“Hidin’ out. A few holed up across the creek.”
“Who’s over there?”
The bartender shrugged. “Maybe Macy can tell you. He’s in his office.” The KR, he found, had been taken. Several KR hands had been killed, but it was believed that Kilkenny had somehow saved Cain Brockman. The news gave Havalik no pleasure. Already there was an uncertainty among the Forty riders. The strange night attacks were having their effect, and a few of them were wondering if Jared Tetlow had not overreached himself. Yet Tetlow believed the situation in hand.
Within an hour after Havalik’s arrival in Horsehead, Jared rode into town sided by his two sons, Ben being with the big herd on the trail. They went at once to the Diamond Palace where they joined Havalik. A few minutes later four of the 4T riders appeared on the edge of town and rode along back streets and into the patch of woods that concealed a narrow bridge. Two more drifted into the Pinenut Saloon. Within an hour there were twenty-five men disposed about the town, filtering in so gradually that all remained unaware of any concerted movement. All but Harry Lott. Big, unkempt and surly, he prowled continually, and he saw things. Lott had nothing against Tetlow, but Horsehead was, he fancied, his town. His authority was being scorned.
Kill Havalik, he reasoned, and the backbone of Tetlow’s power would be broken. He was seated at a table in the Pinenut Saloon when he reached this decision. He shoved the bottle away from him and began to think. The scattered groups of 4T riders broke up and vanished and the town lay still. Harry Lott went up to his bed and turned in, resting before what was sure to come.
Dawn broke bright and lovely, but a few clouds hung over the mountains. The first riders in the street were Jared and Andy Tetlow and they rode straight down the street and across the bridge, drawing up before Blaine’s. Blaine, accompanied by Leal Macy, appeared on the porch. “I want to see that Riordan girl,” Tetlow said abruptly. “I want to make her an offer.”
“She’s not here, and I’m sure she will consider no suggestion of selling.”
“I’ll have her word for that!”
Cain Brockman limped into the doorway. He was wearing two guns. “She won’t be forced into no sale, Tetlow!”
The older man’s lips tightened with impatience. “No occasion for trouble. I’ll buy her place.”
“Like you did Carson’s and Carpenter’s?” Macy asked.
“What happened to them was their own fault.”
“You’re like a lot of others, Tetlow. You believe anything that is good for you is good for the country. You’re guided entirely by selfish motives.” Macy stepped to the edge of the porch. “Now let me tell you something. If you haven’t moved your cattle off the KR range within twenty-four hours, and if you haven’t made restitution to Mrs. Carpenter for damage to her property, I intend to telegraph the Territorial Governor as well as the United States Marshal.” Andy Tetlow pushed his horse forward. “Dad, we’re wastin’ time. Let’s burn the place around their ears.”
Jared Tetlow swung his horse and the two men rode back up the street and across the bridge. Phin sat his horse near the bridge, and as they passed he rode into the trees and started back.
Four riders waited in the trees back of the livery stable, and with these around him, Phin circled to the back door of Savory’s. Dismounting, they trooped in through the back door and took stations near the front windows. Savory’s was west of and corner across the street from Dolan’s and Doc Blame’s. Six Tetlow riders moved down the main street toward the bridge, and took station in the trees nearby. Dolan and Blaine were now covered from every approach. Harry Lott came down the stairs of the Westwater Hotel and stopped in the lobby. He had seen Dee Havalik standing on the boardwalk in front of the Diamond Palace. Lott eased his guns in their holsters and stepped out, closing the door behind him. He was cold sober and ready to make his play. He saw himself as no hero. He was the town marshal and trouble was breaking in his bailiwick and he was going to stop it.
He walked into the street and faced about. He was a hundred yards from Havalik when he started toward him, and he had covered thirty yards before Andy Tetlow saw him. At some word from Andy, Havalik turned. His face seemed to grow tighter and grayer. “Lott,” he said, “and he wants me.” Facing Lott he walked ten paces toward him. “Lookin’ for something, Harry?”
“Call in your boys, Dee! There’ll be no fighting today. I’m the law!” “You were the law.” Havalik shifted his position to put a big plate glass window behind him. The morning sun shone into that window. “Now you’re a dead man.” As he spoke he stepped off the walk, still keeping the window behind him. As he stepped down, he drew.
Harry Lott was fast and game, but he knew with immediate awareness that he was going to die. As his hands grasped the gun butts, the guns of Dee Havalik were coming into line.
Lott squinted against the glare. He heard the concussion of Havalik’s guns and something struck him a blow in the midsection. There was no pain. His draw completed, his gun lifted and blasted sound. The window behind Havalik crashed, but the gunman took a step nearer and fired again. His third shot crossed Lett’s second. Lott felt himself struck again and his eyes blurred. Desperately, he knew he had missed. Havalik’s figure seemed to waver before him, and Lott braced himself, trying to steady his aim. Phin Tetlow leaped his horse from behind the barber shop, gun up, ready to chop down with a shot. Lott faced squarely around and shot Phin twice in the stomach, then swung back and took his last shot at Havalik and missed again. Still standing, he used the border shift to exchange guns and peered through the blurring haze toward Havalik. “You killed the wrong man!” Havalik yelled. “You crazy?”
“Couldn’t see you, saw him.” The voice seemed to issue from a great distance.
“One rat’s as good as another.”
Havalik shot again and Lott tottered forward, his gun blasting into the earth. He hit the street on his face, rolled over and tried to get to his feet, shooting as fast as he could trigger his shots. All went wild. One broke a window in the Diamond Palace, one buried in the wall within inches of Jared Tetlow, and then Harry Lott sprawled in the street, his buck teeth biting the dust of Horsehead, his guns empty.
Shaken by his near escape and the shooting of Phin, Jared Tetlow crossed the street. Phin was dead.
Suddenly, Tetlow felt old and lost. Four tall sons and now two of them killed. A bad luck country. Two dead and one disloyal. It was like him not to consider that Ben had his own intelligence, his own loyalties. Harry Lott, dying, had struck out. Unable to kill the man he wanted, he chose the next best. At Blaine’s the shooting held them still and listening. Yet news passes all boundaries and within a few minutes they knew.
South of town a rider rode up Butler’s Wash and with a shielded field glass studied the cattle on the KR. A big steer with wide horns was not far from him, and only a few yards away was another. Kilkenny rode from his shelter and hazed the steers back into a cul de sac among the boulders. The grass was rich there and they would stay. He studied the other steers, and sometime later captured another.
At the Blaine house Shorty stuck his head into the kitchen and grinned at Laurie. “How’s for some coffee?”
“You’ll have to get wood. The doctor keeps it in that shed near the stable.” “Huh!” Shorty was disgusted. “Every time you open your mouth to a woman she puts you to work!”
He opened the door and a bullet slammed the door jamb within inches of his face. Shorty hit the steps on his belly, then scrambled back into the room. He got to his feet and glanced sheepishly at Laurie. “Looks like I won’t get my coffee,” he said.
Dee and Macy had been drawn by the shot. “Looks like we’re bottled up;” Shorty told them. “Two of ‘em out in the trees. Maybe more.” Dolan came into the kitchen. “From upstairs I could see a rider skirting Comb Ridge, high up. Might have been Kilkenny.”
“Havalik went after Kilkenny and Nita with four men, and he came back with two … looks like he found them.”
“Tetlow thought they were here so they must have gotten away,” Laurie said. “I know Kilkenny has a place in the mountains. He bought supplies and a pack horse.”