The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

  “It’s amazing, Roy. I’ll grant you that.”

  “Tell me if I’ve got this straight: there were two dead up in the Livingston house, including Livingston himself.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Shot to death.”

  “Yes. It looks to me like they shot each other.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “Stranger in town. I don’t know that we’ll ever find out.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “In the undertaker parlor, stinking to high heaven. We got to get them buried fast.”

  “I’ll take a look at them. But I’ll probably not be able to figure out anything more than you did.”

  “We need some big-city police folks looking at this one.”

  “Well, we ain’t got none of them. I’ll look at them and we’ll bury them. Hell, I never liked old Livingston much anyway.”

  “Why would anybody shoot him, though?”

  “A dozen reasons. Attempted robbery, probably. You know the stories about him stashing money everywhere.”

  “There was some sign that a woman had been there. I found a hairpin and a woman’s brush up in one of the bedrooms.”

  “Not surprising. It wouldn’t be the first time old Jack had a woman. You know he had a big love affair going with the mayor’s wife for a long time. But he would see her over in Caylee in an old house he fixed up. He thought nobody else knew about it, but everybody did. Including the mayor, but he didn’t care. He had a woman of his own visiting him while his wife was visiting Jack.”

  “Maybe the woman he had up there lately had a husband who wasn’t so go-along about all that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you going to investigate it?”

  “Hell, no. I can’t bring ’em back to life, can I? I figure they must have had a reason for shooting each other. That’s good enough for me. Besides, if I solve the murder, what good is it? There’s nobody left alive for the district attorney to prosecute.”

  “What about the first two dead men?”

  “No witnesses. Two highway robbers … nothing there worth looking into, either. Whoever killed them did the world a favor.” He shook his head and gave a wry laugh. “Damn, I can’t believe this. Two dead men on the road as I leave town, and two more dead men when I come back.”

  “That ain’t all. There could be a third one.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Another stranger. A young man. He was found stabbed in an alley, nearly dead. He should rightly have been dead six times over, given the shape he’s in, but he’s still alive, or was the last time I checked. Not conscious, though. He’s up at Doc Asheman’s. The doc swears he’s going to make sure this one comes through alive. Sort of a personal mission.”

  “No clue who stabbed him?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Anybody identified this stranger?”

  “Tell you the truth, I ain’t tried. What am I going to do? Line up everybody in town and have them file by?”

  “Reckon not. Well, if he lives, he can tell us who did it. If not, he’s just corpse number five in a week unusually rich with them.”

  * * *

  Billy Connery opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

  Still alive, he thought. I can’t believe it. Still alive.

  Alive, but so weak he could not move, and his throat slashed so that he could not speak.

  Billy Connery had no memory of the stabbing beyond its initial moments. The throat cutting in particular was absent from his mind, for which he was thankful. He figured he had been unconscious when it happened.

  He said a prayer of gratitude every time a drawn-in breath made his throat burn. It had always been his belief that a slashed throat meant death. Apparently McCurden just hadn’t cut quite deep enough.

  But his stab wounds had done enough damage to leave Connery incapable of doing anything but lying here, worrying about what McCurden had done.

  He’d talked about Kenton, and that was frightening. As best Connery could figure it, McCurden was probably an agent for Kevington.

  Connery suffered in a frustration he was too weak even to show on his face. He had to get his strength back, had to get up to the Livingston mansion.

  If only he’d done it when he had the chance.

  * * *

  As the sun edged toward the mountaintops to the west, Dr. David Kevington stood in a window on the second floor of the Culvertown Hotel and looked out across a scene of squalor that reconfirmed to him every hatred and prejudice he possessed regarding Americans. In Kevington’s view, Victoria was the only worthwhile colonial product. And nothing less than Victoria could have made him visit this miserable nation again.

  He scanned the dirty street below, the buildings that seemed even dirtier with their peeling paint and layers of hoof-splashed mud extending more than a yard up their fronts. And most were false fronts, which Kevington found irksome and typically American. The entire American culture was in his mind something of a false front, something pretending to be much bigger and grander than it was.

  Damn them all. He wished he could fetch back his Victoria, head back to England, and leave the entire North American continent in flames. He’d never fulfill that fantasy … but one he would fulfill. He’d not leave this rubbish heap of a country until Brady Kenton was dead.

  And if Victoria refused to come with him willingly, then he would leave her dead as well. Painful as it would be, he would do it. He would not be mocked. He would not be denied.

  Kevington lifted his eyes and gazed at the looming Livingston mansion. From his pocket he pulled the copy of the telegram McCurden had sent:

  K. AND V. FOUND CULVERTOWN, COLORADO. ENTER CULVERTOWN HOTEL AND AWAIT WORD.

  Well, here he was, but so far there was no visit from McCurden, no word from McCurden. Curse him for the fool he was! His message had been inadequate. He should have given some indication of how to contact him. But if in the end McCurden delivered what his telegram promised, Kevington was prepared to be quite forgiving.

  He saw Bartholomew Graham striding across the street toward the hotel. Graham was an interesting man to observe: tall and wide and muscled and bearded, he looked somewhat like a cleaned-up but still unshorn mountain man. Graham’s looks were almost stereotypical of the American frontier, and Kevington had found it amusing to watch the reactions of Americans the first time they heard Graham speak in a voice rich with the dialect of his native Essex. Graham might look like an American frontiersman, but he was British to the core and proud of it.

  He was also heartless, smart, and willing to do whatever Kevington paid him to do, and those were key reasons Kevington had brought him along from England to help with the great chase. An additional reason was Graham’s four years of roaming in the American West, hiring out his gun to whoever paid the highest and had the fewest scruples.

  Kevington was awaiting at the door of the room when Graham came lumbering up the stairs.

  “Anything?” Kevington asked.

  “Not one bloody clue,” Graham replied. “Nothing solid, anyway.”

  “Damn!” Kevington exclaimed, stepping aside as Graham entered the room and threw himself down on a chair. Kevington closed the door. “Where the devil could McCurden be?”

  “He may be dead.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “There’s apparently been an epidemic of violent death in this town of late. So go the stories in the pubs, in any case. Two highwaymen shot dead on the road into town and two other dead men in the big mansion up on the hill.”

  “Who were these men?”

  “The two highwaymen were a pair known to plague the region, haunting the roads to several towns and camps. One of the dead men in the mansion was the man who owned the dwelling … quite an eccentric, it seems. The other, though, was a stranger to folks here. It could be our own McCurden.”

  “Or anyone else. It had better not be McCurden. If he’s gone, then it will be hard
indeed to learn what he found.”

  “The dead man could have been Kenton, too.”

  “He could have been Paul the Apostle for all we know. More than likely he was just a burglar who was confronted by the owner of the house, and both of them wound up dead.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve got nothing more to tell you,” Graham said, pulling a pipe and pouch from his pocket and beginning to prepare a smoke. “Perhaps the others will do better.”

  “Perhaps they will,” said Kevington, looking out the window again. “They’re coming this way now … and they’ve got a boy with them.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Where Graham had a certain English grace about his manner, despite his burly build, George Evaline and Kendall Brown were Americans, products of poverty and violent households, and as rough-edged as men could be. Both were lean, flinty-eyed, and even more unscrupulous than Graham but were loyal to those who paid them. Upon his arrival in the United States, Kevington had hired an underground agent to assemble him a little army of investigators and hired toughs, and Evaline and Brown had come with the highest recommendations.

  “Who’s this?” Kevington challenged Brown as he threw open the door, gesturing toward the boy with them. The boy wore a smart, disdainful expression and had the butt of a reeking cigar smoldering on his lip. He strode into the room like he owned it, Kevington glaring at him and instantly disliking him.

  “That’s Stockton Shelley,” Brown said. “Local boy … he says he knows some things about Brady Kenton.”

  “What I know I’m glad to tell,” Stockton said. “For the right price.”

  Kevington knelt and looked into the boy’s face. Smiling, he reached up and removed the cigar from his lips and handed it to Evaline, who took it to the window and tossed it out.

  “Cheap tobacco is rather revolting,” Kevington said. “So are little boys with exalted views of themselves.”

  “You’re foreign!” Stockton said, not at all cowed by Kevington’s menacing manner. “Where the hell you from? France?”

  “England, young man. The mother country of this vast wasteland of yours. Now, tell me what you know about Brady Kenton.”

  “I know he drawed some might pretty pictures in his day. Anything else I know about him don’t come free.”

  Evaline stepped forward, ready to grab the boy and begin persuading him to change his mind. But Kevington shook his head and waved him back.

  “I’m not inclined to pay for that which may prove worthless,” Kevington said to Stockton.

  “Then I reckon you’ll never know,” Stockton said, pulling another cigar from his pocket and sticking it in his mouth. It was a cheap saloon cigar, the kind barkeeps sold for a nickel out of jars. Stockton turned to Graham, who was puffing on his pipe. “Got a match, compadre?”

  Graham laughed as he pulled a match block from his pocket. He liked this boy. “Here you are, young man.”

  “Well, well! Another Frenchman!” He fired up the cigar and blew the smoke toward Kevington.

  Graham laughed heartily. “You know, young gentleman, I’ve killed men for lesser insults than that one.”

  “I don’t believe you’ll want to kill me. Not if you want to know where to find Brady Kenton.”

  “You have this information, I take it?”

  “Wouldn’t be talking about it if I didn’t.”

  “You have a wiseacre attitude about you, young fellow. Do you have any notion how serious a matter we are talking about here?”

  With a gesture toward Evaline and Brown, Stockton said, “I know that these two were going around asking whether anybody knew where Brady Kenton was. Most folks laughed and told them to look in the graveyard. But me, I know better. I can tell you where he’s been … and where he is now.”

  “A big claim.”

  “Needs some big money to go with it.”

  Kevington had never met a boy he disliked more, and he disliked all children. But right now he was short on leads. McCurden had not appeared. Urchins of the street sometimes did know things worth knowing. He’d put up with the boy for now, in case he really did know something.

  “If you can lead me to Kenton, my boy, it’s worth a hundred dollars to me.”

  Stockton Shelley’s bravado couldn’t hold up. His eyes widened and it was clear at once that he hadn’t expected an amount like that. To Stockton, a hundred dollars was a rich man’s fortune.

  “I’ll lead you to him,” he said. “And I hope you get somebody to arrest him, because he’s a murderer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He killed two men up in the Livingston mansion.”

  “How do you know it was Kenton?”

  “Who else could it be? He was up there in that house.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I seen him.”

  “Was there a woman, too?”

  “You’re the second man to ask me that. I never saw no woman. But if she was in the house, I wouldn’t have seen her.”

  “Who is in the house now?” Kevington asked.

  “Nobody that I know of.”

  “Who was the second dead man?”

  “I don’t know. But I know it wasn’t Kenton.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I seen Kenton, traveling.”

  “Alone.”

  “No. Not alone. There was a woman.”

  “You told me you never saw a woman with him!”

  “I told you I never saw a woman with him the first time I saw him.” Stockton smirked.

  “Damn you, boy, I’ll not have you play games with me! I don’t know that I believe a word you’re telling me.”

  Graham spoke. “If that big house on the hill is empty, I think we should go in it. If Kenton and Victoria have been there, maybe there will be some sign of it.”

  “You said you saw Kenton traveling, boy. Where was he going?”

  “All I can say is what he seemed to be going toward.”

  Kevington reached into a pocket. His hand closed around a derringer that he was ready to pull out and shove into the boy’s face. But instead he took a deep breath, put his face closer to Stockton’s, and said in an icy tone: “Listen to me, young man. I don’t know you, and I don’t know whether you are telling me the truth. But I have the strongest sense that you think you are very clever indeed, and that all of this is quite the game. Let me tell you something, my boy. I am not a gentle man. I am not a friendly man. I am not a man who has an abundance of scruples. If I find that you are indeed toying with me, I will personally cut off your ears, one at a time, and send you home to give them to your father and mother for whatever use they may want to make of them. Have I made myself clear?”

  Stockton lost his smirk. “Yes, sir.”

  “Now … we will go to this house, and look it over. If we find evidence that Kenton and Victoria have been there, your credibility will rise. But you will tell me—now—where it is you believe Kenton has taken her.”

  “I’m thinking, sir, that maybe he’s taking her to the ghost town across the mountain, a town called Caylee. There’s a house there that Livingston kept up for staying in. I think Kenton killed Livingston and headed for that other house.”

  “And why would Kenton kill Livingston and some stranger?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to protect the woman or something.”

  Kenton as a killer. Kevington thought it over and found it perfectly plausible. God knows he himself would gladly kill for Victoria. Kenton would probably do no less.

  “Let’s go,” Kevington said. “I want to look through that mansion. Is it locked up?”

  “I know a way in,” Stockton said. He was being cooperative now, not nearly so snide and cavalier. Kevington had scared him, almost enough to make him run.

  The only thing holding him back was that he didn’t have his hundred dollars yet.

  CHAPTER 27

  The Livingston mansion was always a dark and ominous place but now was all the more uninviting
because two men had died bloody deaths there.

  Kevington stood looking up at it, with Stockton at his side. The boy’s usual cocky attitude was gone now, driven away by a fear of Kevington and his toughs that he tried unsuccessfully not to show.

  “How are we going to get inside?” Evaline asked.

  “Break out a window,” Graham said.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Stockton replied. “I know some secret ways into the house. It was built with secret ways in and out because old Livingston’s dead wife liked that kind of thing.”

  He led them around the rear of the mansion and into a root cellar that was built right into the hillside and nearly hidden in a tangle of foliage and scrubby trees that had been allowed to have their way unmolested for years.

  “It’s in there.”

  “What is?”

  “The door to the tunnel.”

  Indeed there was a door hidden inside, on the rear wall. It was designed to blend into the structure in a natural way and had no apparent latch. But Stockton pushed one board, which tilted out and revealed a latch beneath. He tripped it easily.

  “Did the man who owned this place know you made yourself such free and easy entrance to his dwelling?” Kevington asked.

  “Old Livingston never used this tunnel, and I never went all the way into the house except once, when I knew he was gone. I’d come up here and hide in the end of the tunnel, mostly.”

  “Hide from what?”

  “My father. When he gets drunk, he beats me.”

  Kevington grunted. He was not a sympathetic man. “Well, I’ll be the one to beat you if all this proves unworthy of the effort.”

  “You wanted in the mansion, I’m getting you in the mansion.”

  By match light they proceeded into the dank and earthen tunnel, bending low in the claustrophobia-inspiring place. Soon, though, they reached a door similar to the one that had admitted them. Stockton triggered the latch.

  They entered a cellar so dark it was distinguishable from the tunnel itself only by the sense of open space around them. Graham struck another match, and by its light they saw and proceeded toward the flight of stairs leading to the main floor.