The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Vol 3 Part 45

"Shot... me," he whispered, his lips working at the words he could not shape, "Mulhavens."

Kilkenny motioned to the dead man inside the door. "Is that a Mulhaven?"

Starr indicated a.s.sent. "Tough," he said, "plenty . . . tough."

"Where's Dunning?" Starr shook his head. Kilkenny grasped the dying man's shoulder. "Tell me, man! Where's that girl! Where's Lona? Dammit, speak up!"

Starr's eyes forced themselves open and he struggled to speak. "D ... d ... don't know. Poke, he ... away."

"Poke Dunning has her," Kilkenny said. "Is that it?"

Starr nodded. "Mailer's craz ... y. Plumb gone bats ..." Sam Starr's voice trailed away, and he fainted. Carefully, Kilkenny eased the man to a p.r.o.ne position and grabbed a pillow for his head from the nearest bunk. Swiftly, he worked over the dying man, doing what he could to ease his position and his pain. Then he hurried from the bunkhouse and made a quick survey of the ranch. He found no one else. Four dead men and the dying Sam Starr.

Dunning, Mailer, Lona, Rusty Gates, and Gordon Flynn were all gone. Hurrying back with a bucket of cool water, he found Starr conscious. Holding a gourd dipper to the man's mouth, he helped him drink.

Starr looked his grat.i.tude. "Mailer's gone after . .. after your girl," he gasped. "He's crazy!"

"My girl?" Kilkenny was dumbfounded. "At Salt Creek?"

Starr nodded weakly. "An'... an' the Mulhavens are after G ... G ... Gates."

"What?" Kilkenny sprang to his feet. "But he wasn't an outlaw!"

"You try tellin' 'em that!" Starr's face was turning gray.

Kilkenny stood flat-footed and still above the dying man. Frank Mailer, kill-crazy and full of fury, was gone to Salt Creek after Nita. Somewhere, Poke Dunning was escaping with Lona, and his friend Rusty Gates, the man who had come into this only to help him, and probably with a wounded man for company, was riding to escape a blood-hungry posse whose reason had been lost in a l.u.s.t for revenge for the killing of their own friends and brothers! Kilkenny knew of the Mulhavens. A family of tough Irishmen, three of them veterans of the Indian wars. Hard, honest, capable men. He knew, too, the men of Aztec Crossing, and they were not men to take the bloodletting Mailer had visited upon them without retaliation. If they had trailed those men to this ranch, they would regard all upon it as tarred with the same brush and would make a clean sweep.

Two of their group had died here, and that would make matters no easier. Leaving Starr, he dashed outside and stopped in the sunlight. Where to go? Nita was in danger. Rusty was being pursued by a hanging mob, and Lona ... Kilkenny forced himself to coldness. Brigo was at Salt Creek with Nita, and so was Cain Brockman. He would have to gamble that they were protection enough. Lona, wherever she was, must wait, for it was not immediately apparent what danger she might be in. Rusty had evidently taken Flynn and somehow managed an escape, knowing that the wounded Flynn would certainly be taken as one of the outlaws.

Rusty had come into this only to help him, and to have him hanged by mistake would be a horrible responsibility. He took swift strides toward the corral, glancing over the remaining horses. Rusty's mount was not there.

Turning, he whistled shrilly, and in a moment saw Buck come trotting around the building toward him. Again in the saddle, Kilkenny began a painstaking sweep of the ranch, yet his job was in a measure simplified by knowing that Gates must make his escape by some route that would take him from the rear of the buildings. Forcing himself to take his time, Lance Kilkenny soon found the tracks of Gates's horse and another. He studied the hoofprints of this other horse carefully, then mounted and worked the trail out of the brush and rocks to a shallow dip south and west of Blue Hill. Apparently, Rusty was heading for the rough country of Malpais Arroyo, and walking his horses. Was that because of the wounded Flynn? Or to keep from attracting attention? He was something over a mile south of the ranch when a bunch of tracks made by hard-running horses came in from the north. Lance felt his stomach turn over within him.

The Aztec posse! They had seen them and were in pursuit. Touching a spur to the buckskin, he went into a lope, then a run. The tracks were easy to follow now. The wind whipped at his face, and thunder rumbled over the mountains beyond Monument Rock. The brim of his hat slapped back against his skull, but the buckskin, loving to run, ate into the distance with swiftly churning hooves. The trail dipped into the arroyo and led along it, and heedless of ambush, thinking only of his friend, Kilkenny rode on, his face grim and hard.

He knew mobs and how relentless and unreasoning they could be. There would be no reasoning with this bunch. If he met them, it could well be a payoff in blood and bullets. He had never, to his knowledge, killed an honest man, but to save his friend he would do just that.

Suddenly he saw that the pace of the horses he followed had slowed, and he drew up himself, walking his horse, and listening. Then, carried by the echoing walls of the arroyo that had now deepened to a canyon, he heard a yell.

Soon somebody called, "Boost him up here, durn it! Let's get this job over with!"

The voices were just around a bend in the rocks ahead. His stomach muscles tight and hard, his mouth dry, Kilkenny slid from his horse. His hands went to walnut-b.u.t.ted guns and loosened them in their holsters, then he moved around the bend and into sight.

There, beneath a huge old cottonwood, stood Rusty Gates, and beside him, Gordon Flynn. The wounded man was being held up by a man who stood directly in front of him. There were seven men here, seven hard, desperate men. Flynn's eyes went past them and he saw Kilkenny.

"Kilkenny!" he yelled. As one man, the posse turned to face the owner of that dread name.

He spoke, and his voice was clear and strong. "Step back from those men, d.a.m.n you for a lot of brainless killers! Get away, or I'll take the lot of you!"

CHAPTER 6.

Surprise held the men of the posse immobile, and in the moment of stillness Kilkenny spoke again. His voice was sharp and clear. "You've got the wrong men there! While you try to string up a couple of honest cowhands, the real killers are gettin' away!"

"Oh, yeah?" Terry Mulhaven's voice was sharp. He had suddenly decided he was not going to be bluffed, Kilkenny or no Kilkenny. "You keep out of this! Or maybe," he added, his voice lowering a note, "you're one of them?"

Kilkenny did not reply to him. Instead, he asked quickly, "Did any of you see the holdup? Actually see it?"

"I did," Worth said sharply. "I saw it."

"All right, then. Look again at these men. Were they among those you saw?"

Worth hesitated, glancing uneasily at Terry Mulhaven. "The redhead wasn't. I saw no redheaded man, but we wounded two of them, anyway, and this man is wounded." He gestured at Flynn. "That's enough for me."

"It's not enough!" Kilkenny returned crisply. "If all you want to do is kill, then kill each other or try killing me. But if you want justice, then try thinking rather than stringing up the first men you meet!"

"All right, mister. You tell us how we should be thinking. You talk quick, though."

"That man was shot by Poke Dunning when he tried to help a girl get away from that bunch of outlaws." Kilkenny spoke swiftly, for he had them listening now, and he knew Western men.

Quick to anger and quick to avenge an insult or a killing, they were also, given a chance, men of good heart and goodwill, and essentially reasonable men. They were also men of humor. Such men had been known to let a guilty man go free when he made some humorous remark with a noose around his neck, or under a gun. They respected courage, and given a chance to cool down, they would judge fairly. He had them talking now, and he meant to keep them talking. "The men who rode to the Crossing were led by Frank Mailer, the worst of the lot," he continued rapidly, arresting and holding their attention by his crisp, sharp speech and the confidence of his knowledge. "With him rode Geslin, Sam Starr, Socorro, an' Scar Ethridge.

"Ethridge never came back. You hanged Socorro and killed Starr at the ranch. You also killed an honest man, Dave Betts."

"We got Ethridge at the Crossin'," Mulhaven said, "but if that honest man was the hombre on the floor inside the house, we didn't kill him. He was dead when we got there!"

This was news to Kilkenny. Apparently Dave had given his life in trying to protect Lona Markham. Dunning had evidently carried her off. "Mailer's still loose and I'm after him myself," Kilkenny added. "These two men were the only honest hands on the place aside from that old man you found dead."

Bill Worth walked over to Flynn and took the noose from his neck, then he removed the loop from Rusty's neck. "Glad you showed up," he said shortly. "I tried to tell these hombres that redhead wasn't among 'em!"

Kilkenny had no time for conversation. "Rusty," he said swiftly, "get Flynn back to the ranch. I'm ridin' to Salt Creek after Mailer. Then we'll have to hunt Poke Dunning."

Turning abruptly, he swung into his saddle, and with a wave at the posse and his friends, he was off at a dead run.

Terry Mulhaven stared after him, then mopped his brow. "Man!" he said. "When I turned around an' looked into them green eyes, I figured my number was up for sure!" He glanced at Rusty. "Is he as fast as they say?"

"Faster," Gates said wryly. Bill Worth looked at the Mulhavens. "Let's pick up the bodies," he said gently, "and head for home. The folks will be worried."

"Yeah"-Terry nodded-"we better." He glanced sheepishly at Rusty and Flynn. "No hard feelin's?"

Gates stared at him, then his red face broke into a grin. "Not right now," he said, "but a few minutes ago I was some sore!"

In a tight knot, the posse headed north for the ranch, and later, with the bodies of the two fallen men across their saddles, they started toward home. They rode slowly and they talked but little, and as a result they were startled by a sudden grunt from their Apache tracker. "Look!" he said. "Big red hoss!"

They looked, and the tracks were there. Terry Mulhaven glanced at this brother, then at Worth. "Well," he said, "we know that track. We followed it all the way from Aztec. Let's see what we find this time!" Grimly, they turned their horses down the trail made by Frank Mailer's horse.

This time somebody would pay the cost of the heavy burden the two lead horses carried, the burden left upon them by the murdered men in the bank. Due east of Monument Rock and the hideout used by Kilkenny was an old prospector's cabin. This adobe shelter had been used by drifting cowhands, by rustlers and sheepherders as a temporary shelter, but for some years now it had been pa.s.sed by and forgotten. It was huddled in a tight little corner of rock far down one of the southern-reaching tentacles of Salt Creek Wash, and here Poke Dunning had taken Lona Markham.

She had not gone willingly. In the confusion of the Blue Hill ranch gun battle, Poke had made his move. His first thought had been to try to put a bullet in Frank Mailer, but as he moved to the window that faced the bunkhouse and the ongoing fracas, rifle in hand, he'd spotted big Frank sliding down the side of the wash that ran across one side of the ranch yard. He had a set of saddlebags over his shoulder and was out of sight before Dunning could shoot. Poke figured that the saddlebags probably held the loot from Mailer's robbery.

Realizing that no matter what happened during the shoot-out, he'd still have Mailer to deal with, Dunning headed for Dave Betts's room and Lona. Knowing that he had only moments before the posse turned its attention on the main house, he plunged into the room. "Out the window, quick!" he snapped. "We're gettin' out of here."

"You go. I'm staying here." Lona had made the mistake of thinking that Kilkenny had come, and although she had been afraid because of all the shooting, she was now sure that if Poke was running, then Kilkenny must be winning.

"Dammit, girl!" He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the window.

"You hold up there, Mr. Markham!" Dave Betts was frightened by the fear he saw in Lona's eyes ... something was wrong here. He grabbed Poke's shoulder. Turning, Poke drew his right-hand gun and shot Dave twice in the chest; then, as Lona opened her mouth to scream he knocked her unconscious with a diagonal swipe of the barrel. He shoved her out the window, and then dropping out after her, he headed for the corrals. In the remote cabin, never visited in these days by anyone, he left Lona tied securely. He had not been able to escape the ranch on either his or Lena's personal mount. Her horse, Zusa, was essential to his new plan.

He was tired of playing games with Mailer and Lona and everybody else. Lona was going to die. The two of them escaped the confusion back at the ranch. Frank Mailer would be revealed to be the vicious bank robber that he was, but in their escape there would be a tragic accident ... a riding accident. His daughter would pa.s.s away and no one would ask any questions about his continuing to live on the ranch. There might eventually be some doc.u.ments to be filed, but the right kind of lawyer could handle that. He was headed now for Blue Hill, intending to arrive there just after dark. With this idea in mind, he cut an old trail south and rode on until he was in the tall shadow of Chimney Rock.

He drew up and got stiffly from the saddle. This place was lonely and secure. He would wait here until almost dark, then he was going to sneak in and get Lena's horse . . . once he'd done that, he could take her out, kill her with a blow to the neck, and fake the fall. Seating himself on the ground in the shadow of the Chimney, he filled his pipe and began to smoke. It bothered him to contemplate the idea of murdering the girl that had lived as his daughter for so many years. She'd always been a tool, but he would admit that he was fond of her.

For a few minutes he considered taking the money he'd hidden away and starting over somewhere else, but there wasn't quite as much as he'd have liked, and after all, he'd never been a quitter. Nearby, a huge old cottonwood rustled its leaves and he leaned back, knocking out his pipe. There would be a couple of hours to kill, and he was in no hurry. He would sleep a little while. His lids became heavy, then closed, his big hands grew lax in his lap, and he leaned comfortably back among the rocks. It was a joke on Mailer that he had taken the big bay, Frank's favorite horse. The cottonwood had a huge limb that stretched toward him, and it rustled its leaves, gently lulling him to sleep.

He did not hear the slowly walking horses, even when a hoof clicked on stone. He was tired, and not as young as he once had been, but no thought of murdered men behind him, or of the girl, bound and helpless in a remote cabin, disturbed him. He slept on. He did not awaken even when the silent group of men faced him in a crescent of somber doom. Silent, hard-faced men who knew that blood bay, and carried with them the burden of their dead. It was the creak of saddle leather when Terry Mulhaven dismounted that awakened him. Five men faced him on horseback, another on foot. Still another had thrown a rope over that big cottonwood limb, and Poke Dunning, who had lived most of his adult years with the knowledge that such a scene might be prepared for him at any moment, came awake suddenly and sharply, and his hand flashed for a gun.

He was lying on his side, his left gun beneath him, and somehow, in stirring around, his right gun had slipped from the holster. Not all the way, but so far back that when he grabbed it, he grabbed it around the cylinder, and not the b.u.t.t. The difference might seem infinitesimal. At this moment it was not. At this moment it was the difference between a fighting end and a hanging.

Pat Mulhaven's rifle spoke, and the hand that held the gun was shattered and b.l.o.o.d.y. Gripping his b.l.o.o.d.y hand, Poke Dunning stared up at them. "What do you want me for?" he protested. "You've got the wrong man!"

"Yeah?" Pat Mulhaven sneered. "We heard that one before! We know that horse! We know you!"

"But listen!" he protested frantically. "Wait, now!" He got clumsily to his feet, his left hand gripping the b.l.o.o.d.y right. Great crimson drops welled from it and dripped slowly from his finger ends to the parched gra.s.s and sand beneath him. He started to speak again, and then something came over him, something he had never experienced before. It was a sense of utter futility, and with it resignation. Roughly, they seized him.

"Give me a gun," he said harshly, "with my left hand! I'll kill the lot of you! Just my left hand!" he said, his fierce old eyes flaring at them.

"Set him on his hoss," Bill Worth said calmly, "behind the saddle." Sometime later they rode on, turning their horses again toward home, and walking slowly, their task accomplished, with the feeling that their dead might ride on toward that dim cow-country Valhalla, attended by the men who had handled the guns.

Behind them, the shadow of Chimney Rock grew wider and longer, and the leaves of the cottonwood rustled gently, whispering one to the other as only cottonwood leaves will do, in just that way. And among them, his sightless eyes lifted skyward as if to see the last of the sunlight sky, and the last of the white clouds, looking through the cottonwood leaves, was Poke Dunning.

The point shadows of night had infiltrated the streets of Salt Creek when Lance Kilkenny came again to the town. The long-legged buckskin entered the dusty street with a swinging trot and did not stop until it reached the hitching rail of the Fandango. Yet already Kilkenny knew much. He knew that nothing had happened here tonight.

Before the Express, Lisa, the Portuguese, was sweeping the boardwalk, and he glanced up to see Kilkenny ride in; then, unaware of his ident.i.ty, he returned to his sweeping. Before Starr's Saloon, Al Starr smoked his pipe, unaware that his brother was at this moment lying dead and chockfull of Aztec Crossing lead on the bunkhouse floor at Blue Hill. At the Fandango, Cain Brockman was arranging his stock for a big night. All was sleepy, quiet, and peaceful. Although it was early, a lamp glowed here and mere from a cabin window, and there was a light in the Express. The advancing skirmishers of darkness had halted here and there in the cover of buildings, gathering force for an invasion of the street.

Lance swung down, spoke softly to the buckskin, and stepped up onto the boardwalk. There he turned again, and swept the street with a quick, sharp, all-encompa.s.sing glance. Then he pushed through the swinging doors into the almost empty saloon. Brockman looked up quickly and jerked his head toward the door where Brigo sat, but Kilkenny walked directly to the bar, waving aside the bottle that Cain immediately lifted.

"Has Mailer been in? "

Cain's eyes sparked. "No, ain't seen him. What's up?"

"h.e.l.l to pay!" Swiftly, Kilkenny sketched out what had happened. "He was headed for here," he added.

"Let him come!" Cain said harshly. "I've got an express gun loaded with buckshot." Brigo was on his feet and coming over.

Leaving Cain to tell him what had happened, Kilkenny went swiftly to Nita's door and rapped. At her reply, he opened the door and entered. She stood across the room, tall, lovely, exciting. He went to her at once and took her hands, then stood and held them, as he looked at her, his heart swelling within him, feeling now as no other woman had ever made him feel, as none ever could, none but this Spanish and Irish girl from the far borderlands.

"Nita, I've got to find Lona and Frank Mailer . .. then I'm going to come back, and when I do, we're going to make this a deal. If you'll have me, we'll be married. We'll go on further west, we'll go somewhere where n.o.body's ever heard of Kilkenny, and where we can have some peace, and be happy."

"You've got to go now?"

"Yes." It was like her that she understood.

She touched him lightly with her lips. "Then go ... but hurry back."

He left it like that and walked back into the saloon. Brigo and Cain turned to look at him. With them was a tall, sandy-haired cowhand. "This fellow says he saw Dunning and Lona riding east. He was some distance off, but he said it looked like she was tied. He lost them in the canyons of Salt Creek."

"All right. We'll have a look." Kilkenny took in the sandy-haired hand with a sharp, penetrating glance. This was a good man, a steady man. "You want to ride to Blue Hill and tell Rusty? Then if you want, have a look. That girl's in danger."

"I'll look," Sandy said. "I've heard about the fightin' this mornin'."

"You be careful," Kilkenny warned. "Poke Dunning is handy with a gun."

"I know him," Sandy said shortly. "We had trouble over some strays, once. He's right handy with a runnin' iron, too." Where to look for Lona was the next thing. While he was looking for her he had to be cautious not to run afoul of Mailer. The man was dangerous, and he would be doubly so now.

"Night and day," Kilkenny told Cain and Brigo, "one of you be around. Never let up." In the morning Kilkenny mounted the buckskin. He returned to the house at Blue Hill and scouted around, but the profusion of tracks told him nothing. Working the trail a bit farther out proved helpful in that he found the tracks of several riders. They seemed to be scouting around some and he figured they were out looking for the lost girl, same as he was. Their tracks had obliterated the original trail and so he followed them quickly, covering ground as fast as possible. He had stopped at a well due west of Chimney Rock when he saw a rider approaching. It was Sandy. His face was drawn and gray.

"Been ridin'," he said. "Rusty is out, too. An' that Flynn."

"How is he?"

"In no shape, but he won't quit. Head poundin' like a drum, I can tell. Pale around the gills. We tracked Poke as far as Monument Rock, then lost him. Other tracks wiped his out."

"The posse, maybe?"

"I reckon." Sandy wiped his chin after a long drink. "Maybe they got him."

"If they found him, somebody is dead." Kilkenny knew the men. "They didn't like it even when I stopped them hanging the wrong men. They wanted an eye for an eye."

"Dunning won't be taken easy," Sandy said. "Where you headin'?"

"Northeast. Look," he added, "why don't you swing back and follow the posse tracks? If they turn off the route back to Aztec, you've got a lead."

Sandy turned his bronc. "See you," he said, and cantered off.

Kilkenny wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes were dark with worry. Someplace in these bleak hills that girl was with Dunning. Someplace Mailer lurked. Neither was pleasant to think of. He swung into the saddle and glanced northeast. The tower of Chimney Rock loomed against the sky, beyond it the mountains, and there was a trail into them by that route. He turned the buckskin. He rode with a Winchester across his saddle, his eyes searching every bit of cover, his ears and eyes alert. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

On a point of rocks near Eagle Nest Arroyo, Frank Mailer, his face covered with a stubble of coa.r.s.e black beard, watched Kilkenny riding north through his gla.s.ses, and he swore softly. Twice, the gunfighter had been close to him, and each time Mailer had held off rather than dare a confrontation. Being on the dodge had him worried, for too long he'd lived the easy life at Blue Hill, taking off to do jobs outside the territory but always with the safety of Dunning's ranch to return to if things got bad. He had learned of what had happened, knew of the end of Sam Starr and Socorro. He had found the body of Poke Dunning, lynched for the crimes that he, Mailer, had committed, but strangely he felt depressed.

There was the man that he had wanted dead, and he was dead. He had the nine thousand dollars from the Aztec bank, a good horse, and a beltful of ammunition. But the good old days were gone. The hanging of Poke Dunning affected him as nothing else had; there was an inevitableness about it that frightened him.

Frank Mailer, six feet five in his socks and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, walked back to his gray horse. He stood with a hand on the pommel, and something was gone out of him. For the first time since he was a youngster, he was really on the dodge. He was running. Poke had run, too, and it hadn't done him any good. Dunning had beat the game for years, and now look at him. Somehow it always caught up with you.