ON BUCK, LANCE Kilkenny rode for Apple Canyon. He was dead-tired, his muscles felt heavy and weary. Yet he knew that the outdoor life he lived, with the simple food, had given him the stamina he would need to recover his strength.
Behind him, in a tight cavalcade, rode the men of the Lord and Steele ranches with a few extras from Botalla and the country around.
Gates rode up beside him. “You had quite a scrap,” he said. “I never knew you were a fistfighter, too.”
“I’ve boxed some. And I worked some in the lum-berwoods as a youngster.”
“You never did say where you were from,” Gates suggested.
Kilkenny smiled. “No, I never did.”
Rusty waited for awhile but nothing further was offered. Then he said, “Facing Barnes with hands like that may be suicide.”
“Nevertheless, I have to do it. And my hands aren’t as bad as they look. It isn’t going to be speed that will win, not in this fight. We’ll both catch lead, and the winner will be the one who can take the most and still keep coming.
“The way I see it, we’ll be spotted before we ever get there. They’ll be holed up around the buildings. The bunkhouse, the livery stable and the blacksmith shop all look like they were built to stand a siege.”
“That was the idea,” Rusty said. “They’re built of heavy logs or stone, and built solid. Bill Sadler’s place, on the same side as the Border Bar, is adobe, and its walls are three feet thick, with windows set to cover the trail into town. It’ll be no picnic, believe me!”
“I know,” Kilkenny rubbed Buck’s neck thoughtfully. “We’ve got to figure that one out, but I’ll not be there for much of it. I’ll be going up to the house, up there on the cliff.”
“Alone?” Gates was incredulous. “Man, you’re asking for it. He’ll be forted up with a dozen others, waiting for you.”
“I doubt it. I doubt if he ever lets more than one man stay up there with him. Royal Barnes, as I understand him, isn’t a trusting soul. My idea is to come down from the cliffs above the house.”
“You’re crazy!” Gates protested. “They’re sheer rock! You’d need a rope and a lot of luck. And even then he’d see you and nail you before you ever got down!”
“Maybe. I’ve got the rope, and maybe the luck. Anyway, I’ll come down behind him where he won’t be expecting trouble, and I’ll come while you boys are keeping them busy down below. Now listen … this is the way I see it—”
As Webb, Frame and Rusty listened, Kilkenny outlined a plan of attack.
“It might work,” Steele said.
Kilkenny had no illusions about the task they had set for themselves. With the plan he had conceived, the details carefully worked out during the days that had passed, he believed the fort houses of Apple Canyon might be taken.
It meant a struggle, and there would be loss of life. This riding column would lose some of its numbers before it returned, and there would surely be bloody fighting before the job was completed.
Where was Steve Lord? Had Steve taken the bait and gone to the hidden cabin in the box canyon? It would be a place to look.
Kilkenny shrank from the task, even the idea, and only the knowledge that others would die if he didn’t act would even permit him to consider it. Luckily, the canyon was only a short distance from the route the cavalcade must follow.
There had been no diary left by Des King. That diary had existed only in Kilkenny’s imagination, and had been bait he had dropped to lure the killer.
Of course, he would have learned the answer soon, in any event, even if Chet Lord had not told him, for the evidence had been accumulating slowly. He had been suspicious of Steve Lord and waited only for a chance to check Steve’s guns against the shells he had found.
What would Steve Lord do now? He was outlawed. He knew that his father had exposed him, and he must realize there was evidence enough to convict him or to send him to an asylum for the insane. He would be desperate. Would he try again to kill Kilkenny? Or would he go on one last killing spree and shoot everybody and everything in sight?
Kilkenny had a hunch that Steve would ride for Apple Canyon. Several times, Kilkenny recalled, he had come upon Steve either on that trail or in the vicinity, and at least once Steve had been rather sharp in his inquiries as to what Kilkenny was doing there.
Was Steve interested in Nita Riordan?
He turned to Webb Steele. “You boys stay on the trail to Apple Canyon. I’ll turn off to that shack where I let Steve think Des King had left a diary, and when I find Steve, I’ll come back.”
He wheeled the buckskin and took off up a draw into the steeper hills. He had been thinking of this route as he rode along. Although he was not sure the route would take him where he wished to go, he knew he would find a way.
He emerged on to a small plain of bunch grass dotted with clumps of oak. All the ridges were covered with scrub oak. He paused among the trees to wipe the sweat from his hatband and brow, then slid his Winchester from the scabbard and rode on.
He kept working his fingers. They were a little stiff, but felt better than he had expected.
He struck a long unused path and followed it through the trees. The trail wound upward, then left the trees and topped out in a region of heaped-up boulders, where the trail wound with all the casualness of cow trails in a country where cows are in no hurry. Twice, rabbits leaped up and scurried away, but the buckskin’s hoofs made no sound on the soft grass.
Kilkenny was cutting across a meadow when he saw the prints of a horse bisecting the trail he was making. In the tall grass of the meadow, the tracks were too indistinct to tell him anything about the horse, but on a hunch he turned the buckskin and followed.
Whoever the rider was, he was in a hurry, riding toward his objective in as straight a line as possible.
It had bad features, this trailing a man in country where he alone was native. Such a man would know of routes and places of concealment of which Kilkenny could know nothing. Such an advantage could mean the difference between life and death.
Scanning every open space before he crossed it, Kilkenny followed the trail with care. He knew only too well how little it required to conceal a man. A few inches of grass, clothing that blended with the surroundings, and immobility were the only essentials to remaining unseen.
Sunlight caught the highest ridges, and slowly the long shadows crept higher, and the light almost disappeared down the quiet canyons. Kilkenny, every sense alert for trouble, rode warily.
When the cabin was not far away, he dismounted and faded into the darkness under the shadowing trees, looking down through the narrow opening into the box canyon.
It was a squat, shapeless structure, built hurriedly by some wandering prospector or casual sheepherder long, long ago. In the years that had followed, the roof had sagged here and there, branches had been added and earth piled atop until the roof had become a mound now covered with grass.
It was an ancient, decrepit structure, its one window a black hole, its door too low for a tall man.
About it the grass was green, for there was a small stream nearby that flowed from the rocks near the cabin, crossed the box canyon diagonally and flowed back into a hole in the rock on the far side. In transit, it watered a small meadow.
Outside the cabin, under a lone apple tree, stood a saddled horse, his head hanging.
“There we are,” Lance muttered. “Now to get close!”
Leaving the buckskin hidden, he crossed a narrow stretch in a crouching run to the nearest boulder, then on to a clump of brush and trees. Crouching there, he watched the cabin.
There should have been a light in there by now, but there was none. It should take no time to search the cabin, but it would be too dark in there to see much. He hesitated, scanning the rocks and the cliffs. He saw nothing.
The saddled horse stood, head low, waiting wearily. A breeze stirred the leaves of some cottonwoods near the stream. They whispered softly to one another in the evening air. Pulling his sombrero lower, Kilkenny moved with the whispering leaves to cover the rustle of his movement, slipping into the bottleneck entrance of the canyon.
There was no shot, no sound. The horse moved a little, began idly cropping grass, yet he acted as if he had been doing that for some time, and was no longer hungry. Suddenly Kilkenny had a feeling that the cabin was empty.
There was no reason to delay. He would go over to it.
He stepped out, rifle ready, and walked swiftly and silently across the grass to the cabin.
The blackness gave off no sound. Despite himself, he was suddenly uneasy. It was too still, and there was something almost unearthly about the squat cabin and the lost, lonely canyon.
He shifted his rifle to his left hand and drew a six-gun, which was better for close quarters.
Then he looked in.
The inside was black, yet between himself and the hole that passed for a window he could see the vague outline of the head of a sleeping man … at least a man seated, with his head bowed forward on his chest.
“All right,” he spoke clearly, if not loudly. “You can get up and come out!”
There was neither sound nor movement. Kilkenny stepped inside, gun ready. And still there was no movement.
Taking a chance, he struck a match.
The man was dead.
He glimpsed a stump of candle on the table, and lit it.
The man was a stranger, a middle-aged man and, by his looks, a cowhand. He had been shot in the right temple by someone who had fired from the window. The room had been thoroughly ransacked.
Kilkenny went out quickly. There was nothing to do now but return. The dead man’s horse was only ground-hitched and there was plenty of grass and water.
Buck returned to the trail with quickened step, as if aware that the end was near. Kilkenny lounged in the saddle. Steve Lord would be riding hard now, heading for Apple Canyon. He would know nothing of their projected attack.
Weary from the long ride and the fight with Cain Brockman, Kilkenny sagged in the saddle, and the yellow horse ambled along the trail, taking its own gait, drifting through the shadows like a ghost horse on a ghost trail.
THERE WAS A faint light in the sky, the barest hint of daybreak in the sky when Kilkenny at last rode up to join the posse.
They were gathered in a shallow valley about two miles from the canyon. Dismounted, aside from a few guards, they stood around a couple of small fires. Kilkenny could smell coffee, and frying bacon.
He swung down and walked to the fire, his boots sinking in the soft sand of the wash. Firelight brought out highlights and shadows on the hard, unshaven faces of the men.
Webb Steele, squatted by the fire, his big body looming as huge as a grizzly’s, looked up. “Find Steve?”
“No … But he killed another man … a stranger.” Briefly, he explained what he had found at the cabin. “Steve rode on. He’s probably down there at the town.”
“You think he worked with this gang? Against his own pa?”
“Could be. I think he knows Barnes, although that’s only a guess. I think they cooked up some kind of a deal, and I think Steve has a leaning toward Nita Riordan. That may be why he came here.”
Rusty made no comment. The tough redhead looked pale. He had been in no shape for the hard ride, but would not be left behind. Wounded or not, he was worth two ordinary men.
Not two like Webb Steele, however. Or Old Joe Frame. Either would do to ride the river with. They might be bullheaded, and they might argue and talk a lot, but they were men who believed in doing the right thing, and men who would fight in order to do it.
Glancing around at the others, Kilkenny saw what he expected. Most of them were tough, rough and ready cowhands who rode for the brand. All of them had been through such fights before, and many another season of trouble. Like a stampede, a river-swimming or a hailstorm, they took it in stride.
Kilkenny accepted gratefully the cup of hot, black coffee that was put in his hand. Sipping it was pure delight after the long, hard ride.
“We’d better mount up,” he said. “The light’s coming on.”
Webb Steele looked around at his men. “You all know what this is about. They ain’t about to back up and quit and we aren’t planning on any prisoners. If a man cuts and runs, let him go if he drops his shootin’ iron. If he doesn’t, he may be going to a better position, so drop him.
“Those who do throw down their guns, take ’em prisoner. We’ll try ’em all an’ hang the guilty ones, but there’ll be mighty few who are innocent in Apple Canyon.”
“One thing,” Kilkenny interrupted. “Leave Nita Riordan, her Border Bar and her house alone.”
He was not at all sure how the men would accept that, but he didn’t care. He saw tacit approval in Rusty’s eyes. Steele and Frame nodded agreement. Then his eyes encountered the eyes in a tall, lean, cadaverous face. The man chewed silently a moment, staring at Kilkenny.
“I reckon,” he said harshly, “that if we clear the bad ’uns out of Apple, we better clear ’em all out. Me, I ain’t stoppin’ for no woman. Nor that halfbreed man of her’n, either!”
Steele’s fingers closed in a fist and there was a sudden tension in the crowd. Was there to be a split now? At such a time?
Kilkenny smiled. “No reason for any trouble, but she gave me a tip once that helped. I believe she’s friendly to us and I believe she’s innocent of any wrongdoing.”
The man with the cold eyes looked right back at him. “I aim to clear her out of here, as well as the others. I aim to burn that place down over her head.”
There was cruelty in the man’s face and a harshness that seemed to spring from some inner source of malice and hatred. He wore a gun tied down and had a carbine in the hollow of his arm. Several others moved closer to him, an odd similarity in their faces.
“There’ll be time to settle that,” Kilkenny said quietly, “when we get there. But you’d better change your mind, my friend. If you don’t, you’re going to have to kill me right along with her.”
“She’s a scarlet woman,” the man said viciously, “and dyin’s too good for her kind! I’m a-gettin’ her, an’ you stay clear!”
“Time’s a-wastin’,” Steele interrupted. “Let’s ride!”
In the saddle, Kilkenny rode beside Steele. “Who is that hombre?” he demanded.
“Name of Calkins, Lem Calkins. Hails from West Virginia, and he’s a feuder. I’ve met some good folks from there, but Calkins is a mean, hard man.
“Did you see those who grouped around him? He’s got three brothers and five sons. You touch one of them and you’ve got to fight them all!”
They rode over the rise and into Apple Canyon, and Kilkenny wheeled his horse and raced toward the cliff. Instantly a shot rang out, and he turned the buckskin on a dime and charged into the street of the town.
More shots sounded, and a man drawing water at a well dropped the bucket and grabbed for his gun. Kilkenny snapped a shot and the man staggered, grabbing at his arm. His gun lay in the dust. A shot whipped past Kilkenny, another ricocheted off his pommel but missed him and he raced his horse between Nita’s house and the Border Bar and dropped from the saddle.
He went up the back steps in two jumps and sprang through the door. Firing had broken out in front, but Kilkenny’s sudden attack from the rear was a complete surprise. He snapped a shot at a lean redhead, and the man went down, grabbing at his chest with both hands.
The bartender reached for the sawed-off shotgun, and Kilkenny took him out with a shot from his left-hand gun.
Jaime Brigo sat tilted back in a chair at the end of the room. He had neither moved nor reached for a gun.
Kilkenny reloaded his pistols. “Brigo, there are some men who would harm the señorita. Lem Calkins and his brothers. They would burn this place and kill her. You savvy?”
“Sí, señor.”
“I must go up the cliff. You must watch over the señorita. I will be back when I can.”
Jaime Brigo got up. He towered above Kilkenny, and he smiled.
“Of course, señor. I know Señor Calkins well. He is a man who thinks himself good, but he is cruel. He is also a dangerous man.”
“If necessary,” said Kilkenny, “take the señorita away, Brigo. I shall be back when I have seen the man on the cliff.”
The firing was increasing in intensity.
“Have you seen Steve Lord?” Kilkenny asked.
“Sí. He went before you to the cliff. The señorita would not see him and he was very angry. He said he would return soon, and she would see him then.”
Kilkenny stood alone in the middle of the room for a moment. He thought about the place on the hill, and the odds. He was a man who never blinded himself to the realities, yet he had faith.
Now he must go.… The time had come.