A Gunman Rode North

by William Hopson

  "Mr. Kerrigan," she smiled at him as he lifted fingers to the wide brim of the brown hat peaked high and sharp on top, "I assume you've had quite a talk with Thomas?"

  "We talked a bit," he admitted.

  "Everything is now… understood between you?" she asked hesitantly.

  "All clear, I reckon, Miss," he answered. "I'm leaving. I rode over this way to have Holiday take a message back to Tom."

  He looked up at the rigidly seated driver he'd seen briefly up in the high country two years before. It might have been this man who had taken the message to Joe Stovers and caused Kerrigan's arrest. His left hand slid inside his unbuttoned shirt and a six-shooter with a long thin barrel sailed through the air. It landed at Stubb Holiday's booted feet, and the man's sudden wooden look indicated that he knew the gun and was wondering if the owner was still on his own feet.

  Kerrigan said quietly, "Harrow already knows it by now, Holiday, but you tell him I said Jeb Donnelly didn't quite make it this morning, and your friend Saunders won't get a second chance. Tell him I'll be along up in the high country one of these days. He'll know I'm there when he sees the smoke."

  "What smoke?" grunted the driver, and sawed at the restive mouths of the six sleek blacks. "What are you talkin' about?"

  "That twenty-room house he built with my money," snapped Kerrigan. "I'm going to burn Dalyville and give the ashes back to the Apaches."

  The rain-swollen Gila River branched off across the desert and Kerrigan made his way along its course, heading toward the distant Salt River Valley and Phoenix. No sign of pursuit showed up in the burning distance behind, and he guessed that Jeb Donnelly had spent most of a bad morning in a doctor's office having his shattered jaw attended to and thus was in no condition to ride. A thought that gave Kerrigan a measure of ironical satisfaction inasmuch as he himself was in little better shape.

  It enabled him to take his time, to let the pain gradually ooze its way out of his bruised arm. By day he grazed the red horse and slept well hidden out of the heat from now hellishly hot sun coming after the rains. By moonlight he moved on at a leisurely pace, the impatience that once had gripped him forgotten; the combination of thought and physical movement away from the confinement in prison a calming antidote for what had been.

  One morning at ten, five days after leaving Yuma, Lew Kerrigan rode at a jog trot down one of the dusty streets of Phoenix and found a livery. He felt no sense of danger here, although Harrow undoubtedly had come through ahead in his red coach.

  Just what had happened between him and Carlotta Wilkerson after she returned to the hotel in Yuma would be interesting to know. But in all probability Tom Harrow had twisted her meeting with Kerrigan into something insidious, and in all likelihood the woman, sensing Kerrigan's danger to her financial security, probably hated him the more for what he was going to do.

  Kerrigan shrugged away the thought and forgot it. She had been given blunt intimation of the kind of man Harrow really was. Any future decision she made was no concern of Lew Kerrigan's, he told himself.

  But he still hoped, instinctively, that some womanly intuition would cause her to postpone becoming Mrs. Harrow.

  He slept a few hours, bathed and shaved, and then went out to see if a drink still revolted his sense of taste. Strangely enough, he felt no fear where the law was concerned. Jeb Donnelly would think Kerrigan too cautious to enter a town like Phoenix, and probably hadn't sent word ahead to the law.

  Or was it more likely that Harrow, desperate as he was, still hoped that something could be done up north and had stayed the marshal's hand?

  At five that afternoon Kerrigan came out of a Chinese grocery store with more of the food that was surging new strength back into his emaciated body. Mormon honey and dried fruits. Canned milk and plenty of sugar. His clothes were new and clean, his brown hair neatly cut, the strings of tension loose now after five nights and two hundred miles of riding.

  Wood Smith's brutal clubbing of his arm and Jeb Donnelly's effort at mayhem already were easing themselves out of his mind, replaced by thoughts of the job that had to be done.

  Kerrigan moved on along the wide boardwalk carrying his purchases. Back to Big Red busily graining more copper along his sleek belly in a livery-stable stall. Back to a horse that would take him across the desert mesa and on into the high country where trees were green all the time and the grass cool beneath them all summer. Back to a horse that could outrun danger and, if necessary, carry him all the way back to Texas.

  I'm coming, Tom, his thoughts ran grimly. I'm on my way back to the country of Loco and his broncos, to burn Dalyville for Kadoba.

  Across the width of the dusty side street the slat swing doors of a small saloon swung wide and two men stepped through. One of them was dirty bearded and wearing an outdated buckskin shirt much too hot for Arizona summer weather; a man who looked half desert rat, half mountain hunter.

  But it was the second man, a much younger man, upon whom Kerrigan riveted his attention. This was the rider who had come into the corral at the hotel at Yuma and asked LeRoy, "He going with us to California?" The one supposedly ordered to go relieve "Old Cap" of some supposed horses.

  They stopped and stared, and Kerrigan felt the chill take a hard grip on his belly. He shifted the food package to his left armpit, right hand dropping down within reach of the worn butt of the .44. But the younger man grabbed the older one by a shoulder and spun him back through the slat swing doors, and Kerrigan hurried on at a faster walk.

  The next afternoon he saw them following him.

  Five men and a pack mule. Five indistinct shapes in the shimmering heat waves back there when he first spotted them. He could even make out the shape of Hannifer LeRoy's odd hat.

  "Well, I'll be damned!" Kerrigan ejaculated softly, and began to laugh, the first time that kind of sound had come from his lips in a long time. Quite a few things suddenly were clear to him.

  You want to buy a horse, Mr. Kerrigan. My name is Hannifer LeRoy and I've got some. Forty-six of the best. They're on pasture south of town—in case Ace Saunders or Jeb Donnelly fails to make the kill. Right along the old Colorado's muddy waters. On the bank where right below it the deep swirl pools roil around and gouge out deep holes in the sandy bottom. Where a man goes around and around and around for about five days, sometimes standing upright, until gas forms in his swollen intestines and brings him to the surface at last and the waters float him on into Old Mexico twenty-six miles away. You haven't got that much time? Very well, Mr. Kerrigan. Take this red horse and cross the Colorado and wait for me. Wait until I can come over with Ace and Old Cap and maybe Jeb Donnelly…

  Kerrigan looked back again. The shimmering heat waves had broken briefly and he saw the white bandage swathing the lower part of Donnelly's face. Yuma's marshal, it appeared, had changed jobs. Beside Donnelly rode LeRoy, as well as the man who'd come into the hotel corral and later appeared in the doorway of the side street saloon in Phoenix. Behind them, Ace Saunders and the man referred to as "Old Cap."

  Kadoba, Lew Kerrigan thought in sudden grimness, we're square for the many things you taught me of how an Apache fights. But be careful when you open one end of that long sausage gut. And if you make it free, don't kill Bud Casey!

  He looked ahead at some lava beds beginning to crop up in the distance; black and ugly on the sandy floor of the desert.

  "I suppose," Kerrigan informed the big red horse, "that after Jeb made his try and failed, LeRoy figured he'd get you back, either across the river in California or at some later place up here."

  He reached the black lava beds that lay like lymphatic scabs from volcanic eruptions of untold millions of years before, now radiating heat waves that distorted the vision. He did not go through, as those patiently biding their time probably expected of him. At the south edge of the beds he swung west and started around.

  Close to them he felt the heat blasts. Big Red's sweat glands began to work overtime to cool him around neck and flanks. The sun was like a blowt
orch upon Kerrigan's shoulders and neck and he shifted the bandanna at his throat and pulled his hatbrim farther down over squinting eyes. He pushed the big horse on around the edge of the black hell and then resumed his course northward. The heat waves threw up a wall of shimmering glass and the five men and six animals disappeared into the center of a cool lake mirage with green trees around the edges.

  Only then did Kerrigan turn the horse in among the hellish heat of the rocks and start back to where his trail had ended at the south edge of the lava beds.

  He let the reins trail, pulled the heavy .45-90 repeater from the thorn-scuffed scabbard, made sure of the long length of bright brass in the firing chamber, and closed the breech of the ugly-snouted weapon.

  He crept back a few yards to a rocky vantage point and settled down to wait. Now let them come, damn them, he thought grimly. A man could only be pushed so often—and he was tired of being pushed.

  Jeb, he heard his voice saying aloud to the heat-hazy figure of the distant marshal, you never should have left Yuma. You'd have been safer up on the hill with Wood Smith, among men who don't have rifles.

  He hadn't wanted this thing. He'd already done more than a man's share of killing through the long years. At eighteen with the Texas Rangers against the Comanches before the Civil War. Four more years of it then.

  I'm thirty-three, he thought in complete surprise. Hell, and Kitty is only twenty-one. Now why would he be thinking about that?

  He concentrated his thoughts upon the men following his trail out there. They had accepted Tom Harrow's ill-gotten money to dance, and now the fiddler must have his pay.

  In Yuma the repercussions of the prisoner's unexpected release from the penitentiary, and his explosive actions against the marshal almost immediately afterward, were still rocking the town. People were talking about how Jeb Donnelly had resigned as marshal, got himself a deputy sheriff's badge, and gone after Lew Kerrigan, his smashed jaw still bandaged. The night bartender had asked Wood Smith about it the day after the marshal left town. Smith had snarled an unaudible reply, signed for his drink, and gone on up the hill.

  He entered the warden's deserted office at the usual time. A key rattled somewhere and Bud Casey, carrying his night lantern, came in from a final vigil in front of Tough Row. He stared at the head guard in surprise.

  " 'Mornin', Wood. You're up kinda early to pick up your pay, ain't you? The warden won't be up here for two or three hours yet."

  "Habit, I guess," the former head guard grinned. "Couldn't resist this last time."

  He reached up and took down the polished brown club from a peg in the stone wall and slipped the shiny thong over his right wrist. "Let's go roust 'em out, Bud."

  "Just a minute, Wood," Bud Casey said quietly. "You don't work here any more, remember? You finished up last night at dark. And when you did, that rough stuff finished with you."

  "You ain't got my job yet," Smith grunted. "Come on."

  There was nothing for Casey to do but shrug and blow out the lantern. He placed it on the floor in a corner and took down his big key ring. Knowing Smith as he did, there was nothing in Smith's actions to arouse undue suspicion.

  "Okay, Wood. But I think you're a plain damn' fool to follow Jeb up north to work for Harrow. Maybe it's supposed to be smart for you to wait a couple of days while, so people are whisperin', Kerrigan is run down and killed. I don't think so. You're a plain damn' fool, and so is Jeb. Lew let him off with a broken jaw, instead of killing him like he should have done. You clubbed his arm the other morning to make the kill easy, only it didn't work out that way. In spite of that, Lew didn't stop by the prison on his way north long enough to slide a .45-90 outa the scabbard and put a slug through your belly at two hundred yards. You both had your chances, but I know Lew Kerrigan a lot better than most men. He ain't goin' to give you a second chance. Unless I miss my guess, Lew is going to do the same I read about them wounded tigers in India: waylay the hunter and kill him before he knows what hit him. And now that the professer has made his little speech, I guess I'll shut up. Let's go!" Casey finished angrily.

  They went out into the yard, past other guards waiting at the regular cells, walking together toward the hillside dungeons of Tough Row. The big keys began to rattle in iron doors and Wood Smith let go with his usual morning bellow:

  "All right, come out of there, you…"

  Dim figures emerged in the dim dawn from their burrows. The hard, cold-eyed bad ones. Sullen men who had killed without mercy and would kill again. Men filled with hatred and with only one hope left to sustain them: escape.

  Wood Smith saw the familiar figure of the Apache appear in the doorway with his chained left leg out of sight. Standing dark and stoically silent, alone now since Kerrigan's release. Long black hair down around naked shoulders. Ragged pants torn off at the knees.

  Looking up at the sky. Always looking up at the sky each morning and maybe praying his damned Apache prayers to the Great Spirit.

  He wouldn't kill himself by knotting his hair around his throat, Smith thought grimly. But I damn' sure came back up here this morning to pay a little debt to Kerrigan for what he done to Jeb Donnelly. I know how to bash in a man's jaw, and his skull too!

  Smith snapped the spinning club up into a big hand and his bloodshot eyes began to burn. He moved in on the slight figure, but the opaque black eyes, always so devoid of expression, never moved.

  Too late, Bud Casey realized what had been in the former head guard's mind in coming back to roust out the prisoners for the last time.

  "Don't stand there like that, you black-faced cholo son of a bitch!" the former head guard roared, and lunged without warning.

  Bud Casey's yell to the Apache, however, had come too late. Wood Smith already had swung the club for a skull-crushing blow. But the blow never fell. A black steel spring shot out of the dungeon doorway like a blood-hungry weasel leaping from its burrow at a much larger prey.

  Only then did Bud Casey see the big coil of horsehair rope in the Apache's left hand. A rope with a heavy iron ring on one end, made much heavier because wrapped around it were the iron links of fifty feet of light chain.

  The Apache's body leaped straight past Smith and was gone, running like a black streak for the far north wall by the river bend. Somebody yelled. Another guard more alert than the others took up the cry. In the tower a hundred yards west of Tough Row two sleepy night guards broke off yawns, grabbed up rifles and tried to peer through the greyness of dawn; shouting to know what the hell was going on down there anyhow.

  They heard the booted yard guards in full cry, like a pack of yelping hounds.

  "The Apache! He's loose from his chains! Shoot him!"

  But there was nothing to be distinguished as a target until the sprinting figure reached the wall and a heavy object on one end of a horsehair rope was flung over the thick top. Something that looked like an oversized monkey skinned up the side of the wall, and then the rifles began to crash. Two ex-cowpunchers, wide-awake now, levering shells frantically. The .44-40 slugs struck adobe and stone and screamed off in ricochet like an Apache in his death cry. But the monkey-like figure never paused.

  Kadoba went over the top and dropped from sight.

  Bud Casey had broken into a run on the heels of the Indian, surprisingly fast on his feet for a man who had spent so many years in the saddle, grabbing at a flying key on his ring as he sprinted. The smaller key was for a gate near the south bank of the river bend, through which water was carried each morning by trusties to slosh down the cells. He jerked open the gate and looked through.

  He was in time to see the Apache flitting among the markers of the graveyard as reloaded rifles began to spang anew. Kadoba's flashing body streaked on through, reached the bank where the current swirled past the rocky promontory named the Point, and arced through the air into the water. Then he was gone and there was nothing among the reeds except newly hatched mosquitoes.

  Nothing but a small, final geyser of water as a .44-40 caliber bul
let slapped futilely into the belly of the river.

  "Why, that little son of a gun!" Bud Casey marveled pantingly. "That black-faced Apache got over the wall into the river! Who'd a thought it?"

  He closed and locked the gate and trotted back to where the men from Tough Row stood obediently in line, pointing and cracking coarse jokes while guards in high-heeled boots and big hats gazed down at the body of Wood Smith.

  Smith lay sprawled on his back, looking straight up at the grey sky with whiskied eyes that saw nothing. The leather thong of the polished club that had smashed Lew Kerrigan's arm was still around his right wrist.

  Protruding from Smith's blood-spurting neck and severed jugular vein were the remaining four inches of a ten-inch file bought in the Big Adobe Store and inserted into a length of sausage when the bespectacled clerk's back had been turned for a few moments.

  Bud Casey thought of Kerrigan as he stood looking down at the body of the man who had come up just one time too often to "roust 'em out." He thought of Smith's part in the plot against Lew Kerrigan, and the man's intention of going on north to work for Harrow. But that final trip had been too much for Wood Smith to resist. He'd come to kill the Apache.

  A half-hidden smile unseen by the other guards and the prisoners came to Casey's genial, sandy-whiskered face.

  The warden, he thought that morning, is going to be awful' mad when he finds out Lew Kerrigan paid somebody to slip the Apache the food that had a file concealed in it.

  But then, on the other hand, old Wood always did need all the extra money he could get aholt of to pay his signed whiskey tabs at the Escondido Saloon!

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lew Kerrigan lay motionless, like a lizard sunning itself in the quiet desolation. Waiting patiently like an Apache, like Kadoba himself would have waited. Sweat formed above the inside leather band of his hat, grew in volume, and finally found an opening near his left temple. It ran down his cheek and into the corner of his mouth, and he felt the salty taste of it. Still, he did not move.