Kilkenny Read online

  Twice he went into the darkness and listened, every sense alert to the sounds of night. And he heard nothing but the wind, the rumble of distant thunder, and the occasional stirring of some small animal. He found grass and rubbed down the gray horse.

  Nita was waiting with coffee when he returned, and they sat beside the fire and sipped the coffee in silence, listening to the faint hiss of the fire as the flame drained the strength from the dry wood.

  Long after she was asleep on the blankets, he sat feeding the flames. Once he thought he heard horses, but after a long time of listening believed he was mistaken. Sometime after that he slept, awakening suddenly in the first light of coming day. He awakened Nita, threw sticks on the fire and went outside. When he looked into the overhang where it had left the gray, two more horses stood beside it!

  Both were saddled, and one was Nita’s mare, Glory. Searching for their tracks, he realized the horses had not been ridden but had found their own way here, evidently following some scent left by his own horse.

  After a quick cup of scalding black coffee, Kilkenny stripped the extra horse of saddlebags, rifle and canteen and took them to his own horse. He had just hung the canteen to the pommel when Nita spoke. “On your left. You’re covered.”

  Kilkenny turned carefully and found himself facing Jess Baker. The cut on the big man’s face was an ugly red scar. He held a .44 Colt and he was grinning.

  “Never figured on no such luck. I was a-trailin’ them horses. Havalik figured we might need ‘em.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Maybe eight mile back.” The big man was vastly pleased. “Means I get to kill you and keep your woman.”

  Kilkenny turned and walked away from Nita. He knew Baker would do just what he said. “Stand still!” Baker yelled.

  Kilkenny halted abruptly. “Why, sure Jess. Look, can’t we talk this over? I mean���” He drew and fired.

  That draw was incredibly, unbelievably fast. Baker had not dreamed any man would attempt a draw when covered at thirty paces. One instant Kilkenny’s voice had been pleading, a salve to the big man’s wounded pride, and the next that hand blurred and flame spouted. Something struck Baker hard in the stomach and he took a step back, his eyes blinking. The gun slid from his fingers and he went to his knees, then simply rolled over and curled up dead.

  All day they pushed on, higher and higher into the stormswept peaks. He had taken the slicker from the spare horse, probably belonging to the man killed when he rushed their camp.

  Rain fell intermittently, washing out any trail. They topped the pass among heavy clouds and Kilkenny had to bend low from the saddle to study the earth. The way dipped down and they entered a forest rich with pine smell and the sound of rushing water. At last Twin Peaks loomed on their right and Kilkenny turned, weaving a pattern among the trees, then skirted a great rock slab and drew rein on a ledge.

  Nita rode up beside him and sat for the first time overlooking the Valley of The Whispering Wind.

  Walled upon two sides and almost upon the third, the valley lay between, a rolling expanse of lush green grass dotted with clumps of trees and bounded by the ridges covered with green forest. Even under the lowering clouds the valley was indescribably lovely.

  “It’s home,” he said, his heart suddenly full. “I call it the Valley of The Whispering Wind.”

  “How did you come to name it?”

  “Wait … you’ll see.”

  A mile further into the valley he drew up and waited. Nita paused beside him.

  A minute passed, and then another, and slowly she became conscious of a nameless stirring, a faint rustling through the grass and leaves. It was a sound not unlike the rushing of a fast train, sometimes heard in big timber, but something fainter, as though from wind singing in the strings of a far-off violin. A whispering wind, a singing wind.

  “Hear it?” he asked gently. “When you hear that sound it means you’re home.”

  On the day of Kilkenny’s arrival in the valley, Dee Havalik returned to Horsehead.

  He was in a savage mood. Kilkenny’s sudden charge from darkness had caught him flat-footed. Despite their pursuit they had found nothing, and only precipitate flight saved them from death under the torrent of water. Returning to confess failure did not sit well with the gunman, nor did he like to think of Kilkenny outsmarting him. Yet rain had washed out all tracks, and the canyons were a maze.

  The street of Horsehead was deserted. Nobody was in the Westwater dining room, and the stove was cold. Havalik walked out on the street with his two remaining men. No horses lined the hitch rails. The Emporium was closed and the shutters were up. Crossing to the Pinenut, Havalik shoved through the swinging doors. A bartender read a week-old newspaper and the saloon was empty. “Where’s everybody?”

  “Hidin’ out. A few holed up across the creek.”

  “Who’s over there?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Maybe Macy can tell you. He’s in his office.”

  The KR, he found, had been taken. Several KR hands had been killed, but it was believed that Kilkenny had somehow saved Cain Brockman.

  The news gave Havalik no pleasure. Already there was an uncertainty among the Forty riders. The strange night attacks were having their effect, and a few of them were wondering if Jared Tetlow had not overreached himself. Yet Tetlow believed the situation in hand.

  Within an hour after Havalik’s arrival in Horsehead, Jared rode into town sided by his two sons, Ben being with the big herd on the trail. They went at once to the Diamond Palace where they joined Havalik. A few minutes later four of the 4T riders appeared on the edge of town and rode along back streets and into the patch of woods that concealed a narrow bridge. Two more drifted into the Pinenut Saloon. Within an hour there were twenty-five men disposed about the town, filtering in so gradually that all remained unaware of any concerted movement.

  All but Harry Lott. Big, unkempt and surly, he prowled continually, and he saw things. Lott had nothing against Tetlow, but Horsehead was, he fancied, his town. His authority was being scorned.

  Kill Havalik, he reasoned, and the backbone of Tetlow’s power would be broken. He was seated at a table in the Pinenut Saloon when he reached this decision. He shoved the bottle away from him and began to think.

  The scattered groups of 4T riders broke up and vanished and the town lay still. Harry Lott went up to his bed and turned in, resting before what was sure to come.

  Dawn broke bright and lovely, but a few clouds hung over the mountains. The first riders in the street were Jared and Andy Tetlow and they rode straight down the street and across the bridge, drawing up before Blaine’s.

  Blaine, accompanied by Leal Macy, appeared on the porch.

  “I want to see that Riordan girl,” Tetlow said abruptly. “I want to make her an offer.”

  “She’s not here, and I’m sure she will consider no suggestion of selling.”

  “I’ll have her word for that!”

  Cain Brockman limped into the doorway. He was wearing two guns. “She won’t be forced into no sale, Tetlow!”

  The older man’s lips tightened with impatience. “No occasion for trouble. I’ll buy her place.”

  “Like you did Carson’s and Carpenter’s?” Macy asked.

  “What happened to them was their own fault.”

  “You’re like a lot of others, Tetlow. You believe anything that is good for you is good for the country. You’re guided entirely by selfish motives.”

  Macy stepped to the edge of the porch. “Now let me tell you something. If you haven’t moved your cattle off the KR range within twenty-four hours, and if you haven’t made restitution to Mrs. Carpenter for damage to her property, I intend to telegraph the Territorial Governor as well as the United States Marshal.”

  Andy Tetlow pushed his horse forward. “Dad, we’re wastin’ time. Let’s burn the place around their ears.”

  Jared Tetlow swung his horse and the two men rode back up the street and across the bridge. Phin sat
his horse near the bridge, and as they passed he rode into the trees and started back.

  Four riders waited in the trees back of the livery stable, and with these around him, Phin circled to the back door of Savory’s. Dismounting, they trooped in through the back door and took stations near the front windows. Savory’s was west of and corner across the street from Dolan’s and Doc Blame’s.

  Six Tetlow riders moved down the main street toward the bridge, and took station in the trees nearby. Dolan and Blaine were now covered from every approach.

  Harry Lott came down the stairs of the Westwater Hotel and stopped in the lobby. He had seen Dee Havalik standing on the boardwalk in front of the Diamond Palace. Lott eased his guns in their holsters and stepped out, closing the door behind him. He was cold sober and ready to make his play. He saw himself as no hero. He was the town marshal and trouble was breaking in his bailiwick and he was going to stop it.

  He walked into the street and faced about. He was a hundred yards from Havalik when he started toward him, and he had covered thirty yards before Andy Tetlow saw him. At some word from Andy, Havalik turned. His face seemed to grow tighter and grayer. “Lott,” he said, “and he wants me.”

  Facing Lott he walked ten paces toward him. “Lookin’ for something, Harry?”

  “Call in your boys, Dee! There’ll be no fighting today. I’m the law!”

  “You were the law.” Havalik shifted his position to put a big plate glass window behind him. The morning sun shone into that window. “Now you’re a dead man.”

  As he spoke he stepped off the walk, still keeping the window behind him. As he stepped down, he drew.

  Harry Lott was fast and game, but he knew with immediate awareness that he was going to die. As his hands grasped the gun butts, the guns of Dee Havalik were coming into line.

  Lott squinted against the glare. He heard the concussion of Havalik’s guns and something struck him a blow in the midsection. There was no pain. His draw completed, his gun lifted and blasted sound. The window behind Havalik crashed, but the gunman took a step nearer and fired again. His third shot crossed Lett’s second. Lott felt himself struck again and his eyes blurred.

  Desperately, he knew he had missed. Havalik’s figure seemed to waver before him, and Lott braced himself, trying to steady his aim.

  Phin Tetlow leaped his horse from behind the barber shop, gun up, ready to chop down with a shot. Lott faced squarely around and shot Phin twice in the stomach, then swung back and took his last shot at Havalik and missed again.

  Still standing, he used the border shift to exchange guns and peered through the blurring haze toward Havalik. “You killed the wrong man!” Havalik yelled. “You crazy?”

  “Couldn’t see you, saw him.” The voice seemed to issue from a great distance. “One rat’s as good as another.”

  Havalik shot again and Lott tottered forward, his gun blasting into the earth. He hit the street on his face, rolled over and tried to get to his feet, shooting as fast as he could trigger his shots. All went wild. One broke a window in the Diamond Palace, one buried in the wall within inches of Jared Tetlow, and then Harry Lott sprawled in the street, his buck teeth biting the dust of Horsehead, his guns empty.

  Shaken by his near escape and the shooting of Phin, Jared Tetlow crossed the street. Phin was dead.

  Suddenly, Tetlow felt old and lost. Four tall sons and now two of them killed. A bad luck country. Two dead and one disloyal. It was like him not to consider that Ben had his own intelligence, his own loyalties. Harry Lott, dying, had struck out. Unable to kill the man he wanted, he chose the next best.

  At Blaine’s the shooting held them still and listening. Yet news passes all boundaries and within a few minutes they knew.

  South of town a rider rode up Butler’s Wash and with a shielded field glass studied the cattle on the KR. A big steer with wide horns was not far from him, and only a few yards away was another. Kilkenny rode from his shelter and hazed the steers back into a cul de sac among the boulders. The grass was rich there and they would stay. He studied the other steers, and sometime later captured another.

  At the Blaine house Shorty stuck his head into the kitchen and grinned at Laurie. “How’s for some coffee?”

  “You’ll have to get wood. The doctor keeps it in that shed near the stable.”

  “Huh!” Shorty was disgusted. “Every time you open your mouth to a woman she puts you to work!”

  He opened the door and a bullet slammed the door jamb within inches of his face. Shorty hit the steps on his belly, then scrambled back into the room. He got to his feet and glanced sheepishly at Laurie. “Looks like I won’t get my coffee,” he said.

  Dee and Macy had been drawn by the shot. “Looks like we’re bottled up;” Shorty told them. “Two of ‘em out in the trees. Maybe more.”

  Dolan came into the kitchen. “From upstairs I could see a rider skirting Comb Ridge, high up. Might have been Kilkenny.”

  “Havalik went after Kilkenny and Nita with four men, and he came back with two … looks like he found them.”

  “Tetlow thought they were here so they must have gotten away,” Laurie said. “I know Kilkenny has a place in the mountains. He bought supplies and a pack horse.”

  “I sold him the horse,” Dolan said. “If anybody could make it, he could. I know the man.”

  Tentatively Blaine tried the door, standing well to the side. Instantly a bullet smashed the wall within inches. Shorty, crouched near an open window, fired three shots as fast as he could lever the rifle. Another shot spattered glass and he ducked flat. “Think I nicked somebody,” he said. “He dropped his rifle.”

  For a few minutes the air was punctured with the staccato bark of guns. Then silence fell. The shooting did no damage in the strongly made house.

  Doc Blaine had stationed himself in his office with Cain Brockman at the other window. Brockman was far from recovered from his injuries but his huge body was amazingly tough and he refused to be coddled.

  Dolan’s place was guarded by his own men, who welcomed the chance for action.

  From the edge of Black Mesa, Kilkenny watched the Forty riders heading toward the KR ranch house and supper. Two riders remained on guard. The cattle moved toward the waterhole, bunching as night drew on. He listened to the distant firing, trying to imagine what was happening. The sound was reassuring. It meant that his friends were holding out. And he knew the caliber of Dolan, Brockman and Blaine.

  As dusk closed around he moved back to the gray horse and began to tighten the cinch. Suddenly he knew he was not alone. He could not have explained how he knew, for there had been no sound.

  He dropped the stirrup into place, and let his eyes search the terrain. His head still lowered, he fooled with the saddle while watching the rocks.

  There was no cover behind him. Yet to move from the side of the horse would leave him in the open and, considering the situation, Kilkenny liked no part of it. Only two places before him offered cover, and one of these was far more likely than the other.

  Turning his horse on a three-quarter angle, he started walking on the oblique toward the rocks, keeping on the far side of the horse. Quite near, he suddenly slapped the gray, vaulted to the saddle and shucked a gun in the same instant. The startled horse leaped past the rocks, and Kilkenny, gun poised, looked into the face of Jaime Brigo.

  Brigo grinned up at him. “I knew it was you, senor, but there might have been someone else near.”

  “You nearly got shot, compadre. Want to help me?”

  “Si.” The Yaqui looked curiously at the now hog-tied steers. “But I do not understand what it is you do.”

  “It’s like this���” Kilkenny explained his plan as briefly as possible.

  “Good!” Jaime said. “We will do it.”

  He caught Kilkenny’s sleeve. “Senor? The senorita? She is safe?”

  “Safe. But let’s get busy. It will soon be time.”

  Chapter 8

  SWEDE CARLSON OF the Forty wa
lked his horse slowly across the range toward the herd. The night had clouded over and the distant rumble of thunder hinted at the possibility of more rain. A hundred yards away he could see the dark outline of Slim’s angular figure slouching in the saddle.

  Slim rode toward him. “I got the creeps!” he said, looking around. “It’s mighty dark, all of a sudden.”

  Swede told him about the killing of Harry Lott and of Phin. “The old man’s turned mighty mean. Losin’ his second boy.”

  “Yeah.” Slim glanced over the herd. They were restless over the imminent storm. “Ben’s coming up the trail with ten thousand head.”

  An electric current seemed to run through the cattle and as if on signal they came suddenly to their feet. One instant the night was still and then the herd was up and running. Horns clashed and somebody shouted vainly. Swede swung his head as he fought his horse around. Rushing down upon the herd was a row of dancing, leaping lights!

  With one mind the herd was gone. Swede caught a glimpse of Slim trying to swing his horse, saw a charging steer hit them broadside and saw Slim and his horse go down under the charging cattle, and then he was fighting blindly, instinctively, for his own life.

  Under him the pony stretched out, running desperately while Swede tried to edge him over and escape from sure death under the pounding hoofs.

  Far behind, Kilkenny drew the gray to a halt. Brigo drew up beside him and they watched the herd go. “They asked for it,” Kilkenny said, “now they’ve got it.”

  Away in the darkness, Swede Carlson finally saw an opening and lunged his horse toward it. They got out of the herd and into the brush. He stopped there, his heart pounding. A steer ran past him, fire still blazing around one horn. Old sacking and grass had been rolled together and tied between the steer’s spreading horns, then set afire. Such a fire would not burn long and would blow or burn itself free before it could harm the cow. The flames had been all that was needed with the skittish herd.

  Slim was dead and there was no telling how many more. It was not going to be a one-sided fight this time, Swede decided. From the town a rifle shot sounded, lost in the vast silence left behind after the rushing hoofs of the cattle. Dismally Swede turned back and began to search for the other riders. Far off, very far off, he could hear the running herd.