A Gunman Rode North

by William Hopson

  "You haven't," came the quiet reply. "I said there's a live one. But it's in one of the .44-40 repeating rifles you sold Loco. It's lined right at your head. Take a good look at it, damn you!"

  He called sharply to the Indian and spoke something none of them understood. Forty feet away the Apache, naked to the waist, stepped into view as though he'd come up out of the ground. Kadoba slithered forward like a dark animal in a half crouch, the Winchester leveled.

  Joe Stovers said sharply, "Hold off that damned Injun, Lew, while I get back my gun."

  "Don't touch it!" Kerrigan snapped sharply.

  Stovers swung around and stared. "You going to try disarming a sheriff, too?"

  "I just don't want to risk you getting killed by an Apache with a nervous trigger finger. For two years he's been under the guns and clubs of guards wearing boots and broad-brimmed hats. To him you're a lawman anxious to put him back in Yuma to hang. He didn't kill Tom just now, because I'd ordered him to hold his fire no matter what happened."

  "Then get him outa sight quick!" snapped the sheriff. "I see men looking over this way, and if they see an Apache after this bad scare—"

  But Kadoba had already moved, disappearing around the horses under the shed. Kerrigan handed the sheriff the weapon he'd taken from Harrow's limp hand and tossed the pistol with the thin barrel a dozen feet away. Instinctively he opened the loading gate of the .44 and began to punch out five empty shells. He didn't look at the two huddled bodies. He felt all sick inside.

  Two more dead men, and Kitty writing him letters while she'd been in Dalyville with Harrow. He wanted more than ever to get this thing over with and leave Arizona forever.

  Stovers' handcuffs clicked into place on Tom Harrow's wrists. "I'm taking Tom over to Judge Eaton and I'll find where we all stand, Lew. Will you give me your word you won't leave Pirtman?"

  "I wouldn't mind talking first. And thanks for my guns. We'll see."

  "Good. I'll get back as quick as I can. Keep a sharp lookout for Jeb Donnelly and Ace Saunders… And for God's sake," he rumbled, "don't get into any more fracases. I don't want to resign to keep from arresting you again. Don't want to get my fool head shot off either. Come on, Tom, let's get walking."

  Kerrigan spoke sharply to the Apache, telling him to bring in the horses and to saddle Big Red. He heard Stovers bellowing in a far-reaching voice, waving his arms to several men over among the trees and log buildings to stay over there; that everything was all right.

  Kerrigan slid the six-shooter into the worn sheath and found two women coming toward him.

  "Hello, Clara. Thanks for the letters you wrote." He nodded and touched the brim of his hat to Carlotta Wilkerson.

  Clara looked up at him, her eyes searching over his clothing. "Lew, are you hurt? Did any of those shots—"

  "No, Clara. LeRoy was over-anxious and missed twice. That other hardcase—Pete Orr— should have stuck to stealing horses and never come down here when Tom struck it rich."

  "You'd better come over and try to eat some supper. Carlotta and I will bar the doors until Joe comes."

  Kerrigan looked at Carlotta and a faint smile came to his lips. He found an answering one as she extended a slim hand. She said, "I didn't think you were capable of it—looking anything but grim, I mean, Mr. Kerrigan."

  "Lew," he corrected her as the three of them walked toward the gap in the old wall. "You offered me your friendship in Yuma, Miss Wilkerson—"

  "Carlotta," she said. "I'm offering it again, Lew. I suppose both of us have found out quite a number of things within the past few minutes. Somehow I feel much better."

  He didn't answer that one and he didn't see the brief question that came into her eyes. They went up the path to the porch and on into the kitchen. Clara left them there and almost immediately he heard the faint jar of a front door being closed. He sat down in the same chair Joe Stovers had occupied that morning and Carlotta came with the same coffee pot. From somewhere upstairs came muffled whimperings like a frightened kitten locked outside and trying to get in.

  "I had expected to find you married to Tom Harrow by the time I finally got here," he said.

  She was pouring coffee for him, and to his nostrils came the clean, womanly smell of her and the awareness of how very close she was. Something he'd never felt before stirred inside him. He'd just killed two men in front of her eyes, although she didn't appear to be terribly shocked. He put it down to the fact that perhaps she'd witnessed much of it as a teen-age girl during the war Tom Harrow had fled from.

  "And suppose I had been married to him, Lew?"

  "It would have saved his life," he answered, looking down as he used the spoon inside the rim of the white cup. "I figured while I was making the long ride north with LeRoy and the others on my trail that you'd got a bad break you didn't deserve. I didn't want to make it worse by making a widow out of you so soon. I was going to let him live."

  "And now should I overlook his sordid affairs with other women, his greed and dishonesty, his murder of an old man, and be noble? I'm afraid you don't know me very well, Lew. Thomas' destiny is now in his own hands. But I do wish to exact a promise from you: don't kill him. Will you promise me that?"

  He felt a chill begin to course through him. He thought she was pleading for Harrow's life no matter how the man had turned out, what he had done to her.

  The man was rotten to the core, but was his record to be compared to five dead men strung along a trail several hundred miles long? Killed by a man now branded an ex-convict and gun fighter?

  Now that she'd had time to think, it looked as though she were viewing him in that light. Trying to save the life of an evil man at the hands of one still more evil. He drank the warm coffee and rose and brushed at the whisker stubble that made his mouth look so suddenly unfriendly.

  "I don't happen to be noble either, Miss Wilkerson," he said quietly. "I'm traveling along a road where there is no turning back. The man I know as a Confederate deserter killed an old one-armed fellow for his share of a gold strike. He sent me to the pen and got my share. I swore I'd destroy him and burn the town he built."

  "Haven't you already destroyed him?" she asked gently. "Better than killing?"

  He shook his head and went into the dining room. Clara said almost cheerfully, "Everything storm proof, Lew. Joe can handle things over in town, and Tom's men wouldn't dare fire on a house with women in it. Now how about some good food?"

  "Where's Kitty's room?" he asked her.

  "It's—upstairs," she said faintly. "The one on the southeast corner."

  "Thanks," he said, and moved into the parlor, which showed the hard effects of stage travelers during the two-year boom. He disappeared on moccasined feet and Clara found the other woman beside her.

  "Why?" Carlotta whispered. "For what reason would he go to her, Clara?"

  "I don't know, my dear. He might feel that after prison and five dead men…"

  Kerrigan moved soundlessly on the worn carpeting. He was almost to Kitty's door when another beside it opened behind him and a man's voice, barely audible, said, "Hold it, Kerrigan. Turn slow and don't try anything."

  Kerrigan turned and looked into the muzzle of the six-shooter in Ace Saunders' slim hand; saw the odd, twisted smile on the dark, handsome face.

  "Seems like we're always meeting in front of stores or in hotel hallways," Saunders remarked softly, keeping his voice down. "No matter what I got to do, I'm glad you got loose from that war party of Apache bucks. The farther away we got from them the more panicky I got."

  "I know the feeling, Saunders. Sort of like a hangover, with a bad case of shakes afterward. It's sheer luck I didn't burn. Where do we go this time? Back to Tom, I suppose."

  "I wanted to go back and get you. If Jeb and Hannifer had backed my play, we'd have split that war party wide open. A few flying shots would have scattered them like quail."

  "But you came on and waited here for me?"

  Saunders nodded and casually slid the .45 into its sheath
. It was a newly developed weapon, only recently put on the market by Colt, and Kerrigan thought, It's too heavy and long for a man like him. He should have a .44 on a lighter frame with a shorter barrel.

  "That's right," Saunders replied. "I was strolling back from the saloon over there along the road. I saw you ride in with the Indian and slip into the shed. When Pete Orr didn't make it collecting the five hundred Harrow promised to pay us all, I slipped in through the front door here and hid. I knew you'd be over."

  Kerrigan studied the dark, youthful face and found himself puzzled. The man had been in the party that had been trailing Kerrigan ever since he had left Yuma. Saunders saw the question in Lew Kerrigan's eyes.

  "I've got just one question to ask you, Kerrigan. You going in there to get righteous with Kitty?"

  Kerrigan shook his head. "I'm in no position to get righteous with anybody."

  "I'm glad. It just saved your life. I was listening downstairs just now when you told the Wilkerson woman—she's a real beauty, ain't she?— about travelin' along a road you couldn't turn back on. Things just naturally happen to people sometimes. Like they happened to Kitty. She wasn't happy with Tom—I could see that. Kitty wasn't bad. You were in the pen for life and she was just lonely, with nobody to turn to. That's about all I got to say, Kerrigan. Maybe I'm on one of them roads you were talking about a little while ago. I can't turn back either. I'm not in Tom's pay any more. I'm just a gent who led another gent named Stubb Holiday along a six-year trail he sometimes didn't want to go. He didn't want to go up on that ridge alone either, because he was afraid of you. I made him go. Make your peace with Kitty, Kerrigan."

  He went down the stairs loudly and into the kitchen, to grin good-humoredly at Clara's surprised look. Kitty's door opened at the noise. Her eyes were wet. A look of shame and humiliation came into them as she saw Kerrigan.

  "What do you want of me now, Lew?" she whispered.

  "I wanted to talk with you, of course, Kitty," he said gently.

  She opened the door wider and stood aside and then closed it behind him. The bed was rumpled, one of the pillows twisted into a dampened ball. She came and stood beside him and then reached up a hand to touch the uncut hair at his temples.

  "Tom said you were hard and mean the way you killed Buck so quick. Why… you're not that way at all, Lew," she said, a new note of wonder in her voice as she sank down on the edge of the bed. He seated himself beside her, and she touched him again as though she still couldn't believe it.

  "I couldn't stop writing you letters, Lew, and at night I cried about me and about you down there in prison. It got so bad Tom made the warden send back my letters. He said you were in for life. And then he wanted to take me back East where I belonged. Lew, did I do something so terribly bad?"

  "I suppose it would all depend upon what kind of people look at things, Kitty. I expect my viewpoint would be different from, say Judge Eaton's or Joe Stovers'."

  "You mean they think I'm bad—not like Clara, who was married to her husband?"

  "And Miss Wilkerson, who was raised a lady, she might think differently from me."

  "Clara never said a single word of reproof after I went to Dalyville and went to work for Tom. That's the way she is. But I don't care what anybody else in the world thinks about me any more. I just want to have you say what you feel, Lew."

  "Take a look at my right hand, Kitty," he said, and opened it to her, palm up. "A gun in that hand has killed six men here in Arizona. I've got quite a lot of mud on me to be wiping it off others."

  "There were others in Texas, Lew?"

  "Five brothers in Texas, who tried to kill my father and shot my mother to death by accident. They're all dead. I've no right to censure you, Kitty, any more than I've a right to censure Harrow for assuming another name. I've got the blood of eleven dead men on my hands and Kerrigan isn't my real name."

  Her hand slid inside his and she looked up with hope in her eyes. "You mean I'm not like Clara and Miss Wilkerson downstairs and you're not like Joe Stovers? That we're two of a kind? Is that what you came to tell me? If it is, I'll go anywhere you want, Lew."

  "I want you to go back East, Kitty," he told her quietly. "You don't belong out here alone. That's why I came up. I might not get out of Pirtman alive, and even if I do, I'll still have to run for it. When I went to prison Joe Stovers came back from Yuma and sold off the hundred head of cattle I had up in the basin. He's been holding the money for me all this time. If I get out of here alive, I want you to have five hundred of it. Start fresh somewhere new. I left Texas for that reason, came over here and changed my name and went to work. But I got a bad break at Tom Harrow's hands. Now I'm going to finish a job I have to do and try it once more. I think it'll work next time."

  "But you don't want me?" She choked a little on the words.

  He rose to his moccasined feet, at a loss for words. What could you say to a woman like Kitty, alone and grabbing at any straw?

  "I've just told you how the chips fell my way, Kitty," he said kindly. "For all I know, the last card in the deck is about to be dealt. You've got a long hand ahead of you to play. This game is too far along to deal yourself in."

  "Could I go downstairs with you and get some coffee, Lew? I don't think Clara would mind."

  "Wipe your eyes a bit first." He grinned at her. "Clara is a very understanding woman."

  He took her by the arm and they went down together.

  But his mind was still puzzling over the strange actions of Ace Saunders. The slim gunman had got the drop on him flat-footedly after helping trail him all the way from Yuma. He could have forced Kerrigan out of the house, or smashed him over the head and got him away in the hopes of finding the secret of Apache renegade gold.

  Instead, he'd appeared to be more concerned about Kitty. He'd found out to his satisfaction what he wanted to know. Then, instead of killing Kerrigan on the spot, he'd turned his back and gone downstairs and out through the kitchen.

  It made one thing certain in Kerrigan's mind anyhow: Saunders was confident that when they met again under even circumstances he'd still be on his feet with a gun in his hand afterward.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Joe Stovers, looking straight ahead, had not spoken a word to his prisoner as they moved away from the former parade ground. With the reins of his led horse in one hand he walked beside a man now fully revealed as a criminal.

  Harrow had regained his aplomb and now he looked over at the sheriff with a faintly amused smile. "No use to get yourself upset, Joe," he remarked suavely. "If it will help remove that outraged thundercloud from your slightly apoplectic features, I'm glad I didn't kill Lew Kerrigan."

  "I'll bet!" Stovers almost spat out. "Still haven't given up hope about grabbing yourself another Dalyville, eh?"

  "I regret it, of course. With another such strike to back me up I could go East again and sell a cool million dollars' worth of stock. I could make you rich, Joe."

  "I know where you're going and it ain't east. It's south, where Lew just came from with your crummy pack of wolves on his trail."

  "That's where you're very much wrong, my righteous friend. I'm not going to any penitentiary. I paid the governor of the territory a twenty-thousand-dollar bribe to get Kerrigan out of prison. Regardless of what charges I'm brought to trial for, I'll have full freedom within two or three days. Just long enough to get word to the right person."

  "Maybe," grunted Stovers shortly.

  He knew Harrow probably was right. The Territorial Governor had sold offices right and left during his administration, receiving a kickback percentage of their state salaries for the favors. But if every paper in the territory knew the full story of Tom Harrow, freedom for him under any legal technicalities would be tantamount to political suicide.

  And there was Judge Eaton. The ex-minister had the complete approval of far-seeing men in Arizona who were backing him in his avowed campaign to clean the northern part of the territory of every tough character who came before him while r
iding circuit court. Stovers had always thought that Eaton was just a mite crazy, but this was one time it might pay off. The Governor already had Harrow's bribe for freeing Kerrigan, and Dalyville was finished as a source of further income. Harrow was through as a mining man with money, and a wily politician afraid of his next election might be somewhat reluctant to give Harrow a clean bill when the facts were laid before him.

  Stovers walked on, suddenly feeling very much better.

  Under the trees beside the old road several men, armed and nervous, waited. The sheriff told them what had happened, and added a blunt warning to stay on guard at their cabins in case he needed them.

  "Where's Judge Eaton?" he demanded.

  "Over there in the Pine Knot, Joe," a man replied and nodded toward a low building of chinked logs. "Having a brandy and bellowing about lawlessness in the territory."

  "I reckon he'll have a chance to bellow some more," Stovers growled. "Get going, Tom."

  "Take these handcuffs off me," Harrow replied angrily. "I'm no common criminal, and I'm not going to run away."

  "You ain't no common criminal," the sheriff agreed, "and you damn' sure ain't going to run away."

  They walked over to the crude pole porch and found the tall, black-coated figure of the judge. Beside him stood Jeb Donnelly. It was hard to tell what lay back of those eyes above the dirty bandage covering the lower part of the ex-marshal's heavy face. But he looked uneasy.

  Stovers said to him almost belligerently, "That shooting over in the old fort was Lew Kerrigan settling accounts with LeRoy and Pete Orr. Seems like he had a friend among them bronco Apaches and didn't get his hair singed. LeRoy and Pete are both dead and Lew is over at Clara's, a place you damn' well better stay away from. That badge you're wearin' don't mean a thing up here, Donnelly. You make one false step after what I've just found out and I'll have you behind log walls."

  "You say the murderer Kerrigan is over at Clara's house?" demanded Judge Eaton ominously.

  "Yep," replied Stovers.

  "Then why haven't you arrested him?" thundered the judge, his thin face darkening. "I appointed you a U.S. Marshal to handle prisoners for a U.S. Court."