“And the poor creature has completely lost her memory, I’m told.”
Puzzled, Fletcher asked, “How did you know that?”
Bob smiled. “Prescott’s hired guns. My, how they love to stand around the saloon and talk.”
“Well, they’re right about one thing. Savannah has lost her memory. Doc Hawthorne says it’s pretty common after a head injury, and she should start to remember things in a couple of weeks.”
“Head injury?”
“Uh-huh. Somebody took a shot at her. When I got to Savannah, her horse had been shot out from under her, and she was lying on the ground unconscious.”
“Did you get a look at the would-be assassin?”
Fletcher shook his head. “No. We traded shots, but there was a blizzard blowing hard, and I lost him.”
“Too bad,” Bob said. “Only a low-down skunk would try to kill a woman.”
“A skunk,” Fletcher agreed. “Or a hired killer.”
“And that points up Mrs. Tyrone’s concern,” Bob said. “She says a young woman without a memory shouldn’t be left alone out there at your cabin, especially with Pike Prescott making all those threats. She says she should come out to the Lazy R where she can get proper care and be protected. If Savannah is willing, I’ve been charged to escort her there in the ranch surrey.”
“I’ve got to agree with Mrs. Tyrone,” Fletcher said. “My cabin is no place for a woman right now. I believe Savannah also knows this and will take her up on her kind invitation.”
“Well,” Bob said, rising to his feet. “I’ll be right here for the next hour or so if you need me. I feel the need for another brandy and”—he smiled—“I don’t think the vigilantes will run me out of town. At least not for a little while yet.”
Fletcher rose and stuck out his hand, which Bob took. “You saved my life out there. It’s something I won’t forget.” He stood for a few moments studying the little man’s face, then added, “Say, just why did you throw in with me? It wasn’t your fight.”
The Englishman colored, looking embarrassed. “I think it’s what we British call fair play. It was two against one, and I evened the odds, even though I’d never fired a gun in anger before.”
“Well, I’m much obliged to you.” Fletcher stepped toward the door, then stopped. “I’ll speak to Savannah about Mrs. Tyrone’s offer,” he said, turning. “If she agrees, I’ll ride out to the Lazy R with you.”
Bob nodded. “That’s a first-class plan. Savannah will be well protected.”
As he stepped onto the boardwalk and made his way to the general store, Fletcher was very much troubled by two thoughts.
The first was that Bob said he’d never before fired a gun in anger and was visibly upset by the killing. Yet he’d been cool enough when he drilled Ezra’s brother right through the middle of the forehead at twenty paces. By any standard, that was good shooting, and it took nerve.
The second was that he was sure he’d seen the mild-eyed little Englishman somewhere before, somewhere back along some misty, half-forgotten trail.
But where?
Chapter 7
Fletcher paid for his supplies and crossed the road to the hotel, carrying a bulging sack that weighed pretty heavy.
When he stepped into the hotel lobby, the clerk wasn’t in sight. He took the stairs two at a time and walked to Savannah’s door. He rapped with his knuckles and said, “Savannah, open up. It’s Buck.”
No answer.
Fletcher knocked again. “Open up, sleepyhead. It’s me.”
Silence.
Alarmed, Fletcher tried the door. It opened easily.
He stepped inside the room and looked around.
Savannah was gone.
A single glance told him that the bed hadn’t been slept on. When he checked the wardrobe, he found that a suede riding outfit with a split skirt was missing. So was the short, fur-lined jacket that he’d seen hanging there earlier. And so was the box of .41 caliber shells.
There was no sign of a struggle. Whatever had happened here, Savannah had left of her own free will.
Doc!
Fletcher’s frustration with the snoring Holliday’s lackadaisical guardianship gave him the irresistible urge to charge into his room and throttle his skinny neck. But a man didn’t barge into Doc’s bedroom unannounced—not unless he was real tired of living.
Fletcher stepped out of Savannah’s room and quietly closed the door behind him.
For a few moments, he stood outside Doc Holliday’s room. Inside, he could hear the man snoring loudly, the strangled snorts and gasps of a lunger who found breathing, even in sleep, very difficult.
Doc had let him down, and now Fletcher decided it was time to let him know it. He stepped up to Doc’s door, braced his arms on the jambs and kicked it hard several times, a thundering BANG! BANG! BANG! that echoed noisily throughout the hotel.
The big man stepped smartly away from the door, out of any line of fire. He smiled when he heard Doc’s snores strangle to a halt, followed by a startled: “Wha—wha—wha ... the hell?”
Still smiling, Fletcher made his way downstairs and stopped at the front desk. The clerk said he hadn’t seen Savannah leave, since he was taking a nap himself. “Did you check the livery stable?” he asked. “Is Miss Jones’ horse gone?”
“I’m just about to go over there,” Fletcher said. He heaved the heavy sack of groceries onto the desk. “Take care of these, will you?”
Without waiting for the startled clerk’s reply, Fletcher stepped out of the lobby onto the boardwalk.
And the sky fell on him.
Fletcher never saw the bottle that crashed into the back of his head and dropped him, stunned, to his hands and knees on the boardwalk.
A boot came out of nowhere and thudded into his ribs, and he fell over on his right side, pain spiking savagely at him.
Fletcher half-turned his head and saw Pike Prescott looming over him, a grinning Higgy Conroy standing next to him.
“I warned you to get out of the Territory,” Prescott snarled. “Now, by God, you’re going to pay the piper.”
Prescott’s boot swung again and crashed into Fletcher’s face, rolling him on his back. Prescott straddled him, then dropped his two-hundred-forty pounds quickly, his knees pinning Fletcher’s upper arms to the rough planks of the boardwalk.
Prescott’s fists swung, first a right, then a left, smashing time and time again into Fletcher’s face, turning the gunfighter’s features into a bloody pulp.
Through a haze of blood and pain, Fletcher tried to twist from under the big rancher’s knees. But he couldn’t move, and again Prescott’s fists thudded into his face.
After what seemed to Fletcher an eternity as he battled to hold onto consciousness, Prescott rose to his feet, hauling the gunfighter with him. Prescott grabbed the front of Fletcher’s mackinaw and threw him against the false front of the hotel with so much force that the building shook.
Fletcher tried desperately to swing a left, but Prescott easily brushed his fist aside and rammed a right, then another hard right, into Fletcher’s unprotected belly.
Gasping, Fletcher doubled up, and Prescott let him fall to the boardwalk. Dimly, as if Prescott were speaking from the other end of a tunnel, Fletcher heard the big man turn to the crowd and roar, “I told this man to get off my land. He chose to ignore me, and now you see him lying there, the big gunfighter Buck Fletcher.” Prescott swung a kick into Fletcher’s ribs. “Well, he doesn’t look so big now, does he?”
Prescott stepped to the edge of the boardwalk. “All of you out there,” he said, “take this as a warning. I won’t be run off my range, and from this day forth I’ll hang any man I find carrying a gun on the PP Connected.”
His voice rose. “My name is Pike Prescott, and I aim to keep what is mine.” Without a backward glance at Fletcher, Prescott stepped off the boardwalk and angrily shoved his way through the crowd, the grinning Higgy Conroy swaggering after him.
Pain.
; Buck Fletcher was at the center of an exploding universe of pain. Every breath he took stabbed at his sides like a red-hot lance. After several tries, when he got to his hands and knees, he saw blood fall like rubies from his face to the boardwalk.
The crowd, stunned and cowed by Prescott’s savage violence, melted away, and Fletcher found himself alone.
The livery stable.
He must try and get to his horse.
Slowly, collapsing on his side time and time again, he crawled along the boardwalk. Behind him lay a trail of bloody handprints, scarlet markers mocking his tedious progress.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Fletcher collapsed onto his belly. He could go no farther.
“Easy there, feller. Let me help you.”
Through swollen eyes that were mere slits in his battered face, Fletcher watched a slender young man bend over him. The man was dressed in a black shirt, black pants and a low-crowned, flat-brimmed hat. The only splash of color was the worn ivory handle of the Colt in a crossdraw holster at his waist.
“My horse,” Fletcher whispered through split and battered lips. “Got to get my horse... got to get to my cabin... Two-Bit Creek ...”
“Mister, you’re hurt bad, awful bad,” the young man said.
“My horse... livery... my cabin ...”
The young man shook his head. “Not there. Pike and his boys are on their way to the Two-Bit right now. If there’s anyone there, they won’t be alive come sundown—Higgy Conroy is with them.”
“No!” Fletcher gasped. “I ... I got to get out there ...”
“Mister,” the man said, “I’d say you’ve had a busy morning. Right now what you need is rest.”
Pain.
Then Fletcher’s entire universe exploded, a blinding flash of searing, white-hot light.
He was falling, falling into a starless void, tumbling like a falling leaf into a darkness that had no beginning and no end.
Chapter 8
He woke to sunlight.
Bright rays slanted through the lace curtains of the room where he lay. Around him, fresh flowers bloomed.
Fletcher blinked, trying to get his eyes back into focus.
He saw them clearly now. They were not real flowers, but the pattern of the wallpaper. Yet he smelled their sweet scent. How was that possible?
A woman was bending over him.
She looked to be somewhere in her mid-thirties, a beautiful woman with a slender, shapely figure, a thick, waving mass of auburn hair, and soft hazel eyes.
She must, Fletcher decided, be an angel.
“Where am I?” he whispered.
“You’re at the Lazy R,” the woman said. “I’m Judith Tyrone.”
“How ... how long ... ?”
“You’ve been unconscious for three days.”
“Three days!”
Fletcher struggled to rise, but Judith gently pushed him back on the pillow.
“You’re not going anywhere. You took a terrible beating from Pike Prescott,” she said. “I sent for Doc Hawthorne, and he taped up your broken ribs, three of them.” She shook her head, smiling. “Strangely enough, your nose wasn’t broken.”
Fletcher smiled back weakly, an effort that made his battered face hurt. “It’s been broke so many times in the past, I guess it just naturally can’t be broke again.”
“How do you feel?” Judith asked, her eyes concerned.
“About as good as I look.”
“That bad, huh?”
In fact, despite his injuries, Fletcher felt stronger than he had a right to feel—and he was very hungry.
Judith held a bowl of beef broth, and she dipped some and held the spoon to Fletcher’s lips.
The big man smiled and sipped what was offered. Then he took the bowl from Judith and said, “I think I can manage this by myself.” He spooned some broth. “But what I really need is someone to burn me a thick steak and lay six fried eggs on top of it. Oh, and maybe a loaf of bread.”
Judith grinned, her eyes wandering over Fletcher’s wide, muscular shoulders and the thick, sunburned column of his neck. “That hungry, huh?” she asked.
Fletcher nodded. “That hungry and then some.”
Judith rose. “I’ll be right back.” She dropped a little curtsy. “Just as soon as I give your order to the chef, sir.”
When the woman was gone, Fletcher lay back on the bed, his hands clasped behind his head.
He’d been beaten up by Pike Prescott, that much he could remember. It had happened as he was leaving Savannah’s hotel—
Savannah!
Fletcher sat bolt upright, ignoring the sudden stab of pain that shot through his ribs on the right side of his chest.
He had to find her. Had she gone back to the cabin? If she had, she was in terrible danger.
Fletcher recalled a man dressed in black who had helped him. The man, whoever he was, had told him Prescott and his gunmen were riding out to the cabin—and Higgy Conroy was riding with them.
Swinging his legs over the bed, Fletcher struggled to his feet. The room spun around him, and he sat down again, the bedsprings squealing under his weight. Judith stepped into the room, and Fletcher realized for the first time that he was stark naked. He dived back under the sheets as the woman laughed.
“Mr. Fletcher,” she said, “I’ve seen a naked man before.”
“Not this one,” Fletcher said, his face flushing. He looked wildly around the room. “My clothes? And where the hell are my guns?”
Judith nodded toward a wardrobe set against the wall. “In there. Your guns are there, and so are your clothes. Your rifle and revolvers have been cleaned and oiled, and your clothes washed and pressed, I might add.” She paused. “Your money belt is there too. Untouched.”
Fletcher realized that this woman had done her best for him, and he’d sounded churlish and ungrateful, like a spoiled child.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I have to find Savannah and quick.”
“She’s not at the cabin; at least, I don’t think so,” Judith said. Then, by way of explanation, she added, “I sent some of my hands up there the day before yesterday, and that crazy old man—”
“Jeb Coons,” Fletcher supplied, smiling.
“Is that his name? Well, anyway, he was forted up in an aspen grove and drove my men off with his rifle. It’s lucky none of my hands were killed.”
“Sounds like Jeb,” Fletcher said.
Then Jeb was still alive and by all accounts as feisty as ever. But where was Savannah? Was she out wandering in the hills somewhere, a young, pretty and vulnerable woman who was the target of a mysterious and cold-blooded killer’s rifle?
Fletcher looked at Judith pleadingly. “Please, Miss Tyrone, bring me my clothes. I’ve got to get going. I have to find Savannah.”
The woman smiled. Her teeth were even and very white. “It’s Mrs. Tyrone,” she said. “But to you, Buck, I’m Judith.”
“Judith.” Fletcher smiled. “My clothes?”
The woman said, “Wait a moment.” She stepped to the dresser and returned with a small hand mirror. She held it up to Fletcher and said, “Look. Are you still sure you want to ride?”
Fletcher glanced in the mirror and saw the grotesque face of a stranger. His eyes were mere slits, black and blue and swollen, fading to yellow across his cheekbones. His lips were split and puffed, and his nose, though Judith said it hadn’t been broken, looked to be twice its normal size, blood crusted around the nostrils.
Fletcher shook his head. “Maybe it’s just as well I wasn’t too purty to begin with.” His fingers went to his mustache. “Thanks for trimming this.”
Judith laid the tips of her fingers on the back of his hand. “I don’t want you to ride, Buck. Listen, I know how urgent finding Savannah is. I know she’s in great danger. That’s why I’ve had my hands out searching for the past couple of days. Doc Hawthorne told you loss of memory wasn’t serious, but I assure you it is. Doc is a nice old man, but he just ca
n’t treat something like that. Savannah needs to go Back East, where there are proper physicians.”
Fletcher nodded. “I agree with you there. But we have to find her first.”
Tears reddened the woman’s eyes, and she turned quickly away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Suddenly I’m being a woman.”
“What’s the matter?” Fletcher asked, his voice concerned.
Judith clasped Fletcher’s big hand in hers, the paleness of her fine skin a delicate, feminine contrast against the sun-toughened mahogany brown of his own.
“Buck,” she said urgently, “it’s just that I don’t want to lose this ranch. Since my husband was murdered, it’s all I have left. Pike Prescott has already moved part of his herd onto my winter grass, and just yesterday he threatened to burn this house down around my ears if I don’t sell out to him by the end of the week.”
Judith lifted Fletcher’s hand to her mouth and brushed it lightly with her soft lips. “That’s just four days from now. I need you, Buck. I need you to stand with me. I have good, steady men, but they’re working hands, not hired gunmen like Higgy Conroy and that bunch.”
Cursing himself for getting involved in another’s troubles, yet moved by the memory of the woman’s lips still warm on his hand, Fletcher heard himself say, “Judith, you won’t lose your ranch. Prescott and me, we have a showdown coming. First I’m going to beat him to within an inch of his life, and then I’m going to run him clear out of the Territory.”
“And Higgy Conroy?” Judith asked, her lips pale.
“Him too.”
Fletcher ran his finger down Judith’s soft cheek. “Now, young lady, for pete’s sake bring me my clothes. I’ve been loafing in bed too long.”
It was only when he dressed and stomped into his boots that Fletcher realized just how weak he was. Doc Hawthorne had taped up his ribs, but it hurt to breathe, and he knew he was no match for Pike Prescott in this condition. Not yet, anyway.
He carried his gunbelts to the kitchen and hung them over the back of his chair. Judith’s cook, a grizzled oldster who had once wrangled grub on Charlie Goodnight’s cattle drives, set a plate filled with steak, eggs and fried bread in front of him.
Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 7