He drew rein and waited for the wagon to catch up. His eyes strayed down their back trail but saw nothing, and the road before them was so winding that they could see but a short distance.
“Bart,” he warned, “it’s still a few miles, but look alive. We may run into trouble.”
“I haven’t heard any shooting.”
“Nor I, but we’d better be ready for trouble.”
What could they have found? Was Lije dead? What of Jackson Hight? How many more must die before all of this was settled? Why should one land-hungry man push this fight upon peaceful men who wanted only to till their fields in peace?
It was a fair land, even at its worst, a good land in which men could grow and raise their families, but if fight they must, then they would fight with every lawful means.
Heat waves danced in the distance, a shimmering veil across the road before them. The tracks of the wagon were there, and some hoof prints superimposed upon them. His eyes strayed across the cedar-dotted hills and up through the boulders. Cicadas sang in the brush along the road until their sound became almost the voice of the wastelands.
Darkness came before they reached the site of the ambush. It could be only a few miles farther, but the mules were tired. Kilkenny waited for Bart to come up and then gestured into the cedars at one side of the road. It was a nest of boulders and cedars overlooking a small grassy meadow.
“We’d best camp,” he said. “We don’t want to go it blind.”
They found a hollow among the rocks and made a small masked fire. There they made coffee and a hurried supper before putting out the fire. Coyotes began to sing at the stars before they were bedded down, and Kilkenny turned to Jack. “How about the first watch, Moffit?”
Bart looked around sharply but said nothing. That he was not sure of the boy’s ability to stay awake and alert, Kilkenny could guess, but he knew Jack would try hard, and perhaps be more alert than an older man.
“Pay attention to the mules and horses, Jack. If they hear anything, they will show it. I’m going to keep Buck up close to camp, and he’s better than a watchdog. When you’ve had a couple of hours of it, you wake up Bart. I’ll take the last watch in the morning. Tell Bart to wake me up at two or so, if there’s no trouble before.”
It was a quiet night. When Bartram touched him, he was awake instantly, and tugging on his boots, he stood up, stamped his feet to settle them in place, and took his rifle and moved out.
“All peaceful,” Bart said. “There’s coyotes around, and I think there was a cat out there somewhere. Your buckskin acted up a little, snorting some, ears pricked. He didn’t seem to pay the coyotes much mind.”
“He doesn’t,” Lance replied. “He’ll take right after a coyote. A lion’s a different thing. He’s right wary of them. Coming across a pass one time in the Absorokas, one jumped us, lit right on Buck’s hindquarters, and you never saw such pitching in your life. The lion evidently was a big young one, and he jumped before he was sure of what he saw . . . figured Buck was a deer or something. Probably only a glimpse.”
“What happened?”
“He pitched some, like I said, got a few nasty scratches, and the lion took off into the brush. He was probably more scared than we were.”
Bartram went to his blankets, and Kilkenny moved out from the others to where he was away from the small sounds of their turnings and mutterings and breathing. He moved about a little, talking to the horses. The mules were feeding, and after a while they dozed and their very complacency told him he had nothing to worry about.
At dawn they had a quick breakfast of bacon and cold cornbread and pushed on. Now the hills came closer, the sides steeper. There was no breeze.
The mules leaned into the harness as the grade stiffened. They heard a rider coming before they saw him, and Kilkenny shucked his Winchester. Jack Moffit took the reins from Bartram, and Bart settled down behind some of the barrels and boxes with his rifle ready. Kilkenny recognized the rider as soon as he came within sight. It was Saul.
“Found ’em,” Saul explained briefly when he rode up. “Both are alive. Mighty bad off, though. Hight was shot several times, and there’s three bullets hit Lije. They was holed up in the rocks, more dead than alive.”
When they reached the cluster of rocks, they pulled the wagon in close. The other wagon was there, and only one mule was dead. Another had a long scratch from a bullet, but aside from being nervous over the flies, it seemed healthy enough. Quince had the two men laid out in the shade.
Hight’s wounds showed signs of care. Wounded as he was, Lije had found time to care for Hight, to wash his wounds and put makeshift bandages on him from material in the wagon. His lips seemed moist, and he evidently had not lacked for water.
Lije they had found near him, propped against a boulder with three rifles laid around him and four six-shooters. He had Hight’s guns and evidently those of one of the men who had been killed. He was forted up and ready for a fight, although obviously in bad shape.
Lije was in bad shape for water. Obviously he had been giving most of what little they had to Jackson Hight.
They made a place for the two men in the wagon and lifted them gently in. A blanket was placed across two barrels as an awning to keep the sun off them.
“Jack,” Kilkenny suggested, “you drive their wagon. That will leave Quince, Saul, and me to ride escort.”
While he and Bartram prepared the places for the two wounded men, Saul and Quince buried Miller and Wilson in shallow graves. Later they would come back and recover the bodies, but there was no time now. They might be attacked at any moment.
Saul rode ahead, and the two wagons pulled back into the road. Quince came up alongside of him. His face was grim. “If Lije dies,” he said, “we uns will be huntin’ scalps.
“We lost Hatfield blood all the way west. Pa’s half-brother was kilt down Texas way, fightin’ for independence. His own blood brother was killed by the Santee Sioux in Dakota, an’ Ma lost a sister and her children on the Kansas plains. Wherever we lost blood, we taken blood.”
“Maybe we can get this settled without that, Quince. The old days and ways are passing out.”
“You show me the way, Kilkenny. You show me how to reason with the likes of Hale, Soderman, and them.”
“Soderman is dead, Quince. So is Gaddis. Both of them were in on the attack. Ratcliff is dead, too. They’ve been paying for it.”
“Ain’t no paying for a Hatfield,” Quince replied stubbornly. “They fetched it to us. Now let them reap what they sowed. Anyway, these are hired hands. Hale’s the man behind it, and Hale and that Cub of his, they are the ones we want.”
Kilkenny said no more, for Quince Hatfield’s face was drawn in hard, bleak lines. He knew how the man felt. Once he would have felt the same.
Maybe he still did.
CHAPTER 15
ALL WAS QUIET in the Hatfield Cup when the little cavalcade rode in. The Hatfield women did not cry or carry on. They went about doing what had to be done.
Kilkenny looked around for Alice Miller. She stood at one side, twisting her apron in her hands, looking for Jody. Suddenly she turned and went inside. He waited for a minute and then went in.
“Ma’am,” he said gently, “we buried him shallow. We will go get him soon. He was a good man, a mighty good man.” He rested a hand on her shoulder and talked quietly and soothingly, yet there was nothing to be said, nothing to be done now—a good man was gone, leaving a wife and a small family.
When he went outside again, there was a cold, bitter anger within him. For a moment he looked at Buck, felt the weight of the guns at his hips, and remembered the contempt of Cub Hale, the arrogance of his father.
No . . . now was not the time. Jody was gone, and Wilson, too, but what they had fought for must not be lost. The surest way to make Hale pay was not to kill him but to destroy him and what he had done, to win so the rest of them could keep their homes.
Parson Hatfield was shaking with anger. “That’s tw
o more, Kilkenny! I’m a-goin’ to kill Bill Hale!”
“Wait, Parson. We’ve got to wait. Has there been any trouble here?”
“Smithers ain’t come back.”
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday mornin’. Wasn’t no holdin’ him. He was worried about his place and his stock. He sets great store by that crop he’s planted.”
“He could be holed up somewhere.” Kilkenny thought back over the country between. “He wasn’t much of a woodsman, but he has good common sense. He might be smart enough to hide out.”
He told Parson then of all that had transpired, of the bitter struggle to cross the wild country, of their arrival in Blazer and of Perkins’s attitude, then of the fighting.
“We can cross that rough country anytime, unless the wind is blowing. Then it would be best just to hole up and wait it out. This time we pushed on through because of need, but we scouted the trail, and I think any of the boys who went with us could find the way across now.
“They can’t bottle us up now unless they wipe out Perkins, which they might do, but he doesn’t shape up like a man you could rub out very easy.
“If a man got caught in a sandstorm down in those bottoms, you’d probably never hear of him again, but that need not happen. Anyway,” he added, “we have supplies enough for a while.”
“I knowed that Gaddis, an’ Soderman, too. Never liked them, either one,” Parson commented. “That Soderman, he was one of the worst.”
“Parson,” Kilkenny suggested, “now that we’ve shown it can be done, they might try to come at us that way. We have to keep it in mind.”
“I hope they try it,” Parson replied grimly. “I surely hope so!”
It was a long time before Kilkenny slept. He lay awake thinking of Tombull Turner. He slowly opened and closed his hands. The soreness had gone from them. They felt good. Suddenly he sat up, folding his arms around his knees. That Turner, now. Sure, he was big and he was tough and he was skilled, but he put his pants on one leg at a time like any other man.
The belly was the place, and the heart. What had Jem Mace told him? “Get ’em where they live, boy. Downstairs. I don’t care how tough they are, get ’em in the belly and you’ll slow ’em down.”
Well, maybe. Just maybe.
After a while he lay on his back and looked up at the stars shining down through the pines. When he next turned over it was daybreak and the stars were gone. The smell of the pines was still there, and the smell of coffee and of bacon frying.
Yet when he looked toward the house, he saw Saul.
The tall, lanky boy was standing in the open, hands hanging empty at his sides. He was just standing, staring. When he saw Kilkenny he said, “Lijah’s dead. He died in the night, quiet-like. Sally was a-settin’ up with him, an’ Quince, he was awake.”
“Dammit, Saul! I’m sorry. I . . .”
“He was just a-lyin’ there,” Quince said, coming from the house. “He just reached over and took my hand and said, ‘Stay with ’em, boy!’ an’ he was gone. Just like that.”
“There’ll be blood on the moon now,” Saul said grimly. “And it’ll be Hale blood.”
O’Hara came out to join them. “Last night,” he said, “I rode all night goin’ an’ coming. I went to get that doc down to Cedar, but he set up a squawl. He wouldn’t come no way. We sneaked into town to reach him, but he made such a fuss we were lucky to get away.”
“We will remember that,” Kilkenny said.
O’Hara shook his head regretfully. “Kilkenny, what if we don’t win? They may just wipe us out entirely. Even if you talk to those men from the territorial capital, what can they do?”
“They can stop it, O’Hara. But don’t worry. We are going to win.”
“Supposing they won’t listen? After all, Hale’s entertaining them. He’s a smart man, and he knows how to cater to people like that.”
“If they do not listen, O’Hara, I promise you one thing. I’ll go down to Cedar with my guns on and I won’t come back as long as either one of them is alive.
“I’ve seen men die, and good men have died, and none of it need be, except for one man who has lost all perspective. Personally I believe it is Cub who is behind him, pushing him on.
“I’m sorry about them all. I’m sorry about Lije because even when badly hurt himself, he cared for Hight. He wasn’t seventeen yet, but nobody was ever more of a man.”
“When you ride down there, Kilkenny,” Parson said, “I will ride with you.”
“No, you stay here. What happens to me doesn’t matter all that much, but you stay here so that no matter what happens, we will win in the end. I want your homes to stay in these high meadows, Parson, and it will take you or somebody like you to see that they do.
“As for me, it doesn’t matter that much. Anybody who has used a gun as much as I have is living on borrowed time anyway. If it doesn’t come one place, it will come another.
“The dumb ones, they think they will live forever, that there’s some charm that protects them. They never know better until they are down in the dust and dying. Whenever a gun becomes a way of life, its owner has condemned himself.”
For several days all was quiet. Kilkenny chopped corn, helped repair some fences, cut wood for the fires, and generally kept busy. Several times he climbed to the top of a nearby peak that gave a good view of the trails. On two days he cut wood continuously, and as he worked he thought of Tombull Turner.
Mace had been a thinking fighter and he had taught Kilkenny well. He went over in his mind all that he remembered, how Turner held his hands, the way his feet moved when he advanced and retreated, how he liked to set himself before throwing a punch. He thought of how Turner threw a right or left and how he reacted when hit, how he blocked or tried to evade a punch.
Each fighter develops unconscious habits. A certain method of blocking or countering is easy for him, and so he uses it more often than not, even though he knows other methods. A good boxer, expecting a long fight, will feel out an opponent, testing his reactions to various blows and studying his methods. Then he will know what he must do.
Kilkenny knew that if he stayed with Turner long enough to get his chance to speak to Halloran it would be only because of brains, because he could think faster, better, and more effectively than Turner. He had the advantage of knowing much of him, while Turner knew nothing or next to nothing of him. Whatever he heard about the Hale fight would be largely ignored by Turner. Hale was not a professional, and the fight had been rough-and-tumble, with no skill apparent.
There was no news from Cedar. By now they evidently knew of what had taken place at Blazer.
On the third day after their return from Blazer, Saul rode in with a poster he had torn from a tree. It announced the fight between Turner and Sandoval, a fight to the finish, London prize-ring rules, for a purse of one thousand dollars in gold.
“For that much I’d fight him myself,” Jesse commented.
“The trouble is,” Bart said dryly, “you’ve got to win to collect. They fight winner-take-all.”
“You mean the loser gets nothin’?”
“He gets a beating,” Bart said.
“Sometimes the winner or somebody will take up a collection for him,” Kilkenny added.
“If this Sandoval is to fight Turner, how come you figure to get a fight with him?”
Kilkenny shrugged. “I’ve a notion Sandoval won’t show up at the last minute and they’ll need somebody else.” He smiled, looking over at Ma. “Friends can be very helpful.”
“You got more guts than I’d have,” O’Hara said. “Turner’s a tiger in the ring. I’ve still got a copy of the Police Gazette somewhere around with a picture of him.”
At that moment, oddly enough, Kilkenny remembered Cain Brockman.
On that desperate day back in the Live Oak country of Texas, he had killed Abel Brockman and Cain had been thrown from his horse and knocked unconscious. Later, in the Trail House, he had whipped Cain in a knoc
k-down and drag-out fight. Cain had sworn to kill him, and now Cain Brockman was coming to Cedar . . . was probably there, in fact.
When night came, Kilkenny threw his saddle on a slim black gelding and rode out of the Cup. He was going to see Nita. Even as he rode, he admitted to himself there was little reason for seeing her except that it was what he wanted. He had no right to take chances with his life when it was so important to so many other people who were depending on him. He wanted to see Nita, but he also wanted some indication of what was happening in town.
He rode swiftly, and the black horse was eager for the trail. He wasn’t Buck, but he was a good night horse, chosen for that quality when night-herding cattle. Some horses take to night work and others do not, and the black seemed born to it. Moreover, the horse was fast, with speed to spare.
It was very late when he rode up to the outskirts of Cedar, and his thoughts reverted to Leathers, whom he had awakened from a sound sleep, and to Dan Cooper, the tough cowhand-gunman who had been watching Leathers’s store. Cooper was a good man on the wrong side, while Leathers was one who would try always to be on the winning side and who had no loyalty but to himself.
Leaving his horse in the shadow of an empty building near the Crystal Palace where he could stand under the trees and out of sight, Kilkenny studied the Palace for some time, listening to the night sounds and getting his ears accustomed to the normal sounds so he could quickly pick up anything out of the ordinary.
Ghostlike then, he moved along the back of the buildings to the door he sought. It was locked.
Ahead of him a curtain was stirred by the wind, a curtain indicating an open window. He paused near it, listening. Inside he could hear the breathing of a man, yet it was the only way in. Hesitating only a moment, he put his foot over the sill and ducked his head through the window.
The Kilkenny Series Bundle Page 44