Reilly's Luck (1970) (10 page)

A fire was blazing on the hearth, for the night was cool. It was a pleasant room, and after the chill of the long ride on the stage it felt comfortable.

Val looked around the room thoughtfully. He saw a young girl, perhaps younger than himself, and there was a man, obviously an easterner, who sat in a big leather chair reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar.

The girl was small, with large eyes, and was very pretty. Val went over to her. "Do you live here?" he asked.

"No." She looked at him with interest. "Do you?"

"We travel," Val said. "In this country--and we spent a year in Europe."

"I've never been there, but I will be going, one of these days."

"I'm Val Darrant," he said. "What's your name?"

"Maude Kiskadden." Her chin lifted proudly. "I am an actress."

"Anactress? "

"Yes, I am. So is my mother."

Will Reilly had come up to them. "How do you do?" he said, offering his hand. "I am Val's uncle. Did you say your father's name was Kiskadden?"

"Yes."

"I knew a Kiskadden up in Montana. In Virginia City."

"That was my father."

Will Reilly looked at her curiously. "Your mother was named Virginia? Who used to be married to Joe Slade?"

"No, sir. My mother is named Annie. She's an actress."

"Sorry. I guess Kiskadden must have married again." He glanced around the room, then his eyes came back to her. "Are there many people stopping here?"

"Only four. There's my mother and me, and there is a mining man from Denver, and some easterner."

"I had expected more ... This easterner now--can you describe him?"

"He is a tall blond man, sort of heavy. He smiles a lot, but I don't like him," Maude Kiskadden said.

Val watched Will Reilly go up the stairs, his face serious. Two hours later, at the supper table, they saw Avery Simpson for the first time.

He came into the dining room after Will and Val were already seated. The Kiskaddens were there too, and Simpson nodded to them, then seated himself at a table at one side of the room and lighted a cigar before opening his paper.

Will Reilly got up. "Excuse me a minute, Val. I will be right back."

He crossed the room to Simpson's table. "Mr. Avery Simpson, I believe?" Will drew back a chair and sat down.

Simpson took the cigar from his mouth and looked at Reilly. "Do I know you?"

"Apparently you do not, or you would be a wiser man."

"What does that mean?" Simpson asked.

"I understand you have been offering ten thousand dollars to have me killed. I am Will Reilly."

The cigar almost dropped from Simpson's lips, and he fumbled for it. His face had gone white. "I don't know what you are talking about," he said.

"You know perfectly well, Mr. Simpson, but if you are carrying a gun, you may call me a liar."

"I did not say that. I did not call you a liar."

"Then what I have said is the truth? You have been offering ten thousand dollars for my scalp?"

Avery Simpson was frightened, but he hesitated. There were at least seven witnesses in the room, and all of them were listening. The man across the table was cool, even casual, but suddenly, desperately, Simpson wished himself far away.

"Well, I--"

"If I am not a liar, Mr. Simpson, you have offered ten thousand dollars for my death. Am I a liar, Mr. Simpson?"

"No. No, no."

"Then you have offered that sum?"

"Yes."

Never in his wildest imaginings had Avery Simpson expected to be confronted with such a situation. From all he had heard, this man across the table had killed other men, and was quite capable of killing him. He waited, his mouth dry, cold sweat beading his forehead.

"Mr. Simpson, as of this moment I want you to revoke your offer. I want an item published in the press in Denver, El Paso, Tucson, and in other papers in a list I shall submit to you, revoking your offers. You need not mention what offer, just that any offers you have made are revoked and no money is to be paid to anyone for any offer previously made. When you have written those letters in my presence, and mailed them, you may leave town. You may go back to where you came from, and if you appear in the West at any future time, for whatever reason, I shall shoot you on sight."

Avery Simpson pushed back his chair. "I will. I will write the letters now."

"That is correct. However, you will not need to leave the table. I will see that paper is brought, and you may write the letters here and now. At this table."

Simpson licked his dry lips and was about to protest, but thought better of it.

"You know, of course, that I could shoot you right now and no western jury would ever convict me. You have tried to buy my death." Will Reilly smiled pleasantly.

Avery Simpson watched as Peck brought paper and pen to the table. Slowly, carefully, he wrote as Reilly dictated, and when he was finished with the last letter, Will Reilly said, "There is one more thing. As you did not know me, and have no reason for wishing me dead, I take it that you have been acting for someone else? Am I right?"

Simpson nodded.

"I want the name of that person. And I want it now."

Some of Simpson's courage was returning. During the process of writing the dictated letters he had been slowly growing more angry. Now, suddenly, the anger burst out. "I'll be damned if I will!"

Almost casually, Will Reilly backhanded him across the mouth. In that room only Val and Simpson knew the jolting force of that blow, Val because he had seen it used before, on other occasions. A slow trickle of blood started from Simpson's mouth.

"The name, Mr. Simpson."

Avery Simpson looked wildly about the room, but those present either seemed to be ignoring what was happening, or they looked at him with cold, unfriendly eyes. The men who hired their killing done were not respected men in Colorado.

"Prince Pavel Pavelovitch."

It was Will Reilly who was surprised. "Him? After all this time?"

"You horsewhipped him. He still carries the scars, and the story follows him wherever he goes. Or so I have been told."

"What else were you told?"

"That the Princess Louise will no longer have anything to do with him."

"She is married?"

"I do not believe so."

Will Reilly was silent, then after a pause he said, "You will leave in the morning, Mr. Simpson, and keep going until you reach wherever you came from."

Deliberately, he stood up and walked back to his table. After a moment, Avery Simpson got up and left the room. Val watched him go, wondering what the man must be thinking.

Will Reilly seemed uninterested in his food. Slowly he took a cigar from his case and bit off the end, and then sat for several minutes holding the cigar in his fingers and staring into space.

"She isn't married," Val said.

"We don't know ... but I could find out. She's a well-known person."

"You would be going where he is."

Will gestured impatiently, as one brushes away a fly. "It doesn't matter." He put the cigar in his teeth, and lit it. "I am thinking of her." He looked at Val. "I am a gambler, Val, and a gambler is not simply a nobody, he is worse."

"Many of the people she knows gamble."

"Of course. But there is a difference between a man who gambles and a gambler. I have never quite been able to persuade myself of the difference but others have ... long since."

"She loved you."

He looked at Val. "Did she? I wonder."

"You don't have to gamble. You could invest some money. Right now," Val lowered his voice--"you have money, and you own mining stock. You could--"

Will Reilly got up suddenly, almost overturning his chair. "We will, Val. We will go in the morning. I will speak to them at the stable about having our horses ready."

Filled with his plans, he opened the front door and stepped out.

They must have been afraid of him, for they used shotguns--at any rate two of them did. The other used a Spencer .56 that fires a slug as big as a man's thumb.

He stepped out the door and it swung to behind him and he had no warning. Even so, in his reflex he cleared his gun from its holster.

The blasting roar of the shotguns shook the room. Val left his chair running, and burst out the door.

There were three of them leaving, and one looked back over his shoulder. It was Henry Sonnenberg.

Chapter
Eight.

Will Reilly had drilled Val in the procedure so many times that he acted now without even thinking. He glanced once at Will; he had seen dead men before, and he knew that Will could never have known what hit him.

He went back inside and up the stairs to their room. He was not thinking, he was as yet only feeling the terrible shock, but he did what Will had taught him to do. He went to Will's trunk and got out their stake money. It was a considerable sum.

Unbuttoning his shirt, he stuffed the gold coins into the money belt with those already there. Then he got out the three letters that had been delivered by hand from Louise to Will, back in Innsbruck, and he put them in his pocket. Only then did he go back downstairs.

He was shaking now, and he was suddenly afraid. Already the sense of loss was beginning. Will was gone, and Will Reilly had been his world. He had been father, uncle, brother, friend, all these in one; he had been his partner against the world, and it was considering that which made Val Darrant realize that he was suddenly without anyone--he was all alone.

Valentine Darrant was nearly fifteen, and he had been traveling most of his life. Not only that, but he had often made all the arrangements himself for both of them. Will might be in a game where it was unsafe to win; a signal to Val, and Val would make the arrangements. And so he made them now.

People were still gathered on the hotel steps, talking, when he went to the livery stable. He saddled their horses and led them out back of the corral, where he tied them in a concealed place. Then he went back to the hotel.

"Mr. Peck," he said when he found him, "I want a decent burial for my uncle." He produced two gold pieces. "Will you see to it? They will pay attention to you."

"Of course, son, but you don't need to think of that now. You're welcome to stay right here at the hotel until everything is settled. Everything will have to be impounded until we find his next of kin."

"He was an orphan," Val said. "He had no kinfolk, except me."

"Well, we will have to see about that. In the meantime, don't you worry. We will attend to everything."

They had taken Will to a dark shed that housed the materials for coffins, a place where bodies were kept until buried. The burial would be the following morning.

Val went to the shed and talked to the man at the door, a pleasant, middle-aged man who had two boys of his own. "May I see him?" Val asked.

The man studied him a moment. "I reckon so, boy. You an' him seemed mighty close."

"We hadn't anybody else."

"How come they killed him? Gambling fight?"

So Val told it to him there by the door, very briefly but clearly, about Will and Louise, and the horsewhipping Will had given Prince Pavel.

"Served him right," the man said. "I'd like to have seen that. You go ahead on in there, boy, an' take your time."

So Val went in.

A lantern was standing on a table and it shone on Will, who was lying there as if he were asleep.

Val stood beside him, knowing what he had to do, but dreading it. This, too, had been a part of it, and from the time Val was six years old, Will had drilled it into him.

"Remember, Val, these home guards are mostly good folks ... but there's larceny in some of them. You know where I carry my money--in that secret pocket inside my vest. No matter what happens, you get it. And get the money hidden in the hotel, and then you get out.

"You've been around enough--stay in the best hotels if you can. Tell them you're expecting to meet your uncle, or any story they can believe, Val. Don't let anybody know you've got more than a few dollars, but money can be your friend, and your best protection."

Val hesitated a moment now, and then put his hand on Will's body, felt for the vest buttons. They were caked with dried blood, but he unbuttoned them. Sure enough, it was there, a small packet of greenbacks, and something else ... a locket, it felt like, and a small square of paper.

Quickly he put them into his pocket, buttoned up the vest, and rearranged the blanket.

"Thanks, Will," he said softly. There was a lump in his throat and he could feel the tears coming, and fought to keep them back. "Thanks for everything. I ... I guess you know how it was ... you an' me. I love you, Will, and I never had anybody else, and may never have again.

"I'm going to get out, Will. I'm going to take off the way you said I should, but I'll see that you're buried, with a marker and all. Then I'll come back, you can count on it. And that isn't all. One of these days I'll find them, Henry Sonnenberg and the others, and when I do, I'll make them remember you, Will."