Let him get Kerrigan, the judge thought. Let Kerrigan find the source of further wealth for them. But Harrow could never again be trustworthy…
Scattered firing broke out somewhere up ahead and Eaton heard men running as though the Cherokee and his followers were scattering to take cover. The coach surged forward under the panicky driver's whip and then was hauled up short again at Lew Kerrigan's harsh order to the man holding the lines.
Judge Eaton found himself fifty yards to the rear, and he lengthened his pace to catch up again. Thanks to Kerrigan's actions since the man had been freed from prison, this thing had gotten completely out of hand. A man like that was hard to stop, as Harrow and his men had found out to their fear and sorrow, and yet that same quality of determination gave the judge confidence now. Someway, somehow, the man he'd sentenced to life at hard labor would get them out of this, the judge was certain.
After that, of course, appropriate action would have to be taken. Self-preservation was the first law of man, and the judge had to protect his name and reputation in the territory…
A shadow glided out of the night on noiseless feet; five feet six inches of young Apache Indian, crouched and leaning forward like the black weasel that had shot out of the dungeon doorway and lunged at Wood Smith. In the dim light the smoky-black eyes of Kadoba were burning.
He closed the distance between them with terrible swiftness. His left arm reached out and locked itself across the judge's throat from behind. Eaton felt the black steel band of forearm sink deep into his prominent Adam's apple and went down into a sitting position, helpless and silent and watching the back end of the red coach move out of sight. To his fear-dilated nostrils came the odor of something not unlike a wild animal and he felt like a rabbit in the firm jaws of a desert wolf.
One of Loco's band had him and he knew he was going to die.
The Apache shifted his grip and twisted around until the terrified "Hanging Judge" saw a face he hadn't seen in two years. He recognized it quite readily despite the streak of white bottom clay now drawn below the fierce black eyes and thin dark nose.
He'd looked down at that same face in the courtroom in Globe, thundering his apologue against lawless white men but that he would show God's mercy to this untutored young savage; thundering it while the interpreter tried vainly to get some of it across to the smoky-eyed bronco. Cavalry officers who knew the Apaches and why they had fought so bitterly against the encroachment of whites across their lands and their way of a free life had listened to Yeager Eaton's overly long harangue with poker faces becoming those of career soldiers.
It had been a big day, a personal triumph, for the judge; taking the case out of their hands and, later, lecturing them severely about setting stern examples for other "savages" to observe, all the while gorging himself on food in the officers' mess and drinking their brandy.
That same young Apache who hadn't understood a word the judge had said now twisted around still farther in front of the judge and spoke to him in garbled English.
"Kadoba, me. You 'member me, huh? I killum squaw with knife. You send me Yuma in iron ropes. Send Yew Ker'gan too, huh? Now I come back kill you."
Eaton's hat had fallen off. Kodoba's dark hand grasped him across the forehead and bent his neck over a knee, the prominent Adam's apple tight beneath the skin as the Apache's knife swept up in a vicious arc.
If Harrow and Jeb Donnelly die this night, Yeager Eaton thought, my name will go into the National Archives as that of an honorable man who helped put down lawlessness in the terr—
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tom Harrow stepped to the ground and closed the coach door upon three silent figures, none of whom had spoken to him. Jeb Donnelly reined the white horse over close and looked down, bulking huge in the saddle like a sack of sheep wool.
"Some of them boozed-up miners saw somethin'," he said in answer to Harrow's question. "They'd shoot at a bat overhead, they're that nervous—not that I blame them, I'm nervous, too."
"Where's Kerrigan?"
"Up front some'ers. I saw him duck back of a building. We're almost at the edge of town."
"There might be a possibility," Harrow said in a low voice, "that those broncos will wait until we get a mile or so along the road. Jeb, now is the time. Go get the judge— Say, where is he?"
"He was with you behind the coach a little ways back. I'll take a look… but not too much of one."
He loped away as the coach began to inch ahead in answer to Kerrigan's distant call. And then Donnelly came spurring back, hauling up hard on a sore-mouthed white horse. The lividness of fear had come into his big face again.
"What is it?" demanded Harrow.
"Goddlemighty," panted out the new marshal appointed by Judge Eaton. "He's—back there."
"Dead?"
Donnelly nodded and swallowed hard. He drew his hand and part of his thick forearm all the way across his throat. "They're in behind us, and it was you got me into this trap with your dirty money. For two cents I'd lay the steel to this hoss and take my chances—"
A rocketing explosion of rifle fire broke out at least a mile ahead of them. Lew Kerrigan, working his way far ahead of the others from one now thinly scattered shack to another, came up short and tried to look through the dim moonlight. He could hear the roar of the flames back there, whipping through and consuming the main part of what had been the business section. The great mansion up on the west ridge was a single blazing pillar of fire.
"Joe!" Kerrigan called piercingly. "Joe, where are you?"
Somewhere up there he caught the sound of hard-running ponies and wild cries. Amid the broken sound of ponies darting here and there and the panic-stricken shooting of the fleeing miners, he heard the steady drumming of other horses. They were coming hard in a steady rhythm, a whole line of them riding abreast in skirmish formation, and now for the first time he caught the clear notes of a Cavalry K of C bugle sounding a charge. A sound he hadn't heard in more than ten years; not since Terry's Texans had ridden into battle against Union Cavalry.
He thought, Hell, I'd forgotten about Rawlinson and his troops being camped somewhere up in this country, using Apache scouts from the reservation. I should have known old Greybeard Fox* would figure Loco's next move would be toward home country …
* Author's note: General Crook.
Loco had timed one trap too often. He'd known that the glow of the fire could be seen for fifty miles and that troops would know it hadn't been set by lightning. He'd gambled on a quick butchery of all the whites in the gulch and then scattering like quail, to meet two hundred miles away at a predesignated point.
To Kerrigan it looked as though he'd been outsmarted by Apache scouts in the pay of the army, and from the sound of things up there in the night, cavalry troops at last were putting an end to his elusive career of butchery.
Kerrigan leaned the .45-90 against the logs of a shack he'd been using for cover, suddenly more tired than he had ever been in his life. With the sudden realization that he wouldn't have to kill any more, the hatred and bitterness had drained out of him. He stood there for a few minutes, listening to the crash of running horses, the shots and general confusion. He thought of Carlotta and wondered how she'd feel, now that it was all over. She'd come to him there in the kitchen of Judge Eaton's courtroom because none of them knew what would happen within the next hour or so.
He'd have to run for it, of course. This night's work would be all over the territory—in every small hamlet paper—within a week. It would go to Washington in the reports of Captain Rawlinson and that of the Indian agent accepting new prisoners surrendering to the soldiers and Apache scouts.