A Gunman Rode North

harness of the six fast-trotting horses jangled, the vehicle rocking gently on the thorough braces of thick, laminated leather. It was rear-heavy with Carlotta's baggage; and Harrow, too, was abandoning Dalyville.

He'd reminded himself all night long that he was a captain during the War Between the States.

Therefore, as a military man of sorts, it was necessary to make a strategic retreat and regather his forces for an all-out attempt to corner Lew Kerrigan and give him the choice of revealing the new source of Apache gold or being returned to Yuma to be hanged.

An act of desperation, yes, but one that easily could succeed. He'd regain his fortune and sweep away the doubts causing his fiancee to be strangely aloof these past few days, and the wedding would not be above the gold-stripped gulch at Dalyville. The wedding would be in the Governor's own mansion at the state capital.

The greedy politician owed him that much for the twenty thousand in gold he'd accepted to free Lew Kerrigan from prison!

Above the steady clop-clop of the cavalry horses behind the rocking coach Carlotta spoke to him. Her words were cool, almost casual.

'Thomas, I have decided to postpone our wedding for the present.'

'Of course, my dear Carlotta.' He smiled and laid a reassuring hand on her arm. 'This whole thing has gotten out of hand. I tried to help a man in prison and he's turned on me like a mad dog. I want you to take up quarters at Clara's place for the present, where you'll be perfectly safe. I'm taking these four men and riding south in the morning.'

'Why, may I ask?'

'What else but to find Kerrigan and try to reason with him again before he rides in here with a gun in his hand? I wish I had sent for Kitty. He loved her—that is, as much as a man like him can love a beautiful woman. I should have had her waiting for him in a buggy when he stepped through the gates of the prison at Yuma. After two years without seeing a woman, it might have made him think of something else besides wanting to kill somebody.'

How he wished it! If only he had done that, instead of bringing Carlotta by way of the state capital in Tucson, to show her off to the governor and other prominent people while he handed over twenty thousand for 'campaign expenses.'

'Now should you have, Thomas?' she asked, and seemed actually amused at some thought back of her lead-grey eyes. 'You've been very vague about her, you know. In fact, embarrassed when people up in the gulch asked about her. I did ask Clara—'

'And what did she tell you?' he snapped at her before he could stop himself.

Her voice came with warning sweetness, something utterly alien to this calm-eyed beauty he had completely misunderstood until now. 'As I managed to put together the few bits of information pried out of Clara, she screamed hysterically when Lew was arrested and brought to trial here in Pirtman by Judge Eaton.'

'Lew?' he cut in, uncontrollably angry now. 'Since when has it become 'Lew'?'

'When Mr. Kerrigan was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor, Thomas, I believe your fair Kitty was hysterical for all of two days, while patient Clara carried cold packs for her eyes. I also believe the sheriff, who, I understand, is a United States Marshal appointed by Judge Eaton, hardly had taken him away when you took Kitty under your fatherly wing to the new strike and gave her employment.'

'Now, look here, Carlotta—' he began ragingly.

'How cruel and callous could you have been? Did you help her write the letters to him to make certain nothing of her possibly stricken conscience was revealed? Did the two of you together read his undoubted heartfelt replies, written from a dungeon? From the clothing she left behind in that architectural monstrosity, you must have been as generous with her as you were with me when you gave me the money to replace my own threadbare wardrobe.'

She laughed softly at the stunned surprise on his suave features, now turning dark with outraged anger. It was Carlotta's turn to pat Harrow on the sleeve, reassuringly.

'Don't look so shocked, Thomas, that the cold woman you bought for display on the frontier has a normal woman's instincts for love. I overlooked your evasions as to details of the great military battles fought during the Civil War. You're not the only one of that particular breed. I also managed to overlook your insufferable vanity at thinking I could love a man like you, my dear Thomas.'

'Then why did you do it?' he burst out. His arm under her fingers was trembling. Women had always been conquests. He wasn't used to a knife.

'Why? I thought you might have suspected the answer. A once-proud family destroyed and scattered during the great war. Poverty and rags during that conflict and little more than proud poverty in the years that followed. It's not easy to live as an old, old maiden of twenty-five, scorned by the townspeople as being too proud to accept the inevitable and marry into a life of near poverty. You were tired of an empty-headed mistress like Kitty and wanted a lady to grace that cavelike monstrosity in Dalyville. I wanted anything away from what I had. But after I arrived here, and found out a few details of your rather sordid past, I discovered that my supposedly thick skin was still very, very thin, Thomas.'

'I see.' He turned on her, cold and hard now. 'And just what do you propose to do now, my dear Carlotta,' he almost sneered.

'I still have the down payment you made on my purchase,' she answered him quite calmly. 'Aside from the real necessity of new clothes to replace my wardrobe of made-over dresses from my mother and grandmother, most of the twenty thousand you gave me before you left for New York is carefully packed away in goldback currency in my baggage. I have hinted to Clara Thompson that I might wish to purchase the place she built with her husband's savings. She's become restless, living too long near old memories, and might go away to Texas and start a new life, as I might do here. But I wish to see Lew Kerrigan first. It is my feeling the money you thrust upon me might rightfully belong to him. If he refuses to accept it from me, then I'll talk seriously with Clara.'

She moved away from him to the far side of the softly cushioned seat in the rear of the coach, and he knew he had irrevocably lost this woman he'd never possessed from the beginning. Her next words confirmed the bitter gall of the truth.

'And now, Thomas, will you please oblige me by climbing up to the seat with the driver? I wish to be alone, to enjoy a sudden uplift of feeling I never thought could happen. And you can do little good in here if we're attacked by veritable swarms of the Apaches, whom I understand you're suspected of having provided with arms and ammunition before you became wealthy and respectable—now could you?'

He wrenched savagely at the door and clambered up on top, ignoring the questioning looks in the eyes of his three heavily armed guards. He slid into the seat beside the driver and scowled.

'Pete,' he said, looking straight ahead, 'you heard what Joe Stovers said about Kerrigan. Hannifer and Ace Saunders tipped their hands, and Kerrigan turned on them like a damned Apache. If he gets through to Pirtman— and that's the first place he'll come—somebody is going to get killed.'

'You don't want him alive any more, huh?' Pete Orr asked.

'Out of the question now, Pete. He's a wolf with a taste for blood. Mine and any of you who used to be with me up at the old place.'

'How much in it for me? Same as the state put on before? Five hundred?'

'Five hundred to any of you.'

'He'd spot the red coach under the sheds at the old fort first thing. He'd slip in that way to get to Miz Thompson's place. I guess I'll play it from that angle.'

'Good! Just make sure you get him, and don't worry about Joe Stovers. Judge Eaton is in Pirtman today, but we still might have to kill ourselves a sheriff before this day is out.'

'Things are that bad, eh?'

'They could get that bad, Pete.'

'Suits me. I haven't forgot that Stovers arrested me up in Dalyville in Sam Blaze Face's place for shooting a damned miner. It ain't been the same since you got rich, Tom. I still prefer the old hangout up in the back country. Nothing to do but handle some of the horses an' guns LeRoy ran in from California. Play cards, plenty of good whiskey, and with a few Indian and Mex gals around to make a man feel at home.'

The coach whipped on down the road to the outskirts of the first few houses among the evergreen trees and here the troopers left it and began the return patrol back to Dalyville and their temporary camp in the mountains. Pete Orr wheeled the six horses up with a flourish before the long frontier veranda of Clara Thompson's place. The