CHAPTER FOUR
Big Blade Koenig looked through the glow of the campfire at the young man sitting opposite. He considered the youngster a piece of human garbage, walking filth without a trace of humanity or a single redeeming feature, and he asked himself again how the hell he could’ve spawned such a vile creature, the misbegotten son of a whore. But, for better or worse, Seth was his only child and, God help him, he loved him.
For Blade Koenig, there was much to forgive.
The young man had revealed his true nature as a boy when he beat to death a pointer puppy for tearing his shirt. When Seth was thirteen he’d stabbed and seriously wounded a black youth for looking at a white woman, and it had cost Blade a small fortune to square that with the law. Seth was seventeen when he killed his first man, a teamster he quarreled with over the affections of a saloon dancer. A year later, he shot and killed the vengeful brother of a girl he’d raped, and he celebrated his twenty-first birthday when, in a drunken rage, he gunned a hard-rock miner in a Lincoln saloon. Seth Koenig, a bully and a braggart, was proud of the fact that he’d killed three men, and he often compared himself to John Wesley Hardin, boasting that he was the most dangerous gunman in the West. His father, who’d once been friendly with Hardin, knew Wes would consider Seth a tinhorn and braggart without any real bottom to him.
But over the years as he’d watched his son turn into a bad seed, Blade had said nothing and kept his own counsel.
Things came to a head that evening among the pines at the northern limit of the Kerrigan range.
Lonesome Len Banning, a named shootist out of the Sabine River country, a man with a secretive personality and fierce loyalties, started the trouble. He’d listened to Seth’s usual boasting to the rest of the hands about the women he’d bedded, his speed with the Colt, and the bad men he’d killed. Finally, a slight smile on his lips under his sweeping mustache, Banning laid his coffee cup on the ground beside him and said, “Boy, here’s some advice—never boast and never brag in the company of men. You know what you’re worth and they know it too.”
That last brought a few laughs from the punchers.
Blade, sensing trouble, said, “Len, let it go.”
Banning shrugged. “Anything you say, boss. Advice is free.”
“We’re all friends around this fire tonight,” Blade said. “We’ve got gun work to do tomorrow.”
Seth Koenig was not a man to overlook what he took as a slight on his honor. Wound up as tight as a watch spring and on the prod, he was ready to kill, but Banning’s gun rep gave him pause. This was the man who’d outdrawn and killed Billy Bob Henderson up in El Paso that time, and nobody ever considered Henderson a bargain. Seth was aware that he was being watched, the eyes of a dozen tough punchers on him, waiting to see what he’d do next . . . waiting to see if his rumored yellow streak showed.
Seth Koenig rose to his feet, his hand close to his gun. “You tell me. What am I worth, Banning?”
The puncher’s eyes slid to Blade’s shadowed eyes and caught the glint of a warning. He returned his attention to Seth. “Forget it, kid. Like I said, a man knows his own worth.”
“No, you tell me.” Seth stood hipshot, as though he was relaxed and confident. In fact, he was neither. But he pushed it. “I want to hear you say it.”
“I don’t feel so inclined, kid. Not tonight.”
“You’re inclined to be yellow. That’s what I think.”
A man like Len Banning could only be goaded so far. He’d been in a dozen gunfights, taken hits in a few, but had always killed his man. Coming of age in the merciless gunfire of a vicious range war when dark men did darker deeds, he’d learned some hard lessons. He knew how good he was but was also aware of his limitations. He’d ridden with men, sudden dangerous men, who were faster on the draw and shoot than himself. He bore them no ill-will. In Banning’s world, such was the natural order of things and he accepted its realities.
As he stood to face Seth Koenig, he’d been pushed to his limit. He would not back down from a spoiled, cowardly ingrate like this one, and his next words spelled his feelings out plain. “All right, Seth, you asked and I’ll tell you. I don’t reckon you’re worth much. Now if you plan on pulling that six-gun, go to it and get your work in.” Those words, quietly spoken, smashed into the taut silence like rocks through a plate-glass window.
From his place on the ground, Blade Koenig read the signs and made his move. With a litheness unusual in such a big man, he rose to his feet and stepped next to his son. Emboldened, aware of his father’s speed on the draw, Seth stared at Banning and through clenched teeth said, “You’re a damned liar.”
Seth’s hand dropped to his gun, but Blade was faster, much faster. Even as Len Banning drew, Blade’s gun slammed into the side of his son’s head, and the younger man let out a shriek of surprise and dropped like a felled ox.
Banning hesitated as he took in the unexpected turn of events. A man who rode for the brand, he then slowly returned his Colt to the leather.
Blade looked at the puncher for long moments and then said, “You would’ve killed him, Len. You were faster, much faster on the draw.”
“He wasn’t even close, boss,” Banning said. “Seen that right off.”
“I know you did.” Blade reached into his coat pocket, withdrew his wallet, and thumbed off some bills. “Here’s your time and then some. Now saddle up and ride, Len. You’re done at the Hellfire.”
Banning nodded, showing no surprise. Without a word to anybody, he took the money and picked up his saddle.
A few minutes later, as the groaning Seth held his head in his hands, the punchers heard departing hoofbeats fade into the distance. The hands sat in silence. Banning had not been particularly well liked, but he’d been one of them, and his treatment rankled. Railroaded by a fool into drawing, Len had not pulled the trigger, and he left with the respect of every man present.
A towheaded young puncher summed up the feelings of the rest when he said, “Next time I run into ol’ Len in a saloon I’ll buy him a drink.”
“Me too.” Blade Koenig raised his son to his feet, but Seth violently jerked his arm away from his father’s helping hand.
“Get your damned paws off me.” Seth staggered back a couple steps and then twisted his mouth into a snarl of hate. “One day I’ll kill you for this.”
“Seth, I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” Blade said. “But Banning was too fast. He would have killed you.”
“You could have shot him,” Seth said. “Your gun was in your hand.”
“It wasn’t my quarrel. A man has to fight his own battles.” Blade stepped closer to his son and whispered low enough so that only Seth could hear. “Len Banning didn’t deserve to be shot. It’s enough that we’ll soon kill another man who doesn’t deserve to die.”
“Would you rather see me hang?” Seth said. “Is that what you want?”
“No, I don’t want to see you hang, and that’s why I’ll kill Jed Tillett. But it doesn’t set right with me.”
“Then maybe it’s time it did. Blood is thicker than water, or had you forgotten that?”
“No, as far as you’re concerned, Seth, I’ve never lost sight of that.”
“You’re agin’ me, Pa. you’ve always been agin’ me.”
“No, I’m not agin’ you, boy. I just don’t think the killing of Tillett is justified. I’ll do it, but it goes against the grain.”
“Compared to me, Tillett is nothing, a nobody, a penniless tramp,” Seth said. “Who gives a damn whether hayseed trash like him lives or dies?”
Blade let that go and said, “Sit down, Seth. Let me look at your head. You’re bleeding pretty bad, son.”
Seth touched his fingers to his scalp, and they came away red. “Damn you. I’ll take care of myself.” His face twisted and ugly, his eyes on fire, he said, “Think about this . . . think real good . . . every day that passes you get older and weaker, but I’m young enough to stay strong and outlast you. A year from now, two years . . . hell, I don’t know how many years . . . but one day I’ll see the feebleness in you, and that will be the day I kill you and claim the Hellfire as my own.”
Blade Koenig looked as though he’d just been gut-punched. “Seth, I’m your father. Do you really hate me that much?”
“More than I can ever tell you . . . Pa.”
“Why?”
“Why? You want me to count the reasons?”
“Just give me one. Give me one reason I can understand.”
“All right. Here’s one you can understand. I hate you because you murdered my mother. Sure, I know she was only a two-dollar whore, but she was the only mother I had and you killed her.”
“Seth, your ma died in childbirth. You know that.”
“She was frail, sick, her heart was weak, yet you forced another baby on her.”
“Force her? I didn’t force her. She was delicate and I knew it, and I would never have done anything to harm her.”
The punchers huddled around the campfire looked like their shirtfronts had been splashed with orange paint. Every eye was on the Koenigs, father and son. None of them could comprehend a hatred that ran that deep, even those who’d fought a bitter enemy in the War Between the States.
“That’s not true, Seth. Your ma wanted another child. She spoke about it all the time. She wanted a girl she could dress up in silk and ribbons who’d grow to womanhood without ever seeing the inside of a brothel.”
“And what did you want? I’ll tell you what you wanted. You wanted a son, a son to take my place, and you wanted him badly enough that you were willing to kill my mother to get him.” Seth spat and then yelled, “Well, it happened to be another boy all right, but he died with Ma, and I’m glad he died because you didn’t get what you wanted.”
Blade reached out to his son. “Seth—”
“Get away from me!”
Seth’s hand reached for his gun, but he stopped when a voice from the darkness said, “No!”
Shield, Blade Koenig’s Pima scout and sometimes range detective, stepped into the circle of firelight. Dressed in a red headband, breechcloth, deerskin leggings and a white, Mexican peasant shirt, he held a Winchester across his chest. “This is bad talk between a son and his father. It is no good.” His eyes glittering, he turned to Seth. “You stop now. The words from your mouth are as bitter as gall.”
If Len Banning was no bargain, Shield was hell on wheels. Bones from the trigger fingers of eighteen enemies, both white and red, hung on a rawhide cord around his neck.
Seth Koenig wanted no part of him, at least not that night. He forced himself to relax, but glared at his father. “Remember what I told you, old man.”
“It’s something I’m not likely to forget,” Blade Koenig said. His face was gray and stiff, as though he wore a mask of iron.