the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (49 page)

"Yeah," Kilkenny agreed. "I'm ridin' at sundown, Parson."

Yet it was after sundown before he got started. Jesse Hatfield was in a bad way. Price Dixon had taken a compact packet of tools from his saddlebags, and his operation had been quick and skilled. His gambler's work had kept his hands well, and he showed it now. Kilkenny glanced at him, curiosity in his eyes. At one time this man had been a fine surgeon.

He was never surprised. In the West you found strange men-noblemen from Europe, wanderers from fine old families, veterans of several wars, schoolboys, and boys who had grown up along the cattle trails. Doctors, lawyers, men of brilliance, and men with none, all had thronged west, looking for what the romantic called adventure and the experienced knew was trouble, or looking for a new home, for a change, or escaping from something.

Price Dixon was one of these. The man was observant, shrewd, and cultured. He and Kilkenny had known each other from the first, not as men who came from the same life, but men who came from the same stratum of society. They were men of the lost legion, the kind who always must move.

Despite his lack of practice, Dixon's moves were sure and his hands skilled. He removed the bullet from dangerously near the spine. When he finished he washed his hands and looked up at Parson.

"He'll live, with rest and treatment. Beef broth, that's what he needs now, to build strength in him."

Parson grinned behind his gray mustache. "He'll get it," he said dryly. "He'll get it as long as King Bill Hale has a steer on the range."

Sally Crane caught Kilkenny as he was saddling the little gray horse he was riding that night. She hurried up to him and then stopped suddenly and stood there, shifting her feet from side to side. Kilkenny turned and looked at her curiously from under his flat-brimmed hat.

"What's the trouble, Sally?"

"I wanted to ask-" she hesitated, and he could sense her shyness. "Do you think I'm old enough to marry?"

"To marry?" He stopped, startled. "Why, I don't know, Sally. How old are you?"

"I'm sixteen, most nigh seventeen."

"That's young," he conceded, "but I've heard Ma Hatfield say she was just sixteen when she married, an' down in Kentucky and Virginia many a girl marries at that age. Why?"

"I reckon I want to marry," Sally said shyly. "Ma Hatfield said I should ask you. Said you was Daddy Moffitt's friend, an' you was sort've my guardian."

"Me?" He was thunderstruck. "Well, I reckon I never thought of it that way. Who wants to marry you, Sally?"

"It's Bart."

"You love him?" he asked. He suddenly felt strangely old, and yet, looking at the young girl standing there so shyly, he felt more than ever before the vast loneliness there was in him, and also a strange tenderness such as he had never known before.

"Yes." Her voice was shy, but he could sense the excitement in her, and the happiness.

"Well, Sally," he said slowly, "I reckon I'm as much a guardian as you've got now. I think if you love Bartram an' he loves you, that's all that's needed. I know him. He's a fine, brave, serious young fellow who's goin' to do right well as soon as this trouble clears up. Yes, I reckon you can marry him."

She was gone, running.

For a few minutes he stood there, one foot in the stirrup. Then he swung his leg over the gray horse and shook his head in astonishment.

"That's one thing, Lance," he told himself, "you never expected to happen to you!"

But as he turned the horse into the pines, he remembered the Hatfields digging the grave for their brother. Men died, men were married, and the fighting and living and working went on. So it would always go. Lije Hatfield was gone, Miller and Wilson were gone, and Jesse Hatfield lay near to death in the cabin in the cup.

Yet Sally was to marry Tom Bartram, and they were to build a home. Yes, this was the country, and these were its people. They had the strength to live, the strength to endure. In such a country men would be born, men who loved liberty and would ever fight to preserve it.

The little gray was as surefooted as a mountain goat. Even the long-legged yellow horse could walk no more silently, no more skillfully than this little mountain horse. He talked to it in a low whisper and watched the ears flick backward with intelligence. This was a good horse.

Yet when he reached the edge of Cedar Bluff, he reined in sharply. Something was wrong. There was a vague smell of smoke in the air, and an atmosphere of uneasiness seemed to hang over the town. He looked down, studying the place. Something was wrong. Something had changed. It was not only the emptiness left after a crowd is gone, it was something else, something that made him uneasy.

He moved the gray horse forward slowly, keeping to sandy places where the horse would make no sound. The black bulk of a building loomed before him, and he rode up beside it and swung down. The smell of wood smoke was stronger. Then he peered around the corner of the building. Where the Mecca had stood was only a heap of charred ruins.

Hale's place-burned! He scowled, trying to imagine what could have happened. An accident? It could be, yet something warned him it was not that, and more, that the town wasn't asleep.

Keeping to the side of the buildings, he walked forward a little. There was a faint light in Bert Leathers' store. The Crystal Palace was dark. He went back to the gray horse and carefully skirting the troubled area, came in from behind the building and then swung down.

A man loomed ahead of him, a huge bulk of man. His heart seemed to stop, and he froze against the building. It was Cain Brockman!

Watching, Kilkenny saw him moving with incredible stealth, slip to the side of the Crystal Palace, work for an instant at the door, and then disappear inside.

Like a ghost, Kilkenny crossed the alley and went in the door fast. There he flattened against the wall. He could hear the big man ahead of him, but only his breathing. Stealthily, he crept after.

What could Brockman be doing here? Was he after Nita? Or hoping to find him? He crept along, closed a door after him, and lost Brockman in the stillness. Then suddenly a candle gleamed, and another. The first person he saw was Nita. She was standing there, in riding costume, staring at him.

"You've come, Lance?" she said softly. "Then it was you I heard?"

"No," he spoke softly, "it wasn't me. Cain Brockman's here."

A shadow moved against the curtain at the far side of the big room, and Cain Brockman stepped into the open.

"Yeah," he said softly, "I'm here."

He continued to move, coming around the card tables until he stood near, scarcely a dozen feet away. The curtains were drawn on all the windows, thick drapes that kept all light within. If he lived to be a thousand, Lance Kilkenny would never- forget that room.

It was large and rectangular. Along one side ran the bar; the rest, except for the small dance floor where they stood now, was littered with tables and chairs. Here and there were fallen chips, cards, cigarette butts, and glasses.

A balcony surrounded the room on three sides, a balcony with curtained booths. Only the candles flickered in the great room, candles that burned brightly but with a wavering uncertain light. The girl held the candles-Nita Riordan, with her dark hair gathered against the nape of her neck, her eyes unusually large in the dimness.

Opposite Kilkenny stood the bulk of Cain Brockman. His big black hat was shoved back on his huge head. His thick neck descended into powerful shoulders, and the checkered shirt was open to expose a hairy chest. Crossed gun belts and big pistols completed the picture, guns that hung just beneath the open hands.

Cain stood there, his flat face oily and unshaven in the vague light, his stance wide, his feet in their riding boots seeming unusually small.

"Yeah," Cain repeated. "I'm here."

Kilkenny drew a deep breath. Suddenly a wave of hopelessness spread over him. He could kill this man. He knew it. Yet why kill him? Cain Brockman had come looking for him, had come because it was the code of the life he had lived and because the one anchor he had, his brother Abel, had pulled loose.

Suddenly, Kilkenny saw Cain Brockman as he had never seen him before, as a big man, simple and earnest, a man who had drifted along the darker trails because of some accident of fate, and whose one tie, his brother, had been cut loose. He saw him now as big, helpless, and rather lost. To kill Kilkenny was his only purpose in life--

Abruptly, Kilkenny dropped his hands away from his guns. "Cain," he said, "I'm not going to shoot it out with you. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not even goin' to try. Cain, there's no sense in you an' me shootin' it out. Not a mite."

"What d'you mean?" The big man's brow was furrowed, his eyes narrowed with thought as he tried to decide what deception was in this.

"I don't want to kill you, Cain. You an' your brother teamed up with the wrong crowd in Texas. Because of that, I had to kill him. You looked for me, an' I had to fight you an' whip you. I didn't want to then, an' I don't now.

"Cain, I owe somethin' to those people up there, the Hatfields an' the rest. They want homes out here. I've got a reason to fight for them. If I kill, it'll be for that. If I die, it'll be to keep their land for them. There's nothin' to gain for you or me by shootin' it out. Suppose you kill me? What will you do then?"

Cain hesitated, staring, puzzled.

"Why, ride out of here. And go back to Texas."

"An' then?"

"Go to ridin', I guess."

"Maybe, for a while. Then some hombre'll come along an' you'll rustle a few cows. Then you'll rob a stage, an' one time they'll get you like they got Sam Bass. You'll get shot down or you'll hang.

"I'm not goin' to shoot you, Cain. An' you're too good a man to draw iron on a man who won't shoot! You're a good man, Cain. Just a good man on the wrong trail. You've got too much good stuff in you to die the way you'll die."

Cain Brockman stared at him, and in the flickering candlelight, Kilkenny waited. He was afraid for the first time, afraid his words would fail and the big man would go for his gun. He didn't want to kill him, and he knew that his own gunman's instinct would make him draw if Cain went for a gun.

Cain Brockman stood stock-still in the center of the room, and then he lifted a hand to his face and pawed at his grizzled chin.

"Well, I'll be-" he muttered. "I'll be eternally-"

He shook his head, turned unsteadily, and lurched into the darkness toward the door.

Chapter
XVIII

Disaster Stalks

Kilkenny stepped back and wiped the sweat from his brow. Nita crossed the room to him, her face radiant with relief.

"Oh, Lance!" she exclaimed. "That was wonderful! Wonderful!"

Kilkenny grinned dazedly. "It was awful- just plain awful."

He glanced around. "What's happened here? Where's Brigo?"

"He's in my room, Lance," Nita said quickly.

"I was going to tell you, but Brockman came. He's hurt, very badly."

"Brigo? Hurt?" It seemed impossible. "What happened?"

"It was those two gunmen of Hale's. Cub sent them here after me. Brigo met them right here, and they shot it out. He killed both Dunn and Ravitz, but he was hit three times, once through the body."

"What happened to the Mecca? What happened in town?"

"That was before Dunn and Ravitz came. Some miners were in the Mecca, and they were all drinking. A miner had some words with a Hale gunman about the fight and about the nesters. The miner spoke very loudly, and I guess he said what he thought about Hale.

"The gunman reached for a gun, and the miner hit him with a bottle, and it was awful. It was a regular battle. Miners against the Hale hands, and it was bloody and terrible.

"Some of the Hale riders liked your fight and your attitude, and they had quit. The miners drove the others out of the Mecca and burned it to the ground. Then the miners and the Hale riders fought all up and down the streets. But no one was killed. Nobody used a gun then. I guess all of them were afraid what might happen."

"And the miners?" Kilkenny asked quickly.

"They mounted up and got into wagons and rode out of town on the way back to their claims. It was like a ghost town then. Nobody stirred on the streets. They are littered with bot- ties, broken windows, and clubs. Then everything was quiet until Dunn and Ravitz came."

"What about Hale? King Bill, I mean?"

"We've only heard rumors. Some of the cowhands who quit stopped by here to get drinks. They said that Hale acts like a man who'd lost his mind. He had been here after the fight, before he went home. He asked me to marry him, and I refused. He said he would take me, and I told him Brigo would kill him if he tried. Then he went away. It was afterward that Cub sent the gunmen after me. He wanted me for himself.

"Something has happened to Hale. He doesn't even look like the same man. You won fifteen thousand dollars from him, and he paid you. He lost money to the miners, too, and to Cain Brockman. It hit him hard. He's a man who has always won, always had things his own way. He isn't used to being thwarted, isn't used to adversity, and he can't take it.