Novel 1964 - Kiowa Trail (v5.0) Page 2

  Lonely ranch houses burned, the stock run off, the dead and mutilated bodies left behind in the sun. Each time they had come upon people at work, people expecting no trouble, but from the sound of that gun I had an idea they had failed in another surprise attack.

  There had been nine Indians in the party whose trail I had cut. From the rocks I looked out and saw the flames of a burning house, the rising smoke…and nearer to me I saw the Apaches.

  Near the house one lay sprawled in death, or what seemed to be death. Nearer to me still, one crawled with a broken leg.

  The buffalo gun boomed again, and from the smoke I located the lone fighter…it was a woman!

  And then behind her, the “dead” Apache moved. And when he moved, I fired.

  There was no thought behind the action, no reasoning, no desire to help. The Apache was behind the woman, and he was rising up, knife in hand. My rifle simply came up and I fired.

  He screamed, and threw himself blindly forward, but he was already dead even as he fell near the woman.

  At least two of the nine Apaches were accounted for, which left seven, but my position was a good one. Before firing, I had already, almost automatically, located the positions of most of them. So with the sound of my own shot in my ears I knew I had declared war, and the only way out was victory. Turning swiftly, I fired three times, as rapidly as the gun could be triggered.

  My attack was too sudden for them, too unexpected. My first shot took an Indian between the shoulders; the second splattered sand; the third caught a leaping, running Indian in full stride, and he fell, throwing his rifle out before him.

  An Indian is not under any compulsion to fight to the last man. When the odds are against him, he simply slips away, if it is possible to do so, and waits to fight another day. Three men out of nine were dead, and at least one wounded. The spirits were not with them, so they faded away into the brush, taking with them their dead that they could reach.

  Mounting up, I rode down to meet Kate Lundy for the first time.

  *

  “MAYBE IF I talked to Tom?” Kate suggested suddenly.

  “Kate, the boy’s riding a dream. He’s seen a girl, and at this moment she looks to him like all the girls he’s ever dreamed of. The fact that there’s opposition only makes it seem more right. You can talk if you wish, but it will do no good.”

  After a minute, I added, “And I wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn for him if it did.”

  Taking up my hat, I got to my feet. “Hardeman will be ready to talk business,” I said. “Do you want me there?”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Then I’ll see John Blake.”

  Chapter 2

  *

  TOD MULLOY AND Red Mike were loitering on the edge of the walk near the Emporium. They got up as I came near. Tod was twenty-two, and had been punching cows on Texas range since he was fourteen. He and Tom Lundy rode as saddle partners. Red Mike was a tough hand, a good man with a rope and with any kind of stock. He was also a very good man with a gun…and he didn’t scare.

  “Conn,” Mike asked roughly, “are they going to make trouble for that boy?”

  “I’ll talk to John Blake.”

  “He won’t take any talk. You know how he is, Conn. With him a rule is a rule.”

  “I’ll handle him.”

  “Well,” Mike said, “if anybody can, you can.”

  “Not that way,” I said irritably. “This mustn’t run into gun trouble, so you sit tight.”

  “If you need us,” Mike said, “we’ll be here. And sober.”

  John Blake was in the Bon Ton. When I walked in the door he took his bottle from the bar and reached over for a couple of glasses. Together we walked to a back table and sat down.

  “You sold your beef?”

  “Kate’s talking to Hardeman.”

  Blake filled two glasses. “Conn, do me a favor? When you get your money…pull out.”

  “Kate’s the boss. We move when she says we move.”

  “She’ll listen to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Conn, you’ve got a tough crew. I know some of your boys. I knew them in Abilene and in Ellsworth, and I know when to expect trouble. When a crew like yours isn’t drinking, there’s something wrong. I want to know what it is.”

  “Were you ever in love, John? I mean when you were a kid?”

  He looked startled. Come to think of it, I think it was the only time I ever saw John Blake startled by anything. He was suddenly embarrassed, too.

  “Hell, everybody’s been in love. Or thought he was.”

  “Which amounts to the same thing.”

  John touched his mustache with a finger and studied me, so I put it to him straight, right across the board.

  “John, Tom Lundy’s going north of the street tonight.”

  His face stiffened and his eyes became like marbles. “No,” he said. “I will not permit it.”

  “There are other ways to look, John. You don’t have to see it happen, and there’ll be no trouble.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Hell, if I’d guessed that was what the trouble was, I’d—”

  “Tom Lundy’s Kate’s brother, John. He’s one of the very best. He’s no wild kid. He’s hard-working, he’s serious, and he’s a boy who’s going to do well in the world. Believe me, any girl who wouldn’t be interested in him would be off her head.”

  “Have you ever met Aaron McDonald?”

  “No.”

  “Well…meet him. You’ll see what I mean. He’s a hard man, a rigid man. There’s no give in him anywhere, and there’s only black or white so far as he’s concerned. He’s a witch burner.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “A witch burner. Like those people back in the old days. This is a man who could pass sentence and light the fires himself. Yet in his way he’s a good, solid citizen. He was against hiring me, but he’s pleased because since they hired me there’s been no gun trouble in town, and everybody from the Texas crowd has stayed south of the street.

  “He helped raised money for the church, and before we had a preacher he spoke from the pulpit. He’s a hell and damnation man, and one of his sermons was about Texas men. He’s rabid on the subject…that, and making money.”

  “How does he figure to make money if he doesn’t cater to the cattlemen?”

  “Hell, Conn, where else can the cattlemen go? This is the best shipping point, and McDonald and his crowd know it. And remember this: he isn’t alone. Two-thirds of the town stand right with him. Tallcott, Braley, Carpenter—all that crowd. Tallcott came west with McDonald, and so did Braley. They can muster forty men to stand against you, perhaps more.”

  “There will be no trouble with Tom unless somebody else makes it. He thinks he’s found the girl he’s been dreaming about, and maybe he has.”

  “He hasn’t.”

  Something in his tone made me look right at him. “Care to make that clear?”

  John Blake’s pale, hard face colored a mite. “I’m not one to talk about a woman. Did this boy tell you what she said?”

  “We heard it, Kate and me. She didn’t say to come, she didn’t say not to come.”

  “So, you see.”

  “What?”

  “She’s in the clear.” John Blake shifted in his seat and leaned his thick forearms on the table. “Conn, I’d not want these words repeated, but that girl’s going to get somebody killed. In fact, that may be what she has in mind.”

  “You’re crazy!” I said. It was a foolish idea. I’d seen the girl, and she was as much of a lady as a man would care to see. Nothing flighty about her, and no question about it, she was lovely. Maybe a little cool…but that kind sometimes are the most passionate, sometimes the most affectionate.

  “I’ve seen the girl, John,” I added.

  “Don’t take me wrong. There’s never been a word against her. She doesn’t go riding out with young men and get herself talked about. Why, I can count the times o
n my fingers when she’s even walked down the street with a young man.”

  We were getting nowhere, and Kate might need me to talk to Hardeman—although she never had. Kate was a shrewd business woman, and no nonsense about her. In her own way, Kate could be as tough or as hard as any man. She’d had to be.

  “And that’s just the trouble.”

  “What?”

  “Look, Conn. Here’s a mighty pretty girl. She’s twenty years old, although I don’t think she admits to it. This here is a country where most girls marry at sixteen to eighteen, and believe me, she’s had chances.

  “Like I’ve said, she doesn’t go riding with them, she doesn’t walk out with them. She invites them home. Or lets them believe they were invited.”

  “So?”

  “Then her father sends them away.”

  It made no kind of sense to me, and I said as much. John Blake pushed his hat back on his head, then took it off and put it on the table beside him.

  “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. The point is, I don’t think she wants to get married, and I think she likes to have her father send these men away. And he does. Oh, believe me, he does!”

  Blake paused, and then he said, “Conn, I don’t know whether this makes sense to you or not, but I think she hates men.”

  Right then I began to wish Kate Lundy was here. When it comes to cattle, horses, or men, I can handle them. I know all about them, but I’ve never had much truck with women. Give me a good old fist fight, knuckle-and-skull in the street, and I’ll handle my share. Or I’ll take a herd over a bad trail and bring them through in as good shape as any man.

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Blake tossed off his drink. “Conn, if you’d spent your life dealing with trail-town people the way I’ve done, you’d find a lot of things don’t make sense.

  “You talk to that boy. You tell him about her, and keep him south of the street.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Then I’ll have to stop him myself.”

  There it was…laid right on the line.

  “This isn’t a challenge, John. You can look the other way for once. Just don’t see him. Let the boy get over there and find out for himself, and let him get back. Then we’ll ride out of town and there’ll be an end to it.”

  He looked at me. “You think it is that easy? Break that rule once—just once—and there’s no more rule. I’d be in a shooting every night in the week all during the season. If one man can go over, why can’t they all?”

  We sat there knowing our talk was over and we’d gotten nowhere, yet we were reluctant to get up and walk away, because we both knew that when we did the bars were down and trouble was smoking.

  “John, I’m asking you. Look the other way.”

  “I can’t. And if I could, McDonald wouldn’t. Believe me, Conn, there’s no give to the man. He’s like iron.”

  My mouth was dry and my hands felt awkward and empty on the table before me. The whiskey was there, but I’d no wish for it. Liquor never solved any problem, nor did it make a problem more simple.

  “John, if the kid goes north of the street—”

  He looked at me. Those cold eyes colder still. “If he goes north of the street…what?”

  “I’ll back him, John.”

  For a long minute we looked across the table at each other, and each knew what the moment meant. John Blake was a trail-town marshal whose reputation depended on fearlessness. He was a good man with a gun, but a man who used one sparingly. He never threatened, never swaggered, never laid a hand on a gun unless to draw it, and never drew unless to shoot. And he never shot unless to kill.

  And in the course of fifteen years as a shotgun guard on Wells-Fargo stages and marshal of cow towns, John Blake had killed eleven men. None of them had been drunks or reputation-seeking youngsters. There were other ways of handling them.

  As for myself, John Blake knew enough about me to understand what the decision might mean. There had been a time—although I had never asked for such a reputation—when it was said that I was a faster man than Wes Hardin, and the most dangerous man alive.

  “I shall regret that,” he said simply, and I knew the man well enough to know he meant it.

  “Tom Lundy is the son I’d like to have had,” I said, “although I’m scarcely old enough to be his father.”

  He nodded, acknowledging that it was high praise. After a minute he said, “Can you keep your boys out of it, Conn? I’ve heard talk of men treeing a western town, but you know and I know that it never happened. It never could happen in a town where seventy per cent of the town’s citizens are war veterans, and ninety per cent have fought Indians.

  “Aaron McDonald now—don’t underrate the man. He’s a cold fish, but he’s got nerve, and if he thought I’d need it he would back me with fifty rifles, every man-jack of them a dead shot.”

  He looked at me. “You’ve fifteen men, I think.”

  He was right, of course. If the boys insisted upon backing Tom there would be a slaughter. The town would suffer, but our boys would be shot to doll rags.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The bartender watched me leave, and I could see the worry on the man’s face. He had a family here, and when shooting started there was no telling who might get hurt.

  Out on the street, I stood for a minute in the sunlight. There was only one thing to it, of course. I’d have to pull the crew out of town. We’d have to move the herd.

  Kate was at the hotel when I walked in, and I knew she had heard something. We went to a quiet corner of the big, almost empty lobby and sat down.

  “What did he say?”

  “No give to him, Kate, but I see his point. He doesn’t dare open the door even a crack.” And then I told her what John Blake had said about Linda McDonald.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me, Kate. Why would a girl do a thing like that?”

  Kate was silent, and I waited; for Kate, despite all her surface hardness, was an understanding woman with a lot of savvy where people were concerned.

  “She may hate men…and she may love her father.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Sometimes, often without knowing it, a girl measures all men by her father. She may enjoy seeing him run them off, and to her it may be a way of continually proving her father’s superiority.”

  “Kate, how do we stand with Hardeman?”

  “He’s offered twenty-two dollars a head, but I think he’ll go to twenty-five.”

  “Take it, Kate. Let’s get out of here.”

  She looked at me quickly. “Is it that bad?”

  “I’ve told him I’d back Tom. That means that if Tom goes the other side of the street, I’ll be going with him.”

  “And you’d fight Blake?”

  “It may come to that.”

  She got to her feet. “I’ll see Hardeman.”

  She turned to go, then stopped. “Tom will listen to you, Conn. See him. Tell him how foolish this all is.”

  “All right.”

  *

  AS I WALKED along the street I realized how serious it had become. It was much more than a boy going uptown to see a girl, for there was bad blood remaining from the War Between the States. Nine of my boys had fought in the Confederate Army, and most of the others had relatives who had. All of them but one were from Texas. One man…and myself.

  In a sense, it seemed that I was from Texas, too, for my parents were buried there, and it had been my home longer than anywhere else.

  Along the street, in the saloons, the gambling houses, and the stores, and at the livery stable, were men who had fought with the Union, or had been, as I knew McDonald had been, rabid abolitionists. John Blake himself had been a scout for the Union Army.

  The Texas trail drivers were, for the most part, uninterested in what lay north of the street. In each trail town there was such a division, and it received unspoken acceptance. The cowhands came to town to have a wild time, and a wild ti
me belonged in the saloons and the houses of the Line. Each man understood that, and regarded it as no slight to be kept south of the street.

  John Blake’s rule was a reasonable one, and nobody but an occasional belligerent drunk felt called upon to question it. The case of Tom Lundy was something quite different.

  Tom was the younger brother of the boss, but he was also the younger brother of every man on the outfit, even those close to his own age. He was a gentleman, and had always conducted himself as one. He rode the wildest of bucking horses, he was a top hand with a rope, he worked right along with the hands and drew the same wages, and while filled with a reckless, devil-take-the-hindmost attitude when in the saddle, he was always a gentleman. He didn’t drink, and no man in the outfit would have offered him a drink.

  To deny Tom Lundy the right to go north of the street to call on a girl was a direct insult to every man on the Tumbling B.

  The bitter feelings left over from the war rankled.

  Even in Texas the Davis police force had treated the Texans like second-class citizens, and the resentment burned deep.

  John Blake knew what that meant, and he also knew the men of our crew. Every man of them was a veteran of dozens of minor or major gun battles with Indians or outlaws, or of trail-town squabbles. The town might defeat them, might even wipe them out, but other men would die before that happened.

  *

  GETTING UP INTO the saddle, I rode out toward the herd.

  Tom saw me, and came riding my way. He was over six feet—as tall as I was, in fact, and he weighed only a bit less. Seeing him come toward me, I felt a sharp pang of regret for the son I’d never have. Sure, I was only thirty-five, but there was only one woman I wanted, and she was the one I could not have.

  “Hi, Conn!” He swung his horse alongside mine. “Can’t somebody else take over? I want to go to town.”

  “I can’t let you go, Tom.”

  His face hardened a little. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of John Blake?”

  The minute he said it, he was sorry. I could see it in his eyes, but I felt that old tightness inside of me at the word. It was something you did not say to a gun-carrying man in those days, but I was old enough to carry it off…or was I?