A Gunman Rode North Read online

  The long years of the Civil War came to a weary end, but the man now pacing the thick carpeting of his magnificent hotel suite had not yet found his hoped-for fortune in gold. A failure as a conscientious plantation owner, it had been inevitable that he would fail in a raw frontier country where iron will and brawn usually spelled the difference between wealth and prominence in the territory or lack of both. The following years found him living in the high country of northern Arizona, a country brought into being by Lincoln during the Civil War, owning a few crude cabins, gambling and drinking with men who knew firsthand about Vigilantes. Men who received no answers concerning the fresh horses some of them now and then needed.

  Men like Ace Saunders and Stubb Holiday, who brought in the guns and cartridges sold at fabulous prices to bronco Apaches.

  Six hundred dollars each for a rifle! One dollar per round for cartridges! In gold! Raw gold nuggets, the source of which only the Apaches knew and Thomas Harrow dared not ask.

  Harrow's great hopes were almost a thing of the past when Lew Kerrigan rode in to his place, fleeing the law for killing Buck Havers—and Harrow had found the key to a great fortune laid in his hand.

  Still pacing the floor, the man who now called himself "Colonel" Thomas Harrow heard a slight sound in the hallway outside the door to his suite. He moved swiftly and seated himself at the big desk a thoughtful management had provided for the use of such a prominent man.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the hallway the man Ace stopped and said casually, "It's time to take your gun now, Kerrigan. You won't need it in there, because I'd only step in and kill you anyhow if you made trouble. If you still want to use it when you get back out here, I'll be very glad to let you have it back with the loads untampered. My job."

  He was already slipping the gun from the worn sheath when a door opposite them opened and a woman emerged. An astonishingly beautiful woman. Her dress was of brown organdie, her shoulders square and tapering down from below the armpits to a slender waist, and then the dress flared out again in flowing lines over thighs probably developed from much horseback riding.

  Her blonde hair beneath a small tricorne hat seemed to shine like ripened wheat even in the sunless hallway. She carried a dainty-looking sun umbrella more for style than practical use.

  Her eyes widened ever so slightly as the heavy pistol was slipped from the sheath at Kerrigan's right hip.

  "Howdy, Miss Wilkerson," Ace said imperturbably. "Getting ready to see the sights of Yuma? Couple of Southern Pacific* steamboats bouncing up and down at the landing with the river plenty high. The territory prison is just up on the hill above. They got some real bad whites, Mexicans, and an Apache or two in there, I hear."

  * Author's note: In 1874 Southern Pacific bought most of the boats plying the Colorado River.

  "Thank you, Ace," she murmured. "Is the coach ready?"

  "Stubb's got it waiting in front of the hotel, Miss Wilkerson. I expect there'll be quite a few eyes start poppin' when you and that red coach with them six blacks roll through town."

  "Thank you for the compliment, Ace, and putting the horses last. Is—is this the man Thomas came to Yuma to see?"

  "This is him, all right. But you wasn't expected to see this part of it. He's just outa the territorial prison and you got to handle them accordin'."

  Kerrigan saw a slight revulsion come into her face and he knew she was viewing him as some kind of a human mad dog. No telling, of course, what kind of story Harrow had concocted for her benefit. But one thing was certain: seeing him disarmed by Ace told her a part of that story.

  She was studying his features; the quick glance of an intelligent woman toward a man she was instinctively afraid of. She viewed him as a hardbitten frontier man worlds apart from a woman like her; a man of whom she had heard much, all of it bad.

  She saw a tight-lipped mouth, thin like the mouths of two manso Apache Indians she'd seen up north. An aquiline nose and, at the moment, the most piercingly impersonal brown eyes a woman had ever looked into.

  "You're Mr. Kerrigan, aren't you?" she asked in a voice that was soft and cultured and which, under normal circumstances, probably was very musical.

  To Kerrigan's surprise, she walked closer and extended a slim, white-gloved hand, grey eyes searching his harsh face. She was too faintly superior, he thought, and she stirred nothing inside of him even after two years without the sight of a woman. But she was too good to marry a man with a past such as Tom Harrow had put behind him, and he wondered fleetingly how much she knew about the man.

  "I'm Lew Kerrigan, ma'am," he admitted with a brief nod, and touched the brim of his brown hat with the fingers of his left hand.

  "I've but recently arrived in Arizona Territory from the deep South, Mr. Kerrigan, but I've heard your name. Clara Thompson up at Pirtman spoke kindly about you."

  "Clara saw a husband brought back to her lashed head down over a cavalry horse with most of his face hacked away by Apache lances, ma'am," he said. "Such things have a way of tempering a woman."

  He found himself removing his hat then, feeling suddenly strange and uncomfortable in the presence of this woman. She wasn't as beautiful as Kitty Anderson by any stretch of the imagination. She didn't look like she'd ever gone through what Clara had suffered. And the thought came to him quite suddenly that perhaps this meeting might have been carefully arranged by Tom Harrow, to soften Kerrigan up before their meeting.

  The old chill of antagonism came into him and he put on his hat with an abrupt movement.

  "I understand that for some reason in the past you hold considerable enmity toward Thomas," she said. "May I ask the nature of it?"

  "It's personal, ma'am."

  "I see," she replied softly. "Could I offer you my friendship on his behalf?"

  He placed his left hand upon the doorknob, and his voice was as flat and cool as the fireless corn baking stone of an Indian woman. "I don't think after today you'll be wanting it, Miss Wilkerson."

  He opened the door, closed it behind him, and saw Harrow seated at the desk. The man who had sent him to prison, the man he had planned to destroy.

  He saw the immaculate suit of blue wool broadcloth, the grey temples and sideburns over freshly barbered chin, the thin, aristocratic nose above a briskly clipped mustache. This was no mountain country man; this was no longer a seller of guns and cartridges to Loco's bronco Apaches. Sudden wealth and prominence in Arizona mining circles had returned Harrow to the status of a suave Southern gentleman. Only Lew Kerrigan and possibly a very few others knew the man for what he actually was.

  Harrow got to his feet easily and with the welcome smile Kerrigan had been prepared for, although he leaned stiff-armed with hands on the edge of the polished desk, above an open drawer. Lew Kerrigan noticed that, too.

  "Hello, Lew," the mining tycoon greeted him pleasantly. "When I heard the noise in the hallway I wasn't sure whether it would be you coming to see me or Ace coming in to tell me you wouldn't be here. Needless to say, I'm glad it's you. Sit down, Lew."

  "I haven't that much time," Kerrigan replied. "You seem to have regained the taste for nice things since our old strike paid off so rich."

  "I know how you feel, thinking what you do," Harrow replied smoothly. "But I wish you'd sit down while I talk. How about a drink, Lew?"

  "Maybe my own taste has undergone a change in the past couple of years," Kerrigan replied harshly. "Whatever you've got to say, let's hear it, Tom. I don't happen to be the ranting kind. I'm just a man who's had two years in prison to do some thinking. Seven hundred and thirty-odd nights in a pitch-black cell with an Apache Indian to do a lot of thinking. I used to feed an old one-armed prospector named Bear Paw Daly. The old grey-bearded fellow who wore a bear claw and skin on his left arm stub to scare the hell out of superstitious Apaches like Loco so he could prospect in their country without fear of being strung up by the heels and burned head down."

  He paused a moment to let Harrow know what was coming.

  "I wa
s up at your place to hang out for a few weeks after killing Buck Havers. All I wanted was to let the law cool down, catch Joe Stovers out of town, pick up Kitty and be on our way back to Texas and a new life back there among my own people. I was safe up there with you in the one place Joe Stovers, knowing me as he did and what you were, wouldn't have come looking for me. He didn't either. Not until somebody tipped him off as to my whereabouts. You real sure you want me to go on, Tom?" he sneered.

  "Go on, Lew," Harrow nodded quietly, "because I know it's all been tied up tight inside of you for two years. You'll feel like a new man when you get it off your chest."

  "Anyhow," Kerrigan went on, "I was there when old Bear Paw came by with the coarse grain nuggets he'd finally found. From the evidence of Indian tools, it was Loco's secret hoard beyond any doubt. The same gold he'd been paying you for guns and ammunition to keep defying the soldiers. Just one of those things—old Bear Paw stopping by for supplies while on his way to Pirtman and my small ranch. He didn't have to go any farther. I was there at your place, sharing your big cabin. Men had gone mad for years hunting old man Adams' lost diggings, and it looked like Bear Paw had hit where scores of others had missed and died."

  "It was to be a three-way deal among us, you and Bear Paw going back to the strike and leaving a blazed trail for me to follow with a mule pack train of stuff to get operations under way. I was going to clean up a fortune, get clear with the law, and take Kitty on to Texas. But I didn't figure on your greed. You knew if I got caught while the case was still hot, old Judge Eaton would hang me. Without any doubt. And just two days later Joe Stovers rode into the little settlement where I was outfitting a pack train and arrested me. Bear Paw Daly was never seen again, because you got rid of him, too—probably with a shot through the back of the head. Thanks to Joe Stovers' testimony, I didn't hang like you planned; but I was in for life and you announced a big 'strike' in bronco Apache country. Old Adams' fabulous lost gold, men swore. But you gave it the name of Dalyville. It was very touching of you, Tom, to name it after the old fellow and put out the story he dropped dead from age and excitement at the new diggings."

  Harrow straightened with a look of poker-faced patience on his well-groomed countenance and picked up the dead cheroot and reached for a match. He struck it into flame and then stood holding it in one hand and looked over at Kerrigan.

  "You forget," he reminded him quietly, "that Joe Stovers put a five hundred dollar territorial reward on your head, Lew. Even Kitty knows that. Why don't you ask Joe who collected it?" He removed the cigar from his mouth. "And aren't you going to ask about Kitty?"

  "I'm asking if you have anything more to say."

  "Quite a few things, if you'll listen, Lew. I always intended to see that you got one half of the cleanup in the Dalyville strike. But a few months ago I took a trip back to the South. People were dead or had forgotten many things, and it was there that I met Carlotta. Then I went on to New York to promote some mining stock for gold exploration. But the Robber Barons of Wall Street were milking millions in the stock market and I went after some of it. Railroad stock. It took two days for the Robbers to manipulate the stock to nothing and fleece the mining lamb from Arizona. Three hundred and forty-five thousand dollars! I'm sorry about your part of it, of course. I might have made a million for us."

  Kerrigan grinned a hard grin and reached for a chair. "I think," he said bitingly, "that I'll sit down and have the first decent smoke I've had in two years."

  Harrow flushed at the implication and shed some of his suaveness, a desperate note creeping into his voice. "I got back practically broke, and knowing that Dalyville's gold was cleaned out, the place about to become another Arizona ghost mining town."

  "Tough luck, eh?" Lew Kerrigan grinned at him. "You went to New York to sell a million dollars of worthless mining stock in played-out Dalyville claims to the lambs, and ended up a fleeced lamb yourself. You come back pretty well broke and suddenly remember that the pardner you double-crossed is still in the pen doing life. So out of the goodness of your big heart you buy me out and come all the way down here, bringing along your Southern fiancée, to carry me back in style. Get to the point and stop stalling, Tom: what do you want of me?"

  Harrow sat down and laid the cigar in an ornate ash tray. He grinned faintly and then his mouth beneath the clipped mustache hardened.

  "No use beating around the bush with a man like you, Lew. I should have known better. With Carlotta on her way out here to take up life with a supposedly rich husband, I was desperate. I got to thinking about Loco and all the raw gold he used to bring me for guns and cartridges. Old Bear Paw found his source of supply, but I know enough about Apaches to know there's more somewhere else. To prove it, I had a friend of mine get him some more guns recently and they were, of course, paid for in more coarse grain gold!"

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, gazing at Kerrigan intently. "I've known for some time that for two years you've been in a cell with one of Loco's top young warriors. With both of you doing life and little chance ever to escape, I know in my own mind he told you where to find another strike like Dalyville. I spent the last twenty thousand dollars I could rake up to buy you out of prison."

  "And you couldn't sleep nights because of the fear that I'd smash out over the walls someday, come north and kill you?" Kerrigan grinned at him. "Maybe you didn't miss it too far at that, Tom," he added softly.

  "Exactly," Harrow admitted with a deprecative shrug. "I had no choice in the matter and, frankly, neither have you. I've had Wood Smith watching you. He put your gun arm out of order this morning at my instructions, to make it more certain that Ace Saunders could bring you here alive."

  "In other words," Kerrigan grinned thinly, "for the past two years you've lived in fear I'd get free and come after you with a six-shooter in one hand. And now if I refuse to accept your terms of 'parole,' you're still so afraid to take me back up there to Mangrum and Wood Smith— afraid that I'll escape again—that you brought along a couple of dependable men from the old mountain hideout to do a gun job. Softening the marshal and sheriff here probably like you paid off the Territorial Governor to stretch and bend the law. I know it was bribery when I was sentenced by Judge Eaton, a United States District Court judge, my keep paid for by the Government. Twenty-five cents per day keep, thanks to a gold-mad man like you, Tom," he added savagely, his face dark.

  Harrow tried a new tack. He said patiently, "Does anything matter except that you're free again? Play things my way and ride out free. Meet me in Pirtman and get Kitty back, while the two of us clean up a fortune and you get back, in addition, what I lost. I'll sell stock back East this time, one million dollars' worth in a new strike—and who cares if it plays out this time!"

  Kerrigan grinned a hard grin at Harrow's anxiety. He stepped to the desk; leaning over to pinch out the brown paper butt in the silver ash tray. Harrow sat unmoving, only his desperate eyes showing what he might be thinking.

  "You won't change your mind, Lew?"

  "No," Kerrigan said.

  "Then damn you," Harrow cried out in desperation, "I'll make you change it!"

  His hand flashed into the open drawer of the big desk but Lew Kerrigan's thin body whip-lashed in a twisting motion. Fingers calloused from gripping a wheelbarrow handle clamped down so hard around Harrow's wrist that a grunt of pain came from the surprised man. Kerrigan stepped back with the pistol in his left hand. The pin points in his brown eyes grew smaller and his low voice slashed through the room.

  "I'm riding north to Kitty, Tom. I'm going to wait for you up there while I take care of a few things and maybe even deliver a message for Kadoba. Don't stake out my little ranch up in the basin, because I won't go back there. And don't try staking out Clara's place either, because maybe in the past two years I've had infused into me a little bit of Apache."

  "You're forgetting Joe Stovers," Harrow grunted back, a new light of hope flickering for a moment in his eyes. "Joe got you once. He'll get you again."


  "Joe won't get me this time because he won't have you to tip him off again. I'm going to destroy you, Tom. You wanted me to meet you in Pirtman instead of riding back with you, because you're afraid of what your woman will find out. If Clara Thompson won't tell her what you are, then I intend to let her find out anyhow. I'm not going to shoot you right through that window, as I should. I want you to enjoy your return trip up north with the woman you thought you were going to marry."

  He backed on the soft carpeting to the door, the gun still in his uninjured left hand. He opened it and whirled through, and the thin barrel of Harrow's gun rammed savagely deep into the surprised Ace Saunder's lean stomach. It brought a grunt from the gunman.

  "I'll take your pistol, for a change, Saunders," Kerrigan said coolly, and did so, slipping his own and Harrow's pistol into his belt.

  Saunders said calmly, "I told Tom he shouldn't have had a gun in the same room with you. Your move now, Kerrigan."

  He took back his emptied weapon, accepted the cartridges in the palm of a slim hand, dropped them into a pocket of the blue silk shirt and grinned. "Looks like it's my turn to walk a step ahead of you now."

  They went down two flights of stairs and through the huge, high-ceilinged lobby, coming to a halt on the long veranda. The red coach with its six sleek blacks was gone and the spectators, gathered to ogle a beautiful lady, had melted away.

  "I'm going to hunt up a horse and get out of town," Lew Kerrigan informed Saunders. "But from what the 'Colonel' intimates, I'm to stay here. Permanently. So maybe you better go back upstairs and find out how Harrow wants you to do the job."

  "Maybe I'd better," Saunders breathed out softly. "I earn my pay, Kerrigan."

  He turned and went back into the hotel and up the carpeted stairs once more. But Tom Harrow had already acted.

  He had stepped to the open window three stories above the street and waved a white handkerchief in signal to a lone man waiting in the muddy alley at the rear of one of the buildings fronting the north side of Yuma's long main street.