Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) Page 4

  “You talk mighty big for a loose-footed cowhand,” Bonham said, smiling coldly. “We might decide not to let you leave here at all.”

  Lance turned his head slowly at the direct challenge and for a long minute he said nothing, letting his chill green eyes burn into the Easterner. “I don’t know what your stake is in this, Bonham,” he said evenly, “but when I want to leave here, I’m goin’ to. I’ll leave under my own power, and, if I have to walk over somebody in gettin’ out, I could start with you.”

  “Better leave him alone, Bonham,” a new voice interrupted. “He means what he says.”

  They all looked up, startled. Rusty Gates stood in the doorway, a sardonic smile on his hard red face.

  “I was ridin’ by,” he explained, “and thought I’d rustle some coffee. But take a friendly tip.”

  Bonham laughed harshly. “I…”

  “Better shut up, New York man,” Gates said. “There’s been enough killin’ tonight. You keep talkin’, you’re goin’ to say the wrong thing.” Rusty smiled suddenly, and glanced at Lance, his eyes twinkling. “Y’see”—he lighted his smoke—“I’ve heard Lance Kilkenny was right touchy about what folks said of him.”

  Chapter V

  The name dropped into the room like a bombshell. Tana’s hands went to her throat, and her eyes widened. Webb Steele dropped his big hands to the table and his chair legs slammed down. Jim Weston backed up a little, his tongue wetting his lips.

  It was Bonham, the man from New York, who Lance Kilkenny was watching, and in Bonham’s eyes he saw a sudden blaze of white, killing rage. The man’s lips drew back in a thin line. If ever lust to kill was in a man’s face, it was in Victor Bonham’s then. An instant only, and then it was gone so suddenly that Kilkenny wondered if it had not been a hallucination.

  “Did you say…Kilkenny?” Webb Steele demanded. “The gunfighter?”

  “That’s right.” Lance’s voice seemed to have changed suddenly. “My name is Lance Kilkenny. Mort Davis was in trouble, so I came to help him.” He glanced up at Webb. “I don’t want trouble, if I can avoid it, but they tried to burn out Mort and wipe him out.”

  “What happened?” Bonham demanded.

  “Four men died,” Lance said quietly. “They were not men anybody ever saw ridin’ with Steele or Lord.” He smiled a little. “Mort’s still around, and still able.”

  Bonham was staring at him. “Yes, I seem to recall something about a man named Kilkenny being nursed by Davis, after a fight.”

  Lance got up. “Think it over, Mister Steele. I’m not ridin’ for war. I never asked for trouble with any man. But Mort’s my friend. Even with two old prairie wolves like you and Chet Lord there can be peace. You two should get together with Mort. You’d probably like each other.”

  Kilkenny stepped backward out of the door and went down the steps to the buckskin. Tana Steele stood there beside the horse. He had seen her slip from the room an instant before he left.

  “So,” she said, scorn in her voice, “you’re a gunman. I might have known it. A man who shoots down other men, less skilled than he, then holds himself up as a dangerous man.”

  “Ma’am,” Kilkenny said quietly, taking the bridle, “I’ve killed men. Most of ’em needed it, all of ’em asked for it. What you say doesn’t help any, or make it worse.” He swung into the saddle. “Ma’am,” he added softly, “you’re shore pretty in the moonlight…where a body can’t see the meanness in you. You’ve either got an awful streak somewhere to make you come out here and say somethin’ unpleasant, or else”—he grinned impudently—“you’re fallin’ in love with me.”

  Tana started back angrily. “In love with you? Why…why, you conceited, contemptible…”

  But the buckskin swung around and Lance dropped an arm about her waist and swung her from the ground. He was laughing, and then he kissed her. He held her and kissed her until her lips responded almost in spite of themselves. Then he put her down and swung out of the ranch yard at a gallop, lifting his voice in song.

  Old Joe Clark has got a cow

  She was muley born.

  It takes a jaybird forty-eight hours

  To fly from horn to horn.

  Tana Steele, shaking with anger or some other emotion less easily understood, stood staring after him. She was still staring when his voice died away in the distance.

  Then she heard another horse start up, and watched it gallop down the trail after Lance Kilkenny.

  It was several minutes before the rider caught up with Kilkenny, and found him, gun in hand, facing downtrail from the shadows at the edge. It was Rusty Gates. “What do you want?” Kilkenny demanded.

  Rusty leaned forward and patted his black on the neck.

  “Why, I reckon I want to ride along with you, Kilkenny. I hear you’re a straight shooter, and I guess you’re the only hombre I ever met up with could get into more trouble than me. If you can use a man to side you, I’d shore admire to ride along. I got an idea,” he added, “that in days to come you can use some help.”

  “Let’s ride, Rusty,” Kilkenny said quietly. “It’s getting late…”

  When Lance Kilkenny rolled out of his blankets in the early dawn, he glanced over at Gates. The redhead was still snoring. Kilkenny grinned, then shook his boots carefully to clear out any wandering tarantulas or scorpions that might have holed up for the night. Grimly he contemplated a hole in his sock. No time for that now. He pulled the sock down to cover the exposed toe, and slid the boot on. Then he got up. Carefully he checked his guns.

  He moved quietly out of camp. For ten minutes he made a painstaking search of the area. When he returned to camp, he saddled his horse and rode quietly away. He was back, and had bacon frying when Rusty awakened and sat up.

  They had camped on a cedar-covered mountainside with a wide view of Lost Creek Valley. From the ridge above they could see away into the purple distance of the mountains of Mexico. The air was brisk and cool with morning.

  Coffee was bubbling in the pot when Rusty walked over.

  “You get around, pardner,” he said. “Shore, I slept like a log. Hey!” He looked startled and pleased. “You got bacon!”

  “Got it last night from that Mexican where we got the frijoles. He’s got him a half dozen hogs.”

  Rusty shook himself, and grinned. Then he looked up, suddenly serious.

  “Ever see this hombre Bonham before?” he asked.

  “No.” Kilkenny glanced sideward at Gates. “Know him?”

  “No. He ain’t from around here.”

  “I wonder.”

  “You wonder? Why? They said he was from New York. He looks like a pilgrim.”

  “Yeah, he does.” Lance poured coffee into two cups. “But he knew about Mort carin’ for me after the fight with the Webers.”

  “Heard it around probably. I heard that myself.” Rusty grinned. “You’re too suspicious.”

  “I’m still alive.” Lance Kilkenny grinned wryly.

  Rusty nodded. “You got something there. Don’t pay to miss no bets. Who you think Bonham is?”

  Lance shrugged. “No idea.”

  “You had an idea last night. You said this fightin’ wasn’t all Lord an’ Steele.”

  “You think it is?” asked Kilkenny.

  Rusty shook his head. “No. Can’t be. But who?”

  “You been here longer than I have. How does she stack up to you? Who stands to gain but Steele and Lord? Who stands to gain if they both get gunned out or crippled?”

  “Nobody. Them two have got it all, everywheres around here. Except for Mort, of course, but Mort ain’t grabby. He wants his chunk of Lost Creek Valley, that’s all.”

  “Rusty, you ever see a map of this country?”

  “Map? Shucks, no! Don’t reckon there is one. Who’d want a map?”

  “Maps are handy things,” Kilkenny said, sipping his coffee. “Sometimes a country looks a sight different on a map than you think it does. Sometimes, when you get a bird’s eye view of things, you get
a lot of ideas. Look here.”

  Drawing with his finger in the sand, Lance Kilkenny drew a roughly shaped V showing the low mountains and hills that girded the Live Oak country. Off to one side he drew in Lost Creek Valley.

  “Right here, where it opens on the main valley,” he said, “is where Lord and Steele’s fence lines come together.”

  “That’s right, plumb right,” Rusty agreed. “That’s what all the fuss is about. Who gets the valley?”

  “But notice,” Lance said, “this V-shaped valley that is half Steele’s and half Lord’s runs from the point of the V up to the wide cattle ranges of Texas. And up there are other cow outfits, bigger than even Lord’s and Steele’s. Fine stock, too. I come down through there a while back and rode over some fine range. Lots of whiteface bulls brought in up there. The stock is bein’ improved. In a few years this is goin’ to be one of the greatest stock-raisin’ countries in the world. The fences won’t make much difference at first except to limit the size of the roundups. There won’t be no more four county roundups, but the stock will all improve, more beef per steer, and a bigger demand for it. The small ranchers can’t afford to get good bulls. They’ll cut fences here and there, as much to let bulls in with their old stock as anything. But that’s only part of it. Look at all these broad miles of range. They’ll be covered with fat stock, thousands upon thousands of head. It’ll be fat stock, good grass, and plenty of water. They’ll shift the herds and feed the range off little by little. You’ve punched cows long enough to have rustled a few head. Huh, we all have now and again. Just think now, all this is stock country up here above the V. Now foller my finger.” He drew a trail in the dust down through the point of the V into the country below. “See?” he asked.

  Rusty furrowed his brow and spoke thoughtfully. “You mean somebody could rustle that stock into Mexico? Shore, but they’d have to drive rustled cows across the Steele and the Lord spreads, and…” His eyes narrowed suddenly. “Say, pardner, I get it. You mean, if Lord and Steele was both out of it, whoever controlled that V could do as he danged well pleased down there. Right?”

  Kilkenny nodded. “What’s this place at the point of the V?”

  “That’s Apple Cañon. It’s the key to the whole country, ain’t it? And it’s a hangout for outlaws!”

  “Shore, Apple Cañon. The Live Oak country is like a big funnel that will pour rustled stock down into Mexico, and whoever controls the Live Oak and Apple Cañon controls rustlin’ in all this section of Texas!”

  “Well, I’ll be durned!” Rusty spat into the dust. “And that’s where Nita Riordan lives!”

  Kilkenny got up. “That’s right, Rusty. Right as rain, and we’re ridin’ to have a little talk with Nita. We’re ridin’ now.”

  Llano Trail lifted up over the low hills from the Live Oak country and headed down again through Forgotten Pass, winding leisurely across the cactus-studded desert where only the coyotes prowled and rattlesnakes huddled in the shade of boulders, and the chaparral cock ran along the dim trails. Ahead of the two horsemen, lost like motes in a beam in all the vast emptiness of the desert, could be seen the great, ragged rocks of the mountains. Not mountains of great height, but huge, upthrust masses of rock, weirdly shaped as though wrought by some insane god.

  It was a country almost without water, yet a country where a knowing man might live, for barrel cactus, the desert reservoir, grew there. One might cut a hole in the cactus and during the night or in a matter of an hour or so considerable liquid, cool and fresh, would gather. Always sufficient for life.

  The buckskin ambled easily, accustomed to long trails, and accustomed to having his head in pacing over the great distances. His was a long-stepping, untiring walk that ate up the miles.

  The sun lifted from behind a morning cloud, and started climbing toward noon. Buzzards wheeled lazily, their far-seeing eyes searching the desert in an endless quest for food.

  Slouching in his saddle, his hard face burned almost as red as his hair, Rusty Gates watched the rider ahead of him. It was easy to admire a fighting man, he thought. Always a fighter himself, Rusty fought because it was easy for him, because it was natural. He had punched cows, ridden the cattle trails north. He had, one time and another, tried everything, been everywhere a man could go on a horse. Usually he rode alone. But slowly and surely down the years he began picking up lore on Lance Kilkenny. He had it at his fingertips now.

  Chapter VI

  Everyone, Rusty Gates thought, knew about Hickok; everyone knew about John Wesley Hardin, and about Ben Thompson and his partner, Phil Coe. Not many knew about Kilkenny. He was a man who always moved on. He stayed nowhere long enough to build a solid reputation. Always it seemed, he had just gone. There was something so elusive about him, he had come to seem almost a phantom. Someone picked trouble with him, someone was killed, and Kilkenny was gone. Once they tried to rob him in a gambling den in Abilene. Two men had died. Apaches had cornered him in a ruined house in New Mexico, and, when the Apaches had drawn off, they had left seven dead behind them. In a hand-to-hand fight in Trail City he had whipped three men with fists and chairs. Then, when morning came, he was gone.

  The stories of the number of men he had killed varied. Some said he had killed eighteen men, not counting Indians and Mexicans. The cattle buyer back in Dodge, who had made a study of such things, said he had killed not less than twenty-nine. Of this Kilkenny said nothing, and no man could find him to put the question.

  “You know,” Rusty said suddenly, breaking in on his own thoughts of Kilkenny, “the Brockmans hang out in Apple Cañon.”

  “Yeah.” Kilkenny sat sideward in the saddle, to rest. “I know. We might run into ’em.”

  “Well,” Rusty said, and he rolled the chew of tobacco in his jaws and spat, “there’s better places to meet ’em than Apple Cañon. There’ll be fifty men there, mebbe a hundred, and all friends of the Brockmans.”

  Kilkenny nodded and rolled a smoke. Then he grinned whimsically. “What you worried about?” he asked. “You got fifty rounds, ain’t you?”

  “Fifty rounds?” Gates exclaimed. “Shore, but shucks, man, I miss once in a while.” He looked at Kilkenny speculatively. “You seen the Brockmans? They’ll weigh about forty pounds more’n you, and you must weigh two hundred. I seen Cain Brockman shoot a crow on the wing!”

  “Did the crow have a gun?” drawled Kilkenny.

  That, decided Rusty, was a good question. It was one thing to shoot at a target even such a fleeting one as a bird on the wing. It was quite something else when you had to shoot at a man with a flaming gun in his fist. Yes, it made a sight of difference.

  “By the way”—Kilkenny turned back in his saddle—“I want the Brockmans myself.”

  “Both of ’em?” Rusty was incredulous. “Listen, I…”

  “Both of ’em,” Kilkenny said positively. “You keep the sidewinders off my back.”

  Rusty glanced up and saw a distant horseman coming toward them at an easy lope. He was still some distance away.

  “Somebody comin’,” he told Kilkenny. “One man.”

  “It’s Steve Lord,” Kilkenny said. “I picked him up a couple of miles back.”

  “Don’t tell me you can see his face from here!” Rusty protested. “Why I can barely see it’s a man!”

  “Uhn-huh.” Kilkenny grinned. “Look close. See the sunlight glintin’ on that sombrero? Steve has a hatband made of polished silver disks. Not common.”

  Rusty spat. Easy enough when you figure it out, he thought, but not many would think of it. Now that it was mentioned he recalled that hatband. He had seen it so many times it no longer made an impression.

  Suddenly he asked Kilkenny: “About that Mendoza deal. I was in Sonora after you killed him. I heard he was the fastest man in the world with a gun, then you beat him to it. Did you get the jump or was you just naturally faster?”

  Kilkenny shrugged. “Didn’t amount to much. He beat me to the draw, though.”

  “I didn’t think any
body ever beat you,” observed Rusty.

  “He did. Mebbe he saw me a split second sooner. Fact, I think he did.”

  “How come he didn’t kill you?” Rusty glanced at him curiously.

  “He made a mistake.” Kilkenny wiped sweat from Buck’s neck. “He missed his first shot. Never,” he added dryly, “miss the first one. You may not get another.”

  Steve Lord came up at a gallop and reined in sharply. “You!” he said, as he glanced sharply from one to the other. “Didn’t know you was interested down thisaway.”

  “Takin’ a look at Apple Cañon,” Rusty said. He grinned widely. “I’m a-goin’ to interduce Kilkenny to Nita.”

  “I heard you was Kilkenny,” Steve said, and looked at him curiously. “I’ve talked to five men before who claimed to know you. Each gave a different description.”

  “Steve,” Lance said, “this fight ain’t goin’ to do you or your old man any good. I had a talk with Webb Steele. I think we need a meetin’ between your dad, Webb Steele, and Mort Davis to iron this trouble out.”

  “Mort Davis?” Steve exploded. “Why, Dad’s threatened to shoot him on sight. They’d never dare get in the same room.”