Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Stella Rybolt, this is Barnes Kilrone. It used to be Captain Barnes Kilrone.”

  “How do you do, Captain? Oh, I remember you! We never met, but there were stories, Captain, there were stories! And such stories!”

  “Better forget the ‘captain’,” Kilrone suggested. “That was several years ago. I’m a civilian now.”

  “I wish Gus was here. You were a favorite of his. He liked the way you took after that Indian agent back down the line. Said we needed more officers like you.”

  “And I’m no longer in the army because of it,” he commented dryly. “I’ll admit nobody forced me to resign, but there were things I wanted to do that I could not do while in uniform. So I resigned and did them.”

  “I know.” Stella Rybolt gestured toward the potbellied stove. “Look, I’ve made some coffee. Let’s sit down and talk a little. It’s no use sitting around with long faces.”

  Kilrone shifted his feet. “Later. I have a few things to do.”

  As he stepped outside, one of the farriers walked up to him. “Kilrone? I’m McCracken. Sergeant Ryerson said you’d be acting in command.”

  “McCracken, I’m going to put you and your partner, Dawson, in the warehouse. Webster will be with you. I don’t need to tell you that those Indians mustn’t get the warehouse.”

  “They won’t, sir.”

  “You’ll be getting help from us. We can cover you front and back from Headquarters. We’ll have to be helping the boys in the hospital, too. And you can help us. But don’t forget to watch your blind side.”

  “Are you planning to release those boys from the guardhouse? They’re good fighters, if you can handle ’em. That Lahey, now—he’s the best rifle shot in the regiment—or one of the best. And he’s a fighter…believe me, he is.”

  “How about the other two?”

  “Troublemakers, both of them. Teale is a cowhand from Texas. The boys figure he joined up so he’d have a place to stay during the winter.”

  “A snowbird?”

  McCracken grinned. “You know the lingo, sir. Yeah, that’s what he is. He’s a rider, though, and a good man when he’s sober—which is most of the time. When he gets a couple under his belt he heads for Hog Town and a poker game.”

  “And loses every cent he makes?”

  “You said it.” McCracken glanced at him. “Do you gamble?”

  “When Sproul runs the house it’s no gamble, believe me. He never ran an honest game in his life.”

  McCracken shrugged. “That’s a good way to get killed, saying something like that where it can be heard.”

  “He wants me, anyway,” Kilrone replied shortly, “and maybe he’ll get his chance.”

  “The other one over there,” McCracken said, “is a Swiss, he says. He might be something else…a German or a Pole. There’s no telling about some of these people. This one is big and he’s mean, but he’ll fight. He has made sergeant three times, I hear, and lost his stripes each time. He’s only been with us a few weeks. His name is Mendel. At least, that’s his name for this enlistment.”

  The rain continued, but remained a fine, mistlike rain. One by one as the men came up the parade ground he assigned them to their places. The three from the guardhouse he broke up, putting Lahey in the hospital, Teale in Headquarters, and adding Mendel to the warehouse.

  Ryerson would remain in command at the hospital, McCracken would handle the warehouse. Reinhardt, a teamster, and Olson, a cook, would also be at the hospital.

  With himself at the Headquarters building he would have Kells, Draper, and Ryan, teamsters. Ryan was a brother of one of the men lost with I Troop. He would also have Rudio the baker, Teale from the guardhouse, and Hopkins the sutler. And with them in Headquarters they would have ten women and six children.

  “What about Hog Town?” Teale asked.

  “They’ll get along,” Hopkins said. “Dave Sproul has at least twenty men over there. Anyway, it’s the post they’ll be wanting, and we’ll be having plenty of trouble here before this is over.”

  As the day went on they worked steadily, bringing food from the warehouse to the hospital and to Headquarters; and a barrel was brought into each place and filled with water. Sacks from the sutler’s store and the warehouse were brought in to fight fire; and materials for binding wounds and taking emergency care of injuries were brought from the hospital.

  All the available weapons on sale at the sutler’s were brought to Headquarters and loaded. With spare rifles from the warehouse, each man had two rifles.

  “How many of you women can load?” Kilrone asked. “Miss Considine and Mrs. Paddock excepted. I want them free to handle the wounded, if any.”

  “I can load,” Stella Rybolt offered. “I’ve had a spell or two of loading before this.”

  Alice Dunivant and Sophie Dawson, wives of enlisted men, could load too. Pat Dunivant, who was twelve, also volunteered.

  As the shadows gathered, Kilrone walked restlessly about, studying the buildings along the parade ground, and the hills that loomed just beyond. Without doubt there was an Indian, and possibly several, already waiting up in the Santa Rosas, an Indian who was watching whatever they did. As he moved about he tried to think of anything he might have overlooked. If the attack lasted long, a barrel of water would not be enough—but there were no more barrels.

  “There’s barrels in Hog Town,” Teale commented, grinning tauntingly at Kilrone. “All you got to do is go get them.”

  “And I might do just that.”

  Teale looked at him skeptically. “From Iron Dave? He’d make you pay five times the price.”

  “Maybe we can find some others,” Kilrone said. “Otherwise, we might have to go get them.”

  “You,” Teale said, “not me.”

  *

  AT HOG TOWN, Iron Dave Sproul sat at his roll-top desk and chewed on a long black cigar while he listened to Poole’s report.

  “They’ve pulled out of the barracks,” Poole said. “Hopkins even left his store. They’re holed up in Headquarters, the hospital, and the warehouse.”

  “You say Paddock rode out with sixty men? It doesn’t sound reasonable that he would leave the town and the post undefended.”

  “It ain’t likely Medicine Dog would make a try at this place,” Poole said. “And Paddock may trap him if he tackles Mellett.”

  “Who’s in command at the post? Rybolt?”

  “He ain’t due back until tomorrow or the next day.” Poole lifted his wary eyes to Sproul’s. “He went after the payroll. You’d figure,” he added, “he’d not risk it with Indians on the warpath. That there payroll could disappear an’ nobody be the wiser.”

  Sproul rolled his cigar in his jaws, considering that. Of course Poole was right. If the entire payroll guard was wiped out nobody would know how it happened, but the Indians would be blamed. There was risk, but all atrocities were blamed on the Indians anyway. In any event, he had no idea of letting Poole know how he was thinking, for the fewer who knew the better, and he wanted no one around to point a finger in the years to come.

  All his trade with the Indians he had handled himself, and so far as he knew not even one of the men who worked for him at Hog Town had any idea of it. The danger had always been that of being caught in the act, but he had moved with care, kept himself informed on troop movements, and had carefully avoided anything that would arouse suspicion. His “prospecting” had been a neat cover.

  “Sergeant Ryerson’s actually in command,” Poole went on, “but there’s some newcomer givin’ orders around. Some feller I never seen before.”

  “What’s his rank?”

  “That’s the funny part, Mr. Sproul. This man ain’t even in uniform. He’s some civilian friend of Paddock’s, from what they say.”

  Sproul was disturbed. A civilian giving orders on an army post? It didn’t sound reasonable. In fact, he’d never heard of such a thing…more than likely it was a mistake. But the unknown or ill-defined always disturbed him. Sproul was a planner, a conn
iver, and he based his actions on information, and that information he wanted exact and complete. This unknown civilian was a new consideration, and it irritated him that he knew nothing about him.

  “What’s he look like?”

  Poole shrugged. “I seen him around. He looks like some down-at-the-heel cowhand ridin’ the grub line. Big, rangy man, wide shoulders, narrow hips…mighty shabby. He rides a good horse though.”

  The description told Sproul nothing. It might have been that of any number of men he knew—of a dozen who came to Hog Town on Saturday night.

  A friend of Major Paddock? He mulled that over, remembering all he knew of Paddock. He seemed an unlikely person to have a friend, welcome in his home as this one was, who was simply a cowhand, a drifting cowhand at that. And Denise Paddock was French, so that left that out.

  After Poole was gone he considered what he had learned, dismissing the stranger for the time being. It was of no real importance anyway, he decided, for they could not hope to defend the post with so few men.

  The warehouse was the important building, for if the Bannocks could get the arms that were stored there, they would constitute a threat to the whole frontier. The man who averted that threat would find himself in an enviable position, and one hard to defeat in any election. And it was this toward which Iron Dave Sproul had been working for more than ten years.

  Many things could be said about him, but nothing could be proved, for Sproul was not the owner of record of any of the gambling houses or honky-tonks with which he had been associated. He made a practice of coming around, of being seen, and of talking to people here and there. It was assumed he was the owner, and so he was; but in each case he had a straw man between himself and the records.

  In the future he would blandly deny any connection with such places. Yes, he had been around them, but they were the customary meeting places on the frontier, and much business was done in saloons and gambling houses. Men met there to buy or sell cattle, to complete mining deals, to arrange for freighting contracts.

  Medicine Dog was the key to the outbreak, and it was Sproul who had built him into prominence. When the news was released that Webb had been killed and his troop massacred, then that Medicine Dog had attacked and burned the post, taking over five hundred stands of arms—it was an exaggeration but it sounded well—the frontier would be in a panic.

  At that moment, Dave Sproul would step in, meet with the Indians, end the outbreak, and become the man of the hour. From there he might become governor or go to the Senate…and Dave Sproul knew how politics could be used by a man with no scruples, no moral principles, and only a driving greed and ambition.

  Chapter 8

  *

  THE HOURS PRECEDING an attack are slow hours. The minutes pace themselves slowly, and those who wait find a savor in life, for they begin to taste, to feel, to hear as at no other time. They realize these hours may be their last, and their senses are sharpened and more alert, and things formerly ignored are now appreciated, or at least realized, as never before.

  Night came gently to the post. The rain continued quietly. There was no thunder, no lightning, no heightening of drama in so far as nature was concerned.

  In the three buildings at the end of the parade ground the people bedded down like refugees, making themselves comfortable, half in fear and half in a sort of thrill at the strangeness of it. To the few youngsters, the atmosphere was almost that of a picnic. It was camping out…some of them had not even seen the inside of Headquarters before.

  Guards were posted outside, none of them further than sixty feet from the buildings. Of one thing they were sure. The Indians would not come with a rush, exposing themselves as targets. They would come quietly, moving like shadows in the earliest hours before the dawn, or perhaps even at night. They would be close and all around them before anyone realized it. The men on guard post knew they would have little time in which to get back inside; the last guard of the night would be mounted from within the buildings.

  Kilrone had too few men for any offensive action. He could afford no losses. His would be a holding action, an attempt to delay until the patrols could return. The tactical advantages of defense were denied him, for he had no covering forces to use in delaying the enemy, to disorganize their advance, or deceive them as to the true location of the defense.

  His greatest advantage lay in his excellent field of fire to the north and south, and in the covering fire the three buildings could offer for each other. The greatest disadvantage lay in the limited field of fire to east and west.

  The women, rising as always to an emergency, when more often than not they function at their best, bustled about and were busy.

  He was not worried about the women; he knew that in those around him he was especially fortunate. These were soldiers’ wives or relatives, bred to a realization of frontier life and the possibility of frontier warfare. Not one of them was likely to falter.

  Stella Rybolt, as the more experienced, was in her element. Denise was quietly competent, quietly in command, but without any effort at assertion. She, who alone among the women had not been born or brought up on the frontier, came of a soldier family; moreover, being of the nobility and the wife of a commanding officer here, hers was a necessity for courage. One of the easiest ways to be brave is to have bravery expected of you.

  With Denise there could be no question of her role. The matter of her role or her reaction to the situation would never even arise in her mind, for the position to which she had been bred was not only that of leader, but of protector.

  Barney Kilrone walked out on the parade ground, visiting each barracks. It had been the rule to have a barrel of water at each corner of each barracks building, but those barrels were now gone. Inquiry revealed that they had been piled into a wagon and taken to the creek for refilling, and had not been returned. That had been two days ago.

  Paddock had been drinking, Ryerson ill, and nobody had been quite up to par. Colonel Webb and Mellett gone…and somebody had been careless. But it might have been part of a preconceived plan, arranged by someone who was aiming at destruction of the army post. Well, if those barrels had been left at the creek they should be there still.

  He went on toward the corrals and stopped. Just ahead of him he heard a faint rustle of movement, glimpsed a momentary shadow. Somebody was pitching hay to the horses. Kilrone walked around the corral and it was Teale.

  He stopped when he saw Kilrone, poised with the pitchfork in his hand. “You, is it? Figured I’d feed the horses before I went on guard. They may not get fed for a while.”

  “Good thinking.” Kilrone paused. “Teale,” he said after a moment, “we should have those barrels. If this lasts any while at all, one barrel of water for each building won’t be enough. Especially at Headquarters, where the women and children will be.”

  Teale was leaning on his fork now. Because of the darkness, Kilrone could not tell what his reaction was.

  “The barrels were left in a wagon down at the creek,” Kilrone said. “Would you know where that would be?”

  “Uh-huh. There’s a pool near the Hog Town crossing. We usually watered up there. When the Major ordered K Troop out, they were told just to leave the wagon, that somebody would go pick it up, but nobody did.”

  “Catch me up a couple of those mules, will you, Teale? I’m going after that wagon.”

  “Suppose the wagon ain’t there?”

  “Then I’ll go where it is.”

  “Alone?”

  “Why not? In any event, we can’t spare any men to go along. They’ll be needed on the post.”

  Teale stood his fork against the corral. “Maybe they can spare one man. I’d like to sort of trail along an’ see what happens.”

  He paused. “You got any idea what you’re gettin’ into? I know why that wagon wasn’t sent after. Some of Sproul’s men hooked onto it and pulled it into Hog Town. Ryerson was too sick to go himself and didn’t like to send anybody after it without orders. Now, I’ve
got a feelin’ Iron Dave Sproul won’t let you have that wagon, and if you make any kind of a fuss, Iron Dave will chop you up without working up a sweat.”

  Teale stepped into the corral, caught a couple of the big Missouri mules, and led them out. Kilrone shut and fastened the gate while Teale took the mules to the harness rack.

  After the animals were harnessed, the two men mounted and rode away toward the creek, Teale leading the way. Kilrone sat silently on the big mule.

  Their time was short. Barrels or not, they must get back before daylight. His thoughts strayed to Betty Considine. There was something about her that stuck in a man’s mind, some quality beyond her beauty or her charm. It was that quiet competence that made a man realize she was a woman to walk beside a man and not behind him. She had a certain glamor, but she had staying quality also, and it was a quality to look for in horses, in men, or in women.

  Trees hung over the creek, shadowing the gently rustling waters. The rain hissed softly as it fell. Otherwise, the night was still. There was no wagon, and the light they struck revealed two deep cuts in the far bank where it had gone up.

  Teale blew out the match. “Hog Town,” he said. “What’ll we do?”

  “Why, we’ll go to Hog Town, I guess,” Kilrone said.

  They rode on, and a few steps further along he asked, “What are they like in Hog Town? Gang-fighters?”

  “If need be. But no gang piles in when Iron Dave fights. He doesn’t need any help.”

  “Then if I tangle with Dave, you keep the others off, d’you hear?”

  “Hell, Sproul wouldn’t let them butt in. He likes doing it himself. He’ll kill you, amigo.”

  “Teale, one thing you should know. This will be real trouble. I know Dave Sproul and he knows me. He hates my guts. He’ll kill me if he can.”

  “You know him? An’ you’ll still go over there?” Teale rode along in silence for a few moments. “Hell,” he said presently, “I could win all the pay in camp, bettin’ on you. They’d offer ten to one.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Teale. I’m not looking for a fight. We’ll have all the fight we can handle if Medicine Dog and his braves come down on us, as I believe they will. There’s plenty of time for Dave Sproul.”