The man before him was the same sort, Blaine admitted that. Having once seen Kilkenny to know him, one was not likely to forget. He was like an edged blade, sharp, clean, and strong, yet resilient. Yes, that was it, he was resilient. Yet he was more, too. The man had character. Curiously, he wondered about his background. This man a killer—what had started that? Badmen looking for trouble and a naturally quick hand and eye? Probably.
Kilkenny turned restlessly. He was never very comfortable inside a house. That might come, but not now. “All right,” he said, as though just responding to the message from Nita, “I will go see her, but not right away. I’ve too much to do and,” he added quietly, “I know this thing too well. Take your mind off it for an instant and you’re shot full of holes. These boys are playing for keeps.” “I’d like to know what Jared Tetlow is hatching right now. You can make up your mind it’s something.”
“I agree.”
Kilkenny picked up his hat and turned swiftly to the door. “Someone coming. I’m going.”
Almost before Doc Blaine could adjust himself, Kilkenny was gone. And Doc had not even heard the door close. Or seen it open. There was a sound of voices, then boot steps and a spur rattled. An authoritative fist pounded on the door and Blaine went to it. Three roughly dressed men pushed their way into the room. Doc knew them instantly. They were the pursuers of Kilkenny. Havalik was in the lead. “Got a wounded man, Doc. Take care of him.”
He turned swiftly and surveyed the room, then walked through into the kitchen.
“You alone?”
“Yes,” Doc’s voice was sharp, “and stay the hell out of my kitchen, Havalik! You’re here with a man for treatment, not making an inspection of the furniture!”
Havalik whirled, white hot on the instant. “Yuh talk to me that way?” “To you or any man. You’ve a wounded man here and that wound’s in bad shape. You stay in here and mind your own business and I’ll tend to mine. I won’t lift a hand until you do.”
Havalik was ugly and he took a quick step forward. Calmly, Doc picked up a scalpel. “This is my business, Havalik. I could cut you open as quick as you could shoot me at this range. And I’d cut where you’d bleed to death mighty fast.”
Havalik stopped, staring at the doctor. There was conviction in Blaine’s voice, and it surprised Havalik to see that he meant it. He drew back. “Furthermore,” Blaine continued, “this community values my hide. They need me here. There’s not another doctor anywhere within two hundred miles. If anything happens to me they’d lynch you, Forty or no Forty. And before this is over, you may need me yourself.”
“What’s that mean?” Havalik demanded angrily.
“It means—“ Doc was working swiftly and surely. It was a nasty wound. “It means,” he repeated, “that you’re carrying a gun and hunting trouble. It’s a combination that gets every man in the end. It will get you. I doubt if you live out the month.”
Dee Havalik turned away with a snarl. The driving urge to kill was riding him but deep inside the doctor’s words rang a bell. Was it because he perceived the truth? Or because he had been accustomed since childhood to take a doctor’s word for things? It made him surly, and he walked out and slammed the door, starting up the street toward the Pinenut.
Dolan stood on the steps of his place and watched him go, then he stepped off into the darkness and went down the path to the rear of his establishment. He walked swiftly to the edge of the trees, then stopped and said carefully, yet aloud, “I could furnish a good horse if a man needed a rest for his own mount, a good horse with bottom and speed.”
“I could use a horse like that.” Kilkenny stepped to the very edge of the woods.
“Busy place around here, Dolan.”
“Yeah,” Dolan said dryly, “too busy. One of that outfit that was chasin’ you looked in on me. What have you been doin’ to that crowd?” “They wanted to go for a ride,” Kilkenny smiled, “so I took ‘em for one.”
“The man that hit my place was half dead. He must have drunk a gallon of water. He said he hadn’t had a decent drink, not more than enough to wet his lips in two days.”
“Dolan, how many boys can you muster? I mean boys with sand?”
“Enough. What do you want to do?”
“Stampede the Forty herd.”
Dolan was silent, but his eyes glinted. That would be hitting them where it hurt, and right at home.
“When?” he asked then.
“Tomorrow night. They are bunching them for another push toward the KR. I’d like to run them right back over their own camp.”
“That might be tough. They’ve too many hands.”
“I’ve got a plan. It calls for roping a half dozen of their steers.” Kilkenny suddenly was tired, more tired than he had believed possible. “I’d need about four good, solid men.”
“You’ll get them. Where?”
“That lightning struck cottonwood in Whiskers Draw. Nine tomorrow night.” “They’ll be there.” Dolan stepped closer to him. “Man, you’re all in. You’d better get some sleep. You’d better sleep until then.” Without awaiting a reply, he turned and walked to a narrow gate in the corral, a very convenient gate for getting a horse into the trees without it being seen. “I saddled this gray when I first saw you. He’s cornfed. He’ll go all day and all night and was mountainbred.”
“Good, and thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Get some rest.”
When he was gone, Dolan walked around to the steps again and lighted a cigar.
Havalik was just leaving with his men. One man wore the white of a bandage. “What yuh mean?” this.man was saying. “Yuh think Kilkenny was in that house before us?”
“I know he was!” That was Havalik.
“Think he was hurt?”
Havalik turned and his voice was low and fierce, yet clearly heard by Dolan in the desert air. “How could he be hurt? Who would hurt him? Did you see him? Did I? Are you crazy?”
“What about the Doc?”
“Leave him to me.” There was icy promise in Havalik’s voice. “Not now, but wait. All of this town that works against me or Forty. I’ll take care of them once Forty’s in the saddle.”
“Dolan’s place is right back there. Let’s go back and bust it up and get Dolan.”
Dolan took the cigar from his mouth and looked at the end of it. “Later. He’s got men with him. We’ll get him when he’s alone and nobody will care. Who cares about a crook?”
Dolan put the cigar in his teeth. “That’s right,” he muttered. “Who does?” He was the vulnerable one. Early and Blaine were respected citizens. Kilkenny was elusive. Only Dolan could be hit without fear of retaliation. He could always, he reflected, go to Tetlow and make a deal. He chuckled with wry humor. That was the one thing impossible for him. He could rustle cattle, plan a bank or stage robbery or hide a wanted man, but it was not in him to betray a friend or sell out a cause.
The dappled gray Dolan had given him was all horse. Kilkenny rode southwest out of town, dipped into a tangle of washes and then turned south until he finally camped with the battlements of Comb Ridge towering above him. He rolled into his blankets nearer dead than alive.
His tight muscles let go their hold, and clogged with weariness. He slept. The long hours of riding, the constant alertness, all left him and he sank deeper and deeper into a sleep of utter exhaustion. Over the hills men rode and horses moved and cattle lowed gently in the night air. Stars faded and a fault gray crept up the east, barred from him by the gigantic wall of the Ridge, a bulwark that lay across his path to the KR.
He stirred in his sleep, then relaxed. Some faint stimulus made him stir again and a violent need within him culminated suddenly in his eyes. They snapped open and for a time he lay still, unable to bring his thoughts into focus. It was a voice that did it for him. A girl’s voice.
“You must have been very tired, Lance.”
Unbelieving, he sat up. Nita sat a dozen feet away, her rifle across her knees, her lips widening in the quick, amused smile he knew so well. “Where … where did you come from?”
“Should I be poetic, Lance? Should I say that I’m your past returned to haunt you? No, I’ll tell the truth. I was restless last night. I could not stay in the house any longer so I gave them all the slip. I caught Glory—remember my black filly? I saddled her and rode west. Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been worried by this Ridge—I wanted to see what lay over here, so I came over just before daybreak and what do I find—you.”