held a different kind of beauty. And yet inside him was the same strange feeling he'd had when the hack rocked down the muddy slope from the prison. Not the warm flush of eagerness he'd looked forward to, but something alien he didn't quite understand. Prison, probably. It had a way of changing a man and making things look different afterward.
Movement over at the north end of the old parade ground caught his eyes as Joe Stovers, on a tired horse, came along the road bitten out a long time ago by army wagon tires. Tom Harrow strode alongside Stovers' horse, the two in animated conversation. From the back porch of the boarding house Carlotta and Clara Thompson saw them and began walking along the trail to the gap in the wall. Kerrigan, his view blocked by the office building, didn't see them.
Well, this was as good a time as any to settle a few things. Then he'd recover the red horse and be on his way. He slid along the manger-lined wall and came up under cover of Big Red, contentedly munching hay.
Joe Stovers' angry voice, obviously lashing at Harrow, ceased as the two men came up to the little group and the sheriff swung his short, bulky weight from his horse.
Stovers dropped the reins to the ground and grunted wearily. Then he said, still angry, 'I wasn't worried about Lew burning your damned town. Well, not too much anyhow. Not as long as there weren't any women and kids left. Now I guess it doesn't matter. Where's that red horse those crummy men of yourn brought in?'
'He's right here, Joe,' Kerrigan replied, and stepped into view around the animal's coppery hip. 'I came back to get him.'
'Lew!' Kitty screamed and took a faltering step toward him, and then drew back as she saw he wasn't looking at her.
His eyes were upon Tom Harrow, whose face had lost color.
'What is all this anyhow, Lew?' Joe Stovers demanded. 'What's all this about you getting caught by 'Paches and burned? What kind of cock-and-bull story is this, LeRoy? Answer up!'
'Hold it, Joe,' Kerrigan said. 'Loco's band did close in on me right after LeRoy pulled out with Ace Saunders and Jeb Donnelly. They were right in thinking it was trail's end for me. But as luck would have it, the Apache I celled with had made his way back and rejoined Loco's band of broncos.'
He flicked his cold glance first to the hard-faced driver, Pete, and to LeRoy, who was smiling lazily, waiting his chance when Kerrigan's attention was diverted.
'In case Tom hasn't told you,' Kerrigan said thinly to the sheriff, 'the only reason he bought my freedom from prison was because I'd been in a cell for two years with that same Indian, Joe. Tom was pretty certain Kadoba had told me the location of more diggings richer than Dalyville. He guessed right, too. I know where there's another Dalyville, and Tom was desperate to get his hands on it. When I broke loose from Yuma he put LeRoy and the rest of the pack on my trail. Three of those men are dead, including Stubb Holiday, who slipped south and joined them. I came after my horse, and to kill the others.'
He felt more than saw the moment LeRoy chose, a shoulder stabbing downward as the horse buyer flashed his hand to his gun. He and the man Pete. Amid the smashing roars of big pistols Kitty began to scream and then screamed again and again. Kerrigan felt the butt of the .44 jarring hard against his calloused hand as he lined shot after shot waist-high at two men writhing in faint wisps of coarse grain powder vapor. He caught two flashes of orange fire spurting from LeRoy's side but felt no pain. A third flash came from the gun of the driver, Pete; slanted groundward as the man fell.
LeRoy was still on his feet as the hammer of Kerrigan's .44 responded with a click on an empty chamber. Slowly the horse thief dropped to his knees; his head jerked back and his chin came up and he looked straight into Kerrigan's eyes. He tried to nod toward Harrow.
'Finish him—off, Kerrigan!' he cried out hoarsely, and a gush of red came to his mouth. 'He sent me to hell and—I want to—' He couldn't finish the rest of it. His head dropped down and red flowed from the corners of his mouth as he fell forward to lie curled up on his right side.
A shrill laugh broke from Harrow. Wheeling, he snatched the gun from the sheath at Joe Stovers' heavy right hip. He didn't use it, but sprang away and jerked from inside his coat a pistol with a long, thin barrel. It was the same weapon Kerrigan had used to smash in the jaw of Jeb Donnelly in the Escondido Saloon that morning down in Yuma.
'Stand fast, Joe, or I'll shoot you, so help me!' he ordered. He looked at Kerrigan. 'Five of them, Lew. I counted those shots, fast as they were; and a man like you would never carry a live one under the hammer. Your gun's empty. It's my turn now—
'I could have made you rich, Lew. Both of us rich! But you wouldn't have it that way. You had to play it your way and now I've got all the trumps. As long as things had to end this way, I might as well tell you that I planned for you to kill Buck Havers.'
'Why?' Lew Kerrigan asked in surprise. 'I hardly knew you by sight at that time.'
Harrow's lips beneath the clipped mustache twisted into a cruel smile that moved the long sideburns; the irrepressible gloat of a man who had known many women.
'Why?' he repeated softly. 'Because of Kitty. Our long-jawed friend, Buck Havers, was just thick-brained enough to have Wild Bill Hickok ambitions after he became a twenty-five-dollar per month 'night marshal' here in Pirtman. I told him,' he laughed pleasantly, 'that you were a Texas gun fighter, and he sicked easy. Eagerly, I'd say. I knew you'd kill him, and I was temporarily in need of the territorial reward Joe would have to put on your head. I saw that you were guided to my place. By merest chance, old Bear Paw Daly came by on his way to you with news of the strike I was certain was Adams' Lost Diggings. I got the reward. I got the gold. And I got Kitty.' He grinned at Stovers.
'I suspected some of it,' Stovers grunted. 'Just keep on talking a noose, Tom.'
'There's nothing more to say now, I guess, except I won't ask for the reward this time. He's got an empty chamber under the hammer of his gun, and I'm going to kill him. And if I have to kill you, too, Joe, I'm quite prepared to do so.'
'You made just one mistake, Harrow,' Lew Kerrigan said coolly. 'There's no empty chamber under the hammer.'
Kitty let out a sudden wail of self-pity and fled toward the corner of the building. Only then did Kerrigan see Carlotta and Clara Thompson standing by it. He glanced at Carlotta, wondering what she would think of him now. He'd forced the man she was engaged to marry to expose his rotten soul, and, being a woman, she'd probably hate the man responsible for bringing hurt to her.
'I never thought I'd catch you with a dead chamber under the hammer,' Harrow laughed and raised his pistol.
'You haven't,' came the quiet reply. 'I said there's a live one. But it's in one of the .44-40 repeating rifles you sold Loco. It's lined right at your head. Take a good look at it, damn you!'
He called sharply to the Indian and spoke something none of them understood. Forty feet away the Apache, naked to the waist, stepped into view as though he'd come up out of the ground. Kadoba slithered forward like a dark animal in a half crouch, the Winchester leveled.
Joe Stovers said sharply, 'Hold off that damned Injun, Lew, while I get back my gun.'
'Don't touch it!' Kerrigan snapped sharply.
Stovers swung around and stared. 'You going to try disarming a sheriff, too?'
'I just don't want to risk you getting killed by an Apache with a nervous trigger finger. For two years he's been under the guns and clubs of guards wearing boots and broad-brimmed hats. To him you're a lawman anxious to put him back in Yuma to hang. He didn't kill Tom just now, because I'd ordered him to hold his fire no matter what happened.'
'Then get him outa sight quick!' snapped the sheriff. 'I see men looking over this way, and if they see an Apache after this bad scare—'
But Kadoba had already moved, disappearing around the horses under the shed. Kerrigan handed the sheriff the weapon he'd taken from Harrow's limp hand and tossed the pistol with the thin barrel a dozen feet away. Instinctively he opened the loading gate of the .44 and began to punch out five empty shells. He didn't look at the two huddled bodies. He felt all sick inside.
Two more dead men, and Kitty writing him letters while she'd been in Dalyville with Harrow. He wanted more than ever to get this thing over with and leave Arizona forever.
