Kiowa Trail (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  “Yes, it is,” Kate replied.

  John Blake turned around slowly to face Linda McDonald. “Miss McDonald,” he said very clearly, “where is your cowhide vest?”

  Chapter 11

  She turned her eyes on him, her face without expression. “I do not understand you, Mr. Blake.”

  “You own a cowhide vest. A black and white cowhide vest. Where is it?”

  She shrugged. “At home, I suppose. Where else would it be?”

  “We’re going there,” he said; “and I’ll ask the doctor to accompany us, if he is no longer needed here. I want to see that vest.”

  It seemed to me that she was tossing a loop inside her mind, trying to put a rope on the reason for his request. At first I thought - just for a minute - that she might have done the shooting herself. Now I was not sure.

  John Blake did think so, I was sure of that. But as he started for the door, he paused. “Now let me tell you something, Mrs. Lundy. And this goes for you too, Conn. This war is over, do you hear?”

  “You’d better tell that to Aaron McDonald,” I suggested. “He’s already killed some of my men - men defending leased land.”

  “That makes no difference to me,” he said. “The fighting stops … everything else will be settled in good time.”

  “Will that stop the men attacking Hackamore?” He did not answer that, but turned away from me and went out the door after Linda. It was she who paused, and her eyes looked directly into mine; then she looked away from me and at Kate.

  “You will see,” she said. “My father is a better man than any of you, and a stronger one. By now he has burned your silly town, and when he comes back he will show you who is in charge!”

  Kate smiled at her, and for the first time Linda seemed to lose that coldness that was so much a part of her.

  “I wonder what you will do,” Kate said, “when your father dies.”

  It was not meant to be cruel. Kate was musing, as I’d seen her do before, and was genuinely curious, but Linda’s expression made me wonder if the thought had ever occurred to her before. Then she was out of the door and gone, and Kate and I were alone in the doctor’s office.

  “You’d better get some rest,” I said. “I’ll sit down outside.”

  “Sit here,” she said. She was silent for a minute, then she went on. “Conn, I’d no business starting all this. We’ve lost some good men.”

  “If you hadn’t started it, the men would have,” I told her honestly. “They thought the world and all of that boy.”

  We did not speak for a few minutes, but sat listening to the tick of the clock on the rolltop desk. Outside in the street it was still. “Conn, I want to go home,” she said presently.

  “All right.”

  “I want you to take me home - to our home.” It was as simple as that, after all the years we’d spent together. My throat felt tight and I got up quickly and walked to the door. Then I turned toward her. “I wanted that,” I said. “I’ve always wanted that.”

  “It had to come by itself, Conn. Just all of a sudden, it seems so right.”

  “Sure,” I said, and listened to the horses coming up the street. I heard them for several minutes before the sound really got through to me - horses coming nearer and nearer, until suddenly it reached me.

  Riders were coming, a lot of riders.

  And then I saw John Blake standing alone in the street, standing there in his black suit, facing up the street toward the west, and those riders coming on, closer and closer.

  When a voice spoke, it was Aaron McDonald’s.

  “Get out of the street, John Blake. We know they’re here, and we want them. They’re both fit for hanging, and we’ll win this fight after all.”

  I could see them - Aaron McDonald and thirty-odd riders, but there were riderless saddles with them, too, and bodies hung over saddles, and there were men among the thirty who were in no shape for any kind of a fight. This was a well-whipped bunch - or they had been until that minute. Now they only had one man to stand against, and he was in plain sight before them.

  “You’re all alone,” McDonald persisted, “and when the report of what happened goes in, we’ll write it… unless you step aside.”

  With one step I was out on the boardwalk, in sight of them all. “He’s not alone,” I said. “I’m here, and I stand ready.”

  “Leave it to me, Conn,” Blake said in a quiet voice.

  “There’s a couple there that I want,” I said clearly.

  But nobody was listening to me, or even looking at me. They were looking over John Blake’s head and up the street to the east, and I heard horses walking … a lot of them. When I looked over my shoulder, it was Red Mike I saw - Red Mike and a dozen others, all with rifles. They were the men he had brought up from Texas.

  Then something moved between the buildings across the street, and I saw Meharry standing there with a shotgun in his hands. On the roof near him was Battery Mason with a rifle.

  The others showed up then, and we had them surrounded. “John,” Red Mike said conversationally, “you just step out of the street. We’ll take it from here.”

  From down the street behind them Gallardo spoke. “Keep your fire in the center of the street, boys. I’ll pick off any who try to get away - me and Frenchy here.”

  Standing there on the boardwalk, I could see the faces of McDonald and his men plain, and there were some almighty sick men out there. They were boxed - nothing left but to nail the top down.

  Darrough was there, and he was standing pat, as I knew he would. He was the kind you’d have to salt down with a peck of lead before he’d stay down. I almost liked the man, but he was the man I was going to shoot first, because he was the best fighter of the lot … and there were some other good ones in that bunch.

  “You call it, Aaron,” Darrough said coolly, “and let me have Dury, over there.”

  “There’ll be no shooting here.” John Blake’s voice was not loud, but it was clear as a bell, and every man-jack of us heard it. “Aaron McDonald, you’re under arrest!”

  The banker laughed. “Under arrest? On what charge?” He was smiling that thin little smile with his tight mouth.

  “Attempted murder,” John Blake said, in that same tone. “You tried to kill Kate Lundy.”

  For the first time it dawned on me that Aaron McDonald was wearing that black and white cowhide vest.

  His face turned livid, then slowly paled, but I was scarcely noticing. For knowing western men the way I did, I was looking at the others. And I was looking at Darrough in particular.

  “Have you got proof of that, Marshal?” Darrough asked.

  “Mrs. Lundy is in the doctor’s office. She told me in front of the doctor that she was shot by a man wearing that vest. Conn Dury heard her say it. That vest belongs to Aaron’s daughter - but he’s wearing it.”

  Darrough dropped his rifle and reached for his belt buckle. “I’m out of it, John,” he said. “I’ll have nothing to do with a man who’d shoot a woman.”

  Guns thudded onto the ground.

  “Do you want us?” Darrough said to Blake.

  “No,” Blake answered. “Just go to your homes and stay there.”

  “Hold it, Marshal,” I said. “Keep Tallcott here. I want his house searched. Kate Lundy’s gold was stolen in that raid.”

  Darrough swore. “Whoever stole that gold,” he said, “needs a rope right alongside of McDonald’s, and I’ll tie the noose!”

  Aaron McDonald had been standing his horse right there, without moving. Suddenly, almost beside me, there was a slight movement, and turning my eyes, I saw it was Linda, and she was looking at her father.

  My eyes followed hers, and I saw what she saw.

  No man on earth was ever more alone than Aaron McDonald at that moment. Almost without noticeable movements everyone had drawn back from him. Only Tallcott remained near, and he was isolated, too. But neither one was thinking of the other at that moment.

  Tallcott wanted to run.
He looked like a whipped cur.

  Aaron McDonald just sat there, because he had no place to run to. Had he been any man but the man he was, I’d have been sorry for him, for he had to stand alone before you realized how really small he was.

  Money and arrogance had bought him, for a time, a certain measure of power and authority. He still had the money, but there wasn’t any store, anywhere, that would take it in exchange for what McDonald needed now, nor was there any store that could supply it.

  When I looked at Linda again, she was staring at her father with a positive hatred in her eyes, hatred and contempt.

  “You are worse than he is,” I said. “You got that boy killed, and you knew what you were doing.”

  She didn’t even hear me. She just turned away and started back up the street. She didn’t look around - not once.

  Chapter 12

  The street was deserted when day came again. Not even a lone cur dog trotted down the dusty alley between the false-fronted buildings.

  The bank was closed. McDonald’s Emporium was closed. Hardeman’s office had been abandoned days ago, as had Bannion’s saloon.

  Behind three of the buildings people were loading wagons. They were silent, and if they saw me they were paying me no attention.

  Howdy Lynch had rolled in after midnight, his face black with powder smoke, grinning and happy despite a couple of minor bullet wounds … mere scratches.

  He had been attacked about twelve miles out by a war party of young Kiowa bucks, and he’d had the time of his life. There had been about twenty in the lot, but Rowdy, though he was alone, had more than sixty loaded weapons, most of them repeating rifles.

  He had water and he had plenty to eat, and when he saw them coming he ran into a big buffalo wallow and waited for them to come to him. By the time they got there he had the wagon positioned and the horses unhitched. The Kiowas were anxious not to kill the horses, for they hoped to have them for their own.

  Rowdy was a good shot, and he had no worries about ammunition, for even if he emptied his guns he still had over a thousand rounds in the wagon … and he was a man who liked a good fight. But the young bucks thought they had a man alone who would be an easy scalp.

  They started for him, and he took a Winchester ‘73 and emptied seventeen shots at them. Then he dropped it and opened fire with a .56-calibre Spencer.

  With one man and one horse down, the Kiowas drew off to consider. They had seen only one man, but nobody in his right mind threw lead like that. After a bit, they tried again. Three of them came at Rowdy from one side; the others waited, then rushed in a body from the opposite side.

  Again he laid down heavy fire with a Winchester, followed it with a Spencer, grabbed up a shotgun and fired four charges at the three Indians who were closing in on him.

  The first blast had knocked the first Indian down, fairly lifting him off his feet. He was dead - half blown apart - before he hit the ground.

  In all, the fight lasted five hours, with long intervals in between. Rowdy knew the Kiowa language, and he could distinguish some of their talk. Some were for pulling out. They had no clear idea what sort of trouble they had stumbled into, but they’d had enough.

  Rowdy shouted insults at them in Kiowa and talked about ghost guns, which one of the Indians had mentioned. He told them the spirits of the great warriors, enemies of the Kiowa, were all about him.

  One of the Indians boasted to the others that he would attack alone, and Rowdy sat back and let him come. When the young warrior was almost upon him, he opened up with a Colt revolving shotgun. There wasn’t enough left of that young Indian to carry home, and, thoroughly worried, the Kiowas pulled off and let him alone.

  Standing in the street, looking up and down, I could see that the town was finished. It was Aaron McDonald who had killed it, not what we had done. And Aaron McDonald was in jail, locked up and waiting to be shipped east for trial.

  He had sent for his daughter, but she had not appeared. When next seen in public, she was standing waiting for the stage, two carpetbags beside her on the walk.

  A man came riding up the street on a roan cow-horse, and when abreast of me he drew up. “Anybody lost a bay gelding with three white stockings … blaze face?”

  That sounded like Red, Kate’s favorite horse.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Seen one like that at the crick, back yonder.” He pointed toward the creek that ran by the edge of town.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I strolled along the street to the corral and stable, and I glanced into the stall. Sure enough, the bay gelding was gone. Saddling up, I stepped into the leather and rode down the street.

  John Blake came to the door and called out to me, but I only lifted a hand. “Back in a minute!” I said, and went on.

  It was a cool, pleasant morning. If those people could get their wagons rolling they could manage some miles before the heat set in.

  The bay gelding was cropping grass on a green patch in the bottom, and I rode up to him and got down to pick up the halter rope. The gelding shied off a little, and I walked after the rope.

  As I straightened up with it, I saw a faint hint of dust in the air along the draw to the south.

  Suddenly I felt the hair prickle on the back of my neck. I stood very still, thinking quickly, as I should have been thinking before this. How had the gelding escaped? Why- “Hello, Dury. This here’s a long way from Burro Mesa.”

  He had come up from behind the nearest willows, a gun in his hand. He was a tall, raw-boned man that I recalled seeing in town.

  “I’m Frank Shalett. Or Hastings, if you like that better. Heard you’d killed Rich and Flange some time back, and I got kind of tired watching out for you. You’ve worried me some, so I think I’ll see how you look when you sweat a little.”

  He had his gun dead center on me, and he was at pointblank range, not over forty feet away. He had been put up to me as a dead shot, and the chances of him missing at that range were slight. Yet I’d seen some good shots miss, especially when the shooter was being shot at - which he didn’t expect to be.

  “Nobody will ask any questions when they find you with a gun on,” he said. “After all, everybody knows you’re supposed to be a fast man.”

  This was the last of the men who had killed Jim Sotherton. How long ago that seemed! Why, I hadn’t thought of hunting for him in years. Not since before the war, for I more than half believed him dead. And now he had caught up with me.

  But that dust I’d seen … this man hadn’t made that dust.

  “Couldn’t have been you,” I said aloud. “You must have been waiting here quite a spell.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “Dust I saw in the air,” I said. “Somebody else is here.”

  He looked disgusted. “Why, you damn’ fool! You don’t think I’d go for anything like that, do -”

  It is harder for a man to shoot quickly to his right, so I stepped quickly left as my hand went for my gun. He shot … missed … shot again. The bullet struck me; I felt the solid blow of it and was firing myself.

  Bracing myself against another bullet, I steadied my hand and put a bullet into his belly, then another. There was a spot of blood on his neck near the collarbone, and he turned around and fell, tried to rise, and slumped back.

  A voice spoke. “Now, that’s what I call a fancy bit of gun play.”

  Where had I heard that voice before? A rifle bellowed, and the six-shooter was knocked from my hand. “And there’s another bit for you. I been aimin’ to even things up, even though it taken me time.”

  It was the Dutchman. It was that dry-gulching, sure-thing killer, Bill Hoback.

  There was blood on the sand at my feet. I’d been hit, and I’d been hurt. The shock was keeping me from feeling it now, but how long would that last?

  My gun was gone.

  My rifle was on my saddle, and my horse was at least fifty feet away, and it might as well have been as many miles.

&
nbsp; When he shot the pistol from my hand - no trick for such a man with a rifle at the distance - it left my arm numb to the elbow. The gun had gone spinning, and it was probably good for nothing now, anyway.

  He had me, and he was going to kill me. Only he had to be sure I suffered, for I’d hurt his pride.

  The boys had been right, of course. You don’t let a man like that live. You kill him as you would a rattler, because he’ll always be waiting around for you.

  Somehow I’d gone down on one knee, and I was fuzzy about that. Had I dropped before he shot at me, or afterward?

  He was back there in the brush, and he had been there when Frank Hastings, or Shalett or whatever his name was, and I shot it out. He had been waiting to see me dead, or to finish me off. He had me cold. Think … I had to think.

  The boys could have heard the shooting, but not many of them, if any, were up and about. This was a morning when they could sleep and there were few such mornings for them.

  “Don’t figure on help. I can see that road, and if anybody starts this way I’ll kill you and skedaddle. Be a while before they find out there was somebody else than you and Shalett - if they ever do.”

  If he could see the road, there was only one place he could be. The trouble was that he could cover every bit of the hollow where I stood from where he was hidden.

  The patch of willows and cottonwood was fairly large, with some blackberry bushes among the undergrowth, which were covered with thorns that would catch and tear at a man’s clothing.

  My eye caught a glint of sunlight. His rifle barrel was pointed at me from alongside a tree trunk, and well back in the brush.

  Frank Shalett’s body lay there in front of me. Suddenly I saw a slight movement of the dead man’s hand - some tightening of muscles, or relaxing. The hand had fallen across a rock when he went down, and if it moved ever so slightly again, it would fall off into the dry leaves below it.

  My head was spinning, and my eyes had trouble coming to focus. Had the hand really moved?

  Yes … it was moving again. “Frank!” I yelled. “Toss me the gun!”

  And the hand slipped off into the leaves.