CHAPTER FOUR
Kerrigan made his way back, again skirting the small water puddles. He stepped onto the muddied boardwalk again, wondering where he could find the California horse buyer LeRoy, the man Bud Casey had mentioned.
It was too late to go back to the hotel clerk and ask, with Saunders probably on his way down again from Harrow's suite. But there was one place you could always find out. It was about four doors down from the end of the street.
The odor of stale beer roiled out through the open doorway of the Escondido Saloon and Kerrigan went into the dank interior. Never much of a drinking man in the past, he hesitated now. His stomach hadn't been hit by liquor in more than two years. But the coffee that morning on the hill had been just as rancid and the bacon just as greasy as ever. He needed a drink to cut the foul taste of it. Twenty-five cents a day didn't buy much food, and Mangrum had to make himself some profit.
The adobe-walled building was quite narrow but went back deep to the rear door and the muddy alley beyond. The few gaming tables, deserted this early in the morning, were in a disorderly row along one dirty white-washed wall. Three drunks were sleeping off an all-nighter. The air held the peculiar odor and dankness of the desert country after a hard rain, as fetid almost as it had been up there in the dungeons before Wood Smith and Casey had unlocked the doors.
Kerrigan stepped past a Mexican swamper leisurely pushing a small knoll of floor trash sprinkled with cigar butts toward the back doorway and a soggy litter of trash and bottles in the alley. A man came out of nowhere, seemingly, his big shoes leaving muddy tracks on the freshly swept floor. After following Kerrigan and Saunders up the street, Jeb Donnelly hadn't gone on home to sleep through the heat and sweat of another hot day.
Donnelly ignored Kerrigan but Lew caught the bartender's knowing look. He said coolly, "Yes, I know I probably look it. I just came down off the hill a little while ago."
"I know who you are, mister. Strictly your business and none of mine. What'll you have, Mr. Kerrigan?"
"Brandy."
"Well, that's something anyhow," the bartender smiled at him. "It shows you've got some sense. Most of the men who come down from up there order a double whiskey and then a few more. Not being used to it, they end up on the floor almost before the marshal can—" He broke off, his face coloring.
"I won't," Kerrigan said easily.
"You're damned well right you won't, Kerrigan," Jeb Donnelly spoke up. "Not if you know what's good for you. Wood Smith ain't the only one who knows how to handle you cell birds."
He was eyeing Kerrigan's worn .44; looking at the queer way Kerrigan's right arm hung so stiff and awkward at his side. Wood Smith had said last night he'd do it up right on the arm, and Wood had kept his word. Kerrigan was badly hurt, and the damned fool still wore his gun in its accustomed place in the sheath, instead of his belt, where he'd at least have a chance to get at it with his left hand.
"So I seem to remember, Jeb," Kerrigan said thinly. "Under the expert tutelage of Wood Smith you got to be pretty good at handling unarmed men who couldn't help themselves. Almost as expert with a billy club as Wood Smith."
The bartender was pouring the brandy into a small glass with studied carefulness, something in his manner indicating that he had seen this kind of thing happen before to men fresh from behind the walls on the hill. Kerrigan sensed what was coming, wondering if Donnelly was going to make a stab for it or merely soften him up still more until Ace Saunders could move in and finish the job later that morning. The thought seemed to accentuate the pain in his swelling arm and stiff elbow.
But he picked up the glass with his right hand. The sip he took was vile tasting and smoking hot to his mouth and throat. The man back of the bar slid across change for a silver dollar and grinned sympathetically.
"It'll taste better on the second round," he said.
"Not in here it won't," the marshal grunted.
Another man entered the place and stepped to the bar not far from where Kerrigan stood waiting for Jeb Donnelly to make his move. The newcomer's light summer suit was cloud-grey, calfskin boots red, but on his head he wore an expensive low-crowned beaver hat of a bygone era in the West. Kerrigan classified him as a gambler in town for a quick cleanup. And yet the man was tall and well built, with a definite military set to his shoulders.
Kerrigan had seen many men like him riding Grimley saddles captured from Union forces during his own four years as a Confederate officer with Terry's famed Texans.
The man spoke politely to the bartender. "An after-breakfast constitutional, if you please, sir."
"Anything you wish, Mr. LeRoy. Any luck yet buying some good Arizona horses?"
LeRoy. The man Bud Casey had mentioned. Kerrigan had come into the Escondido seeking information as to where he could find LeRoy. He'd found him.
He flicked a glance at both the front and rear doors of the deep, narrow saloon. Ace Saunders would have new orders from Tom Harrow by now…
"A bourbon straight with a touch of sweetened water, if you please. And drinks for the other two gentlemen with my compliments. Gentlemen?"
"Thanks, friend," Kerrigan smiled in return, his eyes still watching both doors. "This one will do me for the present."
Jeb Donnelly spoke again; "You damn' right it will. You got a half-hour to git outa Yuma, Kerrigan. Drink up an' git goin'!"
Kerrigan guessed shrewdly that inasmuch as there had been no shooting in front of the Big Adobe, the marshal figured Kerrigan had bowed to some kind of an agreement with Harrow. Donnelly's job, it now appeared, was to harry Kerrigan on out of town and head him north to Pirtman. And Donnelly was doing his part of the job in his own way.
The pupils in Kerrigan's eyes began to pin point as they had when he left Harrow. His piercing gaze locked with the marshal's belligerent, red-shot eyes.
Kerrigan said almost softly, "Wood did a pretty good job with the club this morning, Jeb. But when you see him tell him it wasn't quite good enough."
He moved in closer to the heavy, scowling face; in toward the man who was a brutish bruiser lacking the cool courage of the slim, ever-smiling Ace Saunders.
Whatever had been in Donnelly's mind when he entered the Escondido, his courage was now whiskied to the apex and a big hand with blunt end fingers crept downward to the butt of his pistol; and yet the flame of a new fear lay burning amid the alcohol inflaming his brain. Something had gone amiss in the handling of this tall man towering above him; the man who had just come out of prison for killing another town marshal.
Donnelly didn't carry a club. He'd have to make his pistol barrel do now.
A wave of fear began to wash through Jeb Donnelly's brain. He'd overplayed his hand and pushed the wrong man too far. He weighed his chances against a club-beaten arm a second time.
Then, on a frantic impulse, he drew swiftly.
The big pistol slid smoothly from its sheath but another gun flashed into sight in Lew Kerrigan's left hand—the gun he had taken from Tom Harrow. The thin barrel and cylinder of the pistol slashed out at the side of the big man's heavy jaw, thudding against the fat face with a crunch as teeth were torn loose and a jawbone caved in.
Donnelly's big body collapsed to the floor and a flabby-lipped groan gushed out of his mouth, the thick mouth beginning to bleed. He made a feeble attempt to sit up and did raise himself a few inches. But Kerrigan's memory of the ex-guard was long and he drew back his right boot a distance of fifteen inches. The toe lashed into that ugly red face and he watched the marshal relax on his massive back in some of the fresh mud his big shoes had tracked in from the street.
"It's not a habit of mine to kick a man when he's down," Kerrigan said pointedly. "I was merely paying back a clubbing Jeb once gave me when I was down."
He stepped back and the thin-barreled pistol slid from sight. The bartender said, "That's all right, friend. I've seen Jeb work on drunks in here. He's had that coming for a long time."
Kerrigan, turning to ask the man LeRoy about buying a
good horse in a hurry, heard a soft chuckle, saw the extended hand.
"My implicit admiration, sir. About the most workmanlike job I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. My name, by the way, is Hannifer LeRoy. I'm a California trader over here in Arizona on a horse-buying trip."
"I was looking for you because I happen to need a good horse in a hurry, LeRoy," Lew Kerrigan answered with pleasure. "I'm out of prison less than an hour, and from the looks of things I'm outside the law once more. I didn't want to kill Donnelly, much as he deserves it at the hands of some decent man. But laying a six-shooter against his jaw makes it necessary more than ever that I find a good horse."
"That I can understand, Mr. Kerrigan," agreed the horse dealer, chuckling. "I have forty-six head of picked stuff on pasture along the river a half mile below town, night-herded by Old Cap, one of my drovers. Suppose we—"
"Donnelly won't keep that long," Kerrigan interrupted sharply. "He might cut me off south and drive me into Mexico. I happen to be going the other direction." He turned to the silent bartender, who had made no effort to assist the fallen marshal. "When you help Jeb to his feet, tell him we're square. But I've been pushed once too often since daybreak this morning."
He picked up his glass and downed the few drops of brandy remaining, and again the horse buyer laughed softly. "I've no wish for trouble with Arizona law, Mr. Kerrigan, so if the bartender will forget about it when the estimable marshal regains his feet and spits out a few teeth, I'll sell you the pick of those forty-six head which I'm riding as a personal saddle horse. He's over in a stall back of the hotel. He'll cost you two hundred cash, no notes or credit."
"If he's the kind of a horse I need right now, hell be worth two hundred," Lew said. "Let's go take a look. Jeb's coming out of it."
Donnelly had let out a slobbering groan. With eyes still closed, he ran a sleeve across his mouth and left a streak of red along the damp blue cloth. Kerrigan moved toward the doorway with LeRoy beside him, and now a strange fear began to bite its way through his mind. Word would spread like lightning around town and there would be no doubt of what would happen if he met Ace Saunders. Saunders also knew the condition of Kerrigan's nearly broken arm and elbow, and Saunders would have more orders from Tom Harrow by now.
The .44 slid out of its sheath and went back into the front of Lew Kerrigan's waistband, butt left. They entered the big hotel corral and went to one of the stalls containing a red horse.
It was sleek and fat, and when it turned its head in answer to Kerrigan's low-spoken voice the eyes showed as clear and as bright as a new moon. Gastric juices working on the oats the animal had finished eating rumbled its stomach loudly as Kerrigan spoke in a low voice again and then gently shoved aside a sleek red hip and moved into the stall beside it.
A big red horse. Four inches taller than average but more there in the blocky body, the short deep barrel. No saddle scars, no wire cicatrices marring the hair around fetlocks above freshly shod hoofs. This horse was sleek and well groomed. Ready for travel.
LeRoy was smoking a thin black cigar, watching with interest as Kerrigan checked the big red animal point by point.
"You don't have to buy him at all, Mr. Kerrigan," he said. "I'm more interested in you. I liked the way you handled Donnelly with a gun barrel where most men in your position would have shot a couple of bullets through his heart. You're already in trouble with the law again over here on the Arizona side of the river, but that won't hold on the west bank of the Colorado. How about going to work for me?"
"Sorry, not interested," was the reply as Kerrigan stepped back out of the stall.
"Then suppose we put it this way. I need a good man like you to help me protect a pretty heavy investment in good horses that certain gentlemen are intending to take from me on the return drive to the California desert. Help me get those horses safely through and I'll do more than give you a percentage of the profits. We'll return to northern Arizona as pardners on a horse-buying trip, and you'll have enough men at your back to make the odds even against a certain Colonel Thomas Harrow. Take the horse, Kerrigan, and get across the river with him and wait for me. He's yours."
Lew Kerrigan looked at the man with the cigar and a chill came into his brown eyes. "What do you know about Harrow?" he asked quietly.
"That man Ace Saunders," LeRoy said as quietly. "From the looks of him he's certainly not a drinking man. Perhaps he was a little nervous about the job of meeting you this morning. But last night he had a bit too much to drink, and he talked in one of the bars. If you don't get shot down this morning before you get out of Yuma, you still face odds of a dozen to one when you get back north. I can get you across the river on the planks of the unfinished railroad bridge. I can make the odds even when we go north as pardners a few weeks from now. Saddle up Big Red, Kerrigan. He's yours."
CHAPTER FIVE
Lew Kerrigan wasted no time. He brought out the big red and saddled him hurriedly, lashing warbag and food pack back of the cantle. He then reached into his hip pocket and brought forth the long leather snap purse and counted out ten more of the twenty-dollar goldbacks.
"Thanks for the offer, LeRoy, but I play my own hand. If you ever get up around Pirtman on a buying trip, look me up. Joe Stovers, the sheriff, might be able to tell you where I can be found."
A cowpuncher strolled into the corral from the back door of the new hotel, breakfast toothpick roaming from side to side in his mouth. He came over to LeRoy. "Mornin, Hannifer." He grinned sheepishly and clapped a hand to his forehead in mock woe. "I ain't never goin' to drink no more of this border whiskey from Mexico." He looked at Kerrigan, a question in his blue eyes. "He's ridin' Big Red. He goin' to California with us?"
"No," LeRoy answered in disappointment, shoving the goldbacks into a pocket of the grey coat. "You get on down to the river and see about the horses while Old Cap comes up for breakfast. And I'd better not find an empty bottle around when I get there," he warned sharply.
He turned to Kerrigan as the puncher left, apparently still not without hope that Lew would throw in with him at the last minute. But a horse came loping past the hotel with mud flying from its hoofs and Bud Casey, on his way home to a day of soggy sleep, beckoned from outside the gate. Kerrigan, thinking of Jeb Donnelly, led the red horse over and opened and went through.
Bud's sandy-whiskered face registered complete and sudden relief.
"I'm damn' glad I got here in time to see you on a good horse, Lew," he said in an undertone.
"What's up, Bud?"
"Something pretty plain. Wood Smith boasted to me just a little while ago, when I got ready to go off shift, about how he beat up your gun arm and elbow. 'Pulled your fangs,' was the way Wood put it. He said there was a pretty good chance you was too full of cussedness to accept the conditions of a parole to any man, so he set you up for an easy kill. Get out of town quick, Lew!"
"You're a little late, Bud." Kerrigan swung a leg high up over the warbag humped back of the cantle. "Jeb Donnelly has already tried it."
"Jeb? Hell he did!" Bud stared in amazement. "Never gave him credit for having that much nerve."
LeRoy had followed over and closed the corral gate. He looked up at Bud and smiled. "Neither did I, Mr. Casey. I didn't know Kerrigan had been hurt, but apparently the marshal did. Unfortunately for the blubbery Mr. Donnelly, he completely overlooked the fact that Mr. Kerrigan is ambidextrous with a hideout gun. An oversight that cost him a caved-in jawbone and the loss of several teeth. Good luck to you, Kerrigan, and if you're ever over in the Mojave Desert country of California, and the sheriff isn't hunting me, he'll be able to tell you where I can be found."
After he was gone, Casey reined over beside Lew Kerrigan, a quizzical look on his long face. "So you busted him in the jaw? Why the devil didn't you kill him, Lew?"
"I only wanted to square up in return for what I got from Donnelly the day I slipped into a ditch with a wheelbarrow and he clubbed me while I was down."
Casey snorted and the sound besp
oke his indignation. He said worriedly, "What are you figgering on doing now? You're same as an outlaw, and from the looks of things you'll have a bunch of rough buckos after you, to boot. Wood said something about a professional gunman named Ace Saunders in town and another around with him called Stubb Holiday. You hitting back to Texas?"
Kerrigan nodded, his eyes searching the panorama of the town and the river beyond. "That's right, Bud. Back to Texas. But I'm going by way of Pirtman and Dalyville."
"To get that girl—but kill a man or two first, huh? Dammit, Lew, if they catch you and bring you back here, I lose my job. I'll resign rather than—"
"Take good care of Kadoba. Smith seems to be getting ready to resign and you're slated for his job. Try to keep him from clubbing the Apache to death before then. So long, Bud, and if I get back to Texas in one piece, maybe you won't need that better job. I square up the other kind of debts, too."
They shook hands with a brief, firm grip and Kerrigan reined over and rode west toward the prison; to cut across the railroad grade and swing north along the east bank of the Colorado River.
A red coach with six sleek black horses was trotting into view over there near the prison, coming back from a swing around town.
Kerrigan wanted to send a message to Tom Harrow and this looked made to order. He rode to meet the coach and its lovely occupant.
He held up a hand and the chunky driver, not knowing what to expect, hauled up on the lines. Stubb Holiday sat with his hands occupied with leather; a short man with the strength of a full-grown black bear in arms and shoulders. Ironically, it made Kerrigan think of old Bear Paw Daly, the eccentric prospector who'd lost an arm in a powder accident and made a big strike in bronco Apache country because of it. And then lost his life by a probable bullet from Tom Harrow's gun.
Kerrigan saw Carlotta Wilkerson's tricorne hat emerge from a door opening, her clear grey eyes looking at him quizzically.
A Gunman Rode North Page 4