Kilrone

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Chapter One Betty Considine shaded her eyes when she saw the rider coming through the gate. Accustomed to the movements of horses and men, she noted the weary, shuffling trot of the pony as it crossed the baked clay of the compound toward the Headquarters building. The rider was unshaven, and the dark hair curled around his ears and over the collar of his sun-bleached shirt. When he swung down she noted the gun hung low, the narrow hips, and the powerful shoulders. His hat brim was ragged, and there was a bullet hole through the crown. When he was a few paces from her she could clearly see the line of an old scar on his cheekbone. His lean brown face was haggard, and in his eyes there was the daze of a dreadful weariness. On the collar and shoulder of his faded blue shirt was a dark stain of dried blood. Pulling his hat from his head, he slapped it against his thigh in an ineffectual effort to free it of dust, and the attempt caused him to stagger, so that he half fell against the hitch rail. She ran to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Are you hurt?" she asked quickly. "What's the matter?" The face he turned to her was etched with lines of exhaustion, and was gray under the tan. "I'll be all right. Thank you." He smelled strongly of stale sweat, dust, and the horse, and he gathered himself with a visible effort. Even in his exhausted state there was a faint swagger in his bearing. "Who's commanding?" he asked. "The adjutant, Major Paddock." He had started to turn away, but at the name his shoulders seemed to hunch as from a blow. He looked back at her, the glaze of weariness gone from his eyes. "You said Paddock. Not Frank Bell Paddock?" "Yes. Do you know him?" He stared at the compound as if seeing it for the first time. Squinting against the white-hot glare of the desert sun, he looked around the rectangle of shabby adobes that made up the tiny post. Officers' quarters, adjutant's office, sutler's store, the post bakery, commissary quartermaster stores, blacksmith shop, corrals, and stables. Everywhere was heat, dust, and the glare of the pitiless sun. "My God!" he said softly. "Frank Bell Paddock!" He opened the door of the Headquarters building and disappeared inside. Betty Considine was Army. The only daughter of General Pat Considine, and a niece of Carter Hanlon, captain and army surgeon, she had grown up to Regulations. Having lived on a dozen army posts, after her father's death she had gone to live with her aunt and uncle. She was familiar with army gossip and she knew, as they all did, the story of Major Frank Bell Paddock. If this stranger was shocked at the presence of Major Paddock at this remote post he must have known Paddock in the past, but not during the years immediately behind him. There had been a time when Paddock was considered one of the most promising young officers in the post-war Army, and one with an assured future. Since that time his decline had been consistent, but the only other consistent thing about Paddock was his addiction to the bottle. Finally he had come here, only a year ago, to this new and temporary fort, one of the most isolated in the country. Her curiosity aroused, Betty Considine paused in the shade of the overhang outside the sutler's store. Uninterested in any man on the post or elsewhere, Betty was intrigued by this disreputable-looking stranger who had known Frank Bell Paddock in the days of his glory. If this man had known Paddock, he must have known him back east, or in Europe, yet a more typical western man she had never seen. But he might have been Army . . . even if he did not look it now. The life of Major Frank Bell Paddock was an open book up to a point, but Something had happened in Paris. Captain Paddock had b