Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  It was so different from all he had known these last bitter years. These years of endless watchfulness, of continual awareness, of looking into each man’s eyes, and wondering if he was another man you would have to kill, of riding down long trails, always aware that a bullet might cut you down. Yet, even as he thought of that, he knew there was something in his blood that answered to the wild call of the wilderness trails. There was something about riding into a strange town, swinging down from his horse, and walking into a bar, something that gave him a lift, and that gave life a strange zest.

  There was something in the pounding of guns, the buck of a .45 in his hand, the leap of a horse beneath him, and the shouts of men, something that awakened everything that was in him. Times bred the men they needed, and the West needed such men, men who could bring peace to a strange, wild land, even while they found death for themselves. The West was won by gunmen no less than it was won by pioneering families, by fur traders and Indian fighters.

  “What are you going to do, Kilkenny, when all this is over?” Nita asked softly.

  He leaned his elbows on the window sill and pushed his hat back on his head. “I don’t rightly know,” he said thoughtfully. “I reckon I’ll just move on to some other town. Might rustle me a herd of cows and settle down somewheres on a piece of land. Mebbe over in the Big Bend country.”

  “Why don’t you marry and have a home, Kilkenny?” Nita asked softly. “I think you’d make a good man around a home.”

  “Me?” He laughed, a bit harshly. “All I can do is sling a gun. That ain’t much good around a house. Of course, I might punch cows, or play poker?” He straightened suddenly. “Time I was ridin’ on. You be careful.” Then he paused. “Tell me, Nita. What hold does this man have over you?”

  “None. It is as I have said. I like to live, even here, and alone. I know I would die, and quickly, if I talked. Then, after a fashion, he has protected me. Of course, señor”—she fell into her old way of speaking—“it is that he wants me for himself. But I belong to no man. Yet.”

  “You can’t tell me who he is?”

  “No.” She looked at him for a minute. “Perhaps you think I am not helping, but, you see, this is all I have, this place. When it is gone, there is nothing. And the people out there”—she waved a hand toward Botalla—“do not think I am good. There would be no place for me there. I can only say that he will kill you if he can, and you must be careful if you go to the cliff. And do not go by the path.”

  When he was back on the buckskin, he turned toward Botalla. If Steele and Lord had their men there, he would bring them back to Apple Cañon at once. In his ride to the place he had carefully scouted the approaches.

  It had been easy enough to see just what they would be facing in an attack on the stronghold. He could muster about sixty men. There would be at least forty here at the cañon. Sixty wasn’t really enough, for the men at the cañon would be fighting on their own ground, and behind defenses. And all were seasoned fighters. Nevertheless, much could be lost by waiting. The time was now. The raid on Apple Cañon, however, might leave the range killer at large.

  As Kilkenny rode, his brain dug into the accumulated evidence, little as it was. Yet one idea refused to be denied, and it worried around in his mind until he reached town.

  He came up to the Trail House at a spanking trot. Dropping from saddle, he flipped a dollar to a Mexican boy.

  “Take that hoss, Pedro,” he said, grinning, “and treat him right. Oats, hay, water, and a rub-down.”

  Pedro dropped his bare feet to the boardwalk and grinned, showing his white teeth.

  “Sí, señor, it shall be done!”

  Chapter XIV

  Rusty Gates was sitting inside the Trail House, holding himself stiffly, but grinning. Webb Steele was there, too. He looked up keenly as Kilkenny came in.

  “Can’t keep a good man down!” Rusty said. “Tana bandaged my side, and I wanted to give you a hand with the Brockmans, but she wouldn’t let me. She’s got a mind of her own, that girl!”

  “What happened?” Frame demanded, stepping up.

  “Got Abel,” said Kilkenny. “Cain got thrown from his hoss. Knocked out, I think. Another hombre dragged him around a corner and got him aboard a hoss. They lit out, and I let ’em go.”

  Frame shook his head, his eyes dark with worry. “Cain will go crazy when he finds out Abel is dead and you’re still alive. He’ll come gunnin’ for you, Kilkenny.”

  “He might.” Kilkenny shrugged. “Got to take that chance. We’re after bigger game now. We’ve got to wipe out that bunch at Apple Cañon. There’s at least forty outlaws there.”

  “Probably more,” Steele said. “Clyde Wilder was down there a few days ago, and he says there was anyways fifty, and might have been seventy.”

  “Don’t make no difference,” Frame declared. “We’re ready. Even Duval at the hotel is goin’. Everybody wants to lend a hand.”

  Down the main street of Botalla there was suddenly a pounding of hoofs, then a rider threw himself from saddle in front of the Trail House. He thrust the batwing doors open with his shoulder.

  “Kilkenny!” he yelled. “Chet Lord’s dyin’! Wants to see you, the worst way!”

  “What happened?” Steele demanded.

  “Gored by a crazy steer. Don’t reckon he’s got long. Askin’ for Kilkenny. Don’t know what he wants of him!”

  “Steele,” Kilkenny said, “get the men together, plenty of arms an’ ammunition. Nobody leaves town to warn Apple Cañon. Get set to move, and, when you’re ready, start her rollin’!”

  He swung into saddle and turned the buckskin toward the Lord Ranch. His mind was working swiftly. What could Chet Lord have to say? That something had been worrying the big rancher for days was obvious enough, for the man had lost weight, he looked drawn and pale, and seemed to be under great strain.

  Was he the unknown killer? As soon as that idea occurred, Kilkenny shook his head. The man was not the type. Bluff, outspoken, and direct, he was the kind of man who would shoot straight and die hard, but his shots would be at a man’s face, not behind his back.

  Kilkenny let the buckskin take his own gait. The long-legged horse knew his rider, and knew the mountains and desert. He knew that on many days he would be called on for long, hard rides, and had learned to pace himself accordingly. While cow ponies were held in light esteem, good as they might be, most cowpunchers had their favorites. Yet they were the gunmen and outlaws, the men whose lives might depend on the horses they rode, who really knew and cared for their horses. It was a time when a few such horses were to acquire almost as much fame as their hard-riding, straight-shooting masters. Sam Bass, for instance, was to become no more famous than the Denton mare he rode. And Black Nell, Wild Bill Hickok’s horse with a trick of “dropping quick,” was to save Hickok’s life on more than one occasion. Kilkenny knew his buckskin, and Buck knew Kilkenny. During the years they had been together, they had learned each other’s ways, and Buck had almost human intelligence when it came to knowing what his master wanted of him. He knew the ways of the frontier, and seemed to sense when there he could husband his strength, and when it must be used. Buck’s ears were as perfect a guide to danger as a rifle shot. A flicker of movement, even miles ahead, and his ears were up and alert. And when he sidestepped, it was always with reason.

  The Lord Ranch was strangely still when the buckskin cantered across the yard and came to a stop before the ranch house. Kilkenny swung to the ground and, leaving Buck ground-hitched, went up the steps at a bound.

  Steve met him at the door. The young fellow’s eyes were wet, and his face looked pale.

  “He wants you,” he said. “Wants you bad.”

  Kilkenny stepped through the door into the room where Chet Lord lay in bed. A sharp-eyed man with a beard stood up when Kilkenny walked in.

  “I’m Doc Wentlow,” he said softly, then smiled a little wryly. “From Apple Cañon. He wants to talk to you”—he glanced at Steve—“alone.”
<
br />   “Right.”

  The doctor and Steve went out, and Kilkenny watched them go. He saw Steve hesitate in the door as though loath to leave. Then the young cowboy stepped out, and Kilkenny turned to the old man lying on the bed. Lord’s breathing was heavy, but his eyes were open. His face seemed to have aged, and he looked up at Kilkenny for a moment, then reached over and took his hand.

  “Kilkenny,” he whispered hoarsely, “I got a favor to ask. You got to promise me, for I’m a dyin’ man. Promise me you’ll do it. It’s somethin’ you can do.”

  “Shore,” Kilkenny said gently. “If it’s anything I can do, I will. You know that.”

  “Kilkenny,” the old man’s voice faltered, then his grip tightened on Kilkenny’s wrist until the gun expert almost winced with the strength of it, “Kilkenny, I want you to kill my son.”

  “What?” Kilkenny stared. Then his eyes narrowed slowly. “Why, Lord?”

  “Kilkenny, you got to. Kilkenny, I’m an old man, and, wrong or right, I love my boy. I love him like I loved his mother before him, but, Kilkenny, he’s a killer! He’s insane! I’ve knowed it for months now! Des told me. Des King told me before Steve killed him. Long time ago, Steve had a bad fall off a buckin’ hoss, and was unconscious for days and days. He was kind of queer when he got well, for a spell, then it looked like he was all right again, and didn’t take pleasure in torturin’ things no more. So when folks began to get killed around here, I never thought of the boy. Then I had a feelin’, and one day Des come to me, and said he knowed Steve had done it, and that he’d have to be put away. He couldn’t go on killin’ folks. But then Des was killed, an’ I couldn’t bear to put Steve away. He…he…was all…I had, Kilkenny.”

  Kilkenny nodded slowly, looking down at the old man, seeing the pleading in his eyes, the plea for understanding, for sympathy at least.

  “I done wrong. I knowed I was doin’ wrong, but I hoped the boy would change. Sometimes he would be a good boy, then he’d get to moonin’ around, then off he’d go.”

  For a long time the old man was silent, then his chest heaved and he turned his head.

  “Kilkenny, you got to kill him. I won’t be around no more to look after him, and you’ll kill him decent, Kilkenny. You’ll shoot him, and he won’t suffer. I don’t want him to suffer, Kilkenny. He’s a baby for pain. He can’t suffer. I don’t want him hung, neither, Kilkenny. Go shoot him down. I left a paper. It’s in a envelope, in case I die. Frame has got it. It tells all about it. Kilkenny, you got to kill him. I can’t die thinkin’ I’ve left that passel of evil behind me. An’ but for that, he’s been a good boy.”

  Kilkenny still stood staring down at old Chet Lord. Yes, it all fitted. Everything fitted. Steve had a Winchester 1873, and he could have done any of the shootings. Kilkenny had suspected something of the kind, which was why he had wired.

  Wired?

  Kilkenny clapped a hand to his pocket. Why, the wires! He’d had them in his pocket all the time! Hurriedly he dug into his pocket and pulled them out, unfolding the sheets.

  The first was from San Antonio, and it was a verification of what Chet Lord had just told him, a few scattered facts about Steve’s boyhood actions after his bucking horse accident, before his father had taken him away, all indicative of what might later come. That was unnecessary now. There would be evidence enough. His father’s letter with Frame, and a few dates and times would piece it all together.

  He unfolded the second message, from El Paso. As its message struck him, his hands stiffened.

  TYSON SAW ROYAL BARNES AT APPLE CAÑON. HE KNEW BARNES FROM HAYS CITY AND ABILENE. BARNES MURDERED TYSON’S BROTHER, AND HE HEARD BARNES SWEAR TO KILL YOU FOR GETTING THE WEBERS. BE CAREFUL, KILKENNY, HE’S COLD AS A SNAKE, AND LIGHTNING FAST!

  Kilkenny crumpled the message into a ball and thrust it into his pocket. The third message no longer mattered. It had only been an effort to learn what gunslingers were where, in an effort to learn who was at Apple Cañon. Now he knew.

  Royal Barnes! The name stood out boldly in his mind, and, even as he turned away from the old man on the bed, he saw that name, the name of a man he had never seen, the name of one of the most ruthless, cold-blooded killers in the West. A man as evil and vicious as any, yet reputed to be handsome, reputed to be smooth and polished, yet known to be a man filled with the lust to kill and of such deadly skill that it was said that Wes Hardin had backed down for him.

  Kilkenny opened the door and stepped outside. Instantly Doc Wentlow got up.

  “How is he?” he demanded.

  “Pretty low.” Kilkenny hesitated. “Where’s Steve?”

  “Steve? That was funny. He stood by the door a minute after you went in. Listening, I guess. Then all of a sudden he turned and got on a horse and took off, riding like the devil.”

  Despite himself, Kilkenny felt relieved. He had never killed a man unless the man was attempting to kill him. To walk out of the old cattleman’s bed chamber and shoot Steve had been the furthest from his thoughts. Just what he had hoped to do, he was not sure. He did know that Steve Lord must be stopped.

  Thinking back, he could remember the curious light, the blazing of some inner compulsion, which he had seen in Steve’s eyes that first day in the Trail House. Yet Steve had not wanted to shoot it out with him, face to face. The young fellow was a man with an insane urge to kill. It grew from some inner feeling of inferiority. What Steve Lord would do now, Kilkenny could not guess. He knew killers, but the killers he knew were sane men, men whose thoughts could be read, and whose ways could be known. He did know that even the craziest man had his moments of sanity, and he knew that Steve Lord must have listened at the door, probably suspecting what his father intended to tell Kilkenny. So he had mounted and ridden away—to what? Where could he go? Yet even as the question came, he knew its answer. Steve Lord would go to Apple Cañon.

  However insane the boy might be, there was some connection between him and the events stemming from the cañon rendezvous. And Kilkenny suspected that Steve had more than a little interest in Nita Riordan. But he would be riding now with fear in his heart, with desperation. For now he was in the open, the place he dreaded to be, where there was no concealment. He must fight, or he must die, and Kilkenny knew that such a man would fight like a cornered rat. Yet he had promised a dying man, and regardless of that it was something that had to be done.

  Why should he feel depressed? Steve was a killer, preying upon the lonely and the helpless, a man who shot from ambush, who killed from sheer love of killing. So he must be stopped. It was his own father, the man who sired him, who had passed sentence upon him.

  Kilkenny turned off into the thick brush, unrolled his poncho, and was asleep almost as soon as he lay down.

  Chapter XV

  Botalla’s Main Street was crowded with horsemen when Kilkenny rode back to the town. They were in for the finish, the lean, hard-bitten, wind-and gun-seasoned veterans of the Texas range. Riders from the Steele and Lord ranches, men who had ridden the long cattle trails north to Dodge and Abilene, men who knew the ways of cows and Indians and guns. Men who had cut their teeth on six-shooters.

  Yet, as Kilkenny rode up the street, eyes alert for some sign of Steve Lord, he wondered how many of these men would be alive when another sundown came. For they were facing men as tough as themselves, as good, and as dangerous as cornered rats are always dangerous. Vicious as men can be who find themselves faced at last with justice and the necessity of paying for their misdeeds. They would fight, shrewdly and well. They were not common criminals, these men of Apple Cañon. A few, yes. But many were just tough young men who had taken the wrong trail or liked the hard, reckless life. A different turn of events and they might have been satisfied cowhands, trail bosses, or they might have been Rangers. They would ask no quarter, and they would give none. They would fight this out to the last bitter ditch, and they would go down, guns blazing. They might have taken the wrong trails, but they had courage.

  And for him? There was
none of that; there was just one man. He had to mount that cliff and take Royal Barnes, the mysterious man in the cliff house. How would he know him? He did not know, but he did know that when he saw the man he would know him. Instinctively he knew that. When a man looked at another across a space of ground, with guns waiting, then he knew whether a man was fast and whether he would kill or not.

  This would be different. Lance Kilkenny understood that. The Brockmans had been good but he had timed his chances to nullify their skill as a twin fighting combination. He had killed Abel Brockman as he had killed many another man, and most of them fast. But—and this he knew—he had never drawn against a man like Royal Barnes. Blinding speed. Barnes had that. Barnes had killed Blackie Slade, and Kilkenny recalled Slade only too well. He had seen Slade in action, and the man had been poison. Yet Barnes had shot him down as if he were an amateur.

  Yet Kilkenny could feel something building up inside himself, and recognized what it was. It was his own compulsion, his own fire to kill. Every gunman had it. Without it, he was helpless. It was a fiery drive, but with it the cold ruthlessness of a man who knew he must kill, or he must die himself.

  He swung down from his horse and walked into the Trail House.

  “We’re all set,” Webb Steele said, walking forward. “All set, and rarin’ to go. The boys wanted to wait and see how Chet is.”

  Kilkenny looked up. “Steele,” he said slowly, “Chet’s dyin’. He told me about the killin’s. It’s Steve. Steve’s a killer!”

  Webb Steele stared, and Frame rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

  “Huh!” Steele said. “I might of knowed it! He was always a strange ’un.”

  “That ain’t all,” Kilkenny said quietly. “The man up in the cliff house is Royal Barnes.”