Death Rides Alone (19 page)

One of the ivory-handled Remingtons flickered into Luke's hand so quickly it almost appeared like magic. Flame spouted from the revolver's long barrel at almost the same instant the rifleman fired again.

But not quite the same instant. Luke's shot blasted a shaved second of time ahead of the other man's. The rifle barrel jerked up and the bullet from it flew harmlessly far over the heads of Luke and Tyler. The round from Luke's gun had bored into the would-be killer's chest and disrupted his aim. He went over backward, falling off the rock and out of sight.

“Son of a gun!” Tyler said. “I never saw shooting like that!”

“You may have a chance to see it again if there are any more of them,” Luke said. “None of that bunch could have gotten ahead of us. That man must have been here already, patrolling the edge of the hills and searching for you.”

“If he was one of Axtell's men, he might've recognized this pony. If he wasn't . . .”

“Whether he was or wasn't,” Luke said, his voice grim, “he fired the first shot. Can't blame a fellow for dancing if somebody else opens the ball.”

He didn't holster the Remington until they had ridden another half a mile without encountering anyone else. He was convinced the rifleman had been a lone deputy on the hunt for Tyler.

They reached the edge of the badlands and started up the slope toward the trees. Now they were in the open again, but it couldn't be helped. The shelter of the wooded hills was right in front of them, and they had to try for it.

Rifles began to pop far behind them. At this range, it would be pure luck if one of the bullets found them, but Luke knew that was possible. Everybody had a certain amount of good luck—and bad—coming to him in his life.

But unless one of the deputies was armed with a Sharps buffalo gun and had the same skill with it as a legendary marksman such as Billy Dixon, Luke figured he and Tyler were safe.

For the moment. They still had to deal with the dangers they would find waiting for them in White Fork.

* * *

They reached the trees without any trouble and disappeared into the thick growth. The members of the posse might still try to track them, but it would be more difficult now. Not only that, the deputies hadn't gotten close enough to be certain that the two men on horseback were the men they were looking for.

Luke wondered if they had found the man he'd killed down in the badlands. If so, that might be enough to convince them they were on the right trail. They wouldn't stop looking.

He and Tyler would just have to stay ahead of them.

“You know these hills, you said. How far is it to White Fork from here?”

Tyler pointed a little east of north and said, “About ten miles in that direction, I reckon. We can make it by nightfall, if we don't have to go to ground. And if we live that long.”

“I plan on living that long,” Luke said. “And
you're
not going to make it to town just yet. We need a place where I can leave you and you'll be safe until I've talked to Judge Keller. I assume you can tell me where to find him?”

“I know where his house is. He and his wife had me come to dinner there once, several years ago. I reckon they were trying to straighten me out after I started getting into trouble.” A wry smile appeared on Tyler's face. “It didn't take.”

“All right. We'll find a good hideout for you, then I'll slip into town and let the judge know what's going on.” Luke paused. “He's not going to double-cross us and tip off Douglas and Axtell, is he?”

“I'd bet my life he won't.”

“Good—because that's exactly what you'll be doing.”

After they had ridden for a few more minutes, Tyler said, “I reckon I know a good place where I can hole up. It's just a little box canyon, but not many people know it's there. The brush grows so thick across the mouth of it you can't hardly see the entrance unless you know what you're looking for. I, uh, sort of made it even harder to see.”

“Sounds like a good place to hold rustled stock until you were able to move it somewhere you could get rid of it.”

“Yeah, I reckon it would be, but I'm not sayin' whether it was ever used for that.”

Luke laughed and said, “Just lead the way, Judd. We'll worry about your rehabilitation later.”

* * *

The box canyon was as difficult to find as Tyler boasted it was. Without the young man to lead the way, Luke probably never would have known the place was there.

But once the young man moved aside some thick brush that was tied together to form a natural-looking barrier, the opening loomed in front of them, wide enough to drive a few cows through. Sheer rock walls rose fifty feet on either side of it.

“It widens out about a hundred feet in,” Tyler said. “There's a little spring and some graze.”

“A regular hole in the wall.”

“Nothing that fancy. I never built a cabin or anything, just spread my bedroll when I needed to spend a night or two.”

Luke glanced up at the late afternoon sky and said, “You shouldn't have to spend the night. I hope to be back to fetch you into town before morning. Does Judge Keller happen to have a barn?”

“More like a shed where he keeps his buggy and horse.”

“That'll do, I imagine.” Luke waved a hand at the narrow passage. “Lead on.”

They rode along the cleft until it opened up into the box canyon, as Tyler had promised. The canyon was less than a hundred yards long and about half that wide, big enough to hold a small jag of cattle but not much else.

The rocky wall bulged out on one side, enough to create an overhang. Tyler pointed to it and said, “A man can build a fire under there and it'll break up the smoke so nobody on the outside will ever see it.”

“The voice of experience.”

“Yeah, this place is almost like home to me. When I lit out from White Fork after Spence killed Rachel, I gave some thought to hiding out here. I wanted more distance between me and town, though. I knew once Manfred found out what happened, he'd have his gunnies out in force, scouring every foot of the countryside for me. Didn't want to take a chance on them finding me. I thought it'd be better to run as far and fast as I could.” Tyler blew out a breath and shrugged his shoulders. “You can see how that worked out. Here I am anyway.”

“Maybe one step closer to clearing your name and getting justice for Rachel. Just think of it that way.”

“Squaring accounts for Rachel is the only thing keeping me going,” Tyler said. “At least it was . . . until I met Deborah.”

Luke wanted to wait until dark to set out for White Fork. Tyler stripped the saddle from his paint, gave the pony a rubdown, then built a fire and boiled a pot of coffee. Luke sipped a cup as he watched the dark blue of evening steal over the sky from east to west.

Tyler told him how to find the judge's house, then said, “You don't reckon Axtell's men hurt anybody with the wagon train, do you?”

“If Jonathan Howard and the others stuck to the story I told them to tell, the deputies wouldn't have had any reason to suspect them. They may have insisted on searching all the wagons, but once they did that and saw we weren't there, I think they'd leave those pilgrims alone. There's a limit to how far even crooked lawmen can push honest citizens without creating more trouble for themselves than it's worth.”

Tyler said, “I hope you're right. If they hurt Deborah or anybody else . . .”

“It'll be one more score to settle, and we'll see that it is,” Luke promised.

* * *

Stars had begun to twinkle into view in the cobalt sky overhead as Luke rode out of the canyon. Tyler replaced the brush behind him to conceal the opening. Tyler had told him the best route to White Fork, and Luke's instinctive sense of direction served him well, even at night.

He didn't rush as he headed in the direction of the settlement. It was possible some of his enemies were abroad in the night, and he wanted to be able to hear their horses if any of them came close to him.

However, by the time he spotted a cluster of lights in the distance and knew they had to come from White Fork, he hadn't run into anyone. He pushed the gray to a little faster pace, eager to reach his destination and talk to Judge Clarence Keller.

White Fork was a good-size town with a business district several blocks long and a number of residential streets around it. According to Tyler, the judge lived in a white, two-story frame house surrounded by cottonwoods, sitting at the western end of the primary cross street, three blocks from downtown. The courthouse, sheriff's office, and jail dominated the northern end of the settlement, while a couple of churches and the stagecoach station were at the southern end. The eastern side of the settlement was the red-light district, such as it was.

Luke aimed the gray toward the western fringes of town and looked for Judge Keller's house as he approached. The moon was up by now, and its light shone silvery on the whitewashed walls of the largest structure Luke could see. When he drew closer, he spotted the shed out back where Keller kept his horse and buggy.

Confident that he was in the right place, he reined in, swung down from the saddle, and went closer on foot. The gray and the horse in the shed whickered to each other, but they were fairly quiet about it. A dog barked in the night, but it wasn't close and didn't seem likely to alarm anyone in the house.

A light glowed in one of the windows on the back side of the house. Luke left the gray by the shed and catfooted toward the window. When he reached it, he took his hat off and ventured a look.

A man with white hair and an equally snowy mustache sat at a desk in a book-littered office. He wore a dressing gown and had what looked like a glass of whiskey at his elbow. A cigar smoldered in an ashtray. A thick, leather-bound volume was open on the desk in front of the man. A law book, perhaps, or just something the judge wanted to read. Luke was confident he was looking at Judge Clarence Keller.

He thought about tapping on the window to get Keller's attention, but he didn't want the judge to raise an alarm, so it might be wiser to get the drop on him until he had a chance to explain, Luke decided. He moved along the wall, trying the windows in the darkened rooms until he found one that slid up without making much noise. He threw a leg over the sill and climbed into what looked like a kitchen, judging by the furnishings he could make out in the dim light.

A moment later he was in a hallway, gliding toward the door of the judge's office, which stood open a couple of inches to allow light to spill into the hall. Luke eased one of the Remingtons out of its holster and held it ready as he used his other hand to swing the door open.

Judge Keller raised his head, his bushy white eyebrows climbing his forehead in surprise, as Luke stepped into the open doorway, leveled the Remington, and said in a quiet but forceful tone, “Please sit right where you are, Judge. I assure you, I mean you no harm. I just want to talk to you.”

Before Keller could respond, Luke heard a whisper of sound behind him. An instant later something hard jabbed into the small of his back and a woman said, “You stand mighty still, young man, or I'll blow your spine in two.”

Instead of looking upset, the judge chuckled and said, “She'll do it, too, sir, let there be no doubt in your mind about that. She's a fierce one, my wife is.”

Luke recognized the thing poking into his back as the muzzle of a gun, though he couldn't tell if it was a rifle or a pistol. He said, “Please be careful with that trigger, Mrs. Keller. I didn't come here to hurt anyone, and I'd hate to suffer a fate such as the one you describe.”

“You talk fancy, like my husband,” the woman said. “Educated man, are you?”

“Self-educated, for the most part.”

“Well, you're smart enough to know that I mean what I say, aren't you?”

“I certainly am.” Luke lifted both hands to elbow level, including the one holding the Remington, and held them out away from his body.

“Clarence, get his guns,” the woman said.

“All right, Mildred,” Keller said as he pushed his chair back and stood up. He came around the desk and approached Luke warily from the side. When he was close enough he reached up and took the revolver from Luke's hand, then circled back, out of reach, until he could hook the other Remington from its holster.

Luke could tell from the way Keller gripped the revolvers that the judge had handled guns before. That came as no surprise, since most men of Keller's age who had spent all or most of their lives on the frontier had seen their share of trouble and fought outlaws and Indians.

“Take your knife out and toss it on the desk,” Keller said as he moved back. “Don't try anything funny with it.”

“With a gun at my back and two more pointed at me from the front? I don't think I'm likely to try anything, Your Honor, funny or otherwise.”

Luke slid the knife from its sheath and tossed it easily onto the desk, where it landed next to the open book the judge had been reading.

“Got a hideout gun anywhere?” Keller asked.

As a matter of fact, Luke had a two-shot, .41 caliber derringer concealed in a cunningly contrived holster inside his waistband. He thought about denying it was there, then decided to tell the truth. He planned to put all his cards on the table for Keller, and he wanted the judge to believe him.

And the man's wife, as well. Luke had a hunch if he could convince Mrs. Keller he was telling the truth, that would carry a considerable amount of weight with the judge.

“I have a derringer,” he said. “I'll take it out and place it on the desk as well, if you'll allow me to.”

Keller hooked his thumbs over both gun hammers and nodded.

“Slow and easy,” he said.

Luke took the derringer out and stepped forward to set it on the desk. Mrs. Keller came with him, keeping the gun barrel pressed into his back. Her steps told him she was far enough away that the weapon had to be a rifle.

“All right, I'm disarmed,” he said. “You can lower your guns now.”

“We'll be the judges of that, won't we, Mildred?”

“Are you making a joke, dear?”

Keller frowned and said, “I don't . . . Oh, of course. I said we'll be the judges of that, didn't I? And I'm a judge.”

“And I'm perfectly happy for you to be the only one in the family. Should I do as this young man says and not poke this Henry rifle in his back anymore?”

“I think that would be safe,” Keller said with a nod. “I plan to keep him covered, though, until I find out who he is and what he's doing here. If you're a thief, sir, I can assure you your stay in our jail won't be pleasant.”

“I'm not a thief,” Luke said. “Is it all right if I put my hands down now?”

Keller thought about it for a second, then nodded.

Luke lowered his arms, which he had raised again after putting the knife and the derringer on the desk. He looked over his shoulder, smiled, and said, “Ma'am, it's been a while since anyone referred to me as young. I'll take it as a compliment, especially coming from such a handsome woman.”

“Don't try to charm me,” Mrs. Keller said. “I may not look it now, but I
was
a bit of a belle in my youth, so I've heard plenty of false compliments.”

“I assure you, I'm sincere.”

Calling Mildred Keller a handsome woman wasn't much of a stretch. Her face and body might have softened and rounded some with middle age, but Luke could still see the belle she had been when she was young. Her thick brown hair had more than a few touches of gray in it, but they, along with the lines around her eyes, just gave her character.

Like her husband, she wore a dressing gown. She might have already retired for the evening, but something had alerted her to the presence of an intruder in the house.

“How did you know I was here?” Luke asked her.

“The floorboards in the kitchen make a little noise when someone walks on them, and my hearing is keen enough that I heard them. I knew Clarence wouldn't be in there—the kitchen is my domain, just as the courtroom is his—and he never hears anything when he's absorbed in his reading, so I thought I should see who was skulking around my house.”

“And you armed yourself with a Henry rifle.” Luke nodded toward the weapon she had tucked under her arm.

“My father made sure I knew how to shoot when I was just a little girl. We lived in Ohio at the time, when it was still the frontier, and those were bloody days.”

“From what I've heard, they certainly were.”

Judge Keller said, “Are you two going to stand there and palaver all night? You broke into my house, mister, and I want to know why.”

Luke faced him again and said, “The best reason of all, Your Honor: a miscarriage of justice that needs to be addressed in the courtroom your wife spoke of.”

“What are you talking about?” Keller asked, frowning.

“Judd Tyler.”

Keller's frown deepened, and his wife said, “Oh, dear.”

“Judd Tyler has been apprehended,” Keller said. “He's being brought here to stand trial for the heinous murder of Miss Rachel Montgomery.”

“Is that what Sheriff Axtell told you?” Luke asked.

“He informed me of the situation, yes. He told me it would probably be a good idea to conduct the trial as soon as possible after Tyler is brought in, since feelings about the case are running so high in the community.”

“The sheriff wasn't being completely truthful with you, Your Honor,” Luke said. “Tyler was caught down in Wyoming at a place called Bent Creek, and the man who caught him was supposed to bring him here to stand trial, but Axtell doesn't intend for Judd Tyler to ever set foot inside a courtroom.”

Keller said, “That's an outrageous statement. How can you possibly know such a thing?”

“Because I'm the man who caught Tyler and was told to bring him here in order to collect the reward . . . and for the past week or so, deputies working for Sheriff Axtell have been trying to kill both of us.”

Keller sputtered angrily for a couple of seconds, then managed to say, “You're the bounty hunter Sheriff Axtell mentioned? Jensen?”

“That's right. My name is Luke Jensen. Axtell's men have been trying to kill me, too. I can give you the names of three of them: Dave Simms, a man called Larrabee, and another known as Cue Ball Hennessy.” Luke smiled faintly. “I'm afraid I don't know his actual given name. And there were others as well, more than a dozen, in fact. I suspect you're acquainted with Simms, Larrabee, and Hennessy?”

Before the judge could answer, Mrs. Keller said, “They're animals. Most of the men who work for Gus Axtell are.”

Keller said, “Now, Mildred, you shouldn't—”

“Don't try to deny it, Clarence. I've seen you stomp around and heard you muttering about the heavy-handed way Axtell and his deputies enforce the law around here. Why, once you said they were little better than outlaws themselves!”

“Axtell was still duly elected—”

“By Manfred Douglas's money and influence, and you know it.”

Luke had a hunch this wasn't the first time the Kellers had had a discussion such as this.

Mrs. Keller went on, “The sheriff is in Manfred's pocket. You should know, since he's tried to put you in that same pocket enough times.”

“Nobody owns me!”

“Of course not, dear. You have too much integrity for that. But you're probably the only representative of the law around here who can honestly say that.”

Keller glared at Luke and said, “There's got to be a lot more to this story.”

“There is, Your Honor, and that's why I've come here. I wanted to be sure you knew the truth in this case. Judd Tyler didn't kill Miss Montgomery.”

Mrs. Keller said, “I never believed he did. That boy may have done some . . . questionable . . . things, but he's no killer and he certainly never would have hurt Rachel. He adored her. Why, he followed her around like a puppy every chance he got!”

“Mildred, please,” the judge said. “This is all very improper. Setting aside the fact that you broke into my house, Mr. Jensen, you shouldn't be discussing the case with me. It's prejudicial and highly irregular!”

“I wouldn't be here if all those hired guns working for Axtell and Douglas hadn't tried to kill Tyler and me,” Luke said.

“The boy never should have run like he did. It just made him look guilty. If he's innocent, he should have stayed here and answered the charges against him.”

“He couldn't do that, for the very same reason that Axtell and Douglas can't afford to allow him to stand trial. He knows who
really
killed Rachel Montgomery.”

Judge Keller frowned at Luke for a long moment, then he drew in a deep breath and blew it out in a weary sigh. He turned and placed the Remingtons on the desk beside Luke's knife and derringer.

“All right, Jensen,” he said. “Whatever it is you want to tell me, I'll listen . . . but that's all I'll promise!”

“That's all I'm asking, Your Honor,” Luke said.