They walked down to the camp a short distance away. One of the war party espied the body of the man who'd emptied his six-shooter at Kerrigan's gun flash the night before and paid for that foolishness with his life. With a wild yell the buck grabbed up the wide-brimmed hat, tore off the filthy buckskin band around his forehead, and put on the Stetson, yanking and tugging until the brim was down around his greasy black locks. Next he unbuttoned the shirt, jerked the blood-caked object from its former owner, and held it up. He put it on proudly, wearing it tail out as was the custom of all wild Apaches.
Kerrigan removed Stubb Holiday's saddle and tossed it aside, cinching his own saddle on the back of the dead man's horse. Kadoba came up leading his pied pony and eased himself into the rawhide kak with its soft sheepskin pad.
To Kerrigan's inquiring look, he said proudly, "I go with you so other Apaches no kill. Loco say you no hunt gold. You hunt gold, I kill you."
"This thing I understand," Kerrigan replied in very polite Apache.
He was hiding a grimace of annoyance as he swung into leather. Somehow he had to get word to Fort Whipple in a hurry as to the approximate whereabouts of Loco and his long-sought band of butchers. Nor did he want any escaped convict killer Apache Indian with him when he returned to civilization. God forbid! He was already as good as hanged if Joe Stovers ever got the drop on him again.
And if Kadoba should be with him when Joe made the attempt, a wild Apache knew only one way in which to repay a debt of gratitude: lever that .44-40 Harrow had sold them, and when it was empty go in beside Kerrigan with a knife.
Sometime between three and four that afternoon their horses made the last steep climb up the side of a ridge they had been skirting and came out on top. Kerrigan and the slim Apache pulled up and looked down upon the green forest below, through which a single brown thread wound its way crookedly along a half-mile stretch of partly hidden buildings.
The walls and buildings of the old fort stood out clear. And so did the top of Clara Thompson's sprawling establishment not far from the headquarters office.
Kerrigan led the way down the steep declivity, both he and the Apache quartering their horses back and forth. Halfway down he pulled up and bent to look at deep hoof marks in the soft carpeting dropped from the pines. Kadoba glanced once and held up four fingers. Kerrigan nodded.
Three riders and one led horse that would be Big Red. The three probably were over there cleaned up and comfortable after gorging themselves on Clara's food. Who else would be over there? Kitty? Where were Harrow and the woman he probably had married by now? And where would cagey old Joe Stovers be about now?
Lew Kerrigan had ridden a few hundred miles to find out the answer.
"Come on," he said to the Indian, and led the way down under an overhead blanket of green branches.
CHAPTER TEN
Carlotta Wilkerson came out on the back porch of Clara's place and once again looked out over the area of the old fort and to the mass of green up there a half mile away. The sun, slanting into the big bend of what now was named Thompson Canyon in honor of Captain Thompson, caught her eyes and she shaded them with a hand. She went back into the kitchen and smiled at Clara's understanding look.
Judge Eaton finished off the last of a slab of canned peach pie, grunted contentedly and rose with coffee cup in one hand. He was a man of sixty, an even six feet in height, with a face so cadaverous that both his bony cheeks and temples were round, sunken spots. He wiped at his greying mustaches and ran a hand over the faint knot of belly beneath the long black coat of wool broadcloth.
"The Lord gives all of us certain gifts, Clara, and yours is one of the greatest," he rumbled. "I wonder if by chance Joe is back from Dalyville yet… Think he went home first?"
"Why don't you go over and see?" Clara suggested. "If you don't, I'm afraid there won't be any pie left for supper."
He took that as a compliment, which it wasn't, drained away the rest of the warm coffee and wiped at his mustaches. "A good suggestion, Clara. He'll want to know the details of Kerrigan's death today at the hands of Indians. Very regrettable that he should come to such an end, but the Lord can be terrible in His vengeance upon such a man. He killed young Havers right in front of your porch, Clara, and for that I should have sentenced him to hang instead of showing mercy. But I listened to the voice of Joe Stovers—and now see what it has brought. One dead man down in the lava beds and two more dead at Kerrigan's hand this very day. I was weak and because of that weakness I have three dead men resting upon my troubled conscience. But the Lord is strong and He showed the black soul of the murderer no such mercy by delivering him into the hands of the Indians."
Carlotta looked over at Clara after he was gone, her mouth a little white around the corners. "A woman can stand only so much, Clara, and if that gluttonous old hypocrite had rolled one more sonorous quotation about the Creator I don't think I could have stood it. Clara, couldn't there be any hope that Lew Kerrigan escaped?"
"I guess I'm like you," Clara said and picked up the empty cup and plate. "I just can't believe it. And yet I know what must have happened if Loco got him back there this morning. I saw the evidence of it when they brought my husband home one afternoon about this time, Carlotta, and broke the news that tore my own small world apart. In the years since then such butchery has been an almost weekly occurrence in this and New Mexico Territory."
Carlotta tried to smile understandingly at this proud woman who still lived alone in a wild frontier country where women, certainly such as she, were so few. She wanted to put a woman's thoughts into words and ask the big question in her mind—if Clara loved Lew Kerrigan. Would she have married him if Kitty had not come along? Carlotta Wilkerson thought almost fiercely to herself, I would have! That sniveling little snip upstairs crying her eyes out over Kerrigan's death wouldn't have got him away from me!
It had been a day with repercussions that would rock Arizona Territory, from the Governor's mansion to the office of the Commanding General of the district in Winslow. Loco's last raid and subsequent butchery of five Mexican sheepherders had exploded three weeks before far to the southeast; and after three terrified men, leading a big red horse, had come spurring in with more bad news Pirtman was a silent, deserted settlement with armed men behind the barred doors of their houses.
Harrow and his men were in town somewhere, a rider on a good horse having been sent north to tell Joe Stovers what had happened. He could withdraw his guard of men from the mining camp now. Lew Kerrigan wouldn't be keeping his promise to burn it. Kitty Anderson was in her room upstairs, weeping hysterically into a pillow over the supposed death of Kerrigan.
She'd tried to explain her effusive greeting to Harrow when he arrived in the coach with Carlotta, and that had been something all of them would remember. Harrow, stony-faced with anger, had pushed the girl away. Clara Thompson had been a witness to it all, and somehow she felt glad it had happened that way.
She liked Carlotta, and the thought of such a woman following Kitty into Harrow's home had strained to the speaking point her natural reticence concerning other people's lives. But from the looks of things now, the calm-eyed beauty from the South had made her own decision before the meeting, and unfortunate Lew Kerrigan would never have to find out the truth about the woman upstairs.
A faint sound came from the dining room and Kitty appeared in the doorway. She'd combed into loose waves the long flow of yellow hair and tied it back with a blue ribbon. Except for her eyes she was as beautiful as ever, with a full, curved figure men couldn't keep their eyes from when she walked into a room.
Small wonder, Clara thought, that a lonely man like Lew Kerrigan would have forgotten his close ties of friendship with her when Kitty, so alone and so helpless, came to Pirtman.
"You look much better now, Kitty," Clara said with a sincerity natural to her.
"Has there been any more news?"
"Nothing."
"I guess you two must think I'm awful to break this way, but I just co
uldn't help it. Poor Lew! He killed Buck Havers on account of me and went to prison because of it; and now he's dead." Kitty's eyes began to mist again and she dabbed at them with a tiny handkerchief. On the return trip from back in the States Kitty had thought much about Kerrigan and convinced herself she'd never loved anybody else. Suffering the pangs of an already badly mauled conscience, the report of his death had hit her hard.
"Have you any immediate plans for the future, Miss Anderson?" Carlotta inquired.
"I don't know now," Kitty almost sighed. "Everything is all mussed up. Poor Lew is dead and you and Tom are going to be married. I was so surprised when Joe Stovers wrote me about it. I thought Tom would—I thought I'd come back and see Lew, because it was on account of me he got sent to the pen. Now I just don't know what I'll do." She dabbed at her eyes with the tiny handkerchief again and went out on the back porch.
"I'm going over to the fort," she called back. "I've got to do something to keep my mind off poor Lew."
"You'd better stay right here in this house, Kitty," Clara warned sharply. "There's no telling what might happen with Indians this close."
"Oh, I don't care what happens to me any more," Kitty replied, stepping off the porch.
She walked the forty yards to a low wall and a gap knocked in it for Clara to use between the house and her grain supply in a room once occupied by the desk of her husband. Harrow's coach had been backed under a long shed and near it were a number of horses tied to mangers: the six coach horses and four more, including a big red horse.
A handsome man in a low-crowned beaver hat stood talking with Pete, who'd been the driver of the coach down from Dalyville that morning. LeRoy and the two others had abandoned the pack mule back near Kerrigan's camp. He'd lost all of his better clothing; and the mule, of course, would be butchered by Loco's meat-hungry warriors. Roasted and eaten probably while Kerrigan swung by his heels over another slow fire.
To Kitty he'd looked like any other roughly dressed rider over in the dining room, except that he didn't wolf his food and his manners equalled those of Torn Harrow.
"Ah, Miss Anderson." LeRoy gave her a smile and lifted his hat, a speculative look in his eyes. Small wonder Lew Kerrigan and then Harrow had been attracted to her. This girl was beautiful! It made a man itch to run his fingers through that soft yellow hair. "You seem to be feeling much better. I'm very happy for you."
A man on foot slipped around the far end of the shed and froze motionless in the shadows. Hannifer LeRoy and the driver of the stage, their eyes on the girl, didn't notice.
Kitty said, "I've been crying all day over Lew, just like I did the last time. I guess I'll never really get over it. You work for Tom, don't you?"
"In a manner of speaking," LeRoy replied gallantly. "I'm actually his first cousin." He didn't add that he'd also supplied some of the guns and ammunition now in the hands of bronco Indians, as well as stolen horses Harrow had sold to men in a hurry. Nor that Harrow had sent word to him in California to come to Yuma and help make certain that Kerrigan either complied with the terms of his freedom or was put out of the way.
The man they were talking about waited in the deep shadows of the shed a few moments, his eyes upon Kitty. Something had happened to her during those two long years. She'd matured amazingly and to his hungry eyes held a different kind of beauty. And yet inside him was the same strange feeling he'd had when the hack rocked down the muddy slope from the prison. Not the warm flush of eagerness he'd looked forward to, but something alien he didn't quite understand. Prison, probably. It had a way of changing a man and making things look different afterward.
Movement over at the north end of the old parade ground caught his eyes as Joe Stovers, on a tired horse, came along the road bitten out a long time ago by army wagon tires. Tom Harrow strode alongside Stovers' horse, the two in animated conversation. From the back porch of the boarding house Carlotta and Clara Thompson saw them and began walking along the trail to the gap in the wall. Kerrigan, his view blocked by the office building, didn't see them.
Well, this was as good a time as any to settle a few things. Then he'd recover the red horse and be on his way. He slid along the manger-lined wall and came up under cover of Big Red, contentedly munching hay.
Joe Stovers' angry voice, obviously lashing at Harrow, ceased as the two men came up to the little group and the sheriff swung his short, bulky weight from his horse.
Stovers dropped the reins to the ground and grunted wearily. Then he said, still angry, "I wasn't worried about Lew burning your damned town. Well, not too much anyhow. Not as long as there weren't any women and kids left. Now I guess it doesn't matter. Where's that red horse those crummy men of yourn brought in?"
"He's right here, Joe," Kerrigan replied, and stepped into view around the animal's coppery hip. "I came back to get him."
"Lew!" Kitty screamed and took a faltering step toward him, and then drew back as she saw he wasn't looking at her.
His eyes were upon Tom Harrow, whose face had lost color.
"What is all this anyhow, Lew?" Joe Stovers demanded. "What's all this about you getting caught by 'Paches and burned? What kind of cock-and-bull story is this, LeRoy? Answer up!"
"Hold it, Joe," Kerrigan said. "Loco's band did close in on me right after LeRoy pulled out with Ace Saunders and Jeb Donnelly. They were right in thinking it was trail's end for me. But as luck would have it, the Apache I celled with had made his way back and rejoined Loco's band of broncos."
He flicked his cold glance first to the hard-faced driver, Pete, and to LeRoy, who was smiling lazily, waiting his chance when Kerrigan's attention was diverted.
"In case Tom hasn't told you," Kerrigan said thinly to the sheriff, "the only reason he bought my freedom from prison was because I'd been in a cell for two years with that same Indian, Joe. Tom was pretty certain Kadoba had told me the location of more diggings richer than Dalyville. He guessed right, too. I know where there's another Dalyville, and Tom was desperate to get his hands on it. When I broke loose from Yuma he put LeRoy and the rest of the pack on my trail. Three of those men are dead, including Stubb Holiday, who slipped south and joined them. I came after my horse, and to kill the others."
He felt more than saw the moment LeRoy chose, a shoulder stabbing downward as the horse buyer flashed his hand to his gun. He and the man Pete. Amid the smashing roars of big pistols Kitty began to scream and then screamed again and again. Kerrigan felt the butt of the .44 jarring hard against his calloused hand as he lined shot after shot waist-high at two men writhing in faint wisps of coarse grain powder vapor. He caught two flashes of orange fire spurting from LeRoy's side but felt no pain. A third flash came from the gun of the driver, Pete; slanted groundward as the man fell.
LeRoy was still on his feet as the hammer of Kerrigan's .44 responded with a click on an empty chamber. Slowly the horse thief dropped to his knees; his head jerked back and his chin came up and he looked straight into Kerrigan's eyes. He tried to nod toward Harrow.
"Finish him—off, Kerrigan!" he cried out hoarsely, and a gush of red came to his mouth. "He sent me to hell and—I want to—" He couldn't finish the rest of it. His head dropped down and red flowed from the corners of his mouth as he fell forward to lie curled up on his right side.
A shrill laugh broke from Harrow. Wheeling, he snatched the gun from the sheath at Joe Stovers' heavy right hip. He didn't use it, but sprang away and jerked from inside his coat a pistol with a long, thin barrel. It was the same weapon Kerrigan had used to smash in the jaw of Jeb Donnelly in the Escondido Saloon that morning down in Yuma.
"Stand fast, Joe, or I'll shoot you, so help me!" he ordered. He looked at Kerrigan. "Five of them, Lew. I counted those shots, fast as they were; and a man like you would never carry a live one under the hammer. Your gun's empty. It's my turn now— Stand fast, Joe!" he warned again, and covered the sheriff.
"I could have made you rich, Lew. Both of us rich! But you wouldn't have it that way. You had to play it your way and
now I've got all the trumps. As long as things had to end this way, I might as well tell you that I planned for you to kill Buck Havers."
"Why?" Lew Kerrigan asked in surprise. "I hardly knew you by sight at that time."
Harrow's lips beneath the clipped mustache twisted into a cruel smile that moved the long sideburns; the irrepressible gloat of a man who had known many women.
"Why?" he repeated softly. "Because of Kitty. Our long-jawed friend, Buck Havers, was just thick-brained enough to have Wild Bill Hickok ambitions after he became a twenty-five-dollar per month 'night marshal' here in Pirtman. I told him," he laughed pleasantly, "that you were a Texas gun fighter, and he sicked easy. Eagerly, I'd say. I knew you'd kill him, and I was temporarily in need of the territorial reward Joe would have to put on your head. I saw that you were guided to my place. By merest chance, old Bear Paw Daly came by on his way to you with news of the strike I was certain was Adams' Lost Diggings. I got the reward. I got the gold. And I got Kitty." He grinned at Stovers.
"I suspected some of it," Stovers grunted. "Just keep on talking a noose, Tom."
"There's nothing more to say now, I guess, except I won't ask for the reward this time. He's got an empty chamber under the hammer of his gun, and I'm going to kill him. And if I have to kill you, too, Joe, I'm quite prepared to do so."
"You made just one mistake, Harrow," Lew Kerrigan said coolly. "There's no empty chamber under the hammer."
Kitty let out a sudden wail of self-pity and fled toward the corner of the building. Only then did Kerrigan see Carlotta and Clara Thompson standing by it. He glanced at Carlotta, wondering what she would think of him now. He'd forced the man she was engaged to marry to expose his rotten soul, and, being a woman, she'd probably hate the man responsible for bringing hurt to her.
"I never thought I'd catch you with a dead chamber under the hammer," Harrow laughed and raised his pistol.
A Gunman Rode North Page 9