The man was rotten to the core, but was his record to be compared to five dead men strung along a trail several hundred miles long? Killed by a man now branded an ex-convict and gun fighter?
Now that she'd had time to think, it looked as though she were viewing him in that light. Trying to save the life of an evil man at the hands of one still more evil. He drank the warm coffee and rose and brushed at the whisker stubble that made his mouth look so suddenly unfriendly.
"I don't happen to be noble either, Miss Wilkerson," he said quietly. "I'm traveling along a road where there is no turning back. The man I know as a Confederate deserter killed an old one-armed fellow for his share of a gold strike. He sent me to the pen and got my share. I swore I'd destroy him and burn the town he built."
"Haven't you already destroyed him?" she asked gently. "Better than killing?"
He shook his head and went into the dining room. Clara said almost cheerfully, "Everything storm proof, Lew. Joe can handle things over in town, and Tom's men wouldn't dare fire on a house with women in it. Now how about some good food?"
"Where's Kitty's room?" he asked her.
"It's—upstairs," she said faintly. "The one on the southeast corner."
"Thanks," he said, and moved into the parlor, which showed the hard effects of stage travelers during the two-year boom. He disappeared on moccasined feet and Clara found the other woman beside her.
"Why?" Carlotta whispered. "For what reason would he go to her, Clara?"
"I don't know, my dear. He might feel that after prison and five dead men…"
Kerrigan moved soundlessly on the worn carpeting. He was almost to Kitty's door when another beside it opened behind him and a man's voice, barely audible, said, "Hold it, Kerrigan. Turn slow and don't try anything."
Kerrigan turned and looked into the muzzle of the six-shooter in Ace Saunders' slim hand; saw the odd, twisted smile on the dark, handsome face.
"Seems like we're always meeting in front of stores or in hotel hallways," Saunders remarked softly, keeping his voice down. "No matter what I got to do, I'm glad you got loose from that war party of Apache bucks. The farther away we got from them the more panicky I got."
"I know the feeling, Saunders. Sort of like a hangover, with a bad case of shakes afterward. It's sheer luck I didn't burn. Where do we go this time? Back to Tom, I suppose."
"I wanted to go back and get you. If Jeb and Hannifer had backed my play, we'd have split that war party wide open. A few flying shots would have scattered them like quail."
"But you came on and waited here for me?"
Saunders nodded and casually slid the .45 into its sheath. It was a newly developed weapon, only recently put on the market by Colt, and Kerrigan thought, It's too heavy and long for a man like him. He should have a .44 on a lighter frame with a shorter barrel.
"That's right," Saunders replied. "I was strolling back from the saloon over there along the road. I saw you ride in with the Indian and slip into the shed. When Pete Orr didn't make it collecting the five hundred Harrow promised to pay us all, I slipped in through the front door here and hid. I knew you'd be over."
Kerrigan studied the dark, youthful face and found himself puzzled. The man had been in the party that had been trailing Kerrigan ever since he had left Yuma. Saunders saw the question in Lew Kerrigan's eyes.
"I've got just one question to ask you, Kerrigan. You going in there to get righteous with Kitty?"
Kerrigan shook his head. "I'm in no position to get righteous with anybody."
"I'm glad. It just saved your life. I was listening downstairs just now when you told the Wilkerson woman—she's a real beauty, ain't she?— about travelin' along a road you couldn't turn back on. Things just naturally happen to people sometimes. Like they happened to Kitty. She wasn't happy with Tom—I could see that. Kitty wasn't bad. You were in the pen for life and she was just lonely, with nobody to turn to. That's about all I got to say, Kerrigan. Maybe I'm on one of them roads you were talking about a little while ago. I can't turn back either. I'm not in Tom's pay any more. I'm just a gent who led another gent named Stubb Holiday along a six-year trail he sometimes didn't want to go. He didn't want to go up on that ridge alone either, because he was afraid of you. I made him go. Make your peace with Kitty, Kerrigan."
He went down the stairs loudly and into the kitchen, to grin good-humoredly at Clara's surprised look. Kitty's door opened at the noise. Her eyes were wet. A look of shame and humiliation came into them as she saw Kerrigan.
"What do you want of me now, Lew?" she whispered.
"I wanted to talk with you, of course, Kitty," he said gently.
She opened the door wider and stood aside and then closed it behind him. The bed was rumpled, one of the pillows twisted into a dampened ball. She came and stood beside him and then reached up a hand to touch the uncut hair at his temples.
"Tom said you were hard and mean the way you killed Buck so quick. Why… you're not that way at all, Lew," she said, a new note of wonder in her voice as she sank down on the edge of the bed. He seated himself beside her, and she touched him again as though she still couldn't believe it.
"I couldn't stop writing you letters, Lew, and at night I cried about me and about you down there in prison. It got so bad Tom made the warden send back my letters. He said you were in for life. And then he wanted to take me back East where I belonged. Lew, did I do something so terribly bad?"
"I suppose it would all depend upon what kind of people look at things, Kitty. I expect my viewpoint would be different from, say Judge Eaton's or Joe Stovers'."
"You mean they think I'm bad—not like Clara, who was married to her husband?"
"And Miss Wilkerson, who was raised a lady, she might think differently from me."
"Clara never said a single word of reproof after I went to Dalyville and went to work for Tom. That's the way she is. But I don't care what anybody else in the world thinks about me any more. I just want to have you say what you feel, Lew."
"Take a look at my right hand, Kitty," he said, and opened it to her, palm up. "A gun in that hand has killed six men here in Arizona. I've got quite a lot of mud on me to be wiping it off others."
"There were others in Texas, Lew?"
"Five brothers in Texas, who tried to kill my father and shot my mother to death by accident. They're all dead. I've no right to censure you, Kitty, any more than I've a right to censure Harrow for assuming another name. I've got the blood of eleven dead men on my hands and Kerrigan isn't my real name."
Her hand slid inside his and she looked up with hope in her eyes. "You mean I'm not like Clara and Miss Wilkerson downstairs and you're not like Joe Stovers? That we're two of a kind? Is that what you came to tell me? If it is, I'll go anywhere you want, Lew."
"I want you to go back East, Kitty," he told her quietly. "You don't belong out here alone. That's why I came up. I might not get out of Pirtman alive, and even if I do, I'll still have to run for it. When I went to prison Joe Stovers came back from Yuma and sold off the hundred head of cattle I had up in the basin. He's been holding the money for me all this time. If I get out of here alive, I want you to have five hundred of it. Start fresh somewhere new. I left Texas for that reason, came over here and changed my name and went to work. But I got a bad break at Tom Harrow's hands. Now I'm going to finish a job I have to do and try it once more. I think it'll work next time."
"But you don't want me?" She choked a little on the words.
He rose to his moccasined feet, at a loss for words. What could you say to a woman like Kitty, alone and grabbing at any straw?
"I've just told you how the chips fell my way, Kitty," he said kindly. "For all I know, the last card in the deck is about to be dealt. You've got a long hand ahead of you to play. This game is too far along to deal yourself in."