the Key-Lock Man (1965) (13 page)

The Navajo shook his head. "I ride to Tuba City." His black eyes went from one to another, then back to Chesney. "You hunt?"

"A white man . . . might be a woman with him."

Jim hesitated. It was never the Indian way to offer information. On the other hand, this man was his friend, and not many white ranchers were eager to employ an Indian rider.

"Back there," he gestured toward Piute Mesa, "I see trail. . . five, six horses, two riders."

He explained they had been camped at the old ruin, and when starting south had seen the dust, and later had found no trail. Curious, they had scouted around, picking up the trail farther along and following it until it went down the cliff into the canyon.

When the Navajos had gone on, Chesney expressed his triumph. "There it is, boys!

We've got "em now!"

Neill looked at him, and started to speak, but hesitated. There was no need to make an issue of it now. Wait until they had met the Key-Lock man and faced him. A man could buy trouble by trying to cross bridges before reaching them, and many an issue disappeared before it actually became a matter of trouble.

What he had started to ask was whether Chesney planned to hang the Key-Lock man right in front of his wife. He had desisted, but now the feeling of doom was on him again. He looked around uneasily. So far, the Key-Lock man had not chosen to make a fight of it, but there was a limit to any man's patience.

From the rim of the cliff, they saw far below them a moving dust cloud. Not large, but enough to indicate several horses.

"What do you make of it, Neill?" Chesney asked.

"Wild horses." Neill had the best eyesight of the lot. "Quite a bunch of them, and they are taking it easy."

Bill Chesney's common sense told him it was unlikely that a pursued man would ride further north. The San Juan River cut across the country and, so far as Chesney knew, there was no crossing for many miles. No Man's Mesa split the country in half, but the man they sought should be right down there somewhere. He could not be far.

He was just about to give the word to start down the trail when he saw them.

Three riders and several pack animals. They came down off what appeared to be a bench and started north, following the wild horses, intentionally or by accident.

"We've got 'em, boys!" Chesney fought back his excitement. "There they go!"

"There's three of them," Neill objected.

"If that's the Key-Lock man and his wife, then who is the other one?"

Nobody answered. Chesney had turned his horse down the trail. Now, by the Lord! Now! he was saying it over and over as he went down the trail.

Short, remembering
Keylock
at Tuba City, felt a coldness inside him, and a tightness at the back of his neck.
Keylock
had told them what he would do if he found them on his trail again, and here they were, with him down there.

"I've got to kill him. Short said the words softly to himself. I've got to get him before he gets me. To hell with hanging! I'm goin" to shoot.

He dropped back alongside McAlpin.

"He meant what he said, Mac. That Key-Lock man surely meant what he said."

"What'll we do?"

"Kill him . . . shoot first and quick."

"Bill wants to hang him. He's set on usin' that rope."

"The hell with him!"

"What'll we do? What can we do?"

"He's got a woman with him. He'll want to talk, to get her out of it. Well, we'll let Chesney talk. We'll shoot."

"Wonder where that Neerland is," McAlpin said.

Short had forgotten him, but it did not seem to matter now. "He's out of it now. This is
Keylock
and us."

The five men went down the switchback trail in the prime of the morning. The sun was upon them, warm and pleasant after the night's chill. Neill rode third, right behind Kimmel, and he knew he was in trouble. It was all well and good to make a stand, to speak your piece and have it listened to; but now, perhaps within a few minutes, certainly within a few hours, he would have to make his stand in the face of armed men. And past friendships would not count now. With Chesney feeling the way he did, it might become a matter of shooting between them, and he shrank from that. And that was where his weakness lay, the weakness of a man who wants to stand for what is right and just. For Neill would hesitate to kill, while the fanatics never hesitated.

But there were just men who had not hesitated. Who was that vigilante up Montana way? Beidler ... he had killed, and rightly so, for there had been no other way. Yet had he ever been asked to shoot down a friend, or a man he respected?

Neill glanced at Kimmel. Where would he stand?

He was a tough man, a veteran of several shooting scrapes, and as many Indian fights. If anyone among them could restrain Chesney it would be Kimmel, for he had done it before. He would not hesitate to kill, but he did not seem to possess the hatred that Chesney did.

A stone fell away and rattled long among the rocks below. They turned another bend of the switchback and faced the way the three riders had traveled, but they were no longer visible.

The low-voiced talk between McAlpin and Short had ceased. Neill felt his mouth becoming dry, as it always did in tense moments. How far away were they, he wondered.

One more switchback and they touched bottom.

Bill Chesney touched a spur to his horse and in a long lope he led off, riding northward, up the valley. On their left were the sheer cliffs of Piute Mesa; on their right, Nakia Canyon, and beyond it the ominous black bulk of No Man's Mesa.

"We've got him!" Chesney was hot with eagerness. "We've got him now!"

Neill closed in beside Kimmel. "These cliffs run to the river?"

"Almost." Kimmel spoke loudly, over the sound of rushing hoofs. "Piute swings away to the west and closes in on the river. It's a death trap thataway." "How about No Man's Mesa?"

Kimmel pointed with the barrel of his Winchester. "She heads up about a mile this side of the river. There's a trail around the end into Copper Canyon!"

Chesney turned in his saddle. "Damn it, why can't you shut up? He'll hear that yelling all the way to the San Juan!"

The level ground ended, narrowing down a good bit, and they slowed their horses to a walk and rode single file. The sun had grown hot and the dark shadows below the western wall of No Man's called to them of coolness, but their eyes were ahead, restless with the nearing danger.

Between the towering walls where they rode was a space of nearly three miles, but talus slopes at the base of the walls narrowed it down, and the cut made by Nakia Canyon narrowed the area which they must search.

Neill felt the sweat trickling down his chest under his shirt. He wished again that Hardin was here, Hardin with his cool head and his sense of balance, his quiet words that always seemed to take the sharp edge off things. Neill was riding alone, and he knew it.

No one in this lot was surely on his side, for Kimmel was only a doubtful chance. Nobody ever knew what he thought or believed.

They were riding to kill a man, and with each step they drew nearer to their aim ... to kill a man who might be innocent, a newlywed man who rode with his bride.

And who was the third party with them, and where did he stand?

Matt
KEYLOCK
DREW rein. The wild horses were close ahead now. He had first to see where they were going, for he had no wish to stampede them over the cliffs into the San Juan. He had never touched the river at this point, but for most of its miles it lay between towering walls.

He felt jumpy inside, but not because of the horses. He turned in his saddle and looked back.

Nothing. . . .

He glanced at his wife. "You all right, Kris?"

She nodded, but behind the stillness of her face he read worry, for he was coming to know her moods now. A branch canyon opened on their right, and suddenly, without a second's hesitation, he turned into it. The others followed.

"Now, what was that for?" Cooley asked. "I thought you wanted those horses?"

"I've got a hunch."

Kris merely looked at him, but Cooley grumbled, "You were right on those horses, Matt.

Why leave them now?"

Keylock
ignored him. He was looking around quickly for an escape. His sudden move might have run them into a box canyon, one from which there was no way out. The canyon seemed to head up on No Man's itself. He rode slowly, and when the wall on the south became low at one spot, he drew up. "Wait here," he said and, turning the buckskin, he went back down the canyon.

There were few tracks, and little enough he could do about them except in a place or two. He did what he could to obliterate their trail, then rode back and led the way up the wall.

"You ain't much better off," Cooley said.

"Now you've got that canyon behind you, and there's another one south. Only way you can get out of here that I know of is back across Nakia."

Where they had stopped there was desert growth and slabs of broken rock, but no good shelter. They were on rising ground where the country sloped steeply back to the abrupt cliffs of No Man's Mesa.

And then he saw them, and almost at the same moment the man riding the lead horse turned his head and glanced up the mountain. He reined in so sharply that his horse reared, and as one man the others turned their heads and looked up toward
Keylock
.

Kris ... I've got to save Kris.

"Stay here," he ordered brusquely. Then he turned his buckskin and rode down the wall to meet them.

MATT
KEYLOCK
rode to the combat through a sunlit morning, sitting lazy in the saddle, right hand resting on his thigh. He rode down with his mind empty, his ears hearing only the hoof falls of his horse and the creak of his saddle leather.

The buckskin knew. Matt could sense it in every movement of the horse. The buckskin knew, just as a good cutting horse knows what is about to happen as it approaches a herd of cattle. The buckskin was a good cutting horse, but he was more. He was a horse with a genuine zest for combat.

Matt
Keylock
had not wanted a fight, but they were bringing it to him, and if the shooting had begun with Kris beside him she might have been killed. So he rode to meet them, giving no more thought to Gay Cooley. He expected no help from him, because this was not Cooley's fight... it was his, and his alone.

The distance was narrowing down. He looked at no man in particular, his eyes holding them all, to register each movement. Two of the riders held back and to one side. Now what did that mean? were they drawing out of it? were they getting out before shooting started? Or did they plan a flanking movement?

When no more than a hundred yards off, he drew up suddenly. On his left were several low, gnarled cedars that grew up from a ledge of rock perhaps three feet high. On his right was a cleft in the rock that dropped away steeply into the canyon that cut down from No Man's Mesa.

Loosening his boots in the stirrups, he held himself still and ready, and moved forward a little farther.

At fifty yards he suddenly called out, "All right, hold up there!"

They stopped, and he said, "I told you that was a fair shooting. Your trouble-hunting friend jumped me unarmed, told me to heel myself and come back, and when I started in the door he drew and shot across his body and under his arm at me. I returned his fire, and the shots took him in the side and back."

"Like hell!" Chesney shouted. "You murdered him, and you'll hang!" He came on a few steps, then drew up again. "You never saw the day you could beat Johnny with a gun!"

"How about it, amigo?" Matt
Keylock
said.

"Just you and me. Let's you and me see if I'm fast enough. The others are out of it."

Bill Chesney was shocked. He had fought his own battles, and he was no coward; but in this he had always thought of the action as a concerted action-of the posse finding this man, executing him, and making an end of it. Or of a gun battle in which all of them took part. None of his thinking had allowed for the chance that suddenly he and this man might come face to face in a shoot-out- just the two of them.

The Key-Lock man was shrewd. He had placed the burden of the fight squarely on Chesney, leaving the others out of it. Nor was there any decent way they could come in if Chesney was killed.

"All right, damn you!" Chesney yelled.

"I'll show you for a cheap tinhorn! I'll-was Behind Matt somebody shouted, and then a smashing blow struck him in the chest. At the same instant his horse reared and he went out of the stirrups and hit the ground hard.

With a frantic eagerness to survive, he scrambled for the crack leading into the canyon. Something was wrong with one of his legs, and his chest felt numb.

There was blood on the rocks.

When he reached the crack, he hastily pulled out a handkerchief and packed it tightly over the hole in his chest. Luckily his shirt was snug, and did much to hold the handkerchief in place. He was hurt, but he had no idea how badly.