“Any trouble at the KR?”
“Some. The Forty started to push cattle on the place two days ago and ran into something they didn’t like. The KR outfit had tied up with old Dan Marable and the Roots and they opened fire at long range. Knocked one rider out of his saddle, killed a horse and about forty head of cattle, laying them in a line right along the boundary. I hear Tetlow was fit to be tied. He ranted and raved for hours, but none of his boys were very anxious to try to push cattle into that straight shooting. Since then things have been hanging fire, waiting for Havalik to get back I suppose.”
“He was following me.”
“So I heard. What happened?”
Kilkenny shrugged. “Not much. I made them chase me, shot their camp up, stole most of their canteens an’ generally raised a hob just to make ’em miserable. They’ve had a mighty dry ride.”
“We had a meeting in town and the place split right down the middle. Macy has Dolan, Early, myself and a few others on his side. Most of the town are against him, but not all.”
“Has he done anything yet?”
“He hasn’t tried. He wants to avoid an all-out gun battle if he can. There was an inquiry into the killing of Carpenter, but no proof. Eight witnesses testified that Carpenter deliberately ran in front of the stampeding cattle. Mrs. Carpenter said they drove them into him. That was the way it ended, and the Forty outfit walked out laughing.”
Kilkenny turned his hat in his hand. “Make up your mind to this. When Havalik comes back, he’ll be killin’ mad. The first man to cross his path will die. I mean it. I think he killed one of his own men out there. At least, he disappeared.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What I’ve been doing. I’m going to move against the Forty tonight. Tomorrow night, I should say.”
“Nita Riordan wants to see you. She asked me to tell you.”
Kilkenny looked up quickly, then he shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve my own reasons.” He got to his feet, then looked quickly at Doc. “How does she look? Is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s looking fine. In fact, she’s the most beautiful girl I ever saw.”
Kilkenny nodded. “She is that. And one of the finest.”
Doc Blaine had the quick perception of one long geared to the study of human reactions. It was here, too. This man was in love with Nita. As much, he decided, as she was in love with him. He felt a quick start of pain at the thought. It had been a long time since he had seen a woman who excited more than a passing interest, and Nita Riordan had—there was something about her that stayed with you after you had seen her once.
The man before him was the same sort, Blaine admitted that. Having once seen Kilkenny to know him, one was not likely to forget. He was like an edged blade, sharp, clean, and strong, yet resilient. Yes, that was it, he was resilient.
Yet he was more, too. The man had character. Curiously, he wondered about his background. This man a killer—what had started that? Badmen looking for trouble and a naturally quick hand and eye? Probably.
Kilkenny turned restlessly. He was never very comfortable inside a house. That might come, but not now. “All right,” he said, as though just responding to the message from Nita, “I will go see her, but not right away. I’ve too much to do and,” he added quietly, “I know this thing too well. Take your mind off it for an instant and you’re shot full of holes. These boys are playing for keeps.”
“I’d like to know what Jared Tetlow is hatching right now. You can make up your mind it’s something.”
“I agree.”
Kilkenny picked up his hat and turned swiftly to the door. “Someone coming. I’m going.”
Almost before Doc Blaine could adjust himself, Kilkenny was gone. And Doc had not even heard the door close. Or seen it open.
There was a sound of voices, then boot steps and a spur rattled. An authoritative fist pounded on the door and Blaine went to it.
Three roughly dressed men pushed their way into the room. Doc knew them instantly. They were the pursuers of Kilkenny. Havalik was in the lead. “Got a wounded man, Doc. Take care of him.”
He turned swiftly and surveyed the room, then walked through into the kitchen. “You alone?”
“Yes,” Doc’s voice was sharp, “and stay the hell out of my kitchen, Havalik! You’re here with a man for treatment, not making an inspection of the furniture!”
Havalik whirled, white hot on the instant. “Yuh talk to me that way?”
“To you or any man. You’ve a wounded man here and that wound’s in bad shape. You stay in here and mind your own business and I’ll tend to mine. I won’t lift a hand until you do.”
Havalik was ugly and he took a quick step forward. Calmly, Doc picked up a scalpel. “This is my business, Havalik. I could cut you open as quick as you could shoot me at this range. And I’d cut where you’d bleed to death mighty fast.”
Havalik stopped, staring at the doctor. There was conviction in Blaine’s voice, and it surprised Havalik to see that he meant it. He drew back.
“Furthermore,” Blaine continued, “this community values my hide. They need me here. There’s not another doctor anywhere within two hundred miles. If anything happens to me they’d lynch you, Forty or no Forty. And before this is over, you may need me yourself.”
“What’s that mean?” Havalik demanded angrily.
“It means—” Doc was working swiftly and surely. It was a nasty wound. “It means,” he repeated, “that you’re carrying a gun and hunting trouble. It’s a combination that gets every man in the end. It will get you. I doubt if you live out the month.”
Dee Havalik turned away with a snarl. The driving urge to kill was riding him, but deep inside the doctor’s words rang a bell. Was it because he perceived the truth? Or because he had been accustomed since childhood to take a doctor’s word for things? It made him surly, and he walked out and slammed the door, starting up the street toward the Pinenut.
Dolan stood on the steps of his place and watched him go, then he stepped off into the darkness and went down the path to the rear of his establishment. He walked swiftly to the edge of the trees, then stopped and said carefully, yet aloud, “I could furnish a good horse if a man needed a rest for his own mount, a good horse with bottom and speed.”
“I could use a horse like that.” Kilkenny stepped to the very edge of the woods. “Busy place around here, Dolan.”
“Yeah,” Dolan said dryly, “too busy. One of that outfit that was chasin’ you looked in on me. What have you been doin’ to that crowd?”
“They wanted to go for a ride,” Kilkenny smiled, “so I took ’em for one.”
“The man that hit my place was half dead. He must have drunk a gallon of water. He said he hadn’t had a decent drink, not more than enough to wet his lips in two days.”
“Dolan, how many boys can you muster? I mean boys with sand?”
“Enough. What do you want to do?”
“Stampede the Forty herd.”
Dolan was silent, but his eyes glinted. That would be hitting them where it hurt, and right at home.
“When?” he asked then.
“Tomorrow night. They are bunching them for another push toward the KR. I’d like to run them right back over their own camp.”
“That might be tough. They’ve too many hands.”
“I’ve got a plan. It calls for roping a half dozen of their steers.” Kilkenny suddenly was tired, more tired than he had believed possible. “I’d need about four good, solid men.”
“You’ll get them. Where?”
“That lightning-struck cottonwood in Whiskers Draw. Nine tomorrow night.”
“They’ll be there.” Dolan stepped closer to him. “Man, you’re all in. You’d better get some sleep. You’d better sleep until then.” Without awaiting a reply, he turned and walked to a narrow gate in the corral, a very convenient gate for getting a horse into the trees without it being seen. “I saddled this gray when I first saw you. He’s cornfed. He’l
l go all day and all night and was mountainbred.”
“Good, and thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Get some rest.”
When he was gone, Dolan walked around to the steps again and lighted a cigar. Havalik was just leaving with his men. One man wore the white of a bandage. “What yuh mean?” this man was saying. “Yuh think Kilkenny was in that house before us?”
“I know he was!” That was Havalik.
“Think he was hurt?”
Havalik turned and his voice was low and fierce, yet clearly heard by Dolan in the desert air. “How could he be hurt? Who would hurt him? Did you see him? Did I? Are you crazy?”
“What about the Doc?”
“Leave him to me.” There was icy promise in Havalik’s voice. “Not now, but wait. All of this town that works against me or Forty. I’ll take care of them once Forty’s in the saddle.”
“Dolan’s place is right back there. Let’s go back and bust it up and get Dolan.”
Dolan took the cigar from his mouth and looked at the end of it.
“Later. He’s got men with him. We’ll get him when he’s alone and nobody will care. Who cares about a crook?”
Dolan put the cigar in his teeth. “That’s right,” he muttered. “Who does?”
He was the vulnerable one. Early and Blaine were respected citizens. Kilkenny was elusive. Only Dolan could be hit without fear of retaliation. He could always, he reflected, go to Tetlow and make a deal.
He chuckled with wry humor. That was the one thing impossible for him. He could rustle cattle, plan a bank or stage robbery or hide a wanted man, but it was not in him to betray a friend or sell out a cause.
THE DAPPLED GRAY Dolan had given him was all horse. Kilkenny rode southwest out of town, dipped into a tangle of washes and then turned south until he finally camped with the battlements of Comb Ridge towering above him. He rolled into his blankets nearer dead than alive.
His tight muscles let go their hold, and clogged with weariness. He slept. The long hours of riding, the constant alertness, all left him and he sank deeper and deeper into a sleep of utter exhaustion. Over the hills men rode and horses moved and cattle lowed gently in the night air. Stars faded and a faint gray crept up the east, barred from him by the gigantic wall of the Ridge, a bulwark that lay across his path to the KR.
He stirred in his sleep, then relaxed. Some faint stimulus made him stir again and a violent need within him culminated suddenly in his eyes. They snapped open and for a time he lay still, unable to bring his thoughts into focus. It was a voice that did it for him. A girl’s voice.
“You must have been very tired, Lance.”
Unbelieving, he sat up. Nita sat a dozen feet away, her rifle across her knees, her lips widening in the quick, amused smile he knew so well.
“Where…where did you come from?”
“Should I be poetic, Lance? Should I say that I’m your past returned to haunt you? No, I’ll tell the truth. I was restless last night. I could not stay in the house any longer so I gave them all the slip. I caught Glory—remember my black filly? I saddled her and rode west. Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been worried by this Ridge—I wanted to see what lay over here, so I came over just before daybreak and what do I find—you.”
“And I didn’t hear you.”
“You wouldn’t have heard if the Ridge had collapsed. If the moon ran into the world and they burst, you wouldn’t have heard it. I never knew a man could sleep like that.”
“It’s lucky it wasn’t Tetlow—or Havalik.”
She was suddenly serious. “Lance, you’re the same. You haven’t changed.”
“Are you saying that, or asking?”
“Both. You’re the same as I see you. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
He got to his feet, running his fingers through his black hair which was all awry. He must look like hell. Needing a shave, tired, red-eyed and hair all on end. How could a woman ever—or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she had changed. He looked at her, trying to guess.
“You—you’re so beautiful it hurts.”
“Hurts who? Not you surely. You ran off and left me. I can hardly believe that. You’re the only man who ever ran away from me, Lance—and the only one I ever wanted to stay.”
He looked at her quickly. “You still mean that?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
She got to her feet, tall, lissome, her skin a beautiful olive, her eyes—“It’s been a long time.” Her eyes widened a little, and her lips parted, he could see the sudden hunger in her eyes, and he stepped toward her, half-frightened by the feeling that shook him. Roughly, he took her arms and pulled her to him and she reached hungrily for his lips and they melted together and deep within him something seemed to well up and the cold dams across his feelings were gone.
He pushed her away, her breath coming quickly, his own ragged with emotion. “It’s no good,” he said hoarsely, “no good at all. You’ve too much to waste on me. I’m a drifter, Nita, a saddle-bum, a man with a gun and a few days, weeks or months to live. It might come tomorrow.”
“It might,” she agreed, “but don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you think I know?” Her voice rose. “Lance, look at the time we’ve lost. Yesterday, and all the days before that, the long days after you left the border country, and the days after we were together in Cedar—you know and I know we’ve wasted that time. I know it may not be long, and yet it may be forever. Who knows how long it is for anyone? All of us, all over the world, all of us walk along a thin edge between life and death and it takes so little for us to fall.
“It isn’t tomorrow I want unless it comes. It’s today, Lance! We women, we don’t have so much imagination about some things. We’re realistic. You think about what it may mean to me tomorrow, if I lose you. I think about what it means today, if I don’t have you.
“It doesn’t matter! None of it does. I know how you live, I know what drives you, and I know that maybe the Tetlows, maybe Dee Havalik, maybe someone else will kill you. Or you may kill them and have long years ahead. After all, I’ve known some of your like who died in bed, and you may. You think about it too much.”
“I live with it,” he said somberly. “What kind of life is it for a woman when her man never leaves the house walking but she’ll fear his body may be carried back? If there’s enough of him to carry? Sure, I’ve stayed away from you and I’ve hated it, but only because I wanted to spare you pain.”
“By causing me pain? It won’t work, Kilkenny. Yes, I often call you that. Everyone does. The mysterious Kilkenny, the unknown Kilkenny. Sometimes I wonder if I ever knew you myself, and if you weren’t just a dream I had, and then I try to go to sleep again and I remember how your arms felt, and your kisses, I remember how you stood in the center of that room and spoke to me first. Remember what you said, Lance? You don’t remember—trust a man to forget, but I remember. I remember every word you’ve said to me, at any time. Even the foolish little things you’ve said.”
He looked at her and tried to find words and there were none. He watched her lips, the rise of her high breasts as she spoke, the wetness of her lips. He turned sharply away, stabbed by sudden pain. Maybe he was a fool. “I’d better get saddled,” he said, “we can’t stay here.”
She smiled at him, laughing a little. “Tough aren’t you? Big and tough! But I know you. Under all that you’re sentimental as a kid. And you love me. I’ve known that from the start, and that’s what irritates me about you. Walking away from me!”
Nita dropped to her knees and began to roll his bed. “Get your horse. I’ll fix this bedroll.”
When he had the gray saddled he strapped the bedroll behind the saddle and helped her with her black mare. They both mounted and he grinned at her. “All right, you tyrant! Wake a man up looking so gorgeous it hurts! Now take me to breakfast!”
“You think I won’t? And if Maria doesn’t have it ready, I’ll fix it for you.” She led off, starting for the switchback trail ov
er the Comb. “You know, I’m almost as glad for Cain as I am for myself. Without you he’s like a big dog with no master. He needs you, Lance.”
“How is he?”
“Fine, and as big and ugly as ever. You should never have broken his nose, Lance. It was probably his one good feature.”
“If I hadn’t, he’d have killed me. That big lug can fight!”
“I’ve seen him.”
“Does he ever mention Abel?”
“Rarely. What was he like, Lance? I never knew him well.”
“Vicious. A killer. Completely and entirely criminal, and very dominating. Cain was never bad, it was just that he followed Abel’s lead. That was a good job I did, killing him. A good job for Cain if for no one else.”
“He thinks so, too. And he says you were the only person who ever treated him decently, and the only one who could ever handle him.”
They rode in silence for a distance and then Nita looked around at him, pausing to breathe her mare. “What’s going to happen, Lance?”
“We’re going to hit Forty. Tonight. And hit ’em hard.”
“And then?”
“Every man for himself. Tetlow will turn loose his dogs then and it’ll be kill or be killed all along the line.”
“That Dee Havalik—I’ve seen him, Lance. He’s mean, cruel.”
Kilkenny shrugged. They topped the ridge and the sun burst bright in their faces. Far below them lay the ranch house and along the distant line of the two ranches was a line of sprawled dark figures, dead cattle.
Beyond them was a dark mass of gathering weight. Suddenly, he was worried. “Let’s get down here! They may start something before we can!”
Suddenly the dark herd began to move and behind them, far behind them came a wave of riders firing into the air, starting the cattle They gathered themselves and lunged, plunging across the line at breakneck speed.
Kilkenny drew up, appalled. “My God! I hope the boys aren’t down there! If they are, they’re dead!”
Chapter 6
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