“Chaw it or chuck it, boy,” the cook said. “It’s all the same to me.”
Fletcher ate hungrily. The food was good, and he said to Judith, who was sitting opposite him in her sunny kitchen sipping coffee, “What your cook lacks in the social graces, he sure makes up for in culinary skills.”
Judith smiled. “Sam has cooked for cowboys too long. It’s a thankless task.”
Fletcher nodded. “It does tend to make a man tetchy after a spell.”
After he’d finished eating, Fletcher sat back in his chair, his hand straying to his shirt pocket. Judith reached into the pocket of her gingham dress and produced the makings, new papers and a full sack of tobacco.
“Looking for this?”
“Judith, you sure do know how to take care of a man.” Fletcher smiled.
“I was married once, remember?” She looked away from him quickly, then said, a catch in her voice, “There I go being a woman again.”
Fletcher put his hand over hers. “It’s all right to grieve, Judith. Nobody’s going to fault you for that.”
“Thank you, Buck,” the woman whispered. “It’s just that now and again I ... remember.”
“Nothing wrong with that either.”
Sitting back in his chair, Fletcher built a smoke and thumbed a match into flame. As he lit his cigarette, he glanced out the window and saw a rider rein up outside. The man climbed down from the saddle and looped the reins around the hitching post, then stood there, looking around.
“Who’s he?” Fletcher asked, turning in his chair so he was closer to his gun.
“That’s Matt Baker,” Judith replied. “The man who brought you here.”
“Do you know him well?”
The rider was still standing outside, glancing around as though he was looking for something.
“I never met him before he brought you here face-down across the saddle of your horse. He’s used a gun before, and probably well, that much I could tell just by looking at him.”
Baker finally strode to the front door, and Judith rose to answer his knock. Fletcher heard her call out a greeting, and a few moments later Matt Baker walked into the kitchen.
Baker stepped close to Fletcher, stuck out his hand and said, “Well, real nice to see you up and around. And may I say, you look really wonderful.”
“You could say that, but you wouldn’t mean it,” Fletcher said, shaking Baker’s hand.
“How are you feeling?” the man asked.
“About as good as I look.”
“That bad, huh?”
Fletcher smiled. “You’re the second person to tell me that this morning.”
He studied the man called Baker. Judith had been right on two counts. This man had used a gun before, and probably he’d used it well. There was the look of the professional about him, the look of a man who sold his gun to the highest bidder and would always do the job he was paid to do. He was dressed in black but for a hip-length sheepskin coat, and he stood, slim, significant and relaxed, a slight smile on his lips.
“I owe you,” Fletcher said finally. “Judith told me you brought me here.”
Baker nodded. “I couldn’t leave you on the street. If I hadn’t happened by, I reckon you’d still be there.”
“How did you know to bring me here?”
Baker shrugged. “That little Englishman, the landscape painter—he told me this would be the safest place.”
At that time in the West, you didn’t question a man too closely about his past, or his present either, so Fletcher came at it from an oblique angle, not wishing to be seen as pushing too hard.
“Been in the Territory long?” he asked mildly.
“Passing through,” Baker replied.
“Heading for Deadwood?”
“Maybe.”
“A gambling man?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.”
Fletcher let it go. “Well, like I said, I owe you one, Baker. You only have to ask.”
Baker smiled. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Groaning a little against the pain in his ribs, Fletcher rose to his feet. “Now I got to be going.”
“Mr. Baker,” Judith said, pouting, “can you talk some sense into him? I’ve told him he’s not fit to ride, but he won’t listen to me.”
Shaking his head, Baker said, “Fletcher is a grown man, ma’am, and he can make up his own mind about things. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be the one who’d try to stop him.”
“Men!” Judith exclaimed. “Well, at least I can get one of my hands to saddle your horse, Buck.”
She tossed her head and stomped out of the kitchen, both men smiling as they watched her go.
After a few moments, Baker said, “I’d say you were going out after Savannah Jones.”
“That’s right. I’ve got to find her before the man that’s trying to kill her does.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
Fletcher shrugged. “This isn’t your fight, Baker, but, like I said, I owe you one. Sure, you can ride with me, and welcome.”
One of the Lazy R hands brought Fletcher’s sorrel around, and Baker helped him into his mackinaw before they stepped outside.
The day was sunny and clear, though cold. Snow lay several inches thick on the ground, and to the west the pine trees on Strawberry Ridge still wore an overcoat of white.
Fletcher, weakness weighing heavy on him, was about to struggle into the saddle when a party of a dozen men loped into sight. He stood, a hand on the saddle horn, watching them come. Beside him, he was aware that Baker had pushed his sheepskin away from the butt of his Colt. The man stood relaxed, his blue eyes calm, but he seemed alert and ready.
On his coat, the man who led the horsemen wore a five-pointed star enclosed by the downsweeping horns of a crescent. He was a tall, skinny drink of water with a droopy black mustache and sad, hound dog eyes, but the Greener across his saddle bow was worn from much handling and spoke quiet volumes about the man who carried it.
Behind him, Higgy Conroy sat grinning on a paint horse, surrounded by the tough PP Connected hands.
“My name is C. J. Graham, and I’m a deputy United States Marshal for the Dakota Territory,” the lawman said by way of introduction. “Which one of you men is Buck Fletcher?”
“That would be me,” Fletcher said, stepping away from his horse. He glanced at the grinning Conroy and the hard, hostile faces of the other hands. “Pike Prescott send you to do his dirty work, Marshal?”
If the lawman was offended, he didn’t let it show.
“Well, now,” he said affably, “that would take a heap of doing, seeing how he was bushwhacked and murdered just yesterday.”
That hit Fletcher hard, coming out of nowhere the way it did. He’d planned to meet Prescott again, this time on even terms, but now the man was dead. Murdered, according to the marshal.
“Damn it, Graham,” Higgy Conroy snapped, “enough talk. Arrest Fletcher for the murder of the boss. After he attacked Mr. Prescott in Buffalo City for no reason and got the beating he deserved, Fletcher swore he’d kill him. The whole town heard him.”
Conroy kneed his horse forward. “Arrest Fletcher, and we’ll take him into custody. We’ll hold him in the Buffalo City jail until a judge gets there.”
“Do that, Graham, and I guarantee you I’d never get to Buffalo City alive,” Fletcher said. “Besides, I never killed Pike Prescott. I was lying here, flat on my back, all day yesterday.”
“That’s true, Marshal,” Judith Tyrone said, stepping from the house. “And Mr. Baker there will tell you the same thing.”
Graham looked at Judith appreciatively, his saggy eyes wandering over the swell of her breasts and hips and the tall, female gracefulness of her.
“You must be the widow Tyrone,” Graham said, touching his hat brim. “I knew your husband well, ma’am. Deke Tyrone was a fine man.”
“Thank you,” Judith said quietly. “Thank you kindly.”
Then, because he seemed to think it might be ex
pected of him, Graham added, “We’re still trying to find his murderer, ma’am. And never fear, we will.”
“I think my husband’s killer has already gotten his just deserts, Marshal,” Judith said. “I believe he was killed by Pike Prescott.”
“That’s a lie!” Conroy yelled. “Don’t you see, Graham, she’s trying to protect Fletcher. He’s always hiding behind women’s skirts.” Conroy leered. “Maybe he’s keeping the widow real happy now her man is gone.”
Suddenly angry, Fletcher opened his mackinaw, pushing it away from his guns. “I’m not hiding behind a woman’s skirts now, Conroy,” he said. “So draw or shut your dirty mouth.”
“Enough!” Graham said, kneeing his horse between Fletcher and Conroy. The marshal turned to the furious gunman. “Now listen here, Hig. Mrs. Tyrone’s word is good enough for me. If she says Fletcher was here, then he was here. As far as I can tell, all you’ve done is drag me out here on a wild goose chase.”
He looked down at Judith from the saddle and swept off his hat. “My apologies, ma’am.”
Judith smiled sweetly and nodded. “None needed, Marshal.”
Graham waved to the PP Connected gun hands. “You boys come with me. There will be no arrests made here today.”
With visible reluctance, the Connected hands filed out after Graham, but Higgy Conroy stayed his ground.
“You and I will meet real soon, Fletcher,” he said, his yellow snake eyes glittering. “And when we do, you won’t have a woman to protect you.”
Anger still flaring in him, Fletcher said, “There’s no time like the present, Conroy.”
But the gunman shook his head. “No, not yet. When we meet, it will be a time and place of my own choosing. That’s when I’ll kill you.”
Then he turned his horse and galloped after the others.
“Know something, Fletcher?” Baker said. “Some day you’re going to have to kill that man or he’ll kill you.”
Fletcher nodded. “I know it.”
“They say he’s fast, almighty fast,” Baker said absently, as though talking to himself.
“I know that too,” Fletcher said.
Baker stood silent and wondered—had he really heard a note of uncertainty in Buck Fletcher’s voice?
Chapter 9
Fletcher and Matt Baker rode north from the Lazy R toward Two-Bit Creek.
There was always the chance that Savannah had showed up there, and besides, Jeb Coons had been alone at the cabin for a long time now, and for Fletcher that was a worrisome thing.
They rode without talking, each occupied with his own thoughts, until they crossed Windy Flats and cleared Bear Butte.
The sun, climbing in the sky toward its noonday point, sparkled on the snow and the frosting on the pines. Above their heads the sky was wide and blue, with only a few puffy white clouds. But the wind was from the north, filled with the promise of bitter cold to come.
The two men stopped to give their horses a breather, and Fletcher said, “I guess it was Higgy Conroy who hit me with a bottle as I left the hotel.”
Baker nodded. “A bottle of Anderson’s Old-Fashioned Rye, to be exact. Empty of course, but still, from what I’m told, it made quite a clunk.”
“I know,” Fletcher said dryly. He nodded. “So it was Higgy. That’s a thing to remember.”
This time Baker heard no uncertainty in the gunfighter’s voice, and, unaccountably, that fact pleased him.
They rode on, and Fletcher said, “Matt, do you know what happened to Judith’s husband? I mean, how it happened?”
Baker shrugged. “I wasn’t here then, and I only know what I read in the papers. It seems Deke Tyrone was the first man to die on this range. He was shot off the back of his horse by someone using a mighty big rifle. Evidently the bullet put a hole in his head so big the coroner could put his fist into it.”
“Do you think it was Prescott?”
“He had the motive,” Baker replied. “He wanted the Lazy R. What better way to get it than kill the owner and leave his widow in charge? Maybe Prescott figured he could do to Judith Tyrone what he couldn’t do to her husband—bully her into selling.”
Baker bit his bottom lip. “Only thing is, later a couple of Prescott’s men were bushwhacked and killed. Would he murder his own hands just to start a range war?”
“It’s possible,” Fletcher replied. “Ambition and greed can do strange things to a man.”
Baker nodded. “Well, Prescott is dead, and all his ambitions have died with him. I don’t think his daughter has the same drive.”
“Daughter?”
“Yeah, just sixteen years old from what I hear, and real pretty. She inherits the ranch, since her mother died a couple of years ago.”
Fletcher was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “It’s too bad Deke Tyrone had to die like that. I mean, a young man with everything to live for: a fine ranch and a beautiful wife.”
Matt Baker turned to face Fletcher, a strange look in his eyes. “He left a ranch and a lovely wife all right, but he wasn’t a young man. Deke Tyrone was pushing eighty-three years old.”
That stunned Fletcher. Judith, so young and fresh, married to an old man? Somehow it didn’t fit with his image of her, and it troubled him. But why? Young women married old men all the time, for many reasons. It wasn’t that unusual.
“And there’s something else strange here,” Baker said, as if reading Fletcher’s mind. “Doesn’t the Lazy R claim range all the way to the Two-Bit?”
Fletcher nodded. “It does, and then east as far as the Cheyenne.”
Baker nodded. “Thought so.”
“What’s eating you, Matt?” Fletcher asked.
“Just that Judith said Prescott was already moving his herds onto her range. I’ve been looking at the brands on the cows we’ve passed. All of them were wearing the Lazy R. I haven’t seen a single PP Connected yet.”
“Maybe Prescott didn’t get a chance to move his cows this far north. They could be to the south of here and east of here,” Fletcher said. “His home range is south of Judith’s ranch; it runs almost clear to the Platte.”
“Maybe so,” Baker said. “But it makes a man think. I believe maybe there’s something odd going on here, something I don’t understand. Why did Prescott hold back? In his heart of hearts, did he really want to avoid a range war, but there was someone else involved, someone who was pushing him headlong into it?”
Fletcher smiled, realizing Baker was testing him. “Matt, you’ve missed your calling. You should have been a detective.” His smile broadened. “A pretty skittish detective, if you ask me.”
The cabin on the Two-Bit still stood. But no smoke rose from the chimney, and as Fletcher and Baker rode closer, they could see no sign of life. The speckled pup was usually alert for approaching riders and by this time should have bounded up to greet them.
“Something wrong here,” Fletcher said, reining in his horse. He eased the thong off the hammer of his Colt, and Baker did the same.
Behind the cabin, the aspens moved restlessly in the breeze, and a couple of jays quarreled noisily in their branches. The snow in front of the cabin had been trampled by the feet of many horses, and the door stood ajar about a foot or so, hanging slightly on its rawhide hinges.
Fletcher kneed his horse forward, every nerve in his body tensed, his senses alert for any sign of danger.
He and Baker rode up to the cabin and dismounted. Fletcher held his gun ready, and Baker moved back and slightly to his left, where he could give him cover.
“Jeb?” Fletcher called.
No answer.
He walked forward and pushed open the cabin door with the muzzle of his Colt. It swung wide, and he walked inside. The broken ribs were slowing his movements, and he stepped with great deliberation, like a man walking on ice. The cabin was undisturbed, but the fire in the stove was cold. An old piece of scrap leather the pup used as a chew toy lay in the middle of the floor, and the remains of a meal still sat on the table.
Baker had been studying the aspens behind the cabin. Now his eyes turned to Fletcher. “Anything?”
The gunfighter shook his head. “Nothing, though it looks like Jeb left in an all-fired hurry and took the dog with him.”
Baker nodded toward the aspen grove. “Them jays are pretty worked up over something. Could be a coyote or a bear. But it could be something else.”
Fletcher’s blue eyes scanned the trees, but he could see nothing. “Maybe we should go look,” he said. “Keep your gun handy.”
“I always do.” Baker smiled.
The two men walked behind the cabin and up the slope toward the aspen. They were about twenty feet from the nearest tree when a voice stopped them in midstride.
“You rannies hold it right there. I got me a Henry rifle gun here, an’ I know how to use her.”
Fletcher grinned. “Jeb, you old he-coon, it’s me, Buck, and I’ve got a friend with me.”
“You sure it’s you, Buck? If’n it ain’t you, this here Henry is pointed plumb at your brisket, an’ I’ll cut her loose right quick.”
“Why, you old goat, of course it’s me! Who else would be powerful dumb enough to walk up this hill right into your rifle sights?”
“Only you, Buck,” Jeb cackled. “Only you.”
The old man stepped out of the aspen, his rifle hanging loose in his right hand. He grinned at Fletcher—then the grin slipped, and he sank slowly to the ground. Fletcher ran to Jeb and kneeled beside him. Blood crusted the front of the old miner’s shirt, fanning up from just below his pants. He was wounded, and it was in a bad place.
“How are you, old timer?” Fletcher asked gently, pushing Jeb’s shirt aside so he could see the wound.
“It’s no good you fussin‘, Buck. I been gut-shot, and it’s all up for me,” Jeb whispered. “But I stayed alive for you. Sometimes the pain was real bad, Buck, but I stayed alive ’cause I needed to tell you something.”
Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 8