the Rider Of Lost Creek (1976) by Louis - Kilkenny 02 L'amour Page B

capable than he!"
    "At least ... He smiled at her, "I give them a chance. I don't run over them in the street."
    He paused. "You know, ma'am, you're right pretty in the moonlight, where nobody can see the meanness in you. You've either got a streak of real devil in you to come out here just to say something unpleasant, or else you're falling in love with me, and I don't know which worries me the most!"
    She stepped back angrily. "In love with you?
    Why, you conceited, contemptible"
    Lance had stepped into the saddle and turned the horse as she spoke. He bent quickly and scooped Tana up with one arm and kissed her soundly on the lips.
    Her lips responded almost in spite of themselves. But then he dropped her and rode off, singing:
    Old Joe Clark has got a cow She was muley born It takes a jay-bird forty-eight hours To fly from horn to horn.
    It was an old song, a good song, and he felt like singing.
    Tana Steele, quivering with anger or some emotion less easily understood, stood staring after him. She was still staring as his voice died away in the distance.
    In less than forty-eight hours she had had a whip taken from her, had been threatened with a spanking, had been ignored, treated carelessly, told she had a streak of meanness hi her, and that she looked pretty in the moonlight. She had also been swept off her feet and kissed soundly, kissed more thoroughly than at any time she could remember . .
    . and for such things her memory was very good.
    She told herself she hated him, but her reasons were vague and unsound, and even in her own mind the statement had a hollow ring.
    He was a gunfighter, a killer. A man known wherever western men gathered. How many stories had she heard of this man? The mysterious man who came from nowhere, and whom no man really knew and who, after his killings, disappeared into the limbo from which he came.
    Disappeared? Would he do that again? Where had he come from?
    Who was he? What was he? Where was he going?
    She remembered the picture she had picked up of the elderly woman. Certainly, no average woman, no common woman. There had been both beauty and distinction in that face,, the face of a cultured woman of the world, a woman of breeding.
    Why would Lance Kilkenny carry such a picture?
    His mother? His aunt?
    She remembered the dress, too. It was a dress from an earlier period, but fashionable for its time.
    Who was Lance Kilkenny?
    There was a movement behind her and she saw Rusty Gates swing into his saddle to follow Kilkenny.
    "Rusty?"
    He drew up. "Ma'am?"
    "Who is he?"
    "Kilkenny, ma'am? Everybody knows who Kilkenny is, even those who've never seen him.
    He's a gunfighter, ma'am, perhaps the fastest, deadliest man alive when it comes to a good gun battle."
    "I don't mean that I mean where does he come from?
    What was he?"
    Rusty considered for a moment. He was restless and. eager to be off. But the question was one he had often wondered about himself. "I don't know, Tana ... He said frankly, "and I don't believe anybody else does either."
    He lifted a hand and rode out of the yard, turning down the trail Kilkenny had taken.
    Tana Steele stood alone then, looking into the night She was puzzled and angry. It irritated her that there had been no immediate final answers.
    She was also disturbed by her own feelings, telling herself the. man was a nobody. Probably an outlaw; no doubt vicious and dishonest. She told herself this, but she didn't for one moment believe it There was a certain quiet distinction about Kilkenny that spoke of breeding . . .
    The man had come from somewhere; he had been somebody.
    Jim Weston came up to her. "Anything wrong, ma'am?"
    "No, Jim, nothing."... Then she added, "That man worries me."
    "Kilkenny? Well, if Webb goes after Mort Davis, you've got cause for worry. If Webb leaves him alone, you haven't. It's that simple. I never heard of Kilkenny killin' anybody that wasn't askin' for it. Usually, nobody even knows who Kilkenny is until the moment before . he dies.