Diablo (A Piccaddilly Publishing Western Book 6) Page 5

  Although tired and sore and barely refreshed, the roan gamely stayed abreast of the stage. Lee rode on the right side, nearest the window at which Allison sat. He would gaze at her when he thought she was not looking.

  The heat gave birth to rivulets of sweat that trickled down his back and front. His frock coat was once again tied behind the cantle. Thanks to his hat, his eyes were shielded from the harsh glare.

  Lee’s mind strayed to the meal at the relay station, to his enjoyable conversation with Jim Hays. Allison, oddly, had not said much after his comment about her beauty. He’d figured she would be flattered, but she didn’t treat him as if she were.

  Lee wasn’t dumb. He knew that he had somehow offended her, and he reasoned that it had something to do with what he did for a living. While being a gambler did have a certain stigma attached to it, she had no call to treat him with contempt.

  It would not have bothered him so much, except that every time he glanced at her, a tingle shot through his body. The irony of his infatuation was not lost on him, provoking a self-conscious grin.

  Leave it to a chucklehead like him!

  A man on the run had no time to dally, no time for luxuries like a woman, not if he wanted to keep one step ahead of those on his trail.

  Lee had no doubt that his pursuers were still after him. In a rush, the memories played themselves across his mind. He recalled the talk Doc had given him the night before he left, how his brother felt that the Lincoln County War, as the newspapers dubbed it, would end in disaster for everyone who had sided with Alexander McSween and John Tunstall, both long since dead.

  That included Billy the Kid, Bowdre, O’Folliard, and the Scurlock brothers. Billy and the others were still fighting, but the law now regarded them as outlaws. “It’s only a question of time before we’re hunted down,” Doc had said. “But it doesn’t have to happen to you.”

  It still galled Lee that his brother insisted he leave. It galled him more that he had done it, but then, ever since they forsook the rolling green hills of Tennessee to strike out on their own, he had been in the habit of doing whatever Doc wanted. How could he not? Doc was older. Doc was bigger. And he’d always rated Doc as smarter.

  Sighing, Lee scanned the horizon for sign of the town. It was as much his own fault as Doc’s that he was now on his own. If he had left well enough alone, if he had minded his own business and kept his mouth shut, if he had not indulged in a rash act of gunplay, he would not be a marked man.

  He tossed his head, clearing the mental cobwebs. Ahead, the landscape was subtly changing. The desert had gradually given way to sage, which was now blending into scrub brush and stunted trees. Scattered buttes broke the monotony of the flatland. Soon hills replaced them, and when the stagecoach clattered through a gap between two of them, Lee found himself on a switchback above an incredibly lush valley, an oasis sheltered by mountains to the north and more hills far off to the west and the south.

  It was startling, the change in the terrain. A meandering river was the cause, a sparkling blue ribbon that literally meant the difference between life and death for the plant and animal life that depended on it for survival. To say nothing of the two-legged inhabitants of the town, several of whom Lee spotted some two miles off.

  Buckskin brought the coach to a stop on a shelf that afforded a panoramic vista of the verdant paradise. “Climb on out and stretch your legs, folks,” he hollered. “I need to rest the team a bit before we take to the steep grade ahead.”

  Lee reined up and eased to the ground. Sunlight played off the buildings in the distance, pinpoints of light marking windows and metal. The river, he observed, flowed out of the mountains to the north, crossed the valley, and looped to the southwest along the base of the far hills. The town of Diablo was located on its east bank.

  Lee strolled to the coach as Jim Hays was helping Allison down. “I never have been fond of stage travel,” he remarked. “All that jostling jars a man’s innards something terrible.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Jim said, stretching. “I feel as if every bone in my body is out of joint.”

  Allison was as perfectly composed as if she were in a sitting room. “I don’t mind,” she said. Truth was, she loved to travel, to see new sights, to meet new people.

  Jim stepped to the edge of the shelf. “Isn’t this extraordinary?” he said, encompassing the valley with a gesture. “We’ve been here several times, and I still can’t get over how splendid it is. No wonder my friend Bob Delony likes it so much.” He regarded Lee a moment. “Where will you stay once we hit town?”

  “A hotel, I reckon.”

  “We’ll be staying with Delony,” Jim said. “I’ll give you his address so you can pay us a visit sometime. I’m sure he’d like to meet you.”

  Allison was befuddled by her father’s behavior. For someone who had always been critical of every suitor who ever courted her, he was being uncommonly friendly to Lee Scurlock. It made no sense. They hardly knew the southerner.

  “We’ll see,” Lee said, unwilling to commit himself unless Allison showed a spark of interest in him. She still would not look him in the eyes. “I might only stay long enough to check on the whereabouts of those two I tangled with.” He did not mention that he was doing it for them.

  The driver, Buckskin, had been adjusting the traces, and overheard. “If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, sonny,” he chimed in, “you’d best tread lightly if you go on the prod after Collins and Morco, or you’ll find the whole Bar K outfit gunnin’ for you. Wynn says you jerk a pistol like greased lightning, but there’s just one of you and Allister Kemp has twenty top hands ridin’ for him, every one loyal to the brand.”

  “Where does this Kemp fit in?” Lee asked.

  Jim Hays answered. “Allister Kemp is an Englishman. He was the first white man to settle in this valley, years before silver was discovered and the town sprang up.” He pointed at a vast stretch of grassland visible beyond the town. “That’s part of Kemp’s ranch, the Bar K, one of the biggest in Arizona. It stretches from west of the river clear to those hilly specks to the west. Most of the valley is his.”

  “He came to our country to make his fortune, and he succeeded,” Allison interjected with a touch of excitement.

  “You sound as if you know him personally,” Lee said.

  “We do,” Jim Hays confirmed. “Two years ago, on one of my visits to Bob Delony, we were introduced. Since then, whenever we come to see Bob, Kemp makes it a point to look us up. The last time, he even invited us to his ranch for supper.”

  “Right friendly of him,” Lee commented.

  “I think he’s stuck on Allison,” Jim said, and he did not sound particularly pleased.

  “Oh?” Lee looked at her, but she turned, foiling his attempt to learn if Kemp’s attention pleased her.

  “Allister Kemp is a gentleman,” Allison said. “He’s worked hard to get where he is. You wouldn’t catch him making his living as a cardsharp.” She checked to see if her barb had scored and was rewarded by a tightening of the Tennessean’s jaw muscles.

  Buckskin made a clucking noise. “Kemp ain’t to be trusted, lady. Who do you think those three gun sharks who tried to make wolf meat of your pa work for?”

  With an airy laugh, Allison dismissed the idea. “Don’t be ridiculous. Allister Kemp would never harm a soul.”

  “He wiped out the Indians who were here before him, didn’t he? And he’s made no secret of the fact that he’d like to drive off every last prospector and settler in these parts.”

  “If those three were his men, and that hasn’t been proven yet, then they were drunk and acting on their own,” Allison said. “You can’t blame Allister for their actions.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with my daughter,” Jim said. “Kemp has always been cordial to us. There is no reason in the world for him to harm us.”

  Buckskin clucked again. “Be that as it may, those three were his hands. I know, ’cause I’ve laid eyes on his outfit when they�
��ve come into town to raise hell and those three are always along.” He patted one of the horses and walked off with a parting shot: “Ask anyone if you don’t believe me.”

  Lee had taken a dislike to the Englishman the moment he saw that Allison appeared to be fond of him. It gratified him that his dislike was justified, since it was highly unlikely that the three hardcases would risk their boss’s wrath by picking on a known friend of his. There had to be a lot more to the affair than was apparent.

  Jim thoughtfully gazed westward. “Kemp owns over five thousand acres, or thereabouts,” he said. “Until four years ago, he had this whole valley to himself. Then the prospectors came. A small town sprang up, mainly businesses supplying their needs. But it wasn’t long before squatters moved in.”

  Allison took up the account. “Allister didn’t mind at first, because he owned all the prime land. He expected the settlers to drift elsewhere after a while, but the town kept growing and they stayed on.”

  “You mentioned prospectors,” Lee said to her father. “Did they find gold?”

  “Silver. An old geezer struck a rich vein in those mountains to the north and prospectors poured in from all over. A strike always draws like honey does bears. Diablo grew from a population of sixty or so to over two thousand in the span of a month. It caught Kemp by surprise. He didn’t like it much, but there was nothing he could do.”

  Lee studied the buildings once more. “Where did the town get its name?”

  “Where else? That’s the Diablo River next to it,” Jim said. “Or, to be more precise, Rio de Diablo, as the Spaniards named it way back when. If memory serves, they called it that after a flood wiped out a third of their expedition. So now everything is named Diablo.” He indicated the mountains. “Those are the Diablo Mountains, and the valley is Diablo Valley, and those hills to the south are—”

  “The Diablo Hills,” Lee guessed.

  Jim chuckled. “You learn quick. Why, even the main creek that feeds into the river is called Diablo Creek. That’s where silver was initially discovered.”

  Lee took in the sprawling expanse of the Englishman’s ranch in silent contemplation. His cherished dream, confided to no one but Doc, was to one day own a cattle spread of his own, a place where he could hang up his pistols and raise a family. But the likelihood of attaining his dream was as remote as the moon in light of his current difficulty.

  “The Diablo Creek Mine is one of the best producers in the Southwest,” Jim said. “The old buzzard who made the claim, Abe Howard, is a real character.”

  “Half the town thinks he’s loco,” Allison mentioned. “All because he donated the money needed to build a school and a church, then set up his own general store.”

  In the past two minutes Lee had learned more about Diablo than he ever knew about his hometown of Possum Hollow. And there was more to come.

  “You see, there already was a general store,” Jim Hays explained. “It’s run by a man named Frank Lowe, who had a monopoly until Old Abe opened his and undercut Lowe’s prices. Lowe has had it in for Old Abe ever since.” He surveyed the valley. “Hate and spite are the real problems here. The homesteaders look down their noses at the prospectors and miners, and both sides despise the cowboys and their employer, Kemp.”

  “With the town caught in the middle,” Lee said.

  “Diablo is a tinderbox just waiting for the fuse to be lit,” Hays said.

  Buckskin whooped for everyone to climb on board. Lee walked to the roan and stepped into the stirrups. As he rode beside the stage down the incline, he mulled over everything he had been told. He could ill afford to get caught up in the brewing conflict, not when the three gents on his trail would hound him to the gates of hell and back again in their quest to bring him to justice.

  “Is there a lawman in town?” Lee asked through the window.

  “Not yet,” Jim replied. “When Allison and I were there last, there was talk about the council appointing a marshal. I don’t know if anything ever came of it. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Lee lied.

  “They need one badly,” Jim said. “Seldom a day goes by that there isn’t a fight or a shooting.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a fitting place for your daughter to be,” Lee commented, and knew he had made a mistake when Allison’s color deepened.

  “Why? Because I’m a woman?” Few things riled Allison more than being treated as if she were helpless or incompetent. Some men did that, though, carrying on as if women were incapable of doing whatever men did. As if men were in some respect superior! “I suppose it’s fitting for you, being a man and all?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Allison looked, and saw that he was telling the truth. “I beg your pardon. I suppose it’s more fitting for you because you’re a gambler and the place is crawling with dens of iniquity?”

  “It’s a living,” Lee said, piqued.

  “So is cattle rustling, but neither will take you very far in life.”

  Lee spurred the roan on past the stage. He had been a fool to think she favored him. Every time he opened his mouth, she jumped down his throat. He couldn’t wait to reach Diablo so they could part company.

  In the stagecoach, Allison told her father, “I don’t see why you’ve been so nice to him. I can’t wait to bid him goodbye.”

  To her astonishment, the kindly matron, who had hardly uttered three words since leaving the relay station, laughed lightly and said, “You can’t fool us, my dear. Please keep me in mind when you send out the invitations. I do so love weddings.”

  Chapter Five

  Wild and woolly didn’t begin to describe Diablo.

  Like an enormous beehive, the town swarmed with activity twenty-four hours of the day. It was already a turbulent boomtown, and if it kept growing as many foresaw, it would soon outpace every other town in Arizona to claim the crown as the largest.

  Divided in half from east to west by a wide, dusty thoroughfare, Diablo displayed two faces to the world at large.

  North of the central street, called Cottonwood, existed scores of tents, shacks, and even a few frame houses. This was the residential section, at its heart a towering white church sporting a needle-thin steeple that reared skyward as if striving to reach heaven itself.

  South of Cottonwood Street flourished dens of iniquity devoted to every sensual pleasure imaginable. Saloons, dance halls, places of prostitution, and sundry other dives lined both sides of every artery, beckoning the foolish and the carefree with the tinkle of glasses, raucous laughter, and the come-hither looks of painted females wearing dresses no woman north of Cottonwood would be caught dead in.

  If Diablo south of Cottonwood qualified as an inferno, then Hell Street served as the focal point for the burning vices on parade. It was the next wide east-west thoroughfare, six blocks south of the central avenue.

  Hell Street attracted the hardest element with its higher class of saloons and working girls. Half a dozen gaming establishments, in particular, received the dubious distinction of being viperous dens the equal of any the West had ever spawned.

  From all over they had come, flocking to Diablo in droves. Prospectors, miners, promoters, gamblers, confidence artists, fallen doves, gunmen, thieves, vagrants, and even a few homesteaders could be found milling in pursuit of their private passions at any hour of the day or night.

  They hailed from the ranges of Wyoming and Nebraska, from the rugged vastness of Montana, from Texas and New Mexico and Kansas, from the fertile farmlands of Illinois and Iowa and points east as well. From wherever men and women were down on their luck and heard about the bonanza to be reaped in the silver-laden mountains or the sin-strewn streets.

  In that respect Diablo was no different from all the previous boomtowns, but those in the know, those who had been to other boomtowns, were unanimous in their belief that Diablo was the very worst.

  Hardly a day went by without a new marker being placed on the aptly named Boot Hill, a solitary windswept knoll on the no
rtheast outskirts.

  Diablo, as the saying went, was a wide-open town where anything went, and usually did.

  As Lee Scurlock trailed the stagecoach down Cottonwood Street and gazed at the sea of humanity flowing back and forth in a torrent, he felt a tingle of excitement. He’d seen his share of rowdy places in his travels with Doc, but nothing like this.

  Doc. Thinking of his brother saddened Lee. It had been a fluke of chance that Josiah’s skill with a six-shooter had earned him that nickname. Josiah was no healer. No, the nickname came from the fact that Josiah had sent so many men to doctors. Naturally, when journalists latched on to the Billy the Kid story and learned that one of Billy’s partisans was a rangy Tennessean called “Doc,” they just had to write him up as they had done Bonney. Small wonder Doc was now halfway to famous, and Lee could not go anywhere his brother’s handle was not known.

  The crack of Buckskin’s whip shattered Lee’s reverie. The stage angled toward a building on the right, pedestrians scattering like chickens to get out of its way.

  Lee reined up shy of the stage office and patted the roan. He surveyed Cottonwood Street, debating his next move.

  Jim Hays stepped down and held up his hand for his daughter and then the matron. “Say, Lee!” he called. “I want you to promise to pay Allison and me a visit tomorrow.”

  Allison did not know whether to be upset or glad. Her father’s strange attachment to the southerner continued to baffle her. By the same token, she would secretly have liked to see Lee again, but she was not going to admit it to him.

  Lee took his time answering. He’d rather get on with his own life, yet he did want to spend more time around Allison. He’d never admit it, for fear she would fling his feelings back in his face. “If you want,” he said.

  Jim Hays came over. “We’ll look forward to it. Bob Delony’s house is on Allen Street, three blocks north. Seventeen Allen Street. You can’t miss it. Say about noon?”