The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 3

by Louis L'Amour

“Gunfighters?”

  “No, but tough hands, and clannish as all get-out. You can bet we’ve got a Mulhaven on us now, somewhere.”

  “What you plannin’ to do?”

  Sam Starr let that question slide. It was not that he did not know, but Socorro was pretty thick with Mailer. Starr planned to get his share of the loot and light a shuck for Texas. But fast.

  A long time after, Gates saw Gordon Flynn come into the room, get something out of his bunk, and leave again. Mailer still had not come in. When he did he undressed and fell right into bed.

  After Mailer left him, Dunning moved swiftly. He had to prepare for battle on two fronts. The trap had to be set for Kilkenny and he needed to be ready for Mailer’s next move, whether they’d done in Kilkenny or not. He crossed the patio and rapped lightly on Lona’s door. “Who’s there?” she asked.

  “It’s me … Pa. Get your clothes an’ come out of there. You sleep in the back room tonight. Beside Dave Betts.”

  Lona thought quickly. Why Dunning wanted her to move she could not guess, but being close to Dave would make her feel much safer. She knew the old man’s affection for her, and his loyalty. “All right,” she said after a minute.

  “You’ll be all right there. Mailer’s back.”

  She said nothing but went to the room mentioned, barred the door, and climbed into bed. Poke Dunning walked into Lona’s bedroom and sat down on the empty bed with his six-shooter in his hand.

  His hunch might be wrong, but Lona was the pawn in the game now. Possession of her person was as important as possession of the ranch itself, even more important, as things stood. If Mailer came … it was almost daylight when he heard the soft rustle of grass, then heard a low voice. “Lona!”

  He sat very still, and then a head and shoulders loomed at the open window. “Lona!” the voice called.

  Poke Dunning fired.

  Mailer, Gates, and Starr came awake on the instant. Starr thought first of a posse, Gates and Mailer were thinking of Kilkenny. Gates kicked off the blankets and reached for his boots. Mailer stared at him, then leaned back in bed. Going out into that yard was something he had no idea of doing right now. Firing a pistol and then waiting might be just the trick Poke Dunning would try. “See what it is,” he said, and sagged back in his bunk.

  Rusty Gates walked out into the yard, but there was no sound and no movement. He waited, then crossed the hard-packed earth of the ranch yard toward the house. He heard a faint stirring and turned toward the wing of the house. Someone had lighted a lantern, and he rounded the corner to see the dark figure of a man bending over another one on the ground.

  Rusty had his gun out. “Who is it?” he demanded.

  Dunning turned, saw Gates, and saw the gun. “It’s Flynn,” he said. “He tried to get into Lona’s window and got shot.”

  “Shot? Lona shot Flynn?” Gates could not believe that.

  He bent over the cowhand. “Dead?”

  “No, he ain’t, but he’s bad hurt. Let’s get him inside.”

  Poke was cursing his luck, for when he fired he was sure that it was Mailer he had under his gun. But why was Flynn here? Had Lona planned to escape?

  When they put the boy down on Lona’s bed, Gates worked over him, and Dunning watched. “Where do you stand in this, Gates?” Poke asked suddenly.

  Rusty looked up. He had wondered if he would be asked. “Now, that’s a good point, Dunning. I don’t know where I stand. I don’t know what the fuss is all about. However,” he added, “this is a deal where I’d look to see where the money was.”

  “I’ve got it. You work for me an’ you can make yourself a fast stake.”

  “That sounds good to me. What do I do?”

  “Saddle a horse an’ see that girl at the Fandango. Tell her Poke Dunning wants to see Kilkenny tomorrow at three. Then you get back here and stand ready to side me … against anybody.”

  “What does it get me?” Rusty knew the question was expected.

  “Two-fifty for five days. Double if you have to fight.”

  Rusty saddled up and rode out of the ranch but he did not ride more than a half mile before he swung off the road and headed for Monument Rock. He would ride directly to Kilkenny. Whatever this meant he did not know, but Kilkenny could make his own decision after he apprised him of the facts.

  Kilkenny heard him out in silence. The return of three men to Blue Hill when five had gone out, the shooting of Gordon Flynn. “No,” Gates said, when asked, “he’s not dead. But he’s got a bad wound and lost a lot of blood. When I left, Dave was takin’ care of him, and old Betts is a good hand with a gunshot.”

  Kilkenny got to his feet and paced nervously beside the fire. It was daylight now, but the morning was still cool. They wanted him there at three o’clock, and between now and three many things could happen, and Gates was here. “You get back to the ranch,” he said. “You watch your chance, and if there is one, get that girl out of there. If there isn’t, watch her close. Maybe it’s just best to do that.”

  “Are you comin’ at three?”

  “I think so.”

  “It may be a trap.”

  “Could be. Anyway, tell him I’ll be there.”

  He watched Rusty go with misgiving. Dunning, Mailer, Starr, and Socorro would be there to meet him, yet there seemed to be no suspicion of Rusty, and it would be only a matter of hours until he would go himself.

  Over his coffee, he considered the whole setup at Blue Hill, remembering every detail of the ranch and its layout.

  This was to be a showdown, he knew that. Whether or not Poke Dunning wanted to talk business, Kilkenny knew very well that if he did not agree to whatever Dunning demanded, he would have to fight his way out. Knowing this, he made plans to stay in. Dunning was going to deal the cards, but he would play his own hand the way that suited him best.

  The killing of Geslin interested him. Frank Mailer was fast, for Geslin had been very fast and an excellent shot. And Mailer had killed him.

  From what Gates said, they had been in some sort of a gun battle, for Ethridge, too, was dead. They had brought back sacks stuffed with money, and that might mean a holdup at any one of a dozen places.

  Shortly before noon Kilkenny mounted the buckskin and left his hideout, but he did not ride out into the flatlands toward Blue Hill; instead he crossed Salt Creek Wash and rode up the canyon that opened opposite Monument Rock and ran due north. Emerging from the canyon at a place just west of Popping Rock, he struck an old trail across the highlands back of the cliffs that formed the northern boundary of the Blue Hill range. It was a trail he had used before, and one he well knew. Within an hour of easy riding, he was on the point of rocks opposite Blue Hill, and here, after concealing his horse among the piñons, he found a place on the crest of the cliffs and began to make a systematic study of the ranch through his glasses.

  His point of observation could scarcely have been better, for he was at an altitude of some six thousand feet, while the ranch itself was all of five hundred feet lower and scarcely a mile away. From his vantage point in the clear mountain air, he could easily see the figures and, knowing them, could distinguish one from the other, even though features would not be discernible. Yet after fifteen minutes of careful study, he saw no one.

  Becoming increasingly anxious, Kilkenny moved down a little lower and somewhat closer to the edge of the cliff, and studied the terrain still more carefully. A few of the buildings were concealed by the bulk of the nearer peak, but the house and the bunkhouse he could plainly see, and there was still no movement.

  He got up at last and rode west. He had a ride of at least two miles before there was a way down from the rim, and when he made it, he was on the Old Mormon Trail. Worried, he studied the trail, but there was no evidence of any recent travel. Turning off the trail, he chose a way that would keep him close against the cliffs, where he would have the partial cover of desert brush, piñon, and fallen boulders until he could reach a point that would put the bulk of the peak between hi
mself and the ranch buildings.

  From time to time he halted and studied the ranch anew through his glasses, and there was still no movement. The place might have been deserted for years; it lay silent and crystal clear in the bright noonday sun.

  Far away across the desert the heat waves danced weirdly, and the towering shoulders of Monument Rock were purple against the sky, while between rolled the salmon, pink, and shadowed magenta of the desert, flecked with islands of cloud shadow. The air was so still that one felt as if a loud voice might shatter it to fragments, or dissolve the whole scene like something reflected in the rounded surface of a soap bubble.

  Uneasily, Kilkenny pushed back his hat and mopped the perspiration from his brow and face. It was very hot. No breath of wind stirred the air. He dried his palms on his handkerchief and stared thoughtfully at the silent ranch, then let the buckskin pick his way forward another hundred yards. He hesitated again, every sense alert for danger, and he loosened the guns in their holsters and squinted his green eyes hard against the glare.

  He studied the ranch again, near enough now to discern the slightest movement, but there was none. Removing the glasses from his eyes, he wiped them off, then studied the ranch again. If he went much farther, he would have to ride out in the open, and a marksman atop the peak would have him in easy shooting distance. For a long time he studied the rim of the nearer peak, then the buildings and corrals of Blue Hill, yet he saw nothing.

  Something was radically wrong. Something had happened, and it must have happened since Rusty left the ranch … or after Rusty returned, for there was no sign of him, either.

  If it were indeed a trap, it had been set much too soon, for he was not due for almost an hour. Furthermore, they would have left somebody in sight; they would have had some natural, familiar movement to lull his suspicions. Yet there was nothing; for all the movement, the scene might have been painted on glass.

  Far away over the range a lonely steer moved, heading for water, miles away. Above, the heat-dancing air, where a buzzard swung on lazy, waiting wings. Kilkenny shoved his glasses back in the saddlebag and rode forward, clinging still to the cliff shadow and its slight obscurity. Now he slid his Winchester from the scabbard and, turning the buckskin away from the cliff, rode directly across to the shadow of the peak opposite.

  When he could ride no closer without presenting too large a target, he swung down from the buckskin, and speaking to him softly, he moved forward. Always light on his feet, he moved now like a wraith, then halted, scarcely forty yards away from the ranch house, to look and listen. He waited there while a man might have counted a slow fifty. There was no sound, no movement. A flat, uneasy stillness hung over the place.

  What had happened?

  Kilkenny arose swiftly from behind the shrub and moved with swift, silent strides to the wall of the building and along the wall to Lona’s window, from which he had seen the girl’s shadow on that first day before she emerged to wave to him. The window was open, and the lace curtain hung limp and lifeless in the dead, still air.

  Inside the room a mirror hung on the wall, and from the side he could see it, and it gave him a view of most of the inside of the room. There was nothing. He had left his Winchester with the horse, but now he slid a Colt into his hand and stepped quickly past the window to get the view from the opposite side. The room was empty. He stepped over the sill and stood inside.

  There was some blood on the sill where Flynn had been shot the previous night. The door was open on the silent, sunlit patio. Kilkenny returned his gun to his holster and crossed to the door, studying the patio.

  Under the eaves of the porch hung an olla, its sides dark with the contents of clear, cold water. Several strings of peppers hung from the eaves across the way and a spring bubbled from the ground into a tiny pool in the center of the patio, then trickled off through a stone pipe to empty into the water trough away at the corral.

  Listening, he heard nothing. Yet within any one of the half dozen windows or two doors, a gun might wait. Back inside the window where he would be invisible, either Dunning or Mailer might stand, gun in hand. A gourd dipper hung near the olla and another at the spring. Kilkenny’s mouth was dry and he longed for a drink. His ears straining with the effort to hear some sound, he waited a moment longer, then stepped out into the patio, and crossed it, to the door opposite. As he walked he glanced sharply right toward the open side from which he could see the corrals and the stable. All was bright and still.

  The kitchen was empty. He placed a hand on the coffeepot, and it seemed to be vaguely warm. Lifting the lid of the stove, he saw a dull red glow among the few coals atop the gray of ashes and the grate. He stepped past the stove and walked into the dining room, and then he stopped.

  In a doorway on his left a hand was visible, lying flat and lax, palm down on the floor. It was an old hand, worn and brown.

  Stepping quickly around the table, Kilkenny saw the man who lay there, his bald head rimmed with a fringe of graying hair, his shirt dark with blood, and the floor beneath him stained with it.

  A six-shooter lay near his hand and he still wore the apron that marked him for who and what he was. Dave Betts was dead. He had been shot twice through the chest.

  Stepping quickly past him, Kilkenny looked into the room from which Betts had apparently emerged. It was definitely bachelor quarters. Turning to the room beside it, he found a mussed bed, and bending over, he sniffed the pillow, detecting a faint perfume. This, then, was where Lona had spent the night, but where was she?

  And where were they all?

  Stepping past the old man’s body, Kilkenny moved the length of the long table and stepped through the open door into the large living room.

  No one. This, too, was empty and still.

  Somewhere, thunder rumbled distantly, mumbling in the far-off hills like a giant disturbed in his sleep. A faint breath of wind coming alive stirred out over the desert, and he heard the rustle of the peppers on their strings in the patio, and the curtain stirred faintly as though moved by a ghostly hand.

  Kilkenny mopped his face of sweat and moved carefully across the room. The wind stirred again, and suddenly he heard another sound, a sound that sent a faint chill over him, making his shoulders twitch with the feeling of it. It was the sound of a strained rope, a rope that hung taut and hard, creaking a little, with a burden.

  He stepped quickly to the door, his mouth dry. As though drawn by foreknowledge, his eyes went to the stable, whose wide-open door he could now see. From the cross beam over the high door, made high to admit racks of hay, he saw a long and heavy form suspended by a short rope.

  Nearer, sprawled upon the ground in the open, lay an outstretched body. Gun in hand, Kilkenny stepped quickly outside, his eyes shooting right and left, then he ran across to the stable. One glance at the face, and he straightened, sorely puzzled. The man was a total stranger!

  Crossing to the barn, he found where the rope was tied and unfastened it, lowering the man who had been hanged. His spurs jingled as the dead man’s heels touched the ground. One glance at the blue face and he knew. It was Socorro.

  Walking to the bunkhouse, he hesitated, for the steps were bloodstained. Then he moved inside. On the floor before him lay another stranger, his body fairly riddled with bullets, and against the end of the room sat Sam Starr, his head hanging on his chest, guns lax near his hands, and his shirt and trousers soaked in blood.

  Crouching beside him, Kilkenny lifted Starr’s chin, and miraculously, the man’s lids stirred, and his lips worked to form words. “Shot … me,” he whispered, his lips working at the words he could not shape, “Mulhavens.”

  Kilkenny motioned to the dead man inside the door. “Is that a Mulhaven?”

  Starr indicated assent. “Tough,” he said, “plenty … tough.”

  “Where’s Dunning?”

  Starr shook his head.

  Kilkenny grasped the dying man’s shoulder. “Tell me, man! Where’s that girl! Where’s Lona? Dammit, sp
eak up!”

  Starr’s eyes forced themselves open and he struggled to speak. “D … d … don’t know. Poke, he … away.”

  “Poke Dunning has her,” Kilkenny said. “Is that it?”

  Starr nodded. “Mailer’s craz … y. Plumb gone bats …” Sam Starr’s voice trailed away, and he fainted.

  Carefully, Kilkenny eased the man to a prone position and grabbed a pillow for his head from the nearest bunk.

  Swiftly, he worked over the dying man, doing what he could to ease his position and his pain. Then he hurried from the bunkhouse and made a quick survey of the ranch.

  He found no one else. Four dead men and the dying Sam Starr. Dunning, Mailer, Lona, Rusty Gates, and Gordon Flynn were all gone.

  Hurrying back with a bucket of cool water, he found Starr conscious. Holding a gourd dipper to the man’s mouth, he helped him drink. Starr looked his gratitude. “Mailer’s gone after … after your girl,” he gasped. “He’s crazy!”

  “My girl?” Kilkenny was dumbfounded. “At Salt Creek?”

  Starr nodded weakly. “An’ … an’ the Mulhavens are after G … G … Gates.”

  “What?” Kilkenny sprang to his feet. “But he wasn’t an outlaw!”

  “You try tellin’ ’em that!” Starr’s face was turning gray.

  Kilkenny stood flat-footed and still above the dying man. Frank Mailer, kill-crazy and full of fury, was gone to Salt Creek after Nita. Somewhere, Poke Dunning was escaping with Lona, and his friend Rusty Gates, the man who had come into this only to help him, and probably with a wounded man for company, was riding to escape a blood-hungry posse whose reason had been lost in a lust for revenge for the killing of their own friends and brothers!

  Kilkenny knew of the Mulhavens. A family of tough Irishmen, three of them veterans of the Indian wars. Hard, honest, capable men. He knew, too, the men of Aztec Crossing, and they were not men to take the blood-letting Mailer had visited upon them without retaliation. If they had trailed those men to this ranch, they would regard all upon it as tarred with the same brush and would make a clean sweep. Two of their group had died here, and that would make matters no easier.