthen floor, and then he stepped forward, peering around the corner of the nearest stall.
John Gunter lay sprawled upon his face, his head pillowed upon one forearm, the back of his shirt covered with a dark, wide stain. Kedrick knelt beside him.
Connie’s uncle had been stabbed in the back. Three powerful blows, from the look of the wounds, had been struck downward—evidently while he sat at a desk or table. He had been dead for several hours.
IX
Alton Burwick, for all his weight, sat his saddle easily and rode well. His horse was a blood bay, tall and long-limbed. He walked it alongside Tom Kedrick’s Appaloosa, and from time to time he spurred it to a trot, then eased down. On this morning Burwick wore an ancient gray felt hat, torn at the flat crown, and a soiled handkerchief that concealed the greasy shirt collar. His shirt bulged over his belt, and he wore one gun, too high on his hip for easy use. His whis kers seemed neither to have grown nor been clipped. They were still a rough stubble of dirty, mixed gray. Yet he seemed unusually genial this morning.
“Great country, Kedrick! Country for a man to live in! If this deal goes through, you should get yourself a ranch. I aim to.”
“Not a bad idea.” Kedrick rode with his right hand dangling. “I was talking about that yesterday, with Connie Duane.”
The smile vanished from Burwick’s face. “You talked to her yesterday? What time?”
“Afternoon.” Kedrick let his voice become casual, yet he was alert to the change in Burwick’s voice. Had Burwick murdered Gunter? Or had it been one of the squatters? With things as they were, it would be difficult or impossible to prove. “We had a long talk. She’s a fine girl.”
Burwick said nothing, but his lips tightened. The red cañon walls lifted high above them, for along here they were nearly five hundred feet above the bottom of Salt Creek. There was but little farther to go, he knew, and he was puzzled by Burwick’s increased watchfulness. The man might suspect treachery, but he had said nothing to imply anything of the kind.
Tom’s mind reverted to Sue’s warning of the previous day—they intended to kill him—but who were “they”? She had not been specific in her warning except to say that he should not keep this rendezvous today. Kedrick turned the idea over in his mind, wondering if she were deliberately trying to prevent a settlement, or if she knew something and was genuinely worried.
Pit Laine, her gun-slinging brother, was one element in the situation he could not estimate. Laine had not been mentioned in any of the discussions and he seemed always just beyond reach, just out of sight, yet definitely in the background as was the mysterious rider of the mouse-colored horse. That whole story seemed fantastic, but Kedrick did not think Sue was inclined to fall for tall stories.
The cañon of Salt Creek widened out and several branch cañons opened into it. They left the creek bed and rode closer together to the towering cliffs, now all of seven hundred feet above the trail. They were heading south, and Burwick, mopping his sweating face from time to time with a dirty handkerchief, was no longer talking. Kedrick pushed back his hat and rolled a smoke. He had never seen Burwick so jittery before, and he was puzzled. Deliberately he had said nothing to any of the company about Gunter, although he had arranged with some of the townspeople to have the body moved. Tom was afraid it might precipitate the very trouble he was trying to end, and bring the fight into open battle. Moreover, he was not at all sure of why Gunter had been killed, or who had done it. That it could be retaliation for Singer’s death was an answer to be considered, but it might have been done by either Keith or Burwick.
He drew up suddenly, for a horse had left recent tracks coming in alone from the northwest. Burwick followed his eyes, studying the tracks. “I’ve seen those tracks before,” Tom Kedrick said. “Now whose horse is that?”
“We better step it up,” Burwick said impatiently. “They’ll be there before us.”
They pushed on into the bright, still morning. The sky overhead was a vast blue dome scattered with fleecy puffballs of clouds, like bolts of cotton on the surface of a lake of pure blue. The red cliffs towered high on their left, and the valley on their right swept away in a vast, gently rolling panorama. Glancing off over this sagebrush-dotted valley, Tom knew that lost in the blue haze, some seven or eight miles away, was Malpais Arroyo and Sue Laine. Was she there this morning? Or was she riding somewhere? She was strangely attractive, that slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl with her lovely skin, soft despite the desert sun and desert wind. She had come to him, riding all that distance to bring him a warning of danger. Why? Was it simply that she feared for him? Was she in love with him? He dismissed that idea instantly, but continued to wonder. She was, despite her beauty, a hard, calculating girl, hating the country around, and wanting only to be free of it.
Heat waves danced out over the bottomland, and shadows gathered under the red wall. A dust devil lifted and danced weirdly across the desert, then lost itself among the thick antelope brush and the catclaw. Tom Kedrick mopped his brow and swung his horse farther east, the tall spire of Chimney Rock lifting in the distance, its heavier shouldered companion looming beside and beyond it.
“Look!” Burwick’s voice held a note of triumph. “There they come!”
To the south, and still three or four miles off, they could see two riders heading toward Chimney Rock. At this distance they could not be distinguished, but their destination was obvious.
“Now that’s fine!” Burwick beamed. “They’ll be here right on time! Say…”—he glanced at his heavy gold watch—“tell you what. You’ll be there a shade before them, so what say you wait for them while I have me a look at a ledge up in the cañon?”
In the shadow of the rock, Kedrick swung down. There was a small pool of water there. He let the Appaloosa drink and ground-hitched him
deeper in the shade, near some grass. Then he walked back and, dropping to the ground, lit a smoke. He could see the two riders nearing now. One was on a fast-stepping chestnut, the other a dappled gray.
They rode up and swung down. The first man was Pete Slagle, the second a stranger who Kedrick had not seen before. “Where’s McLennon?” he asked.
“He’ll be along. He hadn’t come in from the ranch, so I came on with Steelman here. He’s a good man, an’ anything he says goes with all of us. Bob’ll be along later, though, if you have to have his word.”
“Burwick came. He’s over lookin’ at a ledge he saw in the cañon over there.”
The three men bunched and Steelman studied Kedrick. “Dai Reid tells me you’re a good man, trustworthy, he says.”
“I aim to be.” He drew a last drag on his cigarette and lifted his head to snap it out into the sand. For an instant, he stood poised, his face blank, then realization hit him. “Look out!” he yelled. “Hit the dirt!”
His voice was drowned in a roar of guns and something smashed him in the body even as he fell, then something else slugged him atop the head and a vast wave of blackness folded over him, pushing him down, down, down, deeper and deeper into a swirling darkness that closed in tightly around his body, around his throat. And then there was nothing, nothing at all.
Alton Burwick smiled and threw down his cigar. Calmly he swung into the saddle and rode toward the four men who were riding from behind a low parapet of rocks near Chimney Rock. As he rode up, they were standing, rifles in hand, staring toward the cluster of bloody figures sprawled on the ground in the shade. “Got ’em!” Shaw said. His eyes were hard. “That cleans it up, an’ good!”
Fessenden, Clauson, and Poinsett stared at the bodies, saying nothing. Lee Goff walked toward them from his vantage point where he had awaited anyone who might have had a chance to escape. He stooped over the three.
Slagle was literally riddled with bullets, his body smashed and bloody. Off to one side lay Steelman, half the top of his head blown off. Captain Kedrick lay sprawled deeper in the shadow, his head bloody, and a dark stain on his body.
“Want I should finish ’em off for sure?” Poinsett asked.
“Finish what off?” Clauson sneered. “Look at ’em…shot to doll rags.”
“What about Kedrick?” Fessenden asked. “He dead for sure?”
“Deader’n Columbus,” Goff said.
“Hey!” Shaw interrupted. “This ain’t McLennon! This here’s that Joe Steelman!”
They gathered around. “Sure is!” Burwick swore viciously. “Now we’re in trouble! If we don’t get McLennon, we’re….” His voice trailed away as he looked up at Dornie Shaw. The soft brown eyes were bright and boyish.
“Why, boss,” he said softly, dropping his cigarette and rubbing it out with his toe, “I reckon that’s where I come in. Leave McLennon to me. I’ll hunt him down before sun sets tomorrow.”
“Want company?” Poinsett asked.
“Don’t need it,” Shaw said, “but come along. I hear this Bob McLennon used to be a frontier marshal. I never liked marshals no way.”
They drifted to their horses, then moved slowly away. Dornie Shaw, Poinsett, and Goff toward the west and Bob McLennon. Alton Burwick, his eyes thoughtful, rode toward the east and Mustang and the others rode with him. Only Fessenden turned nervously and looked back. “We should have made sure they were dead.”
“Ride back if you want,” Clauson said. “They are dead all right. That Kedrick! I had no use for him. I aimed my shot right for his smart skull.”
Afternoon drew on. The sun lowered, and after the sun came coolness. Somewhere a coyote lifted his howl of anguish to the wide, white moon and the desert lay still and quiet beneath the sky.
In the deeper shadow of towering Chimney Rock and its bulkier neighbor there was no movement. A coyote moved nearer, scented the blood, but with it there was the dreaded man smell. He whined anxiously and drew back, then trotted slowly off, turning only once to look back. The Appaloosa, still ground-hitched, walked along the grass toward the pool, then stopped, nostrils wide at the smell of blood.
Well down behind some rocks and brush, the shooting had only made it lift its head, then return to cropping the thick, green grass that grew in the tiny, sub irrigated area around Chimney Rock. Nothing more moved. The coolness of the night stiffened the bodies of the men who lay sprawled there. Ten miles north Laredo Shad, late for his meeting with Kedrick, limped along the trail, leading a badly lamed horse. Two hours before, the trail along an arroyo bank had given way, and the horse had fallen. The leg was not broken, but was badly injured. Shad swore bitterly and walked on, debating as he had for the past two hours on the advisability of camping for the night. But remembering that Kedrick would be expecting him, he pushed on.
An hour later, still plodding and on blistered feet, he heard horse’s hoofs and drew up, slipping his rifle into his hands. Then the rider materialized from the night, and he drew up, also. For a long minute no word was said, then Shad spoke. “Name yourself, pardner.”
The other rider also held a gun. “Bob McLennon,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Laredo Shad. My horse lamed himself. I’m headed for Chimney Rock. S’posed to meet Kedrick there.” He stared at the rider. “Thought you was to be at the meetin’? What happened?”
“I didn’t make it. Steelman an’ Slagle went. I’m ridin’ up here because they never come in.”
“What?” Shad’s exclamation was sharp. “McLennon, I was right afeared o’ that. My bet is there’s been dirty work. Nevah trusted that there Burwick, not no way.”
McLennon studied the Texan, liking the man, but hesitant. “What’s your brand read, Laredo? You a company man?”
Shad shook his head. “Well, now, it’s like this. I come in here, drawin’ warrior pay to do some gun slingin’, but I’m a right uppity sort of a gent about some things. This here didn’t size up right to me, nor to Kedrick, so we been figurin’ on gettin’ shut of the company. Kedrick only stayed on, hopin’ he could make peace. I stayed along with him.”
“Get up behind me,” McLennon said. “My horse will carry double an’ it ain’t far.”
X
His eyes were open a long time before realization came, and he was lying in a clean, orderly place with which he was totally unfamiliar. For a long time he lay there, searching his memory for clues to tie all this together. He was Captain Tom Kedrick—he had gone west from New Orleans—he had taken on a job—then he remembered. There had been a meeting at Chimney Rock and Steelman had come in place of McLennon, and then he had thrown his cigarette away and had seen those men behind the rocks, seen the sunlight flashing on their rifle barrels actually. He had yelled, and then dropped, but not fast enough. He had been hit in the head, and he had been hit in the body at least once.
How long ago was that? He turned his head and found himself in a square, stone room. One side of the room was native rock, and part of another side. The rest had been built up from loose stones gathered and shaped to fit. Besides the wide bed on which he lay, there was a table and a chair. He turned slightly, and the bed creaked. The door opened, and he looked up into the eyes of Connie Duane!
“Connie?” He was surprised. “Where is this place? What’s happened?”
“You’ve been unconscious for days,” she told him, coming to the bedside. “You have had a bad concussion and you lost a lot of blood before Laredo and Bob McLennon found you.”
“What about the others?”
“Both of them are dead, and by all rights you should have been.”
“But where are we? What is this place?”
“It’s a cliff dwelling, a lonely one, and very ancient. It is high up in the side of the mountain called Thieving Rock. McLennon knew where it was, and he knew that, if word got out that you were alive, they would be out to complete the job at once, so they brought you here, McLennon did, with Shad.”
“Are they still here?”
&nb
sp; “Shad is. He hunts and goes to Yellow Butte for supplies, but he has to be very careful because it begins to look like they are beginning to get suspicious.”
“McLennon?”
“He’s dead, Tom. Dornie Shaw killed him. He went to Mustang to find a doctor for you, and encountered Dornie on the street. Bob was very fast, you know, but Dornie is incredible! He killed Bob before he could get a shot off.”
“How did you get here?”
“Bob McLennon and Shad had talked about it, and also that Uncle John had been killed, so they came to me, and I came out here right away. I knew a little about nursing, but not much. Laredo has been wonderful, Tom, he’s a true friend.”
Kedrick nodded. “Who did the shooting? I thought it was Poinsett.”
“He was one of them. I heard them talking about it but was not sure until later. Poinsett was there, Goff, Fessenden, Clauson, and Shaw.”
“Anything else happened?”
“Too much. They burned Yellow Butte’s saloon and livery stable, and they have driven almost half the people off the land. Their surveyors are on the land now, checking the survey they made previously. A handful of the squatters have drawn back into the mountains somewhere, under Pit Laine and that friend of yours, Dai Reid. They are trying to make a stand there.”
“What about Sue?”
She looked at him quickly. “You liked her, didn’t you? Well, Sue has taken up with Keith. They are together all the time. He’s a big man now. They’ve brought in some more gunmen, and the Mixus boys are still here. Right now Alton Burwick and Loren Keith have this country right under their thumbs. In fact, they even called an election.”
“An election?”
“Yes, and they counted the ballots themselves. Keith was elected mayor, and Fessenden is sheriff. Burwick stayed out of it, of course, and Dornie Shaw wouldn’t take the sheriff’s job.”
“Looks like they’ve got everything their own way, doesn’t it?” he mused. “So they don’t know I’m alive.”
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