The sun was very hot in the bottom and he was sheltered from the breeze. The sweat trickled down his face and down his sides under his arms. He dried his palms on his chaps and rode steadily forward, his eyes roving. To the right he could see several trees and beyond them the roof of the jail. To the left there was only the thick clump of trees that divided the creek bed from the home of Doc Blaine.
When no more than ten yards from the bridge, he heard footsteps of an approaching man, and the slight jingle of spurs. There was nothing for it now but to continue on, and he did so, his hand ready to grab for a gun butt if it became necessary.
The walking man hove into sight and, despite himself, glanced up. It was Leal Macy.
Macy’s face did not change, nor did he pause in his stride until he reached the bridge. Then he stopped and leaned on the rail, looking back the way Kilkenny had come. “Rider coming. Stay under the bridge!” he said.
Kilkenny halted and heard the horses approaching, and then their hoofs on the bridge. They drew up and stopped, and the voice was that of Jared Tetlow!
“Howdy!” Tetlow’s voice was cool. “Seen that Kilkenny? We’re huntin’ him.”
“Taking a lot on yourself, aren’t you?” Macy demanded. “I’m sheriff here.”
“We ain’t askin’ no law’s advice,” Tetlow replied shortly. There was a harshness in his voice that grated, yet there was indifference too. “Keep out of the way an’ you won’t get hurt.”
“Tetlow,” Leal Macy replied quietly, “I am ordering you to withdraw your cattle from the range you have forcibly occupied. If you do not do that, you will be arrested and brought before the courts.”
Tetlow chuckled without humor. “What courts? In this town?” He waved a hand. “I already know your judge is back an’ he favors me. So do most of the folks here.”
Macy ignored him. “I’m preparing charges against you,” he replied, “for manslaughter. I refer to the killings of Carson and Carpenter. You will be arrested, as will all those who participated, and you will be tried in the courts of the land. Withdraw your cattle, pay the damages we will agree upon, and I will allow you to go free on my own initiative. Otherwise, you will be prosecuted.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Tetlow was impatient. “What do you take me for, man? An idiot? What witnesses do you have? Who will testify against me? I had no reason to dislike Carson and Carpenter. Carson made the mistake of trying for a gun while Carpenter got caught in front of a stampede. As for my cattle, why shouldn’t they move on empty range? There’s no one on the KR.”
“There was until you drove them off.”
“Prove it.”
Tetlow had spoken his last word. Clapping spurs to his horse, he rode on across the bridge into the east side of town. Dust from the disturbed planking fell down Kilkenny’s neck. He started to move when another voice interrupted. He recognized the hoarse voice of Harry Lott, thickened now by liquor.
“How long you puttin’ up with this, Macy? You standin’ by while they run the town right out from under you? I thought you was a tough sheriff?”
“I’m waiting, Harry.” Macy’s voice was patient. “I want to avoid a pitched battle if I can. I’ve seen a cow outfit hit a town like this before. I know what happens. I know how the innocent suffer. You’re right, and something should be done, and it’s up to us, but the time is not yet. When I can muster enough support, I’ll arrest Tetlow and Havalik both, and I’ll hold them for trial.”
Harry Lott laughed. “Yeah? Well, you won’t arrest Havalik! I got him figured! He’s their backbone! Git him an’ they’d blow up higher’n them clouds! An’ that’s what I aim to do—
git Havalik!
”
Macy did not reply and Kilkenny heard the drunken marshal’s footsteps as he moved off toward the east side of town.
“Be seein’ you!” Kilkenny said softly, and rode on up the creek. Rounding the bend in the creek bed, he walked his horse faster and when the last buildings were behind he pushed him into a trot.
There was far to go and it was midafternoon. He would never reach the lake now before dark. There was not a chance of it. Not a chance.
N
EAR A LONE waterhole high on Black Mesa, south of the KR ranch house, a big man crouched alone in the darkness, cleaning his rifle. That man was Jaime Brigo.
Hunted like an animal, he had contrived to escape. To the best of his knowledge, all on the ranch had been killed except Nita Riordan and Maria. The former had gone riding in the early dawn and so had missed the attack. Where she was he did not know, but he had infinite respect for her judgment, and she had been mounted on a good horse and had been armed. Further, he was sure he had later seen Kilkenny atop the ridge overlooking the ranch. As for Maria, she was an old woman and would not be harmed. They would need her services to care for the house.
Of Cain Brockman, Ed, and the other three men, he thought only with a dumb pain. He had known these men and worked with them. Ed he had seen go down shooting, trying to stem that awful mass of cattle. One of the other men had been roped and dragged to death by Andy Tetlow. So far as he knew, he alone was left of the KR outfit. He was an educated man, but beneath the knowledge he possessed he was first, last and always an Indian, a Yaqui. He was basically still a savage, and his home and his friends had been attacked. Now he was moving out on his own private war.
He had no horse. He had discarded his boots and made of his saddle bags a pair of crude moccasins. Now he was starting out and he was not thinking of prisoners. He was thinking of death. Huge, powerful and cleanly muscled, he was not disturbed by what lay ahead. In the darkness he moved out, and in the darkness he struck.
Carl Hadley was a tough young Missouri rider of the old Bald Knob breeding. He had killed three men in his time, robbed a bank and rustled a good many cows. The first job he had held had been with the Forty, and he had helped them to take over range before this. He was enjoying the power of the brand he rode for. He was happy to see the herd take over the KR. He had been one of those who looked upon the murder of Carson with satisfaction.
On this night he was riding along a dim trail north of Black Mesa. Ahead of him, a stone fell, then rolled. He rode forward, gun in hand. Above him loomed a boulder, and as he rode past it he had a sensation as of something huge and black dropping upon him. He was wrenched from the saddle and hurled to the ground.
Stunned, he started to stagger to his feet and was struck and knocked rolling. He came up and grabbed for the knife he always carried, but his knife wrist was seized by a big hand that shut down hard and the bones in his wrist crunched under that power and a scream of agony rang from his lips, and then another huge hand seized his throat and there was a brief instant of blind struggling before a darkness washed over him and he went limp and helpless.
Brigo dropped the body of Carl Hadley and walked to the horse. It shied slightly, then hearing the easy voice of the big man, it thrust out a nose at him. Brigo had a way with animals. They understood him and he them. He swung into the saddle and felt the scabbard. There was a rifle here.
Jaime Brigo started toward the KR. Somewhere his hat had been lost. The wind ruffled his straight black hair, his big jaws moved ponderously over the chew of tobacco. Enemies had moved against his beloved employer, the girl he had seen grow from childhood, whose father had meant more to him than any living being. He was counterattacking with all that was in him.
He struck again, later, with that knife, killing one of them and injuring the other. The injured man told a wild and incoherent story. Cowhands of the Forty listened uneasily and avoided each other’s eyes. They were superstitious men, but sometimes things happened, and…two men left the Forty that night. They just rode off.
Phin was found, still bound. He could give no good account of what had happened except that the man who struck him down had been Kilkenny. Jared Tetlow knew men too well not to realize what he must do if he was to keep his hands in line. The time had come to move.
T
HE MOON WAS high before Kilkenny reached the tiny lake. An hour before, Brigo had killed his first man. Fifteen minutes earlier, Phin Tetlow had been found and released. News had not yet come in of the attacks by Brigo.
In town the lines were being harshly drawn. Bob Early with his family had moved across the creek to Doc Blaine’s older but sturdier home, a home moreover that was backed by Dolan’s. Ernleven had deserted his beloved stove and come across the creek bringing with him two finely engraved pistols and a twin-barrel shotgun. He also brought a burlap sack of shotgun shells.
In his saloon, Happy Jack sat staring at the cards he was riffling. Harry Lott had stopped drinking and was staring sullenly up the street. Aside from Macy, he had been king in this town. He was so no longer. He wore both guns and he was thinking of his own express gun upstairs in his room.
The streets were empty and still. Few men loitered around the bars and as the evening drew on, these grew fewer. Somehow the news that Kilkenny had been in town filtered through and was whispered around the bars and tables. Dee Havalik rode through in the afternoon accompanied by several men, but he had taken the road west and had not stopped in the streets.
Doc Blaine went with Dolan and Shorty to pick up Cain Brockman. They found him conscious and wary, and they got safely back to town. All he could tell them was that Nita had been away from the ranch when the Forty struck, and that he thought Brigo had escaped. He remembered Kilkenny coming for him, remembered his fight with Phin, and the beginning of the ride on the horse. He had passed out and recalled little else. He had awakened in darkness under the willows and found the gun and canteen. The rest he surmised and waited.
Elsewhere in the town people talked and there was much disputing about the rights and wrongs of the fight. And very little about the impending result. Agreement was unanimous that Forty could not lose. As the night drew on, the east side of town waited, breathless. On the west side, the people in Doc Blaine’s house went to sleep with their clothing on, ready to rise at a moment’s notice.
Shorty was on watch in the trees alongside the bridge. Pete was watching westward from Dolan’s roof.
K
ILKENNY APPROACHED THE lake carefully, but found no campfire, no one. Carefully he searched the place from a wide circle, but saw no hint that anyone was there. Twice he risked being shot to call out, but there was neither a shot nor a reply.
Daylight broke under lowering skies, and in the first light, Lance made a hasty search. He was tired and stiff from sleeping on the ground. It looked like rain and he had no slicker, but then, on the far side of the lake he found the kicked-out remains of a campfire. And he found where a horse had been picketed. Searching around, he found a place where a struggle had taken place, and then where Nita had walked away with three men. One of those men had very small feet.
Backtracking, he found their tracks. Four riders had come here, and three had dismounted and approached Nita’s camp while one remained with the horses.
Kilkenny paused and lighted a cigarette, carefully shielding the glow of the match. The logical place for them to have awaited him was right here. They might have ambushed him here when he came to meet Nita. However, Havalik was no fool, and having lived as a hunted man himself, he would guess that any camp Kilkenny approached would be approached too warily. Moreover, they had several times lost his trail before this and knew he was a skilled frontiersman, adept at woodcraft and with all the tricks of the trail.
So they had taken Nita and gone. To return to Tetlow? That was their best bet, but would that be the bet Havalik would make? He would be thinking more of Kilkenny and killing him than of anything else. And he had no doubt those small boot-tracks belonged to the gunman.
Mounting the gray, Kilkenny turned to trailing the party. The trail led east into the worst of the mountains, toward his own cabin and the Valley of Whispering Wind!
Dolan had not been mistaken about the gray, for the horse had a willingness for the trail equaled only by Kilkenny’s own buckskin. The tracks led plainly off toward the east and after crossing the plateau, dipped into a narrow gap between gigantic cliffs. Here the sand was hard-packed and the hoof scars were plain as print. Kilkenny gave some time to studying each hoof print, knowing that upon his memory of their characteristics might depend success or failure.
Kilkenny looked at the sky. He had left his slicker under Cain’s head and had no protection against the rain. He rode on, and the trail became increasingly bad. He was not worried about Nita, for she had been born to the saddle, nor much worried about these men as long as Havalik was along, for the gunman was not eager after women. He was a man who lived to kill, and Kilkenny doubted that he even thought of Nita as anything but a pawn in the game. That might not be true of the others, but in the West few men would risk bothering a woman. It was the one thing the frontier would not accept.
A few spattering drops of rain fell, and Kilkenny dug into his bedroll and got out his ground sheets and wrapped it about him as best he could. It was cumbersome and did not help around his neck, for it kept slipping down. It did, however, keep off the worst of the rain, and it was now raining hard.
He hurried the gray, lifting the horse to a canter. If the rain continued the tracks would be washed out.
And within a half dozen miles, they were.
But not before they had told their story to Kilkenny. Havalik was hunting a place where there was shelter from the wind and rain. It showed in every deviation of the trail. He was hunting such a place, and he would not go much further. The rain eased a little, and lowering black clouds crowded down around the mountains, drifting in gray tendrils through the passes and between the cliff tops. The wind stirred and on the breath of the wind came a faint smell of woodsmoke!
It was late evening now, for the trail had been long. Kilkenny stripped off his ground sheet and rolled it, returning it to the place behind the saddle, and then he slipped into a worn buckskin jacket, but one that left his gun butts free. His mind was utterly cold, his eyes like those of a searching hawk. He walked his horse, keeping to the sand or soft earth, careful to strike no stone.