And who was the third party with them, and where did he stand?
MATT KEELOCK DREW rein. The wild horses were close ahead now. He had first to see where they were going, for he had no wish to stampede them over the cliffs into the San Juan. He had never touched the river at this point, but for most of its miles it lay between towering walls.
He felt jumpy inside, but not because of the horses. He turned in his saddle and looked back.
Nothing.…
He glanced at his wife. “You all right, Kris?”
She nodded, but behind the stillness of her face he read worry, for he was coming to know her moods now. A branch canyon opened on their right, and suddenly, without a second’s hesitation, he turned into it. The others followed.
“Now, what was that for?” Cooley asked. “I thought you wanted those horses?”
“I’ve got a hunch.”
Kris merely looked at him, but Cooley grumbled, “You were right on those horses, Matt. Why leave them now?”
Keelock ignored him. He was looking around quickly for an escape. His sudden move might have run them into a box canyon, one from which there was no way out. The canyon seemed to head up on No Man’s itself. He rode slowly, and when the wall on the south became low at one spot, he drew up. “Wait here,” he said and, turning the buckskin, he went back down the canyon.
There were few tracks, and little enough he could do about them except in a place or two. He did what he could to obliterate their trail, then rode back and led the way up the wall.
“You ain’t much better off,” Cooley said. “Now you’ve got that canyon behind you, and there’s another one south. Only way you can get out of here that I know of is back across Nakia.”
Where they had stopped there was desert growth and slabs of broken rock, but no good shelter. They were on rising ground where the country sloped steeply back to the abrupt cliffs of No Man’s Mesa.
And then he saw them, and almost at the same moment the man riding the lead horse turned his head and glanced up the mountain. He reined in so sharply that his horse reared, and as one man the others turned their heads and looked up toward Keelock.
Kris…I’ve got to save Kris.
“Stay here,” he ordered brusquely. Then he turned his buckskin and rode down the wall to meet them.
Chapter 11
SO MATT KEELOCK rode to the combat through a sunlit morning, sitting lazy in the saddle, right hand resting on his thigh. He rode down with his mind empty, his ears hearing only the hoof falls of his horse and the creak of his saddle leather.
The buckskin knew. Matt could sense it in every movement of the horse. The buckskin knew, just as a good cutting horse knows what is about to happen as it approaches a herd of cattle. The buckskin was a good cutting horse, but he was more. He was a horse with a genuine zest for combat.
Matt Keelock had not wanted a fight, but they were bringing it to him, and if the shooting had begun with Kris beside him she might have been killed. So he rode to meet them, giving no more thought to Gay Cooley. He expected no help from him, because this was not Cooley’s fight…it was his, and his alone.
The distance was narrowing down. He looked at no man in particular, his eyes holding them all, to register each movement. Two of the riders held back and to one side. Now what did that mean? Were they drawing out of it? Were they getting out before shooting started? Or did they plan a flanking movement?
When no more than a hundred yards off, he drew up suddenly. On his left were several low, gnarled cedars that grew up from a ledge of rock perhaps three feet high. On his right was a cleft in the rock that dropped away steeply into the canyon that cut down from No Man’s Mesa.
Loosening his boots in the stirrups, he held himself still and ready, and moved forward a little farther.
At fifty yards he suddenly called out, “All right, hold up there!”
They stopped, and he said, “I told you that was a fair shooting. Your trouble-hunting friend jumped me unarmed, told me to heel myself and come back, and when I started in the door he drew and shot across his body and under his arm at me. I returned his fire, and the shots took him in the side and back.”
“Like hell!” Chesney shouted. “You murdered him, and you’ll hang!” He came on a few steps, then drew up again. “You never saw the day you could beat Johnny with a gun!”
“How about it, amigo?” Matt Keelock said. “Just you and me. Let’s you and me see if I’m fast enough. The others are out of it.”
Bill Chesney was shocked. He had fought his own battles, and he was no coward; but in this he had always thought of the action as a concerted action—of the posse finding this man, executing him, and making an end of it. Or of a gun battle in which all of them took part. None of his thinking had allowed for the chance that suddenly he and this man might come face to face in a shoot-out—just the two of them.
The Key-Lock man was shrewd. He had placed the burden of the fight squarely on Chesney, leaving the others out of it. Nor was there any decent way they could come in if Chesney was killed.
“All right, damn you!” Chesney yelled. “I’ll show you for a cheap tin-horn! I’ll—”
Behind Matt somebody shouted, and then a smashing blow struck him in the chest. At the same instant his horse reared and he went out of the stirrups and hit the ground hard.
With a frantic eagerness to survive, he scrambled for the crack leading into the canyon. Something was wrong with one of his legs, and his chest felt numb. There was blood on the rocks.
When he reached the crack, he hastily pulled out a handkerchief and packed it tightly over the hole in his chest. Luckily his shirt was snug, and did much to hold the handkerchief in place. He was hurt, but he had no idea how badly.
In the swift instant of action and reaction when he heard that shout, he had seen what had happened. The two men who had pulled off to one side had shot him. He had seen their rifles come up…but he had seen it too late.
Somebody yelled, “What the hell did you do that for?”
“We came to kill him, didn’t we? Well, he’s dead,” Short answered.
Neill, furious, stared at Short and McAlpin. “That was a dirty—”
He never completed the sentence. From far up the hill, a rifle was talking. He heard the sharp whap of a bullet and saw Short go back out of his saddle; and then another shot and McAlpin’s horse was buck-jumping all over the place.
They scattered for shelter.
Kris lowered her rifle, her calm blue eyes studying the terrain for a target.
“Ma’am,” Cooley said, “you better let me take you out of here—”
“Get out,” Kris said coldly. “Get away from me.”
“Now, you see here!” Cooley grabbed at her bridle rein.
Her rifle was in her hand and she swung the barrel, smashing him across the face. He fell back, lost a stirrup, and struck the ground. As he started to get up, blood flowing from his smashed lip, Kris pointed the muzzle of the rifle at him. Gay Cooley held himself very still. “Look here, ma’am. I didn’t mean—”
“Get on your horse and get out. I don’t want to see you anywhere around.”
“Those men will kill you. You shot at them. They’ll kill you, sure.”
“Matt’s down there,” she said, “and I’m going down. You sat there and let them kill him. You saw those men. You knew what they were going to do.”
Gay Cooley sat up slowly, putting a hand to his lip. Then he said, “Ma’am, Matt’s dead. You saw him go, and those men had him under their guns at short range. You’re goin’ to need a man, ma’am. Nobody like you can get out of this country alone. I tell you, I—”
She walked her horse around behind him, then suddenly spurred her mount into the brush. Gay lunged to his feet, but she was already out of sight.
He got himself straightened up, and looked carefully around. Keelock’s buckskin had run a few feet, then stopped. There was no sign of Keelock’s body, nor of any of the other men.
Keelock’s pack horses had dashed after Kris, but they were scattered out and running. There was not much chance she would stop for them; and presently they would be scattered over the country from hell to breakfast.
Well, he could round them up himself. There must be quite a lot of grub…a man could hunt desert country for weeks on what was aboard those pack animals.
He got into the saddle. His lip hurt badly, and he poured water into his palm and bathed his face gently. That damn’ woman! She’d been so quick…and it was the last thing he had expected. Who did she think she was, anyway? And what could she do now, away to hell and gone back in the mountains like this?
He glanced down the slope, where Matt’s horse stood fast. Too bad about Keelock…a good man…but a bullet will take the good as well as the bad.
Why couldn’t that fool woman see that Matt was out of it?The dead don’t matter.
Gay Cooley had seen a lot of life and of death, and on the dead he wasted no time. He and Keelock had always gotten along all right, only this had been Keelock’s fight, not his. He kept telling himself that, and knew it was true, but it shamed him to think of it. But the man was dead, and there was no use letting all that grub go to waste. Nor the woman, either.
He rode his horse away along the hill toward the south.
It was past midday, and the afternoon was warm, sunny, bright. The solitary buzzard had been joined by a second, and then by a third. A cicada sang in the brush, a desert wren flipped about among the rocks. The last echoes of the gunfire had long since died away. Above the scene, No Man’s Mesa loomed ominous and silent, its western shadow thinned to a mere line.
FAR DOWN THE hill Neill slowly gathered himself together and lifted his head warily. He looked up to where the shots had come from, but there was nothing in sight—there was no movement, no sound.
Suddenly Kimmel was beside him. “Short’s hurt…he’s in bad shape,” Kimmel said.
Neill turned himself around and sat down. He removed his hat and ran his fingers back through his hair. His face was drawn and hard. “We played hell, Kim. That man was no back-shooter.”
“No.”
Something scrabbled on the gravel slope, and Chesney appeared. He looked older, and somehow smaller. He glanced at them, his eyes avoiding theirs. “You—you boys all right?”
“Short caught one. Mac’s with him.”
Chesney looked up. “What in God’s name got into them? Why did they shoot?”
“Mac said down to the store at Tuba that the Key-Lock man warned them off him. They figured they had to get him first.”
“I could have taken him.”
Kimmel looked hard at Chesney. “Bill, you played in luck. That man would have killed you.”
“Is he dead?”
“Ain’t seen him. But they had him cold.”
“He had sand. I was wrong—I took him for a coyote.” Chesney straightened up. “We’ve got to find that woman,” he said, “and get her out of here. Only decent thing to do.”
Neill glanced at him. It was late to think of doing the decent thing now, but Chesney was right. They must not leave that woman here for Neerland.
“We’ve got to call off our dog,” he said. “We’ve got to stop Neerland.”
Chesney looked blank, then suddenly sounded irritable. “All right, call him off. The job’s done, anyway.” He started for his horse. “We’ve got to find that woman and take her out of here—see she gets to safety.”
“Maybe she won’t want to be found,” Kimmel said. “Or she might find us first.”
“What’s that mean?”
“She was the one that shot Short.”
“You’re crazy!”
“It’s true.” Kimmel looked straight at Chesney. “Bill, that woman lifted a rifle and looked right down her sights at Short, and if Mac hadn’t hit the dirt he’d have caught one, too.”
Chesney led the way down the slope toward the horses of the others. Twice he glanced over his shoulder. Then he drew up. “Maybe that Key-Lock man was just wounded. We’d better find him.”
“Leave him alone,” Kimmel replied shortly. “If he’s alive he’ll shoot, and if he lives through this we’ll all have to fort up.”
When they reached McAlpin he was on his feet, standing over Short. “He’ll make it,” he said, “but I’d say he cut it thin. If that bullet had been a mite further to the right it would have broken his spine.”
He shifted his rifle. “You boys take care of him. I’m goin’ after the Key-Lock man.”
“Leave him alone,” Neill said. “We’ve done enough.”
McAlpin looked around at him. “You do what you’ve a mind to. I’m goin’ to make sure that man’s dead. Else he’ll be huntin’ me…and all of us.”
“We’ve got to get that woman safe to town,” Chesney objected. “We can’t leave her out here.”
McAlpin’s anger was mingled with astonishment. “Damn you, Bill! It was you wanted this man’s scalp more than anybody. Now you’re pinchin’ off the fuse. Why, it was that woman that shot Short an’ damn near got me. Look at my horse!”
A livid wound from a grazing bullet lay across the gray’s shoulder. “I’ll take Short’s horse, Bill, and if you’re any kind of a man you’ll come with me. You got to finish what you started.”
“Leave it alone, Bill,” Neill advised.
Chesney was torn between quitting a bad job and carrying on with it because of his obligation to finish what he had begun. He started to go, then hesitated. He was sure now—sure ever since the Key-Lock man had offered to face him in open combat—that he had been mistaken. He was positive Johnny Webb had been killed as the Key-Lock man said. Moreover, there was a woman involved; and he had nothing but distaste for the way the man had been shot down while talking it out with Chesney himself. But what McAlpin said was true. He had been the one who built the fire and kept it alive.
“The man’s dead, Mac. You saw the way he fell. After all,” he said bitterly, “it was you and Short who shot him down.”
“Are you callin’ me on that?” McAlpin was bitter. “You didn’t see him down to Tuba. He told us what would happen if we followed him and by heaven, I believed him then and I do now. If that man lives, no one of us will ever sleep easy again.”
Chesney hesitated. Kimmel took his plug from his shirt pocket, examined it carefully, and bit off a small corner. “He’s right, Bill,” Kimmel said. “We started it. Like it or not, we’ve got to finish it.”
“Count me out,” Neill said. “I never liked it. And I like it less now.”
“You are out.” Chesney’s anger at Neill had been growing. He was an upstart. He had no right to be so damned sure of himself. “You’re out of everything, as far as I am concerned,” Chesney said.
“Of course. That’s the way you would be.” Neill reined his horse around. “I’ll find her and take her back to town if she will come. You do what you’ve a mind to.”
He turned his back on them and rode away, and Kimmel looked after him thoughtfully.
Together, the three men rode to where the buckskin stood. A bullet had hit the saddle horn and glanced off. No doubt it was the shock of this that had made the horse rear. There was blood on the leather of one stirrup, and on the ground where Keelock had fallen.
A thin trail of blood led into the deep crack that split the rim of the canyon. All three eyed the crack with distaste. Only a few feet down the crack took a sharp turn under a shelving ledge. Beyond that point they could see nothing. If anybody wanted to find Keelock they would have to go down into that hole. They all knew it, and not one of them wanted to do it. Keelock might even have reached the floor of the canyon.
Kimmel walked to the rim and peered over. The canyon was not deep; the floor of it was sand, broken by ledges of rock or fallen boulders or slabs of stone.
He came back to the others. “If he’s down there he’s well hidden…All right, I’ll go down and have a look.”
Nobody spoke up, and he added, “One man
can watch this hole—you watch it, Mac.” He looked at Chesney. “Bill, you comin’, or you goin’ to sit this one out?”
“Let’s go!” Challenged, Chesney led off, and they rode up the canyon to where the wall was low. Then they rode down.
When they reached the spot below the crack they found blood on the rocks. There was no blood on the sand, but the Key-Lock man had a way of covering his trail. In the deep, loose sand there were too many hoof prints for anything definite to be distinguishable. But they did find one boot track that looked sharp enough to be recent.
Kimmel paused with his hands on his hips. “What d’you think, Bill?”
“He’s alive. He’s out and away.” Chesney was not as positive as he sounded, but it was what he believed most likely. How else could those blood spots have reached the bottom? “Which way do you want to go?” he asked.
Kimmel shrugged. “Makes no difference. Down canyon, I guess.” He considered it. “He’ll want water. I think he’ll go down to Nakia Canyon.”
He started down canyon, then drew up. “Bill, Mac’s right. We started it—we’ve got to finish it.”
They rode on, watching for tracks or trail sign.
And presently the canyon was empty, and there was no sound, no movement.
Chapter 12
MATT KEELOCK STRUGGLED against the awful blackness, fought against it until his eyes opened slowly…to more blackness. He lay perfectly still.
Where was he? Was he dead? Had he been buried alive?
The pain was there, so he must be alive. He tried to move and found a new source of agony in his side. He lay still again, eyes wide open. He was looking up into complete darkness.
He lifted a hand. Inches from his face was rock. He lay upon more rock, and rock pressed in upon his side. The searching hand reached out to his right…nothing. So there was space on his right, space up, out, and down.
Slowly, his thoughts assembled and sorted themselves out. He had been shot. He was in the crevice he had crawled into when he fell. He had passed out there, but not before he had done something…oh, yes, the blood. He had squeezed blood from his soaked handkerchief on the rocks below, and then he had crawled back in here.
Novel 1965 - The Key-Lock Man (v5.0) Page 10