the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (37 page)

It was a quiet room, utterly different from the garish display of the gambling hall behind him. It was a room to live in, the room of one who loved comfort and peace. On a ledge by the window were several potted plants; on the table lay an open book. These things he absorbed rather than observed, for all his attention was centered upon Nita Riordan.

She stood across the table, taller than most women, with a slender yet voluptuous body that made a pulse pound in his throat. She was dressed for evening, an evening walking among the tables of the gambling room, and she was wearing a black and spangled gown, utterly different from the room in which she stood.

Her eyes were wide now, her full lips parted a little, and as he stopped across the table he could see the lift of her bosom as she took a deep breath.

"Nita!" he said softly. "You've not changed. You're the same."

"I'm older, Lance," she said softly, "more than a year older."

"Has it been only a year? It seems so much longer." He looked at her thoughtfully. "And you are lovely, as always. I think you could never be anything but lovely and desirable."

"And yet," she reminded him, "when you could have had me, you rode away. Lance, do you live all alone in that cabin of yours? Without anyone?"

He nodded. "Except for memories. Except for the thinking I do. And the thinking only makes it worse, for whenever I think of you, and all that could be, I remember the Brockmans, Bert Polti, and all those others back down the trail. Then I start wondering how long it will be before I fall in the dust myself."

"That's why I sent for you," Nita told him. Her eyes were serious and worried. She came around the table and took his hands. "Lance, you've got to go. Leave here, now! I can hold your place for you, if that's what you want. If that doesn't matter, say so and I'll go with you.

I'll go with you anywhere, but we must leave here."

"Why?" It was like him to be direct. She looked up into his dark, unsmiling face. "Why, Nita? Why do you want me to go?"

"Because they are going to kill you!" she exclaimed. She caught his arm. "Lance, they are cruel, ruthless, vicious. It isn't King Bill. He's their leader, but what he does he believes to be right. It's Cub.

"He loves to kill. I've seen him. Last week he killed a boy in the street in front of my place. He shot him down and then emptied his gun into him with slow, methodical shots. He's a fiend!"

Lance shook his head. "I'll stay, no matter."

"But listen, Lance!" she protested. "I've heard them talking here. They are sure you'll fight. I don't know why they think so, but they do. They've decided you must die, and soon. They won't give you a chance. I know that."

"I can't, Nita. These people in the high meadows are my friends. They depend upon me to stand by them. I won't be the first to break and run, or the last. I'm staying. I'm going to fight it out here, Nita, and we'll see who is to win, the people or a man of power and greed."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Nita looked at him seriously. "Hale is out to win, Lance. He's got men. They don't know you're Lance Kilkenny. I've heard them talking, and they do suspect that you're something more than a nester named Trent. But Hale is sure he is right, and he'll fight to the end."

Trent nodded. "I know. When a man thinks he is right, he will fight all the harder. Has anybody tried to talk to him?"

"You can't. You can't even address him. He lives in a world of his own. In his way. I think he is a little insane, Lance, but he does have ability, and he has strength. He's a fighter, too."

Trent studied her thoughtfully. "You seem to know him. Has he made you any trouble?"

"Why do you ask that?" Nita asked quickly.

"I want to know."

"He wants to marry me. Lance."

Trent tightened and then stared at her. "I see," he said slowly. "And you?"

"I don't know." She hesitated, looking away. "Lance, can't you see? I'm lonely. Dreadfully, frighteningly lonely. I have no life here, just a business. I know no women but those of the dance hall. I see no one who feels as I do, thinks as I do.

"King Bill is strong. He knows how to appeal to a woman. He has a lot to offer. He has a son as old as I, but he's only forty, and he's a powerful man, Lance. A man a woman could be proud of. I don't like what he's doing, but he does think he's right.

"No," she said finally, "I won't marry him. I'll admit, I've been tempted. He's a little insane, I think. Drunk with power. He got too much and got it too easily, and he believes he is better than other men because he has succeeded.

But whatever you do, Lance, don't underrate him. He's a fighter."

"You mean he'll have his men fight?" Trent asked.

"No. I mean he is a fighter. By any method. With his fists, if he has to. He told me once in such a flat, ordinary voice that it startled me that he could whip any man he ever saw with his hands."

"I see."

"Shaw, his foreman, tells a story about King Bill beating a man to death in El Paso. He killed another one with his fists on the ranch."

"I've got to see him today. I've got to convince him that we must be left alone."

"He won't talk to you, Lance." Nita looked at him with grave, troubled eyes. "I know him. He'll just turn you over to his cowhands, and they'll beat you up or kill you."

"He'll talk to me."

"Don't go down there, Lance. Please don't."

"Has he ever made any trouble for you?"

"No." She shook her head. "So far, he has listened to me and has talked very quietly and very well. No one has made any trouble yet, but largely because they know he is interested in me. Some men tried to hold me up one night, but Jaime took care of that. He killed them both, and that started some talk. But if King Bill decides he wants this place-or me- he'll stop at nothing."

"Well,"-he turned-"I've got to see him, Nita. I've got to make one attempt to stop this before anyone else is killed."

"And if you fail-?"

He hesitated, and his shoulders drooped. Then he looked up, and he smiled slowly. "If I fail, Nita, I'll buckle on my guns, and they won't have to wait for war. I'll bring it to Cedar myself!"

He stopped in the outer room and watched Price Dixon dealing cards, but his mind wasn't on the game. He was thinking of King Bill.

Hale was a man who fought to win. In this little corner of the West, there was no law but that of the gun. Actually, there were but two trails in and out of Cedar Valley. What news left the valley would depend on Hale. The echoes of the war to come need never be heard beyond these hills.

Only one trail led into Cedar Bluff, and one led out. Most of the traffic went in and out on the same route. The other trail, the little-used route to Blazer, was rough and bad. Yet in Blazer, too, Hale owned the livery stable, and he had his spies there as all around.

Hale himself lived in the Castle, two miles from Cedar. He rode into town once each day and stopped in at the Mecca for a drink and again at the Crystal Palace. Then he rode out of town. He went nowhere without his gunmen around him. Thinking of that, Trent decided on the Mecca. There would be trouble unless everything happened just right. He didn't want the trouble close to Nita.

He knew what Nita meant when she said she was lonely. There had never been a time when he hadn't been lonely. He had been born on the frontier in Dakota, but his father had been killed in a gun battle, and he had gone to live with an uncle in New York, and later in Virginia.

Trent walked out on the street. It was late now, and the sun was already gone. It would soon be dark. He walked down to the buckskin and led him to a watering trough. Then he gave him a bundle of hay and left him tied at the hitching rail.

There were few people around. Dan Cooper had left the store and was sitting on the steps in front now. He watched Trent thoughtfully. Finally, he got up and walked slowly down the walk. He stopped near the buckskin.

"If I was you, Trent," he said slowly, "I'd get on that horse an' hit the trail. You ain't among friends."

"Thanks." Trent looked at Cooper. "I think that's friendly, Cooper. But I've got business. I don't want a war in Cedar Bluff, Cooper. I want to make one more stab at stopping it."

"An' if you don't?" Cooper studied him quizzically.

"If I don't?" Trent stepped up on the boardwalk. "Well, I'll tell you like I've told others. If I don't, I'm going to buckle on my guns and come to town."

Dan Cooper began to roll a cigarette. "You sound all-fired sure of yourself. Who are you?"

"Like I said, old son, I'm a nester, name of Trent."

He turned and strolled down the walk toward the Mecca, and even as he walked, he saw a small cavalcade of horsemen come up the road from the Castle. Four men, and the big man on the bay would be King Bill Hale.

Hale got down, and strode through the doors. Cub followed. Ravitz tied King Bill's horse, and Dunn stood for a moment, staring at Trent, whom he could not quite make out in the gathering gloom. Then he and Ravitz walked inside.

Chapter
V

May the Best Man Win

Walking up, Trent pushed open the swinging doors. He stopped for an instant inside the door. The place was jammed with Hale cowhands. At the bar, King Bill was standing, his back to the room.

He was big-no taller than Trent, and perhaps an inch shorter than Trent's six-one, but much heavier. He was broad and powerful, with thick shoulders and a massive chest. His head was a block set upon the thick column of a muscular neck. The man's jaw was broad, his face brown and hard. He was a bull. Looking at him, Trent could guess that the stories of his killing men with his fists were only the truth.

Beside him, in white buckskin, was the slender, catlike Cub Hale. And on either side of the two stood the gunmen Dunn and Ravitz.

Trent walked slowly to the bar and ordered a drink. Dunn, hearing his voice, turned his head slowly. As his eyes met Trent's, the glass slipped from his fingers and crashed on the bar, scattering rye whiskey.

"Seem nervous, Dunn," Trent said quietly. "Let me buy you a drink."

"I'll be hanged if I will!" Dunn shouted. "What do you want here?"

Trent smiled. All the room was listening, and he knew that many of the townspeople, some of whom might still be on the fence, were present.

"Why, I just thought I'd ride down an' have a talk with King Bill," he said quietly. "It seems there's a lot of war talk, an' somebody killed a harmless nester the other day. It seemed like a man like King Bill Hale wouldn't want such things goin' on."

"Get out!" Dunn's hand hovered above a gun. "Get out or be carried out!"

"No use you makin' motions toward that gun," Trent said quietly. "I'm not heeled. Look for yourself. I'm makin' peace talk, an' I'm talkin' to King Bill."

"I said-get out!" Dunn shouted.

Trent stood with his hands on his hips, smiling. Suddenly, Dunn's hand streaked for his gun, and instantly, Trent moved.

One hand dropped to Dunn's gun wrist, while his right whipped up in a short, wicked arc and exploded on Dunn's chin. The gunman sagged, and Trent released his gunhand and shoved him from him so hard he fell headlong into a table. The table crashed over, and among the scattered cards and chips, Bing Dunn lay, out cold.

In the silence that followed, Trent stepped quickly up to King Bill.

"Hale," he said abruptly, "some of your men killed Dick Moffitt, shot him down in cold blood and then burned him out. Those same men warned me to move out. I thought I'd come to you. I've heard you're a fair man."

King Bill did not move. He held his glass in his fingers and stared thoughtfully into the mirror back of the bar, giving no indication that he heard. Cub Hale moved out from the bar, his head thrust forward, his eyes eager.

"Hale," Trent said sharply, "this is between you an' me. Call off your dogs! I'm talkin' to you, not anybody else. We want peace, but if we have to fight to keep our land, we'll fight! If we fight, we'll win. You're buckin' the United States government now."

Cub had stepped out, and now his hps curled back in a wolfish snarl as his hand hovered over his gun.

"What's the matter, Hale?" Trent persisted. "Making a hired killer of your son because you're afraid to talk?"

Hale turned deliberately. "Cub, get back. I'll handle this!"

Cub hesitated, his eyes alive with eagerness and disappointment.

"I said," Hale repeated, "to get back."

He turned. "As for you, you squatted on my land. Now you're gettin' off, all of you. If you don't get off, some of you may die. That's final!"

"No!" Trent's voice rang out sharply. "It's not final, Hale! We took those claims legal. You never made any claim to them until now. You got more land now than you can handle, and we're stayin'. I filed my claim with the United States, so did the others. If we don't get justice, we'll get a United States marshal in here to see why."

"Justice!" Hale sneered. "You blasted nesters'll get all the justice you get from me. I'm givin' you time to leave-now get!"

Trent stood his ground. He could see the fury bolted up in Hale, could see the man was relentless. Well, maybe--