Trace pegged the man as a one of the Kansas cattle drovers he’d heard so much about recently, but hungry, he tried to hurry his mare a little, but she was having none of it.
He didn’t blame the horse. He’d arrived in town after hours of fruitless searching for Haganville, wearying her unnecessarily.
“Hey, hold up young feller,” the drover said.
Trace drew rein and waited, the Colt in his waistband a reassuring weight.
“You made a smart move back there, feller,” the man said.
Trace turned as the man stepped toward him. He wore spurs that chimed with every step and carried a holstered Colt on his waist, high, in the style of a horseman.
“Hi,” Trace said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“For me, not a thing. But I can do something for you.”
The drover smiled, showing good teeth.
“Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“Didn’t hurt me any.” Trace stuck his hand. “Kerrigan. Trace Kerrigan.”
The man shook Trace’s hand. His palm felt as rough as a piece of broken sandstone. This was a man who knew work and had known it for years.
“Kerrigan, did you say? Why hell, this world’s getting smaller all the time. That’s the name of a family I was sent out here to meet at the stage station. This burg is called Benson and Haganville is about ten miles farther up the trail.”
“That’d be my family. I’m meeting them in Haganville. We’ve kind of been separated by circumstances for a while now. How did you know we were coming?” Trace said.
“I didn’t. But Mr. Hagan sent a wire all the way to Nashville. He said not to send a reply, so he don’t know if your ma got it or not.”
The drover grinned.
“If she gets here, she got it. If she don’t, she didn’t. Name’s Brock Davis and I’ve been riding for Mr. Hagan since the war ended. Do I hear a bit of Irish in your talk, Trace?”
“You might. I was born and raised in these United States, but my parents were Irish. Shouldn’t say ‘were,’ though, for it’s only my father who is gone. My mother is still living.”
“Name’s Kate, I think?”
“That’s right.” For a moment Trace felt worried. Might the trouble he’d fled in Tennessee have anything to do with this man being here, knowing his family and waiting for them?
“Mr. Hagan is Irish like you, except he was actually born over there. He’s a man of great wealth, and he’s real interested in your family, Trace. The plan was for me to meet them and take them to a place to stay at. Then the boss wants to meet the entire family. Of course I didn’t expect to see you riding in here on that mare all alone.”
“Must be a fine thing to have a town named after you,” Trace said, hoping to change the subject of why he was traveling apart from his family.
“Aw, I don’t know. A town name don’t buy a man a loaf of bread or a swallow of coffee. Mr. Hagan’s a big and powerful man, but he ain’t high and mighty like some I could name. That’s the best way for a man to be, rich or poor.”
“Can I ask you something, Mr. Davis?”
“Only if you call me Brock. Mister never set well with me.”
“All right, Brock. What were you talking about earlier when you said I made a wise decision?”
“Oh, about Erlean?”
“Yes, her.”
“Well, there’s a feller hereabouts goes by the name of Charlie Palmer. A big feller is Charlie and good with the Colt. Some says he’s killed seven men, others say nine, but I know for a fact he’s killed three hombres over Erlean.”
“He’s jealous?” Trace said.
“Jealous ain’t much of a word when it comes to Charlie. If he catches anybody sparkin’ Erlean, he goes stark, raving mad and it usually ends up with a dead man on the saloon floor, his beard in the sawdust.”
“Sparking a girl? Is that why she called me sparkles?”
“Could be.”
“I don’t want Charlie’s girl and if I see him I’ll tell him that.”
“Well, he ain’t a man who listens to reason,” Davis said. “Charlie shoots first and regrets it later.”
“Then I’ve had a narrow escape,” Trace said.
“Charlie ain’t in town right now, so you were pretty safe. But my advice to you, being new to the west an’ all, is to avoid sporting gals. They’re bad for your health.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Trace said.
“Best climb down,” Davis said. “I reckon we might have a wait ahead of us.”
Trace saw a moment’s hesitation in the drover’s eyes.
Finally the man said, “You meet up with any Indian trouble on the trail?”
Trace shook his head. “No, I sure didn’t.”
Davis seemed relieved.
“That’s good to hear. The Comanche have been playing hob, killed a settler and his family a week ago ten miles east of here.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Trace said.
“You should know.”
Trace nodded.
“Yes, I guess I should.”
And now he was really worried.
The stage station beacon fire still burned brightly, but the old Indian man whose job it was to keep it tended was snoring on the station porch, loudly enough that neither Trace nor Brock Davis heard the approach of the two riders until it was too late.
“Good evening to you, amigos!” the biggest of the pair said, his pistol out and leveled.
He’d just ridden around from the rear of the station and at his side was a smaller man, shifty-eyed and nervous, though his gun was steady enough. He had a wide, pointless grin and looked to Trace that he was tetched in the head.
“Hello, Señor Davis,” said the bigger man. “How convenient to have run into so generous an hombre as you just at the time Pablo and me are short of funds.”
“I’m flat broke, Julio,” Davis said. “You’ll need to go find somebody else.”
“Well! Once again I learn something from my good friend Señor Davis. He is broke, he says, yet his compadre carries a fine revolver in his pants.”
Davis waved a hand at the bandits.
“Trace, please allow me to introduce you to this pair of beauties. They’re breeds, half-Comanche, half-Mexican and all border trash.”
Davis grinned.
“They may be dressed like vaqueros, but the only cattle they’ve ever herded were stolen.”
“Ah, that is so true,” the man called Julio said. “But we are still poor men and that makes me very sad. If we had guns and horses we could sell them and buy mescal and that would make Julio and his cousin Miguel ver’ happy.”
“Miguel, please put away that damned pistol,” Davis said. “You’re making me nervous the way you’re waving it around. Julio, your cousin’s got no business aiming a gun at anybody. He’s too crazy in the head.”
“No, no, no, Señor Brock. We don’t put away our guns, no. We hold them on you so you will be wise and give us what we ask of you. That is how the bandit business works, señor.”
Davis glanced over at Trace. “Sorry we had to run into these two here. We’re old acquaintances, these two fools and me. I got lead into Miguel a year back, caught him and Julio rustling our beeves over to Lost Creek. Only winged him though, more’s the pity.”
“That is a thing Miguel does not forget,” the small man said, his mouth twitching.
Without warning, the revolver in Miguel’s hand stabbed orange flame in the darkness.
Brock grunted and jerked and blood spattered from the underside of his left forearm.
“That is where you shot me, señor,” Miguel said, grinning. “An eye for an eye.”
“I figgered you out fer a rat and low down, Miguel,” Brock said. “Now I know fer sure.”
“I . . . I sorry, Señor Brock,” the breed said. “The eye for an eye is necessary, you understand? The Bible says so. A holy father told me that.”
“Put
the gun away before it happens again,” Brock said to Miguel. “For old time’s sake, I don’t want to kill you, but if I have to I will.”
Julio thumbed back the hammer of his Colt.
“No more games and big boasting Señor Brock,” he said. “No bad wound, that one. No bad hurt. Now you take out your gun, slow, slow, and let it drop to the ground.”
Brock two-fingered his gun from the holster and let it thud to the dirt.
“Ver’ good,” Julio said, grinning. He showed several gold teeth. “Now I want your horse, your fine rifle and your watch and chain. Oh and I want the silver ring you wear on your little finger.”
“It’s a gambler’s ring, Julio,” Davis said. “It’s of no use to you.”
“Maybe I will play poker on the steamboats one day,” the breed said. He shrugged. “Or I can sell it.”
Brock glanced over at Trace, who thus far had been silent throughout the confrontation.
“My gun’s on the ground, Trace, and we’re finished,” he said.
“That is so, Brock,” Julio said. “It is so sad for you.”
The breed swung his revolver and covered Trace.
“Now bring over your fine American stud or I’ll shoot the boy right out of his saddle.”
“He’s out of it, Julio,” Davis said. “I’ll get the hoss.”
The big drover sent Trace a single look, a significant appeal that managed somehow to convey just what he wanted the younger man to do.
Trace, smart as a whip, instantly understood.
He drew the Colt from his waistband and deftly flipped it over to Brock, who just as deftly caught it.
Trace rolled from the saddle as Julio fired.
The breed’s ball passed a foot above the young man’s head as Trace slammed into the ground.
Davis had the revolver in his fist. He fired at Julio. A hit. Fired again.
Julio shrieked and threw up his arms, his gun spinning away from him.
He tumbled from the saddle, shot in the forehead and in the chest, dead when he hit the ground.
The watch in Davis’s vest barely ticked two seconds between Julio’s shot and the drover’s answering fire.
And for the first time in his life, Trace saw what a skilled pistolero like Davis could do with a six-gun. It was a lesson he never forgot.
“Drop it, Miguel,” Davis said in dead cold voice. “Or by God, I’ll kill you right where you’re at.”
Miguel screamed and jerked wildly on his mount’s reins and the horse pranced a full-circle turn. When the breed faced Davis again and tried to level his revolver.
“No, Miguel!” Davis yelled.
The breed dropped his hand and let his Colt hang by his side.
“Trace, there’s a piggin string in my saddlebags over there. Use it to tie Miguel’s hands to the saddle horn. Oh, and take his gun away from him while you’re at it.”
Trace had no idea what a piggin string was, but he found a length of looped rope in the bag and figured that had to be it.
He stepped to Miguel, took his revolver, then tied the breed’s wrists to the saddle horn.
“Miguel, it was fun chasing after you and Julio when you’d rustled a cow or two,” he said. “But the fun ended right here tonight. If I see you again around these parts I’ll kill you.”
“Yes, señor. I understand.”
Miguel looked scared.
“You stay out of trouble now, or you’ll end up like your cousin, dead on a dirt street at the far end of nowhere,” Davis said.
He let out a yell as he slapped Miguel’s horse on the rump.
The breed rocked and jolted into the night, his hands firmly bound to the saddle horn.
Davis shook his head.
“Miguel is not a bad hombre, as breeds go, but he’s none too smart. That’s why Julio was able to control him and steer him wrong.”
“Brock, how did you ever learn to use a gun like that?” Trace said.
“It took years, a war, a heap of shooting scrapes, and a lot of dead men.”
The drover’s eyes were bleak.
“I hope you never have the need to learn the way of the Colt like I did.”
But the older man’s eyes held a warning that the need might one day arrive . . . and that Trace would have to learn almighty sudden.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“How’s your arm?” Trace said. “I think you best see a doctor.”
“There’s no doctor in this town or for fifty miles around,” Davis said. “But our ranch cook does some doctoring and mighty good at it he is, too.”
“You’re bleeding,” Trace said.
“It’s fine. Miguel’s ball barely grazed the skin. I’m not even going to bother bandaging it. Hey, this Colt of yours has a balance like I never felt in a gun. Hardly any recoil at all.”
“Yeah, it was a gift from one of the best gunsmiths there ever was. Down in Tennessee. He put it together custom, worked on it for weeks.”
“Well, here it is back, and thanks for the use of it. That’s a revolver any man would be proud to have.”
Trace took back the gun and shoved it into his waistband.
“I’m glad I met you, Brock,” he said.
“And the feeling is mutual, I’m sure. I’m a man you’re going to get to know real well over the next few months.”
Davis nodded to Julio’s body.
“We’ll drag that over to the stage depot porch there. No point in him laying around upsetting folks.”
When the job was done, Davis prodded the ancient Indian asleep on his chair on the porch.
“Well I be damned,” he said. “We got another one to put away. This old Chippewa ain’t sleeping. He’s dead.”
So they put the old Indian under the porch, too, beside Julio.
The Kerrigan wagon rolled into town three days later.
Trace smiled when he saw Quinn up on the driver’s seat beside Kate. He held the old .44 Henry and by his intent face took his job as guard seriously.
The reunion was one between a group of very weary people. Trace was tired from long riding and from the unexpected violent adventures of the night since he’d met Brock Davis, and the balance of the Kerrigans were each exhausted in the way that only a wagon ride on rough trails can make one.
Trace was glad to see Shannon looking brighter and healthier than she had in many months. She was surprisingly vigorous as well, bouncing along with the level of energy youngsters of her age were supposed to have, but which she never had. She bounded up to Trace and shoved her beloved doll, Kate, up at him.
“Katie wants to kiss you, Trace!” she said, giggling.
Trace, playing along with a forced good nature he was actually too tired to really be feeling, leaned his cheek down and let Shannon press the doll’s yellow-cloth face against his cheek while Shannon made a loud smooching noise with her lips. “Oh!” she said then. “Katie says your whiskers are scratchy!”
“And who is this fine young lass?” Brock boomed out, approaching Shannon and Trace with a big grin on his face.
“Brock, this is my youngest sister, Shannon. Shannon, meet my new friend, Mr. Davis.”
“You can just call me Mr. Brock, if that’s easier to remember,” he said. “Brock is my first name.”
“Okay, Mr. Brock.” Shannon shoved her rag doll up toward Brock as she had toward Trace moments earlier. “This is Katie, Mr. Brock. She’s my best friend.”
“Well . . . hello, Katie,” Brock said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Katie kissed Trace but she won’t kiss you because she doesn’t know you yet, and because your whiskers would be even scratchier than Trace’s. He’s only fifteen years old, you see.”
Brock nodded and Shannon skipped away to go examine the dancing fire.
“You really only fifteen?”
“Yep. I’m told I look older than my age.”
“You do. How old would you say I am?” Brock asked.
“I don’t know. Thirty-five?”
Niall walked up. “Trace, there’s men under the porch of this place. Two of ’em, just laying there. And they smell kind of bad.”
“Just pay them no mind, Niall,” Trace said. “They’re not hurting anybody.”
“They sleeping?”
“That’s right. Sound asleep, both of them. They’ll sleep the night through, and then some.”
The first night of the reunited Kerrigans was spent in a hotel one town past the humble one Trace had found so uninteresting.
A surprisingly spacious accommodation, the hotel provided a much-needed night’s respite from travel exhaustion.
Kate had trouble falling asleep because her mind kept replaying the dangers and hardships of the trail.
They’d met a cavalry lieutenant returning to his post at Fort Ellsworth the afternoon the Comanche rode so close to their wagon she smelled their horses and saw the red, white, or yellow paint that decorated the hair partings of both men and women.
Kate sent the children into the back of the wagon and took the Henry from Quinn.
“Will they attack us, Lieutenant Werner?” she said.
She was surprised and a little irritated that the young soldier sat his horse so calmly.
“If they were going to attack us, they’d have done it by now, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Werner said. “Comanche are mighty notional.”
“Why do they ride so close to my wagon?” Kate said.
“To let you know that they’re aware of you.”
“Well, Lieutenant, I’m certainly aware of them,” Kate said.
“This band is going somewhere,” Werner said. “The young warriors are in the lead, the women of childbearing age behind them, all mounted. Those that are passing now are the old people, and they walk. The Comanche don’t set much store by old timers, especially men.”
“Why not?” Kate said, peering into the dust cloud kicked up by hooves and human feet.
“Well, it’s a disgrace for a Comanche warrior to grow old,” the lieutenant said. “It means they were not brave enough in battle.” He smiled. “In the world of the Comanche only cowards don’t die young.”
Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty Page 14