The Quest of Brady Kenton / Kenton's Challenge

by Cameron Judd

  “What?”

  By now Evaline and Kevington were in the room, descended from above. “Where is he?” Kevington demanded.

  “I heard a door,” Brown said. “Wait.…”

  He opened a door that seemingly led into a small storage room. But a strike of the match revealed another door on the other side, and blackness beyond it, and a staircase.…

  “He said there were tunnels and passages all through this house,” Kevington said. “The boy’s escaping us! Go get him.… Bring him back!”

  Evaline and Brown obeyed at once, descending the dark staircase swiftly, vanishing into blackness.

  Graham did not move. “Let him go, I say,” he muttered.

  “Let him go? And alert the law to our presence here … and to the corpse you’ve now blessed us with? Why the hell did you kill that man?”

  “Because he found us. And because he spilled beer on me on the street tonight.”

  Kevington swore bitterly. Graham simply sauntered away, through the dark, and lay down on his sofa again.

  * * *

  Brown and Evaline returned soon after.

  “He’s given us the slip,” Evaline reported. “The little bastard must know five or six different ways in and out of this house.”

  “He may go to the law,” Kevington said. “That’s trouble and delay we do not need. Come on. Let’s gather our goods and leave here.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “That’s right. We have no time for entanglements with the local constabulary. We’re leaving this house tonight, and at first light we’ll set out to find that ghost town on our own. There can’t be many roads across that mountain … only one, if we’re fortunate. We don’t need that boy to track down Kenton and Victoria. We’ll get by without him.”

  “What if we can’t find that ghost town?”

  “We’ll find it. We’ll find it if we have to search to the very edges of hell. Now, move with haste. We must leave this house before that little escapee brings back trouble to us. I have no desire to attempt to justify the killing of an intruder, especially considering that we are intruders here ourselves.”

  CHAPTER 30

  AFTERNOON, TWO DAYS LATER

  Roxanne Gunnison stood beside the bed, watching Rachel Frye sleep, and tried to remember if she’d ever seen anyone look so pale. She reached down and lightly touched Rachel’s forehead, taking care not to disturb her. Rachel was fevered. Roxanne shook her head sadly and left the room.

  She walked down the hall a few yards and entered the adjacent room, where Alex was seated by the window, cleaning his pistol and looking quite somber. Outside, beyond the window, the ragged and rugged farrago of Culvertown, Colorado, was visible. Roxanne hadn’t liked Culvertown when she visited it recently, and she didn’t like it now.

  Yet she felt they were supposed to be here. She was not a superstitious woman by nature, but finding that sketched-upon envelope in the Buckeye Cafe just a short distance down this very street had certainly seemed like a stroke of destiny to her. If not for that event, none of this would be transpiring.

  “She’s worse, I think,” Rachel said. “The strain of all this hard travel has been too much for someone who not all that long ago was lying senseless in a hospital bed.”

  “We shouldn’t have brought her,” Gunnison said, rubbing the gun barrel gently with a lightly oiled cloth.

  “Perhaps not. But it seemed the only possible thing at the time.”

  They were in the Culvertown Hotel, on the second floor, in the very room, in fact, that Dr. David Kevington had occupied until he and the men with him had simply vanished without paying. But Gunnison knew none of this. They had come here, arriving late the prior evening, simply because they had needed rooms after a long and wearying railroad journey across a big part of the nation, with Rachel Frye growing more weak and sick with each mile.

  Now Gunnison was not quite sure what to do. Rachel needed medical care, and he’d already learned from the locals about the violent deaths of Jack Livingston and an unidentified stranger up in the Livingston mansion.

  KB FOUND IN CULVERTOWN. LIVINGSTON HOUSE. PLEASE COME.

  So had read the telegram Billy Connery had flashed to New York. Well, Gunnison had come, but there was no access to the Livingston house, no Billy Connery, and so far no Kenton.

  He was scared out of his wits that the unidentified stranger who had died with Jack Livingston might have been Kenton.

  And where the devil was Billy Connery? And why hadn’t he sent a more complete and informative telegram? Did Kenton have Victoria with him up in the Livingston house? If so, where was she now?

  Too many questions, too few answers, and Gunnison was growing downright irritable about it.

  “She’s going to need a doctor,” Roxanne said.

  “I know,” Gunnison snapped. “I’ll fetch her one, as quickly as I can. Just let me finish cleaning this pistol. Do you mind?”

  Roxanne stared at him silently a moment. “No. What I do mind is having my head taken off for a mere comment.”

  Gunnison softened. “I’m sorry. I’m just on edge … and scared. I have this feeling that something has happened to Kenton. Maybe to Billy, too.”

  “The dead men in the Livingston house?” Gunnison had already told his wife about that bit of grim local news.

  “Yes. I’m afraid Kenton might have been one of them.”

  “Wouldn’t he have been identified, though? His face is famous.”

  “Everyone believes Kenton has been dead for months. They’d just assume this dead man was one who resembled him.”

  “What are we going to do, Alex?”

  Gunnison laid his work aside and stared out the window at the street. “Well, I suppose that we need to make sure Rachel is cared for. I need to find a physician.”

  “Yes. I think so. She has a fever right now.”

  Gunnison stood, went to Roxanne, and wrapped his arms around her. “I wish I could say I felt good about all this. But I don’t. Since we’ve gotten here I’ve had the worst feeling about it all. But I’m glad you’re here with me. It makes it better.”

  She kissed him. “If Kenton is alive, we’ll find hiim. And Victoria, too.”

  “I’m going to go find a physician for Rachel,” Gunnison said.

  “You’re a good man, Alex Gunnison.”

  “I don’t know about that. But I do know I’m a very worried one.”

  * * *

  On the far side of Culvertown, a man known to most as Preacher Joe Sammons walked up a rocky hillside toward a church house he had built three years ago almost entirely by himself. It was Friday, and Sammons’s habit was to spend an hour or two each Friday getting the church cleaned up for the weekend, stocking the supply of firewood. He would also pray in the empty sanctuary for each of the members of his small congregation, who at the moment were scattered out across Culvertown and its vicinity. Sammons was a big, burly man, rough and leathery, carrying on his body the scars of what had once been a rowdy and violent life. Now he was known as the gentlest, kindest, most tender man in all Culvertown, and even those who declined to set foot in his church respected him.

  He never locked the building, believing it should always be open for the sake of those who wished to pray. In Culvertown there were far too few of these, but Sammons was an optimist. Someday the fire of faith would sweep across these mountains, and he intended to be there to see it. Maybe he would even be the one to spark it, if God was kind enough to give him the privilege.

  The interior of the church was shadowy and cool. Sammons walked through it, the heels of his boots clumping heavily on the wooden floor. He was proud of this little building, simple as it was. Its interior was spotlessly clean, thanks to his constant attention to it, and painted a clean, oily white.

  Sammons went to a closet in the corner and pulled out a broom. He began to sweep between the pews, whistling softly to himself.

  Within a couple of minutes he began to get an odd feeling.
He stopped sweeping.

  “Hello? Is there somebody here?”

  He heard the faintest kind of noise in response. Just a whisper of sound, so low that Sammons couldn’t tell what it was.

  “Hello?” he said again as he began winding between the pews, looking for the source of the sound.

  He found it near the front, in the person of young Stockton Shelley. Sammons knew Stockton well; he’d tried many times to bring the poor boy under his influence and lessen the influence of his hard-drinking, abusive father. Sammons worried about Stockton a lot and prayed for him daily.

  Stockton was curled up like an unborn child, lying on the pew on his side, staring at the back of the pew before him. His eyes were wide open, hardly blinking, and he was moving very slightly, kind of a childish rocking. There was blood on him, crusted and rusty-colored.

  “Stockton, son, what’s happened to you?” Sammons said, kneeling between the pews and laying a hand gently on Stockton’s shoulder. Stockton flinched at the touch, his eyes still fixed.

  “Stockton, it’s me: Preacher Joe. It’s all right.… You can talk to me.”

  Stockton continued to stare, hardly seeming aware that Sammons was there.

  Sammons moved, lowering his head so that his face came into the line of view of Stockton’s staring eyes. He looked into the boy’s face a few moments and noticed a subtle change. Stockton looked at him, and his lips began to tremble.

  Sammons smiled and nodded. “That’s right, Stockton. It’s just me. I’ll help you out, no matter what’s wrong.”

  Stockton began to cry. His lips moved.

  “What’s that? I didn’t hear.”

  “He’s dead,” Stockton whispered.

  “Who?”

  “My pa. He’s dead.”

  Sammons developed a terrible suspicion. This boy, threatened and abused, had killed his own father! That might account for the blood.

  “Let’s sit you up and take a look at you, Stockton.”

  Stockton sat up. Sammons saw the cuts in his shirt that told him the dried blood was at least in part Stockton’s own. Someone had knifed this boy.

  “Did your pa do this to you?”

  Stockton shook his head.

  “How long have you been hiding here?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Come on, son. We’re going to get you to Doc Asheman. He’ll look you over and see what needs fixing, all right?”

  Stockton did not reply but did stand. The poor boy was weak and deep in some sort of numbing shock, mind and body, and Sammons wondered what this boy had experienced, and seen, to make him be this way. The Stockton Shelley he had always known was cocksure and sarcastic, hiding fear and loneliness behind a mask of bravado … a far cry from the pitiful creature Sammons saw now.

  Stockton made it out of the church and down the hill, then slumped to the ground, too weak to continue.

  “Don’t worry about it, Stockton,” Sammons said. “I’ll carry you to my house and hitch up the wagon. Then you can lie down and I’ll take you in to Dr. Asheman.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Roxanne sat on the edge of Rachel’s bed and wondered how long it would take for her husband to locate a physician in this town. It seemed to her that Rachel’s fever was mounting, and she looked worse by the hour.

  Hurry, Alex.

  Rachel opened her eyes. “I feel like I’m aflame,” she said.

  “I’ll get something to cool you,” Roxanne told her. “And Alex will be back soon, with a physician, I hope. He’s out looking now.”

  “You’re very kind to me.”

  “You’re our friend, Rachel. It’s our pleasure to be kind. Would you like me to bathe your brow with a damp cloth?”

  “Yes, mum, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” Roxanne looked around for a cloth but could not find one. But she recalled that a handkerchief lay on the chest in her and Alex’s room next door.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to Rachel, and went to get the handkerchief.

  A minute later, she was seated on the bedside again, the cloth dampened by water from the basin. She dabbed it lightly on Rachel’s hot brow.

  “Thank you so much,” Rachel said. “It’s wonderfully cool.”

  Roxanne smiled and dipped the handkerchief in the basin again. As she did so, she noticed something she had not before.

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” she said. “I didn’t realize that Alex had monogrammed handkerchiefs … but wait a moment. These aren’t Alex’s initials.”

  On the corner of the white handkerchief were the embroidered and highly stylized initials D. K.

  Rachel turned her head and looked at the handkerchief. “Oh … dear God.…”

  “What is it?”

  “The letters … they are the same as those on Dr. Kevington’s house!”

  “Dr. David Kevington? That Dr. Kevington?”

  “Yes! The shape of the letters, the way they are … it’s exactly the same! I grew up seeing those letters above the door of his house.… I know those letters. The handkerchief has to be his!”

  “Rachel, it hardly seems likely. This handkerchief was on the chest of drawers in my room. I assumed it was one Alex had placed there.”

  “He is here, Roxanne. That is his handkerchief.”

  “Please, Rachel. Don’t say that. You know there are many people with those initials. If the style is the same, it’s only coincidence.”

  “No … he’s here. He’s come here for the same reason we have, to find Brady Kenton and Victoria! He’s here!”

  Rachel was drifting toward hysteria … and Roxanne was beginning to wonder if she might be right. If Kevington had set an agent to following them all the way to New York, why should it be unlikely that he would come to this town if he, too, had found evidence that Kenton and Victoria were here?

  “Rachel, please try not to worry. We don’t really know why this handkerchief is here, or whose it is. Alex will be back soon.… We’ll show it to him. Now, would you like me to bathe your brow some more?”

  “Not with that cloth.”

  Roxanne forced out a smile. “Very well. I’ll find another.”

  * * *

  Gunnison learned the location of Dr. Asheman’s office from a woman sweeping the porch of her cabin. He walked there with a broad and fast stride, not only because of his concern for Rachel but also because of the inexplicable sense of something being amiss.

  He climbed the stairs to the office and knocked on the door. No answer. He looked through the window on the door but couldn’t see anything through the curtain.

  Glancing down, he saw that a little hand-lettered placard had fallen from the window to his feet. BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.

  Well, it would help to know whether the fifteen-minute count started ten minutes ago or one. Either way, he’d wait.

  He tried opening the door and found it unlocked. He pushed it open a foot and found himself looking into an outer office, off of which two other doors opened. One of them was ajar. “Hello?” he said, in case the doctor was back in that room and hadn’t heard his first knock.

  In reply he heard a faint groan. Probably a patient back there.

  “Doctor? Is that you?”

  The groan was a little louder this time … and there was something about it that caught his attention.

  Gunnison paused, then said, “Are you all right?”

  Not a groan this time, but a word, barely whispered and very hoarse: “Alex?”

  Gunnison was stunned.… Then he recognized the voice.

  He burst into the office and went straight to the back room. “Billy?”

  “Alex.…”

  Sure enough, it was Billy Connery back there. He was thin and weak and bandaged and trying to sit up. His right hand lightly gripped a bandage around his throat.

  “Merciful heaven, Billy, what happened to you?”

  “Throat … my throat was cut.…”

  Gunnison gaped. “Your thr
oat was cut.… Who? Why?”

  “Can hardly … talk … couldn’t talk … at all until … yesterday.…”

  Gunnison scrambled about until he found a notepad and pencil. “Here, Billy … write it down. Take your time.… Don’t try to talk.”

  Connery nodded. Gunnison helped him sit up, the exertion of that alone causing Billy to wince and become pale as the blood drained away from his head.

  “Billy, tell me one thing: did you actually meet Kenton?”

  Connery shook his head.

  “But he was here?”

  Connery whispered, “Yes.…”

  “Don’t say anything more. Just write.”

  Gunnison grabbed a chair and pulled it up to Connery’s bedside. Forgotten now were Rachel’s fever and his promise to Roxanne to hurry back with the doctor.

  He sat squirming, as keyed up as a child awaiting a gift, as Billy Connery began to write.

  CHAPTER 32

  Dr. David Kevington, tired, dirty, sunburned, and angry, swore loudly and sat down on a boulder beside the trail. Or was it a trail or just a path made by the passing of wild game? He and his companions had crossed the mountain in the darkness and lost the road in the process, and now they’d wandered so far and lost themselves so thoroughly in the wilderness that it was easy to imagine that there never had been a human presence in this region at all.

  “We’re going to have to go back to Culvertown,” Evaline said. “This ain’t working. We’re not going to find that ghost town … if there is any such damn place. I think we’ve been lied to.”

  “I’m hungrier than a redskin in winter,” Brown said. “We’ve ate up every bit of food we brought, and the last stream I drank out of tasted like a buffalo had pissed in it. I say we go back. If there really is such a town as Caylee, we can find out how to get there and not just wander through all the backside of Pharaoh’s Egypt to find it … or not find it.”

  Kevington looked at him bitterly. “I’ll not turn back without finding Kenton.”

  “Begging your almighty pardon, sir, and with all due respect to you for the good wages you’re paying us, it seems to me you’ll be a damn sight more likely to find Kenton by going back than by going forward.”