A Gunman Rode North

by William Hopson

  "Harrow thought you were, too, until you sent him packing," he retorted, and grinned.

  "Did you know she has expressed a desire to buy this place from me?"

  "The devil she did! A woman like her, come here to marry into wealth—how much you suppose she's found out about the kind of man Tom Harrow really is?"

  "Quite enough, I think," Clara replied; and then, because she was a woman, she added, "We women have a keen perception for such things."

  "You women!" Joe Stovers snorted again.

  He finished his breakfast in silence, a frown on his usually good-humored face. Afterward he took the north road toward Dalyville. Kerrigan had sent word to Harrow that he was going to burn the town, and a dozen unemployed, hastily sworn-in miners were patrolling the place day and night. Loco was on the rampage again, after a breather over in New Mexico Territory. He'd picked off an occasional traveler after Harrow went East; people rapidly turning Dalyville into a ghost town. A trickle of them had been coming through Pirtman almost every day. A troop of cavalry from Fort Whipple, Captain Rawlinson commanding, was patrolling roads. More troops from Fort Stanton, New Mexico, had been reported on the way, hoping to intercept the bronco fleeing north.

  A mining-boom camp drained of its gold, and its people, into a shell of empty shacks in a gulch. A grim, determined man fresh out of prison and on his way to put the torch to it. And the law said Joe Stovers had to arrest him again for murder.

  Three miles north of Pirtman the brooding sheriff rounded a sharp turn in the mountain road and met the red coach. He spurred his horse aside and scowled up at the armed driver, Pete Orr, a man he'd arrested numerous times. Orr scowled back as he hauled hard on the lines and brake blocks squealed against rear wheel tires.

  On top of the coach, also heavily armed, were three more of the shoddy characters who'd hung around Harrow's mountain hangout in the days before the "Colonel" had struck it rich.

  Behind the coach Captain Rawlinson, red-bearded and thirtyish, halted his detail of nine blue-clad troopers acting as escort.

  As Harrow opened the door to the red coach, Stovers saw the trim figure of Carlotta Wilkerson inside. He looks like he ain't slept in a week, the sheriff thought and felt better. He went East to sell a crooked million in worthless gold stock and came back fleeced of all his money. He got Lew Kerrigan out of prison to help him out of some kind of trouble. But Lew turned on him and is coming north with a gun in one hand and probably a box of matches in the other. And when Tom gets to Clara's place in Pirtman with that lovely woman I should stop him from marrying, he'll find Kitty's come back all full of love for either him or maybe hoping to marry Lew now …

  " 'Morning, Joe," Harrow said as the pudgy sheriff tipped his hat to Carlotta.

  He looked haggard and he was haggard. He'd told the woman who'd come so far to marry him in the great mansion in Dalyville that Kerrigan had no valid claim against the diggings. He'd painted for her a picture of a gun-throwing outlaw present when Bear Paw Daly whom Harrow had grubstaked, came in with news of the strike. He had hired Kerrigan to pack-train in for him, but the law in the grim person of hard-riding Joe Stovers had caught up with him and sent him to Yuma prison as an embittered killer blaming Harrow for everything.

  She'd believed him, but there was something in her quiet reticence that worried him. She'd taken an immediate liking to Clara Thompson, the respect of a clean woman for another woman who at nineteen had married her second-lieutenant husband the day he graduated from West Point and at twenty-seven had seen them bring back her captain face down across his cavalry mount.

  Captain Rawlinson of the gay manners and red beard had filled in a few more details, including those of a well-kept grave in the little military cemetery not far from Clara's back door in Pirtman. He'd been a lieutenant second-in-command under Captain Thompson in that vicious tangle with Loco's well-armed broncos.

  Now Carlotta Wilkerson sat beside Harrow in the coach, thinking of Clara, her mind made up. There was nothing to go back to in the South. Her home had been in the path of Sherman's "March to the Sea," and it had not been spared. The long years afterward had not been good, and when the distinguished Western mining man, Colonel Thomas Harrow, met her he represented the aristocratic South she had known as a small girl and an opportunity to leave behind forever the postwar South she did not care for. She had accepted his proposal without any particular feeling. No feeling at all except the calm acceptance of a secure marriage with untold wealth. Not until she had looked into the hard-bitten face of a man named Lew Kerrigan in the hallway of a new hotel in Yuma. He'd struck a new, strange fire inside of her, and she hadn't been able to get him entirely from her thoughts.

  She sat there in the comfort of the coach, listening to Harrow talking with the sheriff and Captain Rawlinson; now calmly accepting the fact there would be no marriage to Harrow, and somehow very much relieved. Too many people in Dalyville were asking the whereabouts of the girl Kitty, the same Kitty who had carelessly left behind some of her clothing, possibly expecting to return to the big mansion.

  Carlotta suddenly wanted to get on to Pirtman; to ask an understanding Clara how much Kerrigan had really loved the girl.

  "Have you heard any word of that hard-headed madman yet, Joe?" Carlotta heard Tom Harrow ask. "The frame of mind he's in, he'll kill again, Joe."

  "He already has," Stovers said matter-of-factly.

  "Seems like when Lew pulled out of Yuma and headed up this way Jeb Donnelly followed him. Jeb and a supposed horse buyer named Hannifer LeRoy who'd been hanging around Yuma but hadn't bought but a couple of good mounts and a pack mule. Ace Saunders is with 'em, along with maybe a couple other gents. I don't suppose you'd be knowing anything about all this, Tom?"

  "Why should I?" snapped Harrow angrily, his face flushing.

  "Just wondering, that's all," came the unruffled reply. "Sorta noticed, too, that Stubb ain't drivin' you this morning."

  "He went south to try to find Lew and give him a message from me."

  The coach got under way once more and Carlotta looked at the man sitting beside her. Harrow didn't see the faintly amused smile on her soft mouth.

  The coach wheels were spinning a yellow blur of bright-painted spokes down the winding mountain road. The harness of the six fast-trotting horses jangled, the vehicle rocking gently on the thorough braces of thick, laminated leather. It was rear-heavy with Carlotta's baggage; and Harrow, too, was abandoning Dalyville.

  He'd reminded himself all night long that he was a captain during the War Between the States.

  Therefore, as a military man of sorts, it was necessary to make a strategic retreat and regather his forces for an all-out attempt to corner Lew Kerrigan and give him the choice of revealing the new source of Apache gold or being returned to Yuma to be hanged.

  An act of desperation, yes, but one that easily could succeed. He'd regain his fortune and sweep away the doubts causing his fiancée to be strangely aloof these past few days, and the wedding would not be above the gold-stripped gulch at Dalyville. The wedding would be in the Governor's own mansion at the state capital.

  The greedy politician owed him that much for the twenty thousand in gold he'd accepted to free Lew Kerrigan from prison!

  Above the steady clop-clop of the cavalry horses behind the rocking coach Carlotta spoke to him. Her words were cool, almost casual.

  "Thomas, I have decided to postpone our wedding for the present."

  "Of course, my dear Carlotta." He smiled and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. "This whole thing has gotten out of hand. I tried to help a man in prison and he's turned on me like a mad dog. I want you to take up quarters at Clara's place for the present, where you'll be perfectly safe. I'm taking these four men and riding south in the morning."

  "Why, may I ask?"

  "What else but to find Kerrigan and try to reason with him again before he rides in here with a gun in his hand? I wish I had sent for Kitty. He loved her—that is, as much as a man like him can love a beau
tiful woman. I should have had her waiting for him in a buggy when he stepped through the gates of the prison at Yuma. After two years without seeing a woman, it might have made him think of something else besides wanting to kill somebody."

  How he wished it! If only he had done that, instead of bringing Carlotta by way of the state capital in Tucson, to show her off to the governor and other prominent people while he handed over twenty thousand for "campaign expenses."

  "Now should you have, Thomas?" she asked, and seemed actually amused at some thought back of her lead-grey eyes. "You've been very vague about her, you know. In fact, embarrassed when people up in the gulch asked about her. I did ask Clara—"

  "And what did she tell you?" he snapped at her before he could stop himself.

  Her voice came with warning sweetness, something utterly alien to this calm-eyed beauty he had completely misunderstood until now. "As I managed to put together the few bits of information pried out of Clara, she screamed hysterically when Lew was arrested and brought to trial here in Pirtman by Judge Eaton."

  "Lew?" he cut in, uncontrollably angry now. "Since when has it become 'Lew'?"

  "When Mr. Kerrigan was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor, Thomas, I believe your fair Kitty was hysterical for all of two days, while patient Clara carried cold packs for her eyes. I also believe the sheriff, who, I understand, is a United States Marshal appointed by Judge Eaton, hardly had taken him away when you took Kitty under your fatherly wing to the new strike and gave her employment."

  "Now, look here, Carlotta—" he began ragingly.

  "How cruel and callous could you have been? Did you help her write the letters to him to make certain nothing of her possibly stricken conscience was revealed? Did the two of you together read his undoubted heartfelt replies, written from a dungeon? From the clothing she left behind in that architectural monstrosity, you must have been as generous with her as you were with me when you gave me the money to replace my own threadbare wardrobe."

  She laughed softly at the stunned surprise on his suave features, now turning dark with outraged anger. It was Carlotta's turn to pat Harrow on the sleeve, reassuringly.

  "Don't look so shocked, Thomas, that the cold woman you bought for display on the frontier has a normal woman's instincts for love. I overlooked your evasions as to details of the great military battles fought during the Civil War. You're not the only one of that particular breed. I also managed to overlook your insufferable vanity at thinking I could love a man like you, my dear Thomas."

  "Then why did you do it?" he burst out. His arm under her fingers was trembling. Women had always been conquests. He wasn't used to a knife.

  "Why? I thought you might have suspected the answer. A once-proud family destroyed and scattered during the great war. Poverty and rags during that conflict and little more than proud poverty in the years that followed. It's not easy to live as an old, old maiden of twenty-five, scorned by the townspeople as being too proud to accept the inevitable and marry into a life of near poverty. You were tired of an empty-headed mistress like Kitty and wanted a lady to grace that cavelike monstrosity in Dalyville. I wanted anything away from what I had. But after I arrived here, and found out a few details of your rather sordid past, I discovered that my supposedly thick skin was still very, very thin, Thomas."

  "I see." He turned on her, cold and hard now. "And just what do you propose to do now, my dear Carlotta," he almost sneered.

  "I still have the down payment you made on my purchase," she answered him quite calmly. "Aside from the real necessity of new clothes to replace my wardrobe of made-over dresses from my mother and grandmother, most of the twenty thousand you gave me before you left for New York is carefully packed away in goldback currency in my baggage. I have hinted to Clara Thompson that I might wish to purchase the place she built with her husband's savings. She's become restless, living too long near old memories, and might go away to Texas and start a new life, as I might do here. But I wish to see Lew Kerrigan first. It is my feeling the money you thrust upon me might rightfully belong to him. If he refuses to accept it from me, then I'll talk seriously with Clara."

  She moved away from him to the far side of the softly cushioned seat in the rear of the coach, and he knew he had irrevocably lost this woman he'd never possessed from the beginning. Her next words confirmed the bitter gall of the truth.

  "And now, Thomas, will you please oblige me by climbing up to the seat with the driver? I wish to be alone, to enjoy a sudden uplift of feeling I never thought could happen. And you can do little good in here if we're attacked by veritable swarms of the Apaches, whom I understand you're suspected of having provided with arms and ammunition before you became wealthy and respectable—now could you?"

  He wrenched savagely at the door and clambered up on top, ignoring the questioning looks in the eyes of his three heavily armed guards. He slid into the seat beside the driver and scowled.

  "Pete," he said, looking straight ahead, "you heard what Joe Stovers said about Kerrigan. Hannifer and Ace Saunders tipped their hands, and Kerrigan turned on them like a damned Apache. If he gets through to Pirtman—and that's the first place he'll come—somebody is going to get killed."

  "You don't want him alive any more, huh?" Pete Orr asked.

  "Out of the question now, Pete. He's a wolf with a taste for blood. Mine and any of you who used to be with me up at the old place."

  "How much in it for me? Same as the state put on before? Five hundred?"

  "Five hundred to any of you."

  "He'd spot the red coach under the sheds at the old fort first thing. He'd slip in that way to get to Miz Thompson's place. I guess I'll play it from that angle."

  "Good! Just make sure you get him, and don't worry about Joe Stovers. Judge Eaton is in Pirtman today, but we still might have to kill ourselves a sheriff before this day is out."

  "Things are that bad, eh?"

  "They could get that bad, Pete."

  "Suits me. I haven't forgot that Stovers arrested me up in Dalyville in Sam Blaze Face's place for shooting a damned miner. It ain't been the same since you got rich, Tom. I still prefer the old hangout up in the back country. Nothing to do but handle some of the horses an' guns LeRoy ran in from California. Play cards, plenty of good whiskey, and with a few Indian and Mex gals around to make a man feel at home."

  The coach whipped on down the road to the outskirts of the first few houses among the evergreen trees and here the troopers left it and began the return patrol back to Dalyville and their temporary camp in the mountains. Pete Orr wheeled the six horses up with a flourish before the long frontier veranda of Clara Thompson's place. The three guards climbed stiffly down and strode off toward the Pine Knot near the road, the settlement's only saloon.

  Pete Orr licked his lips but had to wait and take the coach over to the old fort and unharness—and then wait some more.

  Harrow had descended the folding step and now hastily helped Carlotta out of the opened doorway of the bright red coach. Thomas Harrow, Esq. Dalyville, Arizona Territory. As Harrow turned, a girl came running off the front porch, arms open and outstretched. A yellow-haired girl, blue-eyed and kitten-faced, who flung herself into Tom Harrow's arms with a little squeal of gladness.

  "My dear," Carlotta smiled warmly at Kitty Anderson's flushed face looking over Harrow's rigidly frozen shoulder, "you do it as naturally as though you'd done it quite often. Thomas, have you forgotten your manners? Aren't you going to introduce me?"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Daybreak came uncomfortably to Lew Kerrigan in the September chill of the high country in northern Arizona. The pines around him stood tall and majestic as though through lordly green eyes they were surveying all of the vast wilderness; a panorama of broken-chested country, myriad colors of green and brown, amber and yellow, with, now and then, the pale-blue glint of distant water.

  Kerrigan had devoted the remaining hours of darkness in cutting a careful circle in the blackness; almost a slow step at
a time in the moccasins. He knew how desperate Tom Harrow must be. In so far as Kerrigan knew, Harrow had long since been waiting for his men to bring in the fugitive, and probably wondering at their silence.

  He thought grimly, Well, he won't have to wonder much longer. I'll make Pirtman today and maybe Kitty will be there. He'd realized many times how much younger she was than himself, but she was beautiful and this was the frontier where almost any woman was a premium in a country preponderantly male and single. After two years of not seeing a woman, a man could forget subconscious misgivings and think only of seeing her again.

  He didn't know exactly what his next step would be after that. He'd think of that when he got to Clara's place.

  As for LeRoy and Jeb Donnelly and who else was with them, they had pushed him twice and each time it had cost them a man. He'd spared Donnelly's life in the Escondido Saloon. He'd ducked away from town to avoid meeting Ace Saunders again. He hadn't gone up to the prison with a rifle to pick off Wood Smith. And he'd spared LeRoy's life back there at the lava beds, shooting instead a man trained to trail like a hound on the scent of a big deer-killing mountain cat.

  But he thought he knew LeRoy, the beaver hat and McClellan saddle a key to the pride and vanity of a man probably once a gentleman from the South. Kerrigan had been ordered brought in or killed, and Hannifer LeRoy had failed in his part of the unsavory job. He'd been trying again now for many days, and last night the red horse he had sold Kerrigan had proved the means of not letting Kerrigan be taken in camp.

  They'd be coming in to play rough now. This was their final big chance!

  Kerrigan lay in a thick brush clump atop a small ridge and waited, a cluster of green weeds tied to the top of his head. Kadoba had said that an Apache could flatten out within five feet of a White Eyes and not be seen, something that the officers and troopers of a hundred, a thousand patrols had at one time or another learned to their sorrow; and that bunch out there somewhere couldn't shoot a man when they couldn't see him.