Kilkenny 02 - A Man Called Trent (v5.0) Read Free Page A

Polti snapped. “Now!”
    He wheeled, but before he could take even one step, Lance moved. He grabbed the thin man and spun him around. With a whining cry of fury, Polti went for his gun, but his hand never reached the holster. Lance’s left hit Polti’s chin with a crack like that of a blacksnake whip, and Polti sagged. A left and a right smashed him down, bleeding from the mouth.
    “This don’t look so good for you, stranger,” the big farmer stated fearlessly. “Let’s look at them bags.”
    “Right,” Lance replied quietly. “An honest man ain’t got anything to fear, they say, but it wouldn’t surprise me none to find the dust there.”
    Watching him closely, the crowd, augmented nowby a dozen more, followed him to his horse. Suddenly he stopped.
    “No,” he said, “a man might palm it if it’s small.” He turned to the girl who had driven the buckboard, and who now stood nearby. “Ma’am, my apologies for our earlier difficulty, and will you go through the bags for me?”
    Her eyes snapped. “With pleasure! And hope I find the evidence!”
    She removed the articles from the saddlebags one by one. They were few enough. Two boxes of .45 ammunition, one of rifle ammunition, some cleaning materials, and a few odds and ends of rawhide.
    As she drew the packet of pictures out, one of them slipped from the packet and fell to the ground. The girl stopped quickly and retrieved it, glancing curiously at the picture of an elderly woman with a face of quiet dignity and poise. For an instant she glanced at Lance, then looked away.
    “There is no gold here,” she said quietly. “None at all.”
    “Well,” Lance said, and turned, “I guess…”
    Polti was gone.
    “Puts you in the clear, stranger,” the big farmer said. “I wonder where it leaves Polti?”
    “Mebbe he’d’ve tried to slip it into the saddlebag when he searched it,” somebody suggested. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”
    Lance glanced at the speaker. “That implies he has the gold dust. If he has, he probably killed Wilkins.”
    Nobody spoke, and Lance glanced from one to the other. A few men at the rear of the crowd began to sidle away. Finally the big farmer looked up.
    “Well, nobody is goin’ to say Jack Pickett lacks nerve,” he said, “but I ain’t goin’ to tackle Polti and them gun-slick hombres he trails with. It’s like askin’ for it.”
    The crowd dwindled, and Lance turned to find the golden-haired girl still standing there.
    “I’m still not sure,” she said coldly. “You could have buried it.”
    He grinned. “That’s right, ma’am, I could have.”
    He turned and walked away. The girl stared after him, her brows knit.
    Lance led the buckskin slowly down the street to the livery stable. He walked because he wanted to think, and he thought well on his feet. This thing had a lot of angles. Polti was mean and cruel. The man was obviously a killer who would stop at nothing. For some reason he had deliberately started out to frame Lance. Why, there seemed no reason. He might, of course, know why he had come to Live Oak and the town of Botalla.
    In the livery stable Lance was rubbing down the buckskin when he heard a voice speak from the darkness of a stall behind him.
    “Busy little feller, ain’t you?”
    The speaker stepped out of the stall into the light. He wore a battered hat, patched jeans, and a hickory shirt. Yet the guns on his hips looked business-like. Powerfully built, he had brick-red hair, and a glint of humor in his sardonic blue eyes.
    “Name of Gates,” he said. “They call me Rusty.”
    “I’m Lance.”
    The eyes of the stranger in Botalla took in the cowpuncher with quick intelligence. This man wasrugged and capable. He looked as if he would do to ride the river with.
    “So I heard.” Rusty began making a smoke. Then he looked up, grinning. “Like I say, you’re busy. You invite Steve Lord to a shootin’ party, then side-step and let him off easy. A lot of people are askin’ why.