Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

by Johnstone, William W.

The man had frightened him, and made him shudder in a deep-inside kind of way. There’d been something wicked and scary about him, and those other men who had been with him. Ivy had felt it, too, Niall thought—felt it but not understood just what it was. She’d refused to talk to Niall about it afterward, or let him talk to her.

  Niall eyed the skeleton of the house again as he passed before it, and thought how big it seemed. Things got big like that, he supposed, when rich men were behind them.

  The Kerrigans had always lived a cramped life, though their flat in Nashville hadn’t been nearly as crowded as their mother’s childhood dwelling in the Five Points of New York had been, to hear her tell it. She’d grown up with her parents, herself, and her younger sister all sharing a two-room space. Not big rooms, either. But they had had it good, compared to some.

  His ma had told him there were tenements in the Five Points where fifteen or twenty people might sleep on the same floor in a single room, lying on rags and such because there were no real beds. Dirty, noise-making, muttering, snoring, wind-breaking people who flopped about like fish on dry land, able to sleep, usually, only because they were so drunk.

  The Five Points stories Kate told her children had made the place seem like hell on earth to Niall, who had a natural aversion to being cramped up and compressed. His mother had told him that came from having been a twin, being crowded even in the womb. Made sense to Niall. Ivy had the same dislike of small spaces that he did.

  Niall studied the dark shell of the new house. Being crowded wouldn’t be a problem here. There would be big rooms, many windows, and all he had to do if he ever felt cramped was throw the door open and head outside onto the plains.

  Ma said Mr. Hagan, who did all things big, had designed this house himself, and he’d made sure their family would have a comfortable space to move around in. God bless Mr. Hagan for that, Niall thought. For that and so many other things.

  “When I grow up,” Niall whispered to himself in the moonlight, “I’m going to be a rich man, too.” It was a sensible ambition, as he figured it. If everybody were rich, nobody would have to do without food, or shelter, or decent clothes for their backs or shoes for their feet. Yep, rich was the way to go.

  He looked up at the cabin’s shell a little longer, wondering which room he’d sleep in and he imagined his ma sitting by the fire at night with her sewing in this wonderful new place—and his thoughts made the scary-looking house skeleton not seem scary anymore. The Kerrigan home would be a warm and happy place, secure and roomy. Oh, it was going to be fun.

  Niall turned to go back to the barn and get a little more sleep before the morning arrived. He’d taken only five steps when he stopped in his tracks.

  He squinted hard, watching what was unfolding before him, and wondering if he was seeing what he thought he was. A cold wave of horror dashed over him like icy water, and he stayed frozen in place, hoping that by being still, he would go unnoticed.

  Apparently it worked, because a few moments later they were gone and the barn was just a big and dark old barn again. Catching breath Niall had been holding without even realizing it, the boy raced toward the barn and up the ladder, and went straight to the makeshift room where his mother slept.

  “Wake up, Mama! You got to wake up now!”

  Kate Kerrigan raised up from her straw mattress on the floor, her hair a jumble from sleep. “Niall? What’s wrong, honey?”

  “They got her, Mama. They got Ivy. They took her away, just now! I was coming back from the outhouse and I saw it! They carried her away, Mama! And . . . and I just stood there because I was too afraid to move.” He began to cry.

  Kate didn’t even have to ask. Her mind filled with the image of that big, foul, bearded man, and the human trash that sat their horses behind him. They hadn’t come to the work site in hope of finding work. They hadn’t even approached the work crew to ask for it. They’d come to look over the pickings at the picnic—to make their selection for later.

  Later had come. They had come back.

  They had Ivy.

  Quinn’s feet slammed the dirt, sending up clouds of dust that caught the moonlight, and his chest heaved and side hurt. Still a quarter mile to go. He strained and pushed himself, wondering if that stitch in his side, worsening with every step, was anything that could actually do him harm. Probably not, but God, it hurt!

  Why had his mother sent him for this task, he wondered. Wouldn’t it have been better for lightweight, fleet little Niall to be sent to run to get Brock rather than dumpy old Quinn? Quinn had been out of breath before he’d made it half a mile. He’d pushed himself on anyway, hard, lungs heaving and burning. He was doing this for Ivy, and he’d run himself to death if he had to.

  Realizing he’d slowed more than he should, he stopped for a moment, let his lungs heave some air, and then started running again. He prayed hard for strength, and told God that after this he’d work on making himself stronger and faster in case he was ever called upon to do something like this again. He hoped to high heaven that would never happen.

  Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, looking for the humble outline of Cornwall, Texas, against the flatlands and dark blur of a horizon, Quinn ran and ran and ran some more, ignoring pain and straining lungs. There! There it was, just coming into the dimmest of views. He saw the big stable, the false-fronted general store, the little shoebox of a church house built by a little gaggle of Methodists—and the saloon. That, plus a couple of thrown-together houses and outbuildings, comprised all there was to see in Cornwall, Texas.

  With his destination now in view, Quinn ran even harder, and he quickly reached the front door. He knew it would be unlocked. Curly Small never closed his saloon, though at night he cranked down the lamp that lit the place and retired to sleep on his lonely cot in the back room. But Curly slept with an ear always open for the jangle of the bell that told him when somebody had come in the front door. A man of business had to be ready to attend at any hour.

  Quinn slammed through and pounded across the floor of lumber that was varnished only with the residue of a hundred spilled drinks and a thousand splatters of tobacco-infused spittle.

  He was vaguely aware of Curly appearing in the doorway to the back room just as Quinn hit the base of the staircase. Curly was but a ghost in dirty long underwear, and there was no time to talk to him and explain.

  Quinn took the stairs two at a time, and despite his panic, proud of himself that he had pulled off the feat of running a mile and a quarter, yet could still bound up a staircase.

  From behind the closed door at the end of the short hallway, he heard the now-familiar rumble of Brock’s distinctive snoring. Whatever else might have gone on behind that door earlier in the evening, it was down to simple sleeping now.

  Quinn hammered the door with fist and forearm. “Mr. Brock! Wake up, Mr. Brock! It’s Quinn!” He was gasping so hard it was difficult to get out the words.

  A muffled female voice, cursing and murmuring. The squeak of a bed upon which people were sitting up abruptly. The replacement of Brock’s snores with grunts and guttural exclamations of, “What the hell . . .”

  The door opened and a disheveled, scantily clad woman glared out at him, her mouth hanging open, breath tainted with the stink from her habit of smoking hand-rolled quirlies and drinking Curly’s stale beer, and never cleaning her yellowed teeth. “Who are you, you little shit?”

  Quinn had no time for this. He rudely shoved the woman aside and burst into the room. Brock, shirtless, was sitting up on the bed, looking sleep-drunk and puzzled.

  “Quinn, what are you—”

  “You got to come, sir. Now! They’ve taken Ivy away. A whole bunch of ’em! They came today and watched her, then they came back in the night and took her.”

  “Who? Wha—”

  “I think it’s the same bad men who come down from up in the Nations—the ones who ride with that Indian called Rain Horse. Except he wasn’t with them today, when they came, I don’t think. There was a big man, with
a beard, name of Bodine.”

  The prostitute put her fingertips to the base of her throat and gasped. “Oh, God! Bill Bodine! If he’s took some woman, it’s going to be hell for her. I know the son of a . . . I know what he likes.”

  Brock, dressing now, said, “Did you say it was Ivy they took?”

  “Yes, sir. Niall saw them carry her away.”

  Brock looked at his whore. “They’ve not taken away a woman, Belle. Ivy is a little girl. Nine, maybe ten years old.”

  The prostitute, who had surely lost most of her feminine sympathies and tenderness long ago, had tears on her face. A little girl, in the hands of a man who (perhaps she knew from personal experience) was a sadist and monster. And the men with him, no better. And Rain Horse, should he enter the picture, worst of all.

  “Come on, Quinn,” Brock said, strapping on his Remington-laden gun belt, which had been hanging on a hat tree in the corner. “There’s no time to waste.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  By the time Davis’s horse galloped to a halt at the Kerrigan house construction site, Quinn riding double behind Brock, the first streaks of dawn were lighting the sky. They found Niall sitting tensely on the ground against the front wall of the barn, holding tight to a hatchet that was his favorite possession, and little more, really, than a toy.

  “Where are they, boy?” Brock asked.

  Niall, wordless and numb, pointed north, out across the Texas flatlands, miles beyond which lay the southern border of the Indian Nations.

  “Did Kate go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she armed?”

  “She has her rifle.”

  Brock had a hopeless manner about him that scared Quinn. He didn’t have to be told that the situation was dire, but Brock’s stance and tension intensified the awareness.

  “A woman, against a gang of devils like that! That’s a mother for you, boys. That’s what you call a mother taking on the devil himself if it’s for the sake of her child.” He rubbed his face. “Where’s Trace? Did he go with your mother?”

  “No, he saddled up early and left. He said he’d find Ivy and kill the men who took her.”

  “I hope to hell Trace doesn’t go up against Rain Horse and his men,” Davis said. “He won’t walk away from it.”

  “We’d best go, Mr. Brock,” Quinn said.

  “You’re staying here, with Niall,” Brock said.

  “I got to go with you, sir. It’s my sister!”

  “It is, and if it can be done, I’ll bring her back to you.” He put himself between Niall and Quinn, his back to Niall.

  “Quinn,” he said quietly, “you have a terrified little brother there. You need to be here to keep guard over him.”

  Quinn couldn’t guess what Niall would need guarding against when it was Ivy who was in trouble, but this was no time for debating. “Yes, sir.”

  Brock went to his saddlebags and from one of them produced a small Colt revolver. He handed it to Quinn. “It’s already loaded,” he said. “Just in case, you know.”

  Seconds later, Brock was riding away, going the way Niall had pointed.

  Niall looked at the pistol in his brother’s hand. “If that man with the beard came back here right now, I’d shoot him with the pistol. Right through the heart.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Quinn said.

  “Would so!”

  Quinn shook his head. “You wouldn’t have the chance. I’d be using it myself, shooting him right in the face.”

  Niall nodded. “That would be good.” He looked toward the shell of the house. No workers would be there that day, it being Sunday. “Quinn, will they hurt Ivy?”

  Quinn could not lie. “They might, Niall. They might.”

  “Take a look at that there, Bill,” said the hairless piece of human vermin known as Steel Chandler. “What do you reckon that is?”

  “It’s a wagon of some kind, best I can tell,” Bodine said. Like Steel, he was on horseback. Nestled in front of him, hands tied to the saddle horn, was Ivy Kerrigan, a trembling and very small human form he held back tightly against him with his left arm, his massive beard hanging down over her left shoulder, scratching against her tear-stained face.

  “Not the usual kind of wagon you see in these parts,” Steel observed. He looked over at Ivy, caught her eye, and winked. “Hey, little thing, you looking forward to playing with me and nice Mr. Bodine here? Huh? You looking forward to that?”

  He’d asked that same question at least five times already, and Ivy had only the vaguest and most disturbing idea of what he was hinting at. The games she liked were the ones like she’d played earlier in the day, tossing that ball back and forth with her brother. She doubted the bald man was talking about anything like that. All she knew was that she wanted to play no games at all with these men. They were ugly, mean, bad. They even smelled bad.

  Steel, watching and listening, chuckled evilly. “Rain Horse is going to like that one, like her a lot!” he said, grinning at her.

  “Not till I’m through with her, and that may take a while,” said Bodine, giving Ivy a hug.

  Steel got down from his saddle and walked a few feet away, looking at the wagon that had drawn his attention. It was parked out on the flats, a little smoke rising from the round chimney pipe that extended from its top.

  No canvas-topped wagon this one. It was fully enclosed with something like a little house built onto its long, broad bed.

  Painted so it even looked like a house, with colorful windows and doors and porch columns.

  Steel had no way of knowing he was seeing a painted version in miniature of the Hagan mansion up in Kansas, because this strange, ornate wagon, pulled by huge and powerful oxen under the control of a black-skinned driver who was himself nearly as huge and powerful as the oxen he drove, belonged to the vastly wealthy Cornelius Hagan, who at the moment was outside the wagon, unseen by Steel because the huge moving house blocked him from view.

  Hagan was having his first urination of the day, admiring his view of the plains as the morning brightened over them.

  Hagan was on his way south, following the way taken by his recent guests, Kate Kerrigan and children. They’d not been gone from his estate for two days before he’d started thinking about following them, seeing for himself that all was going according to his direction and the house construction was on schedule, and up to quality.

  In truth, he was going because he was finding it miserable to be away from Kate, after having grown used to having her around.

  No finer woman had he ever known, none he had more wish to be near. He’d not foreseen falling in love when he’d decided to give aid to his late half-brother’s widow and her brood.

  It had happened, though.

  His driver, Farley, who knew him maybe better than anyone else, had detected it quickly. Hagan had taken a little longer to recognize the truth and admit it, even to himself.

  His newly blossoming love inspired Hagan to hurry completion of his new “Rolling Mansion” vehicle, the excellent wagon, as ornate as a tycoon’s personal railroad car, that he might have allowed the Kerrigans to use for their Texas journey had it been finished.

  So he had put his wagon builders to constructing traditional wagons for the journeying family, and had reserved “Rolling Mansion” for himself.

  Hagan had hurried his wagon makers mercilessly, and set out southward the day after the wagon was declared finished.

  Not far now.

  They should reach the vicinity of the small town of Cornwall and the nearby Kerrigan cabin this very day.

  Hagan was so excited he could hardly restrain himself from dancing. His only qualm about this venture was that he wasn’t sure that Brock Davis wasn’t as interested in Kate as he was.

  It was worry over Brock that had provided a handy pretext to launch the journey of pursuit, and it didn’t matter much, anyway. Kate was the kind of woman that almost every man fell for upon meeting her.

  Farley was the designated cook as well
as the driver, and had a fire going already, bacon sizzling in a heavy iron skillet and biscuits baking in a Dutch oven.

  The smell was intolerably good, and Hagan was starved.

  He paced around restlessly, eager to get to his breakfast.

  Hagan walked past the front of the wagon and glanced to his left.

  To his surprise, he saw horsemen, five or six of them, at a standstill off to the east. They were just far away enough that he couldn’t make out much about them, though the closest of them, who was down off his horse and facing Hagan’s way was as bald as an egg.

  Still mounted was a huge, burly man with a flowing beard and some sort of sack, or bedroll, or something, clutched in front of him on the saddle.

  Hagan squinted, trying to make out just what it was, and then he remembered the field glasses that Farley kept beneath his seat whenever he was on driving duty.

  Something kept drawing Hagan’s eye back to the big man and the unidentified thing he clutched before him.

  Squinting even harder, Hagan gasped suddenly, and rushed to fetch Farley’s field glasses.

  From the driver’s platform that was Farley’s domain, Hagan looked toward the horsemen through the field glasses. The bald man was getting into his saddle again. He swept the glass to the right a little bit, and what he saw filled him with horror and disbelief.

  It was as it had seemed—the thing in front of the big man was not a thing at all, but was a small child. A girl. And as Hagan adjusted the focus, he saw her face.

  God in heaven—

  It was Ivy Kerrigan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Kate Kerrigan and Brock Davis had searched all night and had seen nothing of Ivy and her captors.

  Trace was also out there somewhere and Kate wondered if her son had better luck.

  Then as a scarlet dawn painted the sky, Davis drew rein and Kate did the same.

  His face drawn and tired, as she knew hers must be, Davis straightened in the saddle and worked knots out of his shoulders.

  Finally he said, “Kate, we’re splitting up to cover more ground. There’s a settlement about an hour to the to west called Cornwall. It’s just possible Rain Horse and his boys have taken Ivy there.”