“Uhn-huh. Away from everythin’.”
“We got law here. King Bill Hale runs this country.”
“Heard of him.”
“You hear a lot,” Gaddis suggested. His eyes were mean.
“Yeah.” Kilkenny turned a little and let his green eyes stare from under his hat brim at the redheaded man. “Yeah, I make it my business to hear a lot.”
“Maybe you hear too much!” Gaddis snapped.
“You want to show me how much?” Kilkenny’s voice was level. He spoke coolly, yet he was sure there would be no shooting here, yet. He was wondering if Sodermann knew Hatfield was outside beside the window.
Gaddis stepped away from the bar, and his jaw jutted. “Why, I think you’re…”
“Stop it!” Sodermann’s voice was suddenly charged with anger. “You’re too anxious for trouble, Gaddis. Someday you’ll get yourself killed.”
Gaddis relaxed slowly, his eyes ugly. Yet, watching the man, Kilkenny could sense a certain relief in him, also. Gaddis was a killer, but not a gunman in the sense that he was highly skilled. He was a paid killer, a murderer, the sort of man who would dry-gulch men around a wagon. And he wore a chipped gun.
“Your friend’s right proddy,” Kilkenny said softly. “He must have a killin’ urge.”
“Forget it,” Sodermann said jovially. “He’s all right. Just likes to fight, that’s all.”
Kilkenny stared at Gaddis. “Seems like you should be somebody I know,” he drawled slowly. “I don’t recognize that face, but I do know you. But then, I never remember a face, anyway. I got my own methods of knowin’ a man. I look at the only thing that’s important to me.”
“What’s that?” Sodermann asked. He was studying Kilkenny, curiosity in his eyes and some puzzlement.
“I always remember a man’s gun. Each gun has its own special look, or maybe it’s the way a man wears a gun. Take that one now, with that chipped ivory on the side of the butt. A man wouldn’t forget a gun like that in a hurry.”
Gaddis stiffened, and his face turned gray. Then the tip of his tongue touched his lips. Before he could speak, Sodermann looked straight into Kilkenny’s eyes.
“An’ where would you see that gun?”
“In Santa Fé,” Kilkenny drawled, remembering that Miller had once lived there. “It was hangin’ to a man they said was comin’ West to farm. His name was Jody Miller.”
“You talk too much!” Gaddis snarled, his face white and his lips thin.
“It was in Santa Fé.” Kilkenny was adding a touch now that he hoped would worry Sodermann. Only a word, yet sometimes…“Miller stopped off in Santa Fé to see some folks at the fort there an’ to talk to Halloran an’ Wallace. Seems they was old friends of his.”
Sodermann’s face sharpened, and he turned. His raised hand made Gaddis draw back a little.
“You’re talkin’ a lot, stranger,” he said smoothly. “You say this Miller knowed Halloran an’ Wallace?”
“Uhn-huh.” Kilkenny motioned to Shorty to refill his glass. “Seems he knowed them back East. One of ’em married a sister of his, or somethin’. I heard ’em talkin’ in a saloon once. Heard Halloran say he was comin’ out here to visit Miller.” Kilkenny glanced at Gaddis, his face expressionless. “I reckon you’ll be plum glad to see him, Miller. It’s mighty nice to have an official, big man like that for a friend.”
Lance could have laughed if he hadn’t known what he knew now, that the wagon had been waylaid and that Miller was probably dead. There would be no other reason for Gaddis’s looking as he did. The man was obviously afraid. Sodermann was staring, keen-eyed, yet there was uncertainty in the big man. When that uncertainty ended, there would be danger, Kilkenny knew.
“Funny,” Kilkenny said softly, “I don’t remember Miller havin’ red hair. Seemed to me it was black. That’s what it was. Black.”
“It was yel…!” Gaddis began.
“Yellow. That’s right. It was yellow. Strange, I couldn’t remember that. But you, stranger, you’ve got Jody Miller’s gun. How d’you explain that?”
Suddenly the door behind Kilkenny opened. He felt the flesh along the back of his neck tighten. He dared not turn. He had been deliberately baiting them, hoping for more information, yet baiting them, too. Now, suddenly, there was a man behind him.
Sodermann seemed to make up his mind. Assurance returned to him, and he spoke low, almost amused. “Why, howdy, Rye! I reckon you should come in an’ meet our friend, here. Says he recognizes this gun Red’s a-wearin’.”
Rye Pitkin walked past Kilkenny and then turned.
His jaw dropped as though he had seen a ghost, and he made an involuntary step backward, his face slowly going white. “You!” he gasped. “You!”
“Why, yes,” Kilkenny said. “It’s me, Pitkin. Long ways from the Pecos country, isn’t it? An’ a sight farther from the Brazos. Now, Pitkin, I’ll tell you somethin’. I’m not real anxious to kill anybody right here an’ now. If I start shootin’, two of you are goin’ to die. That’ll be you, Rye, and Sodermann here. I couldn’t miss him. An’ if I am still shootin’, as I will be, I’m goin’ to take care of Gaddis next. Gaddis because he killed Jody Miller. But that comes later. Right now I’m leavin’, an’ right now you better impress it on your friends that reachin’ for an iron won’t do any good.”
He stepped back toward the door, and his eyes shifted under the hat brim from one face to the other. Sodermann’s eyes were narrowed. Pitkin’s obvious fear put doubt in the big man. Who was the stranger? Red Gaddis shifted toward the center of the room, his eyes watchful.
Rye stiffened as Red moved. “Don’t, Red! That’s Kilkenny!”
Gaddis stopped, and his face turned blank with mingled astonishment and fear. Then glass tinkled from the front of the room, and a long Kentucky rifle barrel slid into the room. Kilkenny stepped back to the door.
“Now, if you hombres are smart, you’ll just hole up here for the time bein’. We don’t want trouble, but we may have it!”
Kilkenny stepped through the door and glanced quickly up and down the street. Bartram was on the wagon seat, his rifle across his knees. Jackie Moffitt was standing by his horse, his rifle in his hands, and Saul was across the street. Kilkenny smiled in narrow-eyed apprehension. They were fighters, these men.
“Start the wagon,” he said, “down the Cedar trail. Jackie, stay with Bartram.”
He walked out and swung into the saddle, and then slid a rifle from the boot. “All right, slide!”
He wheeled the buckskin and whipped down the street. A shot rang out from behind him, and he twisted to look. Saul was mounted, but Quince had turned and thrown up his rifle. He fired. A man staggered from the shelter of the Wagon Wheel and spilled on his face in the dust. The next instant there was a fusillade of shots from the Wagon Wheel and nearby buildings. The gunmen had slipped out the back way and were getting into action.
Kilkenny reined in behind the last building and swung to the ground. Then, with careful fire, he covered the Hatfields as they raced up the street to join him.
Quince was smiling, his eyes hard. “That was Red Gaddis,” he said coolly. “He won’t take no more dead men’s guns.”
“Give the wagon a start,” Kilkenny said. “We three are going to make some buzzard bait! We have to come back to this town, and we might as well let them know what the score is.”
Every time a head moved, one of them fired. While they stayed where they were, no man dared enter that street, and no man dared try the back way in this direction.
Leaving the two Hatfields, Kilkenny sprinted down behind the buildings toward the Wagon Wheel. The men there were killers. He did not know what had happened to the other wagon, but he meant to find out. It was his reason for taking the Blazer trail. He was hoping they might not all be dead. At least, he could bury those that were.
Chapter XIII
The rear door of the saloon was open, and there was no one in sight. He stood behind the next building and watched for an
instant. He wanted Pitkin or Ratcliff. He would get nothing from Sodermann unless the fat man elected to tell him.
Several old boards lay on the ground behind the saloon, dry and parched. On a sudden inspiration, he moved swiftly from the shelter of the building and, holstering his gun, hurriedly piled them together. Then, using a piece of old sacking and some parched grass, he lit the fire.
It was away from the buildings, but the wind would blow the smoke into the saloon. He hoped they would think he was burning them out, the last thing he wanted to do, as they needed the town as a supply base. As the boards caught fire, he stepped back quickly.
There was a startled exclamation as the fire began to crackle and wood smoke blew in the back of the saloon. A second later a man stepped to the door, thrust his head out, and then stared at the fire. He seemed puzzled. Out of sight, Kilkenny waited.
Then the man stepped out and kicked the boards apart. “All right!” Kilkenny snapped. “Don’t move!”
It was Ratcliff, and the man froze. “What’s up, Kilkenny? I never done nothin’ to you.”
“Start this way, walk careful, an’ watch your hands.”
Ratcliff was a weasel-faced man with shifty eyes. He started moving, but shot a glance at the doorway. He held his hands wide. When he was six feet away, Kilkenny stopped him.
“All right, talk. I want to know what happened to that other wagon.”
Ratcliff sneered. “You think I’ll tell? Guess again. You don’t dare shoot. If you do, they’ll be out, but fast.”
With one quick step, Kilkenny grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him back against the building. Then he lifted the pistol.
“Want a pistol-whipping, man?” he asked harshly. “If I start on you, you’ll never look the same again!”
“Leave me be,” Ratcliff pleaded, his face yellow. “I’ll talk.”
“Get at it then.”
“They done loaded up with grub. We let ’em get out of town. Then Sodermann ambushed ’em. Had about six men, I think.”
“Who was killed?”
“We lost a man. We got Miller an’ Tot Wilson in the first blast. It was Hatfield got our man. Nailed him dead center between the eyes.”
“What happened to Hatfield an’ Hight?”
“They got Hight. I seen him go down. He was shot two, maybe three times. We got Hatfield, too. But he got up, an’ he dragged Hight into some rocks. We couldn’t get to ’em.”
“Then what?”
A voice roared from the saloon. It was Sodermann. “Ratcliff! What in time are you doin’ out there?”
“Answer me!” Kilkenny snapped. “Then what?”
“Sodermann said it’d serve ’em right. Leave ’em there to die with two men to see they didn’t move out of them rocks. They been there two days now.”
“On the Blazer trail?”
“Yeah, almost to the turn-off to the peaks.”
With a swift movement, Kilkenny flipped Ratcliff’s pistol from its holster. “All right, get goin’!” he snapped.
With a dive, Ratcliff started for the saloon door. And just at that instant, Sodermann thrust his huge bulk into the open space. He glimpsed Kilkenny as he released Ratcliff and, with a swift motion, palmed his gun and fired.
He fired from the hip, and he wasn’t a good hip shot. His first bullet caught Ratcliff squarely in the chest, and the weasel-faced rider stopped dead still, and then dropped. Kilkenny’s gun swept up, and, straddle-legged in the open, he fired.
Sodermann’s gun went off at the same instant, but Kilkenny’s bullet hit him right above the belt buckle in the middle of that vast expanse. The blow staggered Sodermann, and his bullet clipped slivers from the building above Kilkenny’s head and whined angrily away into the grass back of the saloon.
The big man looked sick, and then suddenly his knees gave way and he toppled face downward upon the steps. The pistol fell from fingers that had lost their life, and rattled on the boards below.
Kilkenny walked toward the saloon, keeping his gun in his hand. Stepping up beside the door, he saw Rye Pitkin and the short bartender, rifles in hand, crouched by the front window.
“Drop ’em!” Kilkenny snapped. He stepped quickly inside. “Unbuckle your belts and let those guns down quick!”
Surprised into helplessness, the men did as they were told. “Rye, I’ve given you a break before. I’m givin’ you one again. The same for Shorty. You two mount and ride. If I ever see either of you again, I’ll kill you. I’ll be back to Blazer, an’ you be dog-gone sure you aren’t here.”
Backing them away, he scooped up the guns and then backed out the door. He hurried to the corner where the Hatfields waited. Quince was chewing on a straw. He looked at the weapons, grinned a little, and started for his horse.
“Lije may be alive,” Kilkenny told him. Then he explained quickly.
Quince narrowed his eyes. “You won’t be needin’ us,” he said. “We’ll ride on.”
“Go ahead,” Kilkenny said, “an’ luck with you.”
With a rush of hoofs, Saul and Quince Hatfield swept off down the trail. Kilkenny watched them go. The Hatfields were hard to kill. Lije might be alive. It was like him to have thought of Hight, even when wounded. Those lean, wiry men were tough. He might still be alive.
He rode up to the wagon and saw Bartram’s face flush with relief. Jackie was riding beside the wagon, his old Sharps ready. His face was boyishly stern.
“What is it?” Bartram asked. “What happened?”
“We’ve won another round,” Kilkenny said. “We can come to Blazer for supplies now.”
Dust devils danced over the desert, and the mules plodded slowly along the trail. The wagon rumbled and bumped over the stones in the road, and Bartram dozed on the wagon seat. To the left the mountains lifted in rocky slopes with many upthrust edges of jagged rock. To the right the ground sloped away toward Cedar Branch, which lay miles away beyond the intervening sagebrush and mesquite.
Jackie Moffitt rode silently, looking from time to time at Kilkenny. Lance knew the youngster was dying to ask him about what had happened in Blazer, and he was just as loath to speak of it. He could understand the youngster’s curiosity.
He moved the buckskin over alongside the boy. “Trouble back there, Jack,” he said after a minute. “Men killed back there.”
“Who was it? Did you kill ’em?” Jackie asked eagerly.
“One. I had to, Jack. Didn’t want to. Nobody ever likes to kill a man unless there’s something wrong with him. I had to get news out of somebody. I got it from Ratcliff, and then turned him loose, but, in tryin’ to get me, Sodermann shot him. Then I shot Sodermann.”
“What about the others?”
“Let ’em go. I told Pitkin an’ Shorty to get out of the country. I think they’ll go.”
“We asked ’em in the store, but they was scared. They wouldn’t talk, no how. Saul, he asked ’em. They was afraid. But they was right nice with us.”
They rode on through the heat. Occasionally they stopped to rest the mules. It was slower this way, as the road was longer, but there was no dust, and they had to come this way to make sure about Lije and the others.
Again and again Kilkenny found his thoughts reverting to Nita. How was she faring with Hale? Would she marry him? The thought came to him with a pang. He was in love with Nita. He had admitted that to himself long before this, but he knew too well what it would mean to be the wife of a gunman, a man who never knew when he might go down to dusty death in a lead-spattered street.
A man couldn’t think only of himself. A few men seemed to be able to leave it all behind, but they were few. Of course, he could go East, but his whole life had been lived in the West, and he had no source of income in the East. He had been a gambler at times and had done well, but it was nothing to build a life upon.
His thoughts moved ahead to the Hatfields. What would they find? Would the men left behind have murdered the wounded Lije? Had Hight been dead? How many more would die before
this war was settled? Why did one man see fit to push this bloody fight upon men who wanted only peace and time to till their fields? Why should one man desire power so much? There was enough in the world for all to have a quiet, comfortable living, and what more could a man desire?
The wagon rumbled over the rocks, and he lifted his eyes and let them idle over the heat-waved distance. After the fire and blood there would be peace, and men could come to this land and settle these hills. Perhaps someday there would be water, and then grass would grow where now there were only cacti and sagebrush. Cicadas whined and sang in the mesquite until the sound became almost the voice of the wastelands.
They camped that night in a hollow in the hills and pushed on at dawn toward the joining of the trails. The country was rockier now. The distance closed in, pushing the mountains nearer, and there was less breeze. The air was dead and still.
Jackie traded places with Bartram and handled the mules. Bartram rode on ahead, riding carefully. Kilkenny watched him go, liking the easy way the farmer rode, and liking his clean-cut honesty.
It was morning of the third day when Kilkenny saw a horseman drawing near. He recognized him even before he came up with him. It was Saul.
“Found ’em,” Saul said briefly, “both alive. Hight’s plumb riddled. Lije was hit three times, one time pretty bad. They was holed up in some rocks, more dead than alive.”
“Anybody around?”
“Yeah. One man. He was dead. Lije must’ve got him, bad off as he was. The other took out. Lije’ll live. We Hatfields are tough.”
When they reached the cluster of rocks, they pulled the wagon close. Quince had both men stretched out and had rigged a shelter from the sun. Kilkenny knelt over the men. That Hight was breathing was a marvel, although all his wounds showed signs of care. Lije, wounded as he was, had cared for the other man. His wounds had been bathed and crudely bandaged. His lips seemed moist, and he had evidently not lacked for water.
Lije Hatfield was grimly conscious. There was an unrelenting look in his eyes, enough to show them that Lije meant to face death, if need be, as sternly and fearlessly as he faced life and danger.
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