"You look much better now, Kitty," Clara said with a sincerity natural to her.
"Has there been any more news?"
"Nothing."
"I guess you two must think I'm awful to break this way, but I just couldn't help it. Poor Lew! He killed Buck Havers on account of me and went to prison because of it; and now he's dead." Kitty's eyes began to mist again and she dabbed at them with a tiny handkerchief. On the return trip from back in the States Kitty had thought much about Kerrigan and convinced herself she'd never loved anybody else. Suffering the pangs of an already badly mauled conscience, the report of his death had hit her hard.
"Have you any immediate plans for the future, Miss Anderson?" Carlotta inquired.
"I don't know now," Kitty almost sighed. "Everything is all mussed up. Poor Lew is dead and you and Tom are going to be married. I was so surprised when Joe Stovers wrote me about it. I thought Tom would—I thought I'd come back and see Lew, because it was on account of me he got sent to the pen. Now I just don't know what I'll do." She dabbed at her eyes with the tiny handkerchief again and went out on the back porch.
"I'm going over to the fort," she called back. "I've got to do something to keep my mind off poor Lew."
"You'd better stay right here in this house, Kitty," Clara warned sharply. "There's no telling what might happen with Indians this close."
"Oh, I don't care what happens to me any more," Kitty replied, stepping off the porch.
She walked the forty yards to a low wall and a gap knocked in it for Clara to use between the house and her grain supply in a room once occupied by the desk of her husband. Harrow's coach had been backed under a long shed and near it were a number of horses tied to mangers: the six coach horses and four more, including a big red horse.
A handsome man in a low-crowned beaver hat stood talking with Pete, who'd been the driver of the coach down from Dalyville that morning. LeRoy and the two others had abandoned the pack mule back near Kerrigan's camp. He'd lost all of his better clothing; and the mule, of course, would be butchered by Loco's meat-hungry warriors. Roasted and eaten probably while Kerrigan swung by his heels over another slow fire.
To Kitty he'd looked like any other roughly dressed rider over in the dining room, except that he didn't wolf his food and his manners equalled those of Torn Harrow.
"Ah, Miss Anderson." LeRoy gave her a smile and lifted his hat, a speculative look in his eyes. Small wonder Lew Kerrigan and then Harrow had been attracted to her. This girl was beautiful! It made a man itch to run his fingers through that soft yellow hair. "You seem to be feeling much better. I'm very happy for you."
A man on foot slipped around the far end of the shed and froze motionless in the shadows. Hannifer LeRoy and the driver of the stage, their eyes on the girl, didn't notice.
Kitty said, "I've been crying all day over Lew, just like I did the last time. I guess I'll never really get over it. You work for Tom, don't you?"
"In a manner of speaking," LeRoy replied gallantly. "I'm actually his first cousin." He didn't add that he'd also supplied some of the guns and ammunition now in the hands of bronco Indians, as well as stolen horses Harrow had sold to men in a hurry. Nor that Harrow had sent word to him in California to come to Yuma and help make certain that Kerrigan either complied with the terms of his freedom or was put out of the way.
The man they were talking about waited in the deep shadows of the shed a few moments, his eyes upon Kitty. Something had happened to her during those two long years. She'd matured amazingly and to his hungry eyes 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.