CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Kiowa glanced up at the blue sky and the brassy ball of the dropping sun. Two hours of daylight, he figured, and he smelled coffee and saw the column of smoke from a white man’s fire that tied bows in the still air.
He left his horse and advanced on foot, using every weather-worn boulder or patch of brush as cover. He was sure Clay Kyle was near. He sensed the man, smelled his danger like the odor of death.
On cat feet, the Kiowa scouted another hundred yards across broken terrain, and then he saw it . . . an overhanging shelf of rock, an obvious camping space sheltered from the sun. A man wearing rough range clothes, chosen with no particular care, stood talking with a tall woman, and even at a distance, her slender beauty was obvious.
The Kiowa took cover behind a large rock, annoying a panting lizard that scuttled away in panic. The Indian nodded to himself. Clay Kyle and the one they called Black-Eyed Susan. It had to be. Because of the contour of the mountain, he could see no others, nor the Calthrop girl. But he’d seen enough. The Kiowa worked his way back to his horse and wary of raising dust, slowly walked his mount back to Caine.
* * *
“Then we have him,” Dan Caine said after talking with the Kiowa.
“Or he has us,” Clint Cooley said. “Best to wait and catch him out in the open.”
“No, there’s an hour of daylight left and I want Kyle in irons and ready for a noose by nightfall,” Dan said, his chin set. He looked as stubborn as a government mule.
“We don’t have any irons,” Cooley said.
“Then I’ll truss him up with rope,” Dan said.
Cooley’s sigh was long on exasperation. “How do you want to play this, Deputy Sheriff Caine?”
“We’ll ride up to his camp, and I’ll order him to surrender in the name of the law,” Dan said.
“And then he’ll laugh and shoot you right off the back of your horse,” Cornelius Massey said.
Young Holt Peters said nothing and neither did Fish Lee. Estella Sweet looked nervous, and the Kiowa stood listening, his face like stone.
“I have my duty, Clint,” Dan said. “Not a legal duty, but a duty toward the Calthrop family and young Jenny still in their clutches. God knows what’s happened to her by now.”
“Then wait until tomorrow and do your duty,” Cooley said. “Stand off a hundred yards and kill him with a rifle shot and save a rope.”
“That would be an assassination. I want Kyle to face a legal hanging, him and the other guilty parties.”
“So we just walk up to his camp and arrest him?” Cooley said.
“Yes, that’s my intention. But not all of us, just you and Fish Lee,” Dan said. He looked around him, his gaze lingering on a fairly steep talus slope that rose from the flat and reached the lower level of the mountain. “This is a fair place to make camp,” Dan said. “Plenty of rock and brush to give us cover if we need it.”
“We’ll need it,” Fish Lee said.
“Perhaps not, if Kyle comes quietly.”
“He won’t,” Fish said.
“We don’t know that until we try, do we?” Dan said, irritated.
“Clay Kyle and his kind don’t surrender to anybody,” Fish Lee said.
“Then if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll shoot him,” Dan said.
“If he don’t shoot you first,” Fish said.
“A very likely occurrence,” Cooley said.
“I rode all this distance, was nearly hung, nearly shot to death, and damn near burned alive and now you expect me to just walk away from it,” Dan said.
“Nobody’s saying that,” Fish Lee said. “Use the Kiowa to spy on ol’ Clay, and when he moves, we ambush him and plug him.”
“From a safe distance,” Cooley said.
“I want him to hang,” Dan said.
“Dead is dead,” Cooley said. “Hanging is just another way of getting there.”
“But hanging is legal,” Dan said.
“So is a .44-40 bullet,” Cooley said.
Estella Sweet said, “Dan, you’re a brave man, but you’re no match for a shootist like Clay Kyle and probably not for any of the others who ride with him. Listen to Clint. Yes, execute Kyle the Calthrop murderer, but do it on your own terms. Don’t go toe to toe with a skilled gunman . . .”
“And expect to come out of it alive,” Fish Lee said.
“Cornelius, what do you think?” Dan said.
“My advice?” Massey said. “Listen to Cooley. I have a feeling he’s been up this road before.”
Cooley smiled and touched his hat. “Very perceptive of you, newspaperman. But trying to talk down a slowpoke who plans to brace a notoriously fast gun is a first.” His smile swung on Dan. “I saw the draw you made on James Duran. If he’d been serious, you’d be dead.”
“Damn it all, I can stand on my own two feet, take my hits, and shoot back,” Dan said.
“Yes, Deputy Caine, you can do that, but there’s no future in it,” Cooley said. “Is there?”
Dan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He could circle around and around about this and never get anywhere, like a blind mule in a grain mill. He knew all along that bringing Clay Kyle to justice would not be easy. Now it was shaping up to be a herculean task, like moving a mountain. He called to the Kiowa, and the man led his beautiful appaloosa to Dan’s mount. The Indian stood at Dan’s stirrup and looked up at him, his face like lead.
“Can you keep an eye on Clay Kyle and tell me when he moves out?” Dan said.
“I can do that,” the Kiowa said.
Dan managed a smile. “Thank you. I owe you.”
“You owe me nothing but wages,” the Kiowa said.
He turned, mounted his horse, and left at a walk, parting the gathering gloom.
After the Kiowa was gone from sight, Fish Lee said, “Someday, somebody is gonna put a bullet into that uppity Injun.”
“Don’t ever try it, Fish,” Cooley said. “If Clay Kyle is a demon, then the Kiowa is the devil himself. I look into his eyes, and all I see is a hundred different kinds of hell.”