“Well, Mr. Tucker, frankly, some of us here in town are a little tired of Ralph Landers running everything, including the law. And his friend, the banker—he’s robbing the citizens blind with his interest rates, and forecloses in a second if a person can’t pay his mortgage. Some have even been physically threatened by the sheriff.”
“Where is everybody now?”
“Most of them are at the Golden Spur Saloon. It’s a fancy joint up the street. That’s where Landers hangs out most of the time. I’ll tell you, Mr. Tucker, I’ve seen that man’s ex-wife, and if I were him, I’d be going over there to make up and forget about fighting!” The man chuckled, and Moss smiled.
“So, everybody knows I’m comin’ in, huh?”
“Oh, yesterday and last night Landers’s men kept straggling into town—one of them with a wounded hand, some dead and slung over their horses. Everybody knows what Ralph Landers has been up to. Now that Mrs. Landers has some help, we’re all kind of sitting back to watch the show, you know? I’m glad she found some good men. Landers’s men didn’t keep it any secret what happened. I don’t think any of them expected Etta Landers to even return, let alone come back with a virtual army. What will you do now, Mr. Tucker?”
Moss straightened and put his cigarette out.
“Well, I reckon I’ll go get me a drink—at the Golden Spur.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Good luck, Mr. Tucker.”
“Obliged,” Moss replied with a nod. He walked through the door, stepping outside cautiously. Darrell, Pappy, Johnny, Bullit, and Sooner all waited outside on their horses.
“Got the letter sent,” Moss told them. “The man in there tells me most of them are at the Golden Spur Saloon. So I figured that might be a good place to go get us a drink. What do you say, boys?”
Pappy grinned. “I’m mighty thirsty myself.”
“Figured you was,” Moss replied, sliding up into his saddle. The six of them headed up the street.
“They’re comin’, Mr. Landers!” one of the local barflies shouted excitedly, leaning out the swinging doors and staring down the street at Moss and his men.
“What do you want us to do, boss?” one of Landers’s men asked.
“Let him come,” Landers replied, looking cool on the outside but shaking on the inside. “The man wants to talk, so we’ll talk. Besides, this Moses Tucker was an old lover of Etta’s. I’d like to see what he looks like before he dies.”
“I’m leaving!” Miles Randall told him, rising from his chair.
“You’re staying right here! You turn tail and run and it will be all he needs!” Landers snapped.
“Moses Tucker almost killed me a few years back!” Randall hissed, leaning toward Landers. “Half the reason he’s here is because your ex-wife told him I’m in town! I know it! I know it in my bones! You’ve got no right to make me stay here!”
Their eyes held a moment, Landers’s steely cold. Miles Randall knew if he didn’t obey, Landers might be angry with him, and Randall couldn’t bear the thought of it. Randall slumped back into his chair as though physically defeated. Landers looked around the room.
“You men keep an eye on them. I don’t feel like dying this morning. But there will be no rough stuff today. We’ll see what Moses Tucker wants, and we’ll tell him the way it will be, and that’s that. I don’t want any out and out killings in front of the fine citizens of Rock Springs.”
Horses could be heard outside now, and Ralph Landers’s heart pounded. Miles Randall felt short of breath, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. A large, shadowy figure appeared at the swinging doors, difficult to see because the sun was at his back. The figure loomed inside, and Miles Randall gripped the edge of the table tightly, his knuckles turning white. His face was the first one Moss saw. Moss stood still a moment, struggling to keep his temper. The man he was looking at had stolen from under his nose every last cent Moss had earned by the sweat of his brow, after five years of patiently mining his own gold and then selling his little claim. It was this same man Moss had nearly killed in rage. Moss had gone to prison for it: five more long years behind concrete and steel walls, suffering starvation, beatings, sickness, and filth. But as he stared at Miles Randall, he knew his vengeance was already being fulfilled. The man looked green, and Moss thought Randall would puke any moment.
Moss pushed his hat back. “Long time, Randall. You look like you got your health back.”
Randall opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Moss shifted his eyes to the very well-dressed man who sat across the table from Miles Randall. He knew who it had to be. So this was Etta’s husband. It did not surprise him that the man was extremely handsome. Etta would not marry an ugly man. But it did surprise him that such a well-built, dark and handsome man could be what Etta claimed he was.
“Mr. Landers I presume?” Moss asked, as five of his men came through the door behind him. Pappy and the others spread out slowly, eyeing everyone in the room cautiously and getting some cold stares in return. The tension was almost painful.
“I’m Ralph Landers,” the man replied, standing up. “You, uh, already know Mr. Randall here.”
Moss reached into his shirt pocket for another cigarette. He looked at Miles Randall again, who in turn was staring at Moss’s missing arm.
“Apache,” Moss told the man, lighting his cigarette. Randall looked up at Moss’s eyes.
“Indians?” he choked out.
“You know anything else that’s called Apache?”
Randall just swallowed.
“Men like me don’t die, Randall,” Moss added. “They’ve got ways of comin’ back. Too bad, isn’t it?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette.
“Mr. Tucker, let’s get down to business,” Landers spoke up.
“First things first,” Moss replied. “I’m thirsty.” He looked over at the bartender. “Me and my men want some whiskey. Pour it.”
The bartender started to get out some shot glasses.
“Don’t you give them a drop!” Landers ordered.
Moss shifted his eyes to Ralph Landers, his hatred building.
“You own this place?”
“I do. I own half this town.”
“Yeah. That’s what I heard. That’s not all I heard about you, Landers.”
Landers turned white, then red. He swallowed and took a deep breath. “What the hell are you talking about, Tucker?” he hissed.
“You know what I’m talkin’ about,” Moss replied in a low and threatening voice. “You’ve all but destroyed Etta Landers. Mister, what you do with your life is your private affair. But pickin’ on a helpless woman irritates me like a burr between my ass and my saddle! She’s suffered enough, and you’re rich enough. So back off, ’cause if you don’t, you’ll be one hell of a sorry man!”
“And who’s going to make me sorry? You?” Landers sneered. “A one-armed man and a few paltry cowhands?”
“Me and these few paltry cowhands sent every last one of your men on their merry way last night. And anybody that comes back to bother Etta Landers is gonna die. And I’m here to warn you personally to back off and go on back to California, or there’s certain things I’m gonna expose. I’ll bring in a U.S. marshal if I have to, and as a last resort I’ll kill you myself!”
Landers’ eyebrows went up. “It’s dangerous to threaten a man in front of witnesses, Mr. Tucker. Especially when you’re an ex-convict.”
“If I worried about dangers, I’d curl up in a closet and never come out. I’ve told you how it’s gonna be, Landers.”
Landers grinned. “Tell me, Mr. Tucker. How long did it take for my lovely ex-wife to get you into her bed? Is that part of your payment?”
His last word was barely spoken before he felt a stinging blow across his lips. Moss backhanded him hard, knocking Landers sideways across the table. At the same time several of Landers’s men went for their guns, but Moss’s was out and waving before any of them could fully draw, and Moss’s men now had their own guns and rifles ai
med at specific targets.
“Everybody stand real still and nobody will get hurt,” Pappy warned. Ralph Landers clung to the table, still lying on it and spitting blood from his mouth. Miles Randall had jumped up and was now cowering behind one of Landers’s men. Moss looked over at the bartender.
“We’ll have that whiskey now,” he said calmly.
The bartender hesitated, while Ralph Landers scooted off the table, choking and wiping at his bloody lips with his expensive suit. Blood was now spattered down the front of his white, ruffled shirt.
“Now!” Moss barked at the bartender, making the man jump. “Bring it to us on trays! We don’t intend to turn our backs on the scum in here!”
The bartender hurriedly put glasses on a tray and began pouring whiskey into them.
“I’ll see you die for this,” Landers sputtered, on the verge of tears.
“Could be one of us will die, Landers. You think about that,” Moss replied. “I’m not ready to yet. Death just has a way of side-steppin’ my doorway.”
The bartender came over with the whiskey.
“Hand my glass to Mr. Landers here,” Moss told him. “He’s gonna put it to my lips and tip it so I can swallow it without lettin’ go of my gun.”
Landers’ eyes widened and the man turned purple with rage.
“I’ll do no such thing!” he growled.
“You will. Or I’ll swing this gun and break that nose, Mr. Landers. You’re a handsome man. But a broken nose could change all that, couldn’t it?” His eyes moved to Miles Randall. “Certain people might get upset by that.” His eyes moved back to Landers. “Especially the…ladies,” he added with a knowing grin. Landers was so red, Moss wondered if the man’s head would explode. He grudgingly took a shot glass from the tray, and the bartender hurried to the other men to give them their drinks. All of Moss’s men still held guns on the Landers men.
Ralph Landers held the glass up to Moss’s lips and tipped it; Moss quickly swallowed the whiskey while his gun barrel rested against Landers’s ribs. As soon as he was through, Landers threw the glass across the room, and it crashed against the wall.
“Thanks. You’re right sociable,” Moss told him.
Just then a man came barging through the doors, brandishing a rifle. Pappy grasped the rifle barrel before the man realized what was happening, ripping it from the man’s hands and throwing it behind him to the floor. The man stood still in surprise, then frowned. He wore a star on his vest.
“What the hell is going on here?” he growled.
“Where in hell have you been!” Landers snapped back. “These men have been holding us at bay, and this one hit me! They barged in here and began bullying everyone in the place. What kind of a sheriff are you, Tillis?”
Moss backed up so that he could get a better view of the sheriff. Tillis glanced around the room, surveying the situation. Then he looked back at Landers.
“Ralph, I—I just got back from Green River. Somebody said there was trouble over here—”
“You bet your ass there’s trouble over here!” Landers roared back at him. “Look at my mouth! Arrest these men!”
Tillis stared at him dumbfounded, then smiled nervously.
“Just how do you propose I do that?” he asked.
Landers bristled. “You worthless—at least tell them if they ever come into town again they’ll go to jail!”
Sheriff Tillis looked up at Moss. “I have to agree there, mister. What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming in here on a peaceful Saturday morning and creating this disturbance?”
“You know good and well why I’m here, mister.” Moss replied calmly. “And I don’t take no orders from a weak-kneed sheriff who takes bribes to look the other way when laws are bein’ broken, or who thinks money is more important than goin’ to the aid of a helpless woman. You take that tin star of yours and cram it up your ass, mister! And I’ll ride into this town anytime I feel like it. You’d best do your duty right, or I’ll be havin’ a talk with the local citizens. Maybe it’s time they got themselves a new sheriff.”
Tillis stood there in near shock, as Moss moved toward the doors now.
“You remember my warnin’,” Moss told Landers. “I’ve come here to deliver it, fair and square. What happens after this is up to you. But if you expect to live to a ripe old age, you’ll be headin’ back to California and out of Etta Landers’s life, or there’ll be law here that’s bigger than that hick sheriff of yours—and more likely than that, you’ll be spittin’ lead out of that mouth instead of blood!”
Moss and his men backed through the door, quickly turning to scan what was behind them as they did so. No one outside made a move. Several local residents stood around gawking as Moss and the others mounted their horses. Moments later they disappeared, and the citizens immediately began gossiping among themselves.
Inside the tavern Ralph Landers paced, wiping at his mouth and kicking at chairs in his rage.
“What a bunch of ninnies!” he fumed at his men. “Etta comes back with a few men and in one day you’re all shaking in your boots!”
“They don’t look like no easy bunch to deal with, boss,” one man spoke up.
“Well, we will deal with them!” Landers barked. “I have more men than he does, if you can call yourselves men! You’d better start doing your job or there will be no more good pay and free whiskey!”
The man then grabbed one of the saloon girls and walked toward the stairs. “I’m going upstairs with Rachel, and then I’m going to decide what our next move is. Maybe you’re all afraid of a one-armed, aging outlaw, but I’m not! I’m going upstairs to have a good time with a woman and let her nurse my sore mouth. Then I’m going to decide how to get rid of Moses Tucker, and all of you had better decide whether or not you’ve got the guts to carry out my plans!”
He stormed up the stairs, half dragging the girl with him, and one man watched him suspiciously, remembering the mortified look in Ralph Landers’s eyes when Moses Tucker had said he’d heard things about the man. The man who watched Landers was Damian Kuntz, the same man Moss had talked to the night they raided Etta Landers’s ranch, when Moss suggested Ralph Landers was some kind of pervert. Now Kuntz wondered if it might be true. Why had Landers suddenly grabbed the saloon girl and made a big show of bedding her in the middle of the day? It seemed almost a defensive move.
The rest of the men mumbled among themselves, but Damian Kuntz sat down quietly to watch the shaking Miles Randall, who kept looking up the stairs with an almost jealous gaze. Then Randall also went upstairs, going into the same doorway Landers had taken the girl. Kuntz frowned, then rose, and went out the door and around back to a stairway leading to a balcony beneath the upstairs rooms.
Two quiet weeks went by; a total of three long weeks away from Amanda. Moss dealt with his painful need for her by keeping himself so busy that he fell asleep quickly at night from pure exhaustion. There was a lot of work to be done around the E.G. An elderly neighbor woman who had once been Etta’s housekeeper, but had been scared away by the feuding, was finally persuaded to return. Etta convinced the woman that the ranch was safe, now that Moss Tucker and his men were there. She helped Etta clean the house from top to bottom, while Moss and several of his men rode the perimeter of the ranch night and day, watching for intruders. Lloyd Duncan, in the meantime, led the other men in the general chores that had long been neglected.
Feed was cut and stored, fences were mended, and buildings repaired. Cattle were herded in closer to the house and buildings, where they could be watched without scattering the men dangerously thin. Almost one full week was spent branding calves, and at the end of that week Etta held a huge cookout for all the men. She flitted around in a yellow dress with a daring neckline, an agonizingly tempting employer who made the men’s mouths water. It was just as hard on Moss as the rest of them, since his own manly needs were only heightened by his constant longing for Amanda.
The men ate heartily, thinking in the back of their mi
nds how soft and full Etta’s breasts looked, wondering how the red hair would look unpinned and falling over bare shoulders. But still they kept their distance, remembering Moss’s warning and realizing the sense of it. If they gave in to their desires, they could be at each other’s throats in no time at all, and divided they would be of no use to Etta Landers or Moses Tucker. The important thing was to finish the job they had come to do. For they were all men of their word.
The day of festivity was spent eating, drinking, and relaxing for the first time in three weeks. The men relieved their tensions by making a contest out of taming the wild mustangs they had gathered up along with the cattle. Etta enjoyed the show herself, as the men whooped and cheered each man who decided to mount a bucking bronc to see how long he could stay on.
Moss was pondering what his next move should be when someone shouted that a rider was approaching. Everyone quieted and turned to see one of Landers’s men slowly advancing his gun slung over his horse’s neck, his hand holding a stick with a white handkerchief tied to it, signifying he came in peace. The man came close to Moss before he halted his horse. Moss recognized him as the same man he’d spoken to the night he and his men took over the E.G.
“Somethin’ I can do for you, mister?” he asked.
“My name is Damian Kuntz, and I want to talk to you, Tucker—in private.”
“Landers send you?”
“No, sir. I came on my own. I want to join up.”
Moss’s eyebrows went up and the other men looked at each other in surprise.
“What changed your mind?” Moss asked.
“I’d rather discuss it alone,” Kuntz replied, glancing at Etta Landers.
Moss pushed his hat back. “All right. Get on down off your horse and we’ll take a walk.”
The man dismounted.
“Could be a trap, Moss,” Pappy spoke up. “Better check him for a knife. Maybe Landers sent him to do you in.”
Moss studied Damian Kuntz closely. “I know a good man when I see one,” he replied. “Let’s go, mister.” They walked off together, and all of them, including Etta, watched in curiosity. The party had quieted, and Hank Stemm ran to the bunkhouse, returning with a banjo.
Lawless Love Page 33