Kerrigan removed Stubb Holiday's saddle and tossed it aside, cinching his own saddle on the back of the dead man's horse. Kadoba came up leading his pied pony and eased himself into the rawhide kak with its soft sheepskin pad.
To Kerrigan's inquiring look, he said proudly, "I go with you so other Apaches no kill. Loco say you no hunt gold. You hunt gold, I kill you."
"This thing I understand," Kerrigan replied in very polite Apache.
He was hiding a grimace of annoyance as he swung into leather. Somehow he had to get word to Fort Whipple in a hurry as to the approximate whereabouts of Loco and his long-sought band of butchers. Nor did he want any escaped convict killer Apache Indian with him when he returned to civilization. God forbid! He was already as good as hanged if Joe Stovers ever got the drop on him again.
And if Kadoba should be with him when Joe made the attempt, a wild Apache knew only one way in which to repay a debt of gratitude: lever that .44-40 Harrow had sold them, and when it was empty go in beside Kerrigan with a knife.
Sometime between three and four that afternoon their horses made the last steep climb up the side of a ridge they had been skirting and came out on top. Kerrigan and the slim Apache pulled up and looked down upon the green forest below, through which a single brown thread wound its way crookedly along a half-mile stretch of partly hidden buildings.
The walls and buildings of the old fort stood out clear. And so did the top of Clara Thompson's sprawling establishment not far from the headquarters office.
Kerrigan led the way down the steep declivity, both he and the Apache quartering their horses back and forth. Halfway down he pulled up and bent to look at deep hoof marks in the soft carpeting dropped from the pines. Kadoba glanced once and held up four fingers. Kerrigan nodded.
Three riders and one led horse that would be Big Red. The three probably were over there cleaned up and comfortable after gorging themselves on Clara's food. Who else would be over there? Kitty? Where were Harrow and the woman he probably had married by now? And where would cagey old Joe Stovers be about now?
Lew Kerrigan had ridden a few hundred miles to find out the answer.
"Come on," he said to the Indian, and led the way down under an overhead blanket of green branches.
CHAPTER TEN
Carlotta Wilkerson came out on the back porch of Clara's place and once again looked out over the area of the old fort and to the mass of green up there a half mile away. The sun, slanting into the big bend of what now was named Thompson Canyon in honor of Captain Thompson, caught her eyes and she shaded them with a hand. She went back into the kitchen and smiled at Clara's understanding look.
Judge Eaton finished off the last of a slab of canned peach pie, grunted contentedly and rose with coffee cup in one hand. He was a man of sixty, an even six feet in height, with a face so cadaverous that both his bony cheeks and temples were round, sunken spots. He wiped at his greying mustaches and ran a hand over the faint knot of belly beneath the long black coat of wool broadcloth.
"The Lord gives all of us certain gifts, Clara, and yours is one of the greatest," he rumbled. "I wonder if by chance Joe is back from Dalyville yet… Think he went home first?"
"Why don't you go over and see?" Clara suggested. "If you don't, I'm afraid there won't be any pie left for supper."
He took that as a compliment, which it wasn't, drained away the rest of the warm coffee and wiped at his mustaches. "A good suggestion, Clara. He'll want to know the details of Kerrigan's death today at the hands of Indians. Very regrettable that he should come to such an end, but the Lord can be terrible in His vengeance upon such a man. He killed young Havers right in front of your porch, Clara, and for that I should have sentenced him to hang instead of showing mercy. But I listened to the voice of Joe Stovers—and now see what it has brought. One dead man down in the lava beds and two more dead at Kerrigan's hand this very day. I was weak and because of that weakness I have three dead men resting upon my troubled conscience. But the Lord is strong and He showed the black soul of the murderer no such mercy by delivering him into the hands of the Indians."
Carlotta looked over at Clara after he was gone, her mouth a little white around the corners. "A woman can stand only so much, Clara, and if that gluttonous old hypocrite had rolled one more sonorous quotation about the Creator I don't think I could have stood it. Clara, couldn't there be any hope that Lew Kerrigan escaped?"
"I guess I'm like you," Clara said and picked up the empty cup and plate. "I just can't believe it. And yet I know what must have happened if Loco got him back there this morning. I saw the evidence of it when they brought my husband home one afternoon about this time, Carlotta, and broke the news that tore my own small world apart. In the years since then such butchery has been an almost weekly occurrence in this and New Mexico Territory."
Carlotta tried to smile understandingly at this proud woman who still lived alone in a wild frontier country where women, certainly such as she, were so few. She wanted to put a woman's thoughts into words and ask the big question in her mind—if Clara loved Lew Kerrigan. Would she have married him if Kitty had not come along? Carlotta Wilkerson thought almost fiercely to herself, I would have! That sniveling little snip upstairs crying her eyes out over Kerrigan's death wouldn't have got him away from me!
It had been a day with repercussions that would rock Arizona Territory, from the Governor's mansion to the office of the Commanding General of the district in Winslow. Loco's last raid and subsequent butchery of five Mexican sheepherders had exploded three weeks before far to the southeast; and after three terrified men, leading a big red horse, had come spurring in with more bad news Pirtman was a silent, deserted settlement with armed men behind the barred doors of their houses.
Harrow and his men were in town somewhere, a rider on a good horse having been sent north to tell Joe Stovers what had happened. He could withdraw his guard of men from the mining camp now. Lew Kerrigan wouldn't be keeping his promise to burn it. Kitty Anderson was in her room upstairs, weeping hysterically into a pillow over the supposed death of Kerrigan.
She'd tried to explain her effusive greeting to Harrow when he arrived in the coach with Carlotta, and that had been something all of them would remember. Harrow, stony-faced with anger, had pushed the girl away. Clara Thompson had been a witness to it all, and somehow she felt glad it had happened that way.
She liked Carlotta, and the thought of such a woman following Kitty into Harrow's home had strained to the speaking point her natural reticence concerning other people's lives. But from the looks of things now, the calm-eyed beauty from the South had made her own decision before the meeting, and unfortunate Lew Kerrigan would never have to find out the truth about the woman upstairs.
A faint sound came from the dining room and Kitty appeared in the doorway. She'd combed into loose waves the long flow of yellow hair and tied it back with a blue ribbon. Except for her eyes she was as beautiful as ever, with a full, curved figure men couldn't keep their eyes from when she walked into a room.
Small wonder, Clara thought, that a lonely man like Lew Kerrigan would have forgotten his close ties of friendship with her when Kitty, so alone and so helpless, came to Pirtman.