Novel 1964 - Kiowa Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Let me know what happens.” The captain hesitated a moment, and then he said, “This is a remarkable coincidence. As a young officer I knew your Major Sotherton. He was a military attaché during the war with Mexico.”

  Two weeks later I found out who the third man was. He was Frank Hastings…a scalp hunter…a man whom I had never seen.

  When I came on Morgan Rich it was in Las Vegas, New Mexico, more than six months later.

  He was in a saloon there, and I walked up to the bar near him and said bluntly, “You murdered Jim Sotherton. You tortured him worse than any Apache.”

  “You lie!” he shouted at me.

  But at least twenty men were listening, and he looked worried.

  “You stole gold money from him, and left a trail of it clear across the country. It was English gold.”

  Nobody was doing anything but listening as I went on. “I traced Bob Flange by it, too.”

  “Flange?”

  “He missed his first shot…I didn’t.”

  “Get out of here, kid. You’re crazy.”

  “That belt you have on,” I said steadily, “is a British uniform belt you stole from his outfit after you killed him.”

  “You’re a damned liar!” Rich said hoarsely, and as he spoke he drew his gun.

  It was cold out on the hill the next morning, with a raw wind blowing, so they buried him in a shallow grave, wrapped in his blanket, then hurried back to the saloon for a drink.

  Frank Hastings had dropped from sight, and I had never found him.

  *

  THE COALS WERE almost gone. “You’d best get some sleep, Kate,” I said. “It is going to be a long night.”

  She was getting to her feet when we heard the shots. A sudden volley…and then one more. The shots came from the town.

  Kate turned sharply to me. “Conn…where’s Tom?”

  Fear tore my throat like a rasp. I turned and ran in a stumbling gait toward the place where the men had bedded down. Tom’s bedroll was there, and it was empty.

  Priest rolled over and lifted himself on one elbow. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Tom’s gone,” I said, “and there was shooting in town.”

  His horse was gone, too. When I returned from checking the remuda, everybody was up and armed.

  And then we heard the galloping of horses out on the prairie. The riders drew up well out in the darkness, at least a hundred yards off.

  There was a thump of something thrown to the ground, and a voice shouted, “And don’t come back!”

  They rode off quickly into the darkness, and we went out there. Bending down, I lit a match.

  It was Tom Lundy, and he was dead. He had been shot three times in the back, and then somebody had turned him over and shot him between the eyes from such close range that the wound was marked with powder burns.

  We carried him back to the hill and laid him down on the ground, and Kate Lundy came and stood over him.

  He was her last living relative, and he had been both brother and son to her. After her husband had been killed by Indians Tom was all she had left, and now he was gone.

  His gun was in its holster, the thong still in place, evidence that he had not expected shooting trouble.

  Standing there, we looked down at those bullet holes. Three shots in the back at close range that had ripped through his back, tearing great holes through his chest. And in case he was still not dead, a man had leaned over him and finished the job with a pistol bullet.

  Suddenly Red Mike began to swear in a choked, horrible voice.

  Tod Mulloy said, “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to burn that town.”

  “Let’s do it now,” Carson said. “Right now!”

  “No.”

  The word was flat, cold, in a voice such as I had never heard Kate Lundy use before.

  “No,” she repeated.

  “We’re pulling out?”

  “No.”

  That was all she would say, and the men were silent.

  Nobody slept that night, but in the morning Naylor and Priest went out and dug a grave on a flat place at the very top of the hill. They dug it deep, and we buried Tom Lundy there.

  Looking off toward town, using the field glasses I kept in my saddlebag, I could see the glint of rifles from the rooftops or corrals.

  “They’re waiting for us, Kate,” I said. “They are waiting to get us as we ride in.”

  “We’re not going in.”

  Rule Carson swore. “Now, look here, Mrs. Lundy,” he began. “Tom was—”

  “Tom Lundy,” she said, “was my brother. He took my husband’s name, and my husband considered him his son.” She paused. “We wanted children, but we never had any…only Tom.”

  She turned to Red Mike. “Mike, I want you to saddle the steel-dust, and I want you to ride to Texas. I want you to find twenty-five men who can handle guns, and who can take orders.” She looked over at the town. “Can you find that many?”

  “I can find a hundred,” he said. “Volunteers, if you want them.”

  “I want men who work for wages,” she said, “and I’ve the money to pay them.”

  Red Mike turned to look at me. “Who do you think?” he asked.

  “The Cuddy boys,” I said, “and Harvey Nugent, Sharkey, Madden, and Kiel. Some of the Barrickman or Clements boys if they’re around.”

  Kate stood there, looking toward the town, a tall, lonely woman, with high cheekbones and a face still lovely despite what sun and wind had done to it.

  “You’re going to fight, Kate?”

  “Not the way they expect,” she said. “Not at all the way they expect.”

  But it was that morning that it began, and it was a kind of warfare I had not expected, and was not prepared for. Nor were they.

  She wrote three telegrams that morning, and she sent Delgado off on a fast horse to take them to the nearest station to the east. It was a water tank and saloon twenty miles away.

  The day drifted slowly by and the men sat around playing cards. Toward sundown they drifted the horses to the nearest creek and watered them.

  Riflemen still stood guard on rooftops and in the alleys approaching the town.

  Kate remained in her ambulance most of the day, and the rest of us waited.

  “They must be getting kind of nervous down there,” Tod Mulloy said finally. “We’ve got the edge, because we know what we’re doin’ and they don’t.”

  The thought seemed to cheer everybody up a little, and I noticed that every once in a while one of the men would go up the rise and stand there looking off toward the town. They could see us up there, and our inaction must be puzzling to them.

  “They will not sleep much tonight,” D’Artaguette commented. “Nor did they last night.”

  Kate looked over at him. “Nor will they for many nights to come.”

  At noon on the third day, a rider came toward us bearing a white flag. With my field glasses I could see it was Bannion, the one man in town—unless it was Hardeman—who might be allowed close enough to talk.

  Bannion had always been fair. He had staked more than one busted trail hand to a final drink when his money was gone, and had even furnished a couple of riders with horses to get back to their outfits.

  Kate, D’Artaguette, and I went down the slope to meet him.

  “I had nothing to do with this, Mrs. Lundy,” he said. “I want you and the boys to know that. Nothing at all. I didn’t even know it was going to happen.”

  “Did they ask you to come out and look the situation over?” I asked.

  “Yes…they’re worried. They can’t figure what’s happening. They’ve been laying for you, expecting an attack just any minute.”

  “Let them worry,” Kate replied. “Mr. Bannion, you have the reputation for being a fair man. Now we’ve going to give you a chance to save yourself. You will have no time to consider this, but take my advice and do as I say.

  “Go back to town. Tell them the truth, that w
e would not allow you into our camp. Then sell your saloon.”

  “Sell my saloon?” he repeated in astonishment.

  “Why, I can’t do that! Anyway, they would think it mighty odd—”

  “Would you rather sell at a loss—and you may have to—or come out with nothing at all?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Mr. Bannion,” Kate asked quietly, “did you ever see a town die?”

  He just looked at her, and after a minute he said, “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you.” Then he turned his horse.

  “Mr. Bannion,” Kate added, “and this is for you, and you alone to know. One hundred miles west of here there’s a creek that flows along the edge of a wide flat. There are hills to the north, and some cottonwoods there. It’s on the main line of the railroad.”

  Well, I looked at her. Of course, I knew the place; we had camped there once. In fact, I myself had camped there several times, and had taken our herd there the season before.

  What she had in her mind I did not know, but looking at her face—and never had I seen it so cold—I knew what was going to happen to the town.

  That town, the town that had killed her brother, was going to die.

  It was not a man, nor several men who were going to die, but the town itself.

  Chapter 4

  *

  KATE LUNDY HAD given no instructions to Red Mike other than to hire fighting men, but we all knew that Red Mike would tell the story of what had happened. And it was such a tale as would be carried by the winds and the dust until it was the talk of every campfire and every ranch house in all of Texas.

  We camped on the knoll under the Kansas sky, and we let the days drift by, but there was plenty to do. On the fourth day two riders drifted toward our camp, and both of them I knew.

  They were fighting men encountered en route by Red Mike and sent on to us. Bledsoe was a former Ranger who had served with Big-Foot Wallace, and Meharry was a tough young Irishman who had fought in the French army at Sedan, a veteran soldier.

  Priest and Naylor she sent off to the west to the place she had spoken of to Bannion, and they had their instructions. When she took them aside and told them what they were to do, they just looked at her, then at each other. Suddenly, both started to grin; and they were still grinning when they rode off to the west.

  “Conn,” Kate said to me, “mount the men, and just at dusk ride toward the town.”

  I waited. There were men with rifles waiting there in town, under cover. We would be riding up in the open.

  “Ride until you are just out of rifle shot,” Kate said, “and make sure you give yourself the benefit of the doubt; then ride around the town. Do not come back until after dark.”

  Smart…she would have them alerted once more, all the night through. It was one more step in a kind of warfare that I’d never have thought of myself, but one look at Kate Lundy told me this was a different Kate. She was fighting…fighting to destroy the town that had killed her brother.

  Would they finally move out to attack us? If so, we were pitifully few.

  That, no doubt, would come. But not just yet. Nonetheless, when I mounted up to ride out that evening I made sure each man carried fifty rounds of ammunition. Kate remained on the knoll alone…but they could not know that…or could they?

  We started out, riding around the hill in a tight bunch, but shifting around so that our dust made it difficult for them to estimate our number. We rode toward the town, keeping out of rifle range, then swung around it, taking advantage of the terrain to dip into valleys, then to emerge, to keep them guessing as to our intentions. We were on the far side of the town when it became completely dark, and at once we swung around and returned to our camp.

  Kate challenged us as we drew near, and when I replied, we rode on in. Later that night she sent Meharry out to start a small campfire on a hill east of town, and to keep it burning for a while.

  By now other herds should have appeared, but none came.

  The days grew warmer. At night the coyotes howled. On the seventh day the train stopped a mile out of town and let a man out, and let a horse down from a flatcar. It was Delgado, coming back with replies to Kate’s messages.

  After he had started across country toward us the train went on into town.

  The following day a dust cloud appeared to the south of the town, and a big herd of steers showed up. They went to a hollow among the low hills, and an hour later we saw two riders approaching.

  One of them was Matt Pollock, who lived a hundred miles east of the Tumbling B. He was a square, powerful man with a quick, energetic way about him. As he rode up to camp we saw that the rider beside him was a man whom we also knew. It was Harvey Nugent, one of the men Red Mike had been looking for.

  Pollock swung down and thrust out his hand to Kate. “Howdy, Mrs. Lundy! Hear you’re in trouble.”

  Briefly Kate recounted the story, mentioning the attitude of the town toward Texans. Take their money and get rid of them—that was the town’s motto.

  “What do you want me to do? Stampede my herd through their cracker-box town? Or burn it around their ears?”

  “East of here,” Kate explained, “a train will be unloading barbed wire. I have leased the railroad land on both sides of the tracks, and I’m going to fence the town in.”

  “What about the even-numbered sections? As I understand it, the railroad was granted only the odd-numbered sections.”

  “Not here, nor at several other points where there was an overlapping of grants for railroad building. I’ve leased it all at fifty cents an acre.”

  “You’re fencing in the whole town?” Matt Pollock reached for the coffeepot. “Damn it, Kate, you’ve got to give them an easement! They’ve got a legal right to go in and out.”

  “Of course they have. There will be the railroad and a driving road right alongside, and I shall stop nobody from going in or out—except the trail herds. No trail herd can cross my land.”

  Squatting beside the fire, I watched Kate. I was curious, and a little shocked. Ours was a hard land, and it needed hard people to survive in it, but I had never seen that look on Kate Lundy’s face before, except once.

  That time was the morning after the Apaches had killed her husband, ran off their stock, and burned their outfit—the morning after I showed up.

  *

  WHEN I CAME down out of the rocks at the end of the attack that I had helped to fend off, she was standing there, hands hanging, her face twisted in that strange, dry grief that was so characteristic of her.

  I was to learn that she rarely cried; only her face seemed to go through the motions, but almost without tears, as if long ago she had shed all the tears she had to shed.

  She stood there looking down at the crumpled body of her husband, and then the boy came out of the rocks and put his arm around her.

  My horse was walking slowly, and I drew up opposite them, but it was several minutes before she looked up. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I’m sorry. Wish I’d come along sooner.”

  “There was no warning. They just came out of the desert like ghosts.”

  “They were Apaches, ma’am. There’s never any warning. They’ll be all around you before you can make a move.”

  I got down from the saddle and went around the place, sizing it up. The site was not bad. The spring beside which they had settled was a good one, and they had managed to irrigate enough to start a small vegetable garden. Also they had been clearing away rock to make land for a field.

  The house had been built of native stone for the lower courses, and of timbers cut out of driftwood logs snaked up from the river for the upper part. The roof had been made of branches, brush, and earth, but the Apaches’ fire had destroyed it, and charred the big timbers. Some of them still smoldered, and I got right at it putting out the fires.

  Lundy’s rifle was lying where it had fallen, and there were a couple of empty shells on the ground nearby.
/>   He was a man of perhaps thirty-odd, with good features, maybe a trifle over-refined for this country. His hands showed evidence of hard work, but indicated this might have been the first such work he had done. His boots were good—the best, in fact. The same was true of his hat and belt.

  Going through his pockets, I took out a couple of gold coins and some odd bits of change. These I placed on a rock with whatever else there was, and then I took the shovel and walked up to a small knoll where there was a mesquite tree growing, gnarled and ancient. There I dug the grave.

  It puzzled me why they had come to such a place, for it was far west of any regular settlements and was in an area known to be traveled both by Apaches and Comanches. Not to say it didn’t have a certain strange, wild beauty.

  “When morning comes,” I said, “we will start for San Antonio. You and the boy can ride the horse. I’ll walk.”

  She didn’t say anything at all, nor did she say much when I wrapped her husband in an old piece of blanket I found and lowered him into the grave, the boy helping. When I’d filled it in, I said some lines from the Good Book that I recalled—I’d buried a few men before this. Then I found a good place where there was soft sand for them to bed down for the night.

  I had no certainty the Apaches would not return at first light, so, dog-tired as I was, I caught a nap, with the boy watching. When daybreak came, I was waiting, but the Apaches evidently figured their medicine was bad, for they didn’t show up.

  When Kate Lundy awakened I had a fire going and some coffee made. I said to her, “Better drink up, ma’am. It’s a long way, and the sooner we start the sooner we will get there.”

  She stood up and shook out her dress and smoothed it down a mite, and then she looked all around. She looked at the ruins of her house, at the grave of her husband, and at the few, pitifully few things that belonged to them, and then, with that strange, hard expression on her face, she said, “I am not going.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “We’re going to stay. This was where we came to settle, and this is where we will settle. We are not going away. Thank you, Mr. Dury, for all you have done.”

  And that was how I met Kate and Tom Lundy, and how I came to stay with them.