Kilkenny (1954)

by L'amour, Louis - Kilkenny 01

  Shorty was on watch in the trees alongside the bridge. Pete was watching westward from Dolan’s roof.

  Kilkenny approached the lake carefully, but found no campfire, no one. Carefully he searched the place from a wide circle, but saw no hint that anyone was there. Twice he risked being shot to call out, but there was neither a shot nor a reply.

  Daylight broke under lowering skies, and in the first light, Lance made a hasty search. He was tired and stiff from sleeping on the ground. It looked like rain and he had no slicker, but then, on the far side of the lake he found the kicked-out remains of a campfire. And he found where a horse had been picketed. Searching around, he found a place where a struggle had taken place, and then where Nita had walked away with three men. One of those men had very small feet. Backtracking, he found their tracks. Four riders had come here, and three had dismounted and approached Nita’s camp while one remained with the horses. Kilkenny paused and lighted a cigarette, carefully shielding the glow of the match. The logical place for them to have awaited him was right here. They might have ambushed him here when he came to meet Nita. However, Havalik was no fool, and having lived as a hunted man himself, he would guess that any camp Kilkenny approached would be approached too warily. Moreover, they had several times lost his trail before this and knew he was a skilled frontiersman, adept at woodcraft and with all the tricks of the trail.

  So they had taken Nita and gone. To return to Tetlow? That was their best bet, but would that be the bet Havalik would make? He would be thinking more of Kilkenny and killing him than of anything else. And he had no doubt those small boot-tracks belonged to the gunman.

  Mounting the gray, Kilkenny turned to trailing the party. The trail led east into the worst of the mountains, toward his own cabin and the Valley of Whispering Wind!

  Dolan had not been mistaken about the gray, for the horse had a willingness for the trail equaled only by Kilkenny’s own buckskin. The tracks led plainly off toward the east and after crossing the plateau, dipped into a narrow gap between gigantic cliffs. Here the sand was hard-packed and the hoof scars were plain as print. Kilkenny gave some time to studying each hoof print, knowing that upon his memory of their characteristics might depend success or failure. Kilkenny looked at the sky. He had left his slicker under Cain’s head and had no protection against the rain. He rode on, and the trail became increasingly bad. He was not worried about Nita, for she had been born to the saddle, nor much worried about these men as long as Havalik was along, for the gunman was not eager after women. He was a man who lived to kill, and Kilkenny doubted that he even thought of Nita as anything but a pawn in the game. That might not be true of the others, but in the West few men would risk bothering a woman. It was the one thing the frontier would not accept.

  A few spattering drops of rain fell, and Kilkenny dug into his bedroll and got out his ground sheets and wrapped it about him as best he could. It was cumbersome and did not help around his neck, for it kept slipping down. It did, however, keep off the worst of the rain, and it was now raining hard. He hurried the gray, lifting the horse to a canter. If the rain continued the tracks would be washed out.

  And within a half dozen miles, they were.

  But not before they had told their story to Kilkenny. Havalik was hunting a place where there was shelter from the wind and rain. It showed in every deviation of the trail. He was hunting such a place, and he would not go much further. The rain eased a little, and lowering black clouds crowded down around the mountains, drifting in gray tendrils through the passes and between the cliff tops. The wind stirred and on the breath of the wind came a faint smell of woodsmoke!

  It was late evening now, for the trail had been long. Kilkenny stripped off his ground sheet and rolled it, returning it to the place behind the saddle, and then he slipped into a worn buckskin jacket, but one that left his gun butts free. His mind was utterly cold, his eyes like those of a searching hawk. He walked his horse, keeping to the sand or soft earth, careful to strike no stone. Again he paused. The smell of woodsmoke was stronger now. A gleam caught his eyes, and looking through the junipers he saw the fire. It was built-in a cut back under a bulging cliff and several men stood about the fire. Their horses were picketed just beyond, and Nita Riordan stood alone on the outside of the fire.

  Kilkenny hesitated for the wink of an eyelash, and then he slapped the spurs to the startled gray and palmed his Colt. The first shot rang out and he charged into the camp, yelling and shooting. A man spun and dropped, others dove for shelter, and Nita, her eyes suddenly alive, sprang quickly left. His gun exploding, Kilkenny hit the camp at a dead run, bending swiftly to sweep his arm around Nita’s waist. Instantly, her foot sought the stirrup and then the gray was past the camp and running while the frightened horses lunged and plunged. One jerked free a picket pin and stampeded out of camp. Behind them a savage yell rang out, then a shot, but the shot was wild. Kilkenny did not halt the gray and Nita crawled quickly behind him despite his demand that she get in front. The gray loved to run and despite the added burden, he ran now, plunging through the wet jumpers that slashed at their faces and drenched them with water. Looping the reins about the pommel, Kilkenny fed cartridges into the now empty Colt. Then he slowed the racing horse and turned swiftly right. He descended into a canyon, and rode south at a trot, then coming to a branch, he turned north again. They had been riding for not more than ten minutes when Kilkenny drew up sharply. Far off, distant in the mountains, came a muffled roar!

  His face went white and he felt his breath go out of him. Swiftly he glanced right and left. On either side were the broken but unscalable walls of the canyon, and behind him for more than a mile were the same canyon walls! He did not hesitate, but spurred the frightened horse forward. The roar grew and behind him he felt Nita’s clasp tighten with fear. Nobody needed to speak, they all knew it was a huge wall of water roaring down the canyon toward them at express train speed! A wall of water running off the rocks of the mountains into the canyon. And behind them, there was no escape. Before them was the water. Nevertheless, flight was useless. Their only hope lay ahead. Rounding a bend in the canyon, Kilkenny’s heart sank, for nowhere in sight was there anything that looked like escape.

  Nita’s arms tightened. “Lance! On the right there! Isn’t that a ledge?” It was. Swinging the gray, Lance cut across to it. The path was unbelievably narrow. Dropping to the ground beside the girl who had instantly realized the necessity, Kilkenny took the bridle. “Go ahead,” he said, “and hurry!” Up she went and Kilkenny followed. It clung to the face of the cliff like an eyebrow of crumbling rock. Several times rocks fell away from under the feet of the horse and fell into the canyon, and now they were only six feet off the bottom. Yet the path switched back and led to a higher ledge, at least fifteen feet above the canyon floor. Nita turned and went up and Kilkenny got the gray to the switchback. It was close, but the horse made it, ears pricked at the trail, nostrils wide with fear at the now thunderous roar behind them. They climbed to the ledge, and Nita was already crawling into what was almost a crack that ran back in the direction from which they had come, but a crack floored with talus and wide enough for the horse. It might be a trap, but it did lead up.

  Nita scrambled into the crack and mounted swiftly as an Indian, and Kilkenny followed. Nothing loath, and frightened by the roar behind it, the gray scrambled after them, fighting for hoof surface, slipping and scrambling. They gained another ten feet and then came out on a ledge that was forty feet above the canyon floor, and here they seemed to be stopped. Hastily Nita went searching about among the rocks for some means of escape, and then the roar mounted until the very mountains seemed crumbling and crashing about them. Turning, Kilkenny glanced back.

  A huge, rolling wall of water, bearing great logs on its crest and tumbling them like chips, was sweeping down from the higher mountains. It was high, higher than their present ledge, and he saw at a glance they would be engulfed. Swinging his eyes to Nita, he saw her mouth wide. She must have been scr
eaming but he heard no sound, but she was beckoning. Dragging the horse, he raced to her. She was pointing into a black opening whose floor slanted upward into the rock itself! She instantly scrambled into it and then the wave hit. Kilkenny felt the tug on the reins as the water caught the gray. Off on one side, the full force of the blow broken by the rocks about them, Kilkenny managed to keep his hold on the bridle even as the water washed over him. Water roared about him and he fought his way forward. Nita had disappeared somewhere in the darkness ahead but he managed to keep a hold on the bridle. His feet were on the sand and the horse was struggling to follow. “Lance!”

  The cry was a faint sound from the darkness, lost in the thunderous roar that filled the cavern. His thrust-out hand, feeling into the darkness before him, suddenly struck wet cloth and excited fingers grasped his arm. Cowering together in the darkness, they listened to the sound of the water, the gray horse trembling beside them.

  Thea slowly the sound began to die and the water receded suddenly as it had come. Clinging together, soaked to the skin, they waited in the cave’s darkness. They were free. They were safe. The water was gone.

  Chapter 7

  “Lance?” Nita stirred in the wet darkness. “Do you think they were killed?” “No telling.” He got up and, holding her hand, led the way down the slanting floor into the gray light of outer day. Wet and bedraggled, they looked down the canyon, unchanged except that now the sand was hard-packed and the walls were wet and dripping. Painstakingly they made their way to the canyon’s bottom. They walked on, anxious to keep moving. Slowly warmth returned to their flesh and watching ahead, Kilkenny could see they were bearing directly into the heart of the Blues.

  “Where are we going, Lance?”

  “Home. We’re going home.”

  Mounting an alluvial fan, they found their way through a shattered opening in the canyon’s upper wall and came out on the plateau. Before them was the towering rampart of the Blue Mountains. Three mighty peaks loomed against the sky, and forward of their position, three more peaks. The sky was heavily overcast, the peaks shrouded in black masses of cumulus. About them the desert was gray, tufted with midnight blue clumps of shrubbery. The scene was shocking in its majesty, breathtaking in its power. The great shoulders of the mountain vanished into the clouds, the gray earth was streaked with the white trails of runoff water.

  Turning, they looked over a vast panorama of foothills and valley. Despite the clouds the rainwashed air was piercingly clear, and miles to the south a few faint trails of smoke marked the town of Horsehead. Nearer the terrain was slashed with ragged canyons, ripped deep into the rocky terrain and tufted here and there with juniper.

  “We’re going up and through those mountains.” Lance indicated the vast jumble of peaks, black under the clouds.

  “Now? In this storm?”

  “Now,” he said grimly, “right now!”

  They mounted the gray, who switched his tail at the added burden. There was no trail, for they followed along a mountainside with the vast sweep of forty miles lying below and beyond them. In the distance gray rain drew a veil across the valley. Twice they passed the paths of small slides, and once worked their way through a great gully ripped from the mountain by a rush of water. There was nothing to be gained by worrying of what might happen in Horsehead. The men were seasoned in frontier warfare and he had first to get Nita to a safe place, and the only one that might be secure was the Valley of Whispering Wind. Despite the lateness of the hour the sky retained a strange afterglow as of distant fire, but now that had gone and they were left in utter darkness broken only by far-off lightning and the mutter of thunder among the canyons. They could go no further in the unknown darkness.

  “We’ll make camp,” he told her. “There’s some cliff dwellings near here.” He had seen the dwellings from afar, days ago. A white gash of the cliff marked the canyon. A flare of distant lightning showed them a steep path and they stumbled up and into one of the dwellings. Obviously, the place had been used for shelter at some distant date for a few dry sticks lay near the remnants of a fire. Drawing them together, Kilkenny soon had a fire going. Roaming through the other rooms, Kilkenny found a pack rat’s nest, a mine of fuel. Nita started to make coffee.

  “Ruined?” He looked at the soggy mass.

  “We can use it.”

  He dropped to a seat near the fire. Cold and wet they might be, but her very presence changed everything for him. She caught his glance and smiled. “I never imagined I’d start housekeeping in a ruin! And both of us soaked to the skin!” Twice he went into the darkness and listened, every sense alert to the sounds of night. And he heard nothing but the wind, the rumble of distant thunder, and the occasional stirring of some small animal. He found grass and rubbed down the gray horse.

  Nita was waiting with coffee when he returned, and they sat beside the fire and sipped the coffee in silence, listening to the faint hiss of the fire as the flame drained the strength from the dry wood.

  Long after she was asleep on the blankets, he sat feeding the flames. Once he thought he heard horses, but after a long time of listening believed he was mistaken. Sometime after that he slept, awakening suddenly in the first light of coming day. He awakened Nita, threw sticks on the fire and went outside. When he looked into the overhang where it had left the gray, two more horses stood beside it!

  Both were saddled, and one was Nita’s mare, Glory. Searching for their tracks, he realized the horses had not been ridden but had found their own way here, evidently following some scent left by his own horse. After a quick cup of scalding black coffee, Kilkenny stripped the extra horse of saddlebags, rifle and canteen and took them to his own horse. He had just hung the canteen to the pommel when Nita spoke. “On your left. You’re covered.” Kilkenny turned carefully and found himself facing Jess Baker. The cut on the big man’s face was an ugly red scar. He held a .44 Colt and he was grinning. “Never figured on no such luck. I was a-trailin’ them horses. Havalik figured we might need ‘em.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Maybe eight mile back.” The big man was vastly pleased. “Means I get to kill you and keep your woman.”

  Kilkenny turned and walked away from Nita. He knew Baker would do just what he said. “Stand still!” Baker yelled.

  Kilkenny halted abruptly. “Why, sure Jess. Look, can’t we talk this over? I mean—” He drew and fired.

  That draw was incredibly, unbelievably fast. Baker had not dreamed any man would attempt a draw when covered at thirty paces. One instant Kilkenny’s voice had been pleading, a salve to the big man’s wounded pride, and the next that hand blurred and flame spouted. Something struck Baker hard in the stomach and he took a step back, his eyes blinking. The gun slid from his fingers and he went to his knees, then simply rolled over and curled up dead. All day they pushed on, higher and higher into the stormswept peaks. He had taken the slicker from the spare horse, probably belonging to the man killed when he rushed their camp.

  Rain fell intermittently, washing out any trail. They topped the pass among heavy clouds and Kilkenny had to bend low from the saddle to study the earth. The way dipped down and they entered a forest rich with pine smell and the sound of rushing water. At last Twin Peaks loomed on their right and Kilkenny turned, weaving a pattern among the trees, then skirted a great rock slab and drew rein on a ledge.

  Nita rode up beside him and sat for the first time overlooking the Valley of The Whispering Wind.

  Walled upon two sides and almost upon the third, the valley lay between, a rolling expanse of lush green grass dotted with clumps of trees and bounded by the ridges covered with green forest. Even under the lowering clouds the valley was indescribably lovely.

  “It’s home,” he said, his heart suddenly full. “I call it the Valley of The Whispering Wind.”

  “How did you come to name it?”

  “Wait … you’ll see.”

  A mile further into the valley he drew up and waited. Nita paused beside him. A minute pass
ed, and then another, and slowly she became conscious of a nameless stirring, a faint rustling through the grass and leaves. It was a sound not unlike the rushing of a fast train, sometimes heard in big timber, but something fainter, as though from wind singing in the strings of a far-off violin. A whispering wind, a singing wind.

  “Hear it?” he asked gently. “When you hear that sound it means you’re home.”

  On the day of Kilkenny’s arrival in the valley, Dee Havalik returned to Horsehead.

  He was in a savage mood. Kilkenny’s sudden charge from darkness had caught him flat-footed. Despite their pursuit they had found nothing, and only precipitate flight saved them from death under the torrent of water. Returning to confess failure did not sit well with the gunman, nor did he like to think of Kilkenny outsmarting him. Yet rain had washed out all tracks, and the canyons were a maze.

  The street of Horsehead was deserted. Nobody was in the Westwater dining room, and the stove was cold. Havalik walked out on the street with his two remaining men. No horses lined the hitch rails. The Emporium was closed and the shutters were up. Crossing to the Pinenut, Havalik shoved through the swinging doors. A bartender read a week-old newspaper and the saloon was empty. “Where’s everybody?”