If he rode east…well, I was going that way, anyway.
And so, if I had guessed right, was Bob Heseltine.
Chapter 20
*
SOMETHING PRODDED ME in the stomach, and instantly I was awake. I was angry and started to speak, but the shape of that hat against the night warned me.
It was Pony, and he had me again.
“You just set tight, stranger, until I have a look at you—”
I heard a match strike, and my hand beside my blankets closed on a handful of sand. He was leaning forward, his rifle held in his right hand. He would kill me the moment he recognized me. He was just making sure, and…
My hand shot up and let go with the sand in his eyes. He gave a low screech and the match went out, and I swept the rifle muzzle up with the other hand. The gun went off and I was on him, punching and striking hard.
Somehow he lost his grip on his rifle, but we came up fighting. I hit him in the mouth and he staggered, reaching for his hip. I went in fast, punching with both hands, and he never got the gun out. He went down, tried to roll aside, and I kicked, catching him in the belly.
He grunted with pain, but there was no quit in the man. We both were fighting for our lives, and he came up clawing at my eyes. I leaped back, almost tripped over a stone, and suddenly he grabbed up his rifle and was gone into the shadows.
Cursing myself for a fool, I pulled back into the brush, careful to make no sound.
His horses! They had to be close by, and on them were my money, my rifle, my guns.
Swiftly, I turned into the brush, caught up the picket rope of the grulla, and swung to its back. Gun in hand, I rode into the trail, saw the shadow of the horses below, and went down the trail at a run.
The horses stood at the spring, still saddled. I swung into my own saddle on the line-back dun, and leading the other horses, rode up the trail to the north. Behind me I heard a shout, then a shot that missed by yards, and then I was riding away at a good clip.
I now had my own horse back, and I had his horse, saddle, and outfit. Now his turn had come to walk. He had one advantage. He had his rifle…and he was not far from ranches and a town.
All night long I pressed on, switching from horse to horse. I cut across by a dim game trail to Indian Valley, ate a good breakfast from some of Pony’s carefully bought supplies, and then I rode out along the bank of the Reese River, heading north.
He wouldn’t quit, I was sure. I had bested him and he would come after me, and for as murderous a man as he was, he would have no trouble getting a horse. He would simply shoot the first man he saw with one.
My money was still in the saddlebags, and with it a small poke of gold.
Men took a long look at me when I rode into Austin, but I paid no attention. I wanted to take a little time to get a good meal, and went into a restaurant.
The marshal came in, glanced at me sharply, and jerked his head toward the horses outside. “Two saddled horses, mister? You expectin’ a friend?”
“I’m expecting a man, but he’s no friend. Sit down, Marshal, and have some coffee.” When he was seated I asked him if he had ever heard of Pony Zale.
“I’ve heard of him,” he replied shortly. “What about him?”
“I left him afoot last night after he tried to kill me down near Barrel Spring. He’d robbed me and I was hunting him, but he found me asleep in the dark, and didn’t know who I was. We had a tussle, and I lit out. As far as I’m concerned, I’m riding to Colorado as soon as I’ve finished eating.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for him, and you’d better, too. If he comes up Big Smoky he might get ahead of you…that is, if he can lay hands on a horse.”
When I left town at a good clip I headed east. Fifteen miles out I stopped for a breather, put my saddle on the grulla, and started again. All three horses were good stock, mountain-bred and used to long stretches of travel. I wasted no time. I didn’t want to see Pony again, or so much as hear of him.
When I rode into Eureka it was a town ten or twelve years old, and there were eight or nine thousand people there, making a living from mining the lead and silver deposits.
As a town it was wild and woolly and hard to curry above the knees, with a hundred and twenty-five saloons and at least twenty gambling houses, all going full blast. In the past ten years they’d taken about $30,000,000 in silver out of the ground, and a quarter of a million tons of lead. Everybody was making money, and most of them were spending it as fast as they made it.
Stabling the three horses, I got them a bait of oats as well as hay, and then leaving my gear with the hostler I went down the street to a restaurant.
At the long table where I helped myself to mashed potatoes, slabs of beef, and several spoons of beans, I ate and listened to the talk.
“Never seen a man so quick,” a man was saying. “I’ve known Pete for years, and figured he was as good with a gun as a man can be, but he never had a chance.”
“Gun battle?” I asked.
The man turned his head and looked at me. I was a stranger, but he was a talker with a story to tell. “Last night, outside the Bon Ton.
“A stranger, a well-set-up man, rode into town with a blonde woman. Pete, he was feeling his oats a mite and he braced this stranger. The man tried to walk away from him, but Pete yelled after him and reached for his gun. Pete’s killed a couple of men, and he was feelin’ mean. Well, he never got off a shot. This stranger put two bullets into his heart and then just walked off down the street.”
“Bob Heseltine,” I said.
“Heseltine? No wonder Pete never had a chance. You say that was Bob Heseltine? The man Shell Tucker is chasing?”
“It sounds like him,” I said, and filled my cup again.
Heseltine had been here last night, might even still be here. But what about Kid Reese?
“You mentioned a woman? Wasn’t there another man with him, too?”
“Come to think of it, one of the boys was sayin’ there was a man rode in with him. He’s taken sick, or something. I hear he’s over to Doc Macnamara’s place.”
When I’d finished eating I went outside. It was sunny and bright, quite a few people were walking up and down, and there were several rigs and saddle horses around. I stood under the awning in front of the theatre and studied the town from under my hat brim.
Once I’d gotten my outfit back I’d shifted into some better clothes, but the trip had been hard on the duds and it was time I picked up some jeans and a coat. The weather was turning cold in the evening.
Down the street I saw Doctor Macnamara’s sign. After a moment I strolled down to his office door, and stepped inside. His waiting room smelled of stale cigar smoke, and there was a worn copy of the Police Gazette on a stand, along with a Harper’s and several week-old newspapers.
The door to the inner office was partly open, and the doctor thrust his head out. “Be with you in a minute. If you’re bleeding, stand off the carpet. I just paid fifty cents to have it cleaned.”
“I wanted to ask about a patient of yours.”
“Which one? Most of the folks around here have been patients of mine. Trouble is this here country’s too healthy for me to make a living. Why, over at Pioche they had to shoot a man to start a graveyard.”
“The man I am asking about is Kid Reese. Came in here a day or two ago, with another man and a blonde woman.”
“Him?” He studied me for a moment, his eyes suddenly alert. “Are you a friend of his?”
“No,” I said bluntly, “we’ve shot at each other a couple of times. I want to know what kind of shape he’s in, and I want to talk to him.”
“Have you been traveling with him?”
“Chasing him,” I replied.
“I won’t have any trouble around here. Anyway, he’s a sick man…a very sick man.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Stomach trouble, he says. My guess is arsenic poisoning.”
“Arsenic? From bad water?”
Ruby Shaw…! Well, that would be one way of getting rid of him.
“He said he only had one enemy he knew of, and that enemy hadn’t been anywhere near him in some time. I told him in a case like this you didn’t worry about your enemies, but those you thought were your friends.”
“Can I see him?”
The bedroom off the office had four beds for patients. Only one of them was occupied, and the man who lay in it was Kid Reese, all right, or what was left of him.
His face was thin, his features were drawn, his eyes hollow. He stared at me, and then reached under his pillow as if for a gun.
“I’m not going to shoot you, Kid,” I said. “Looks to me as if you’ve got trouble enough.”
“I got nothing to say to you.”
“At least I didn’t fill you full of arsenic.”
“That’s a lot of nonsense. Who could do that? Who would have any reason to?”
“What about Ruby, Kid? Without you, she’d have Heseltine and the money, and with Bob—”
“Are you crazy? Ruby? How could she? And anyway, she dotes on Bob. You’re tryin’ to fill me with bad thoughts about my friends. You just wait until—”
“How could she? I’ll lay you five to one she’s been making the coffee lately. And the kind of coffee we drink out here is poisonous enough without adding arsenic. And I’ll bet she hasn’t been drinking much of it herself.”
“That’s a damned lie! That’s—” His voice trailed off, and his brows drew together with sudden awareness.
“I don’t want you, Kid. I want my money, and I’m going to get it.”
Deliberately, I sat down. Doc Macnamara looked at Reese, and then he said, “I know nothing about your troubles. There is arsenic in some of the water out here, but not enough to poison you the way you have it. I would say—and I have had such cases before this—that you had been fed increasing doses over quite a period of time.”
The doctor shrugged. “However, I am surmising. I would have to perform an autopsy—”
“Not on me, you don’t!” Suddenly Reese said, “Doc, am I going to get well?”
“I think so. That is, if you don’t get any more of it. This man is supposed to be your enemy, I believe, but if I were you I’d take his advice and never go near those people again.”
He didn’t like it, but it was obvious that he believed us. He had believed me even before the doctor spoke, because evidently he remembered who had been making the coffee.
“I ain’t got any of your money,” he said, his tone surly.
“They’re takin’ care of it for me.”
“I’ll bet,” I said dryly.
“You think I’m a damn fool, don’t you?” he said.
“Nobody has a corner on being a fool, Kid. We were all fools back there in Texas when we stood around shooting off our mouths about how big and tough we were going to be. You two were fools when you tied in with Heseltine, and he was seven kinds of a fool for going to Ruby Shaw with that money. I’ll bet she’s argued against you dividing it, all along.”
“Maybe she has. That cuts no ice.”
“What will you do when you get out of here, Kid? Go back to them? Will you have the guts to warn Heseltine that he’ll be next?”
Reese was silent. The doctor went into his office and began puttering over some papers.
“Where are they, Kid? I owe those folks back in Texas and I want to get my money.”
Reese did not answer for a minute, then he said, “You’d go against Heseltine? You actually would?”
“Of course.” Even as I said it, I suddenly realized that I would do just that. A lot had happened to that boy who had left Texas on a cattle drive. And then I added, with sudden surprise to realize it was true, “Bob Heseltine will be more worried about facing me than I will about facing him.”
He looked hard at me. “You figure you’ve put on some weight, don’t you?” But he didn’t sneer. I could see that Kid Reese believed it, too. “I won’t deny,” he added, “that Bob’s almost had his fill of you—you hangin’ on his trail and all. He ain’t sleepin’ so well any more. Fact is, none of us have been.”
He turned his eyes on me. “If I cut free of them, will you lay off me?”
“I don’t want you, Kid. I never did. You knew that was our money and you knew that was our horse, but I just want the money back.”
“What did those folks in Texas ever do for you?”
“Nothing.” But then I said, “I take that back. They did do something for me—or for pa, which is the same thing. They trusted him. You’ll find out that counts for a lot, Kid, a lot more than buying drinks for a lot of rum-pots or shady women to show how big a man you are.”
“Maybe you’re right. All right, I’ll tell you something. Bob Heseltine’s got him a hide-out up back of Bridal Veil Falls, near Telluride.”
“Where’s Telluride?”
“It’s a new camp. A man named John Fallon staked some claims up there, and she looks like she’s going to boom.”
That was all I got out of him, and I was not too sure of that. He had no reason to tell me the truth, and enough reason to lie. On the other hand, somebody had been feeding him arsenic, and perhaps he already knew what had happened to Doc Sites.
Two days I stayed on in Eureka, scouting the town, making inquiries. Heseltine and Ruby had been in town, all right, but they had pulled out, headed east.
I switched horses and went after them, making good time. Several times I thought I was coming up to them, but each time it turned out to be some other people.
It was a wild and beautiful land through which I rode, but the trail was becoming crowded. Three times during the first day I passed freight outfits, and several riders passed me, as well as a stage going each way. It was getting so a man could scarcely ride five miles on that trail without seeing somebody.
In Utah I sold Zale’s horse, but I had become too attached to the dun and the grulla to let them go.
That day had been a cool one, and I was wearing a short thick wool coat when I rode up to the stage station. It was getting on for evening and I was hunting a place to stay. The station stood in the open without so much as a cottonwood tree nearby. Just a stone corral, the stone house and the trail that bent in toward its door.
There was a water trough and I rode up to it. A man peered from the doorway then came over.
“Howdy! Passin’ through?”
“Maybe. Have you got some good food in there?”
“Sort of. Fact is, I’ve got me a new cook, if she’ll stay. That’s what I came out for. She’s lookin’ to buy a hoss, and I was wishful you’d not sell her one of yours. I see you’ve got an extra.”
“I’m keeping my horses.”
I tied them, and as an afterthought, considering what he’d said, I tied them double tight. When somebody wants a horse real bad there’s no use putting temptation in their way.
He went ahead of me, and when he stepped through the door he said, “Ruby, there’ll be another mouth for supper.”
It was Ruby Shaw.
She saw me at the same minute I saw her, and her face went cold and hard. She began to swear, and she could swear better than any mule-skinner I ever did hear. I stood quiet a minute, and then I said, “Mister, I’ll not stay for supper, and if I was you I’d not eat her cooking either. The last man she cooked for is dying of arsenic poisoning.”
“Damn you!” She spat the words at me. “Damn you to hell! You turned a good man into a yellow dog!”
“Not me,” I said. “You.”
I turned around and went back to my horses, and the man followed me. “What was all that about? Do you know her?”
“Her name is Ruby Shaw. She must have come in here with a man. What happened to him?”
“He left, right after she fell asleep. He was not a we
ll man, if you ask me. He stopped out there, right where you stand, all knotted up with pain and holdin’ his belly. When I asked him about the woman, he said I was to keep her or get rid of her, and then he lit out. He took her horse, too.”
Untying my horses, I thought bitterly of a cold camp somewhere in the mountains or desert ahead, then I swung my leg over the saddle and was off.
She came to the door and called after me, but I did not look back.
Chapter 21
*
IF BOB HESELTINE figured on hiding out in the mountains near Telluride he had better hurry. The season was getting on and that was country where the drifts piled deep. Once back in those mountains, he would be there for the winter, unless he was a good man on skis or snow-shoes, and had them with him.
Skis were something I’d never attempted, but men who carried the mail through the mountains had been using them for years; and out California way, Snowshoe Thompson had made himself a reputation carrying the mail on them.
There’d been a growing chill in the air that made me think of hunting a hole. If I was going to see Vashti before snow flew I was going to have to forget about Heseltine and make time.
Frost had turned the leaves, and the mountainsides were splashed with golden clouds of aspen. Great banks of them poured down the steep slopes as though the earth had suddenly decided to give up and pour all her gold out to the waiting hands of men, only this gold was there for everyone to have—they had only to look. It was the kind of wealth that stayed with a man down the years, the kind you could never spend, but the memory of it waited in your mind to be refreshed when another autumn came.
I was going home, I was thinking now. Home? Well, for me home was where Vashti was, and it had taken me a while to know it. The only trouble was, would she still be there? Would she think of me as I did of her?
All the time I’d been covering country I’d seen a lot of men who had settled down to building businesses for themselves. Here I was, wasting time chasing after a couple of thieves when I should have been building something for myself.
Men were ranching, farming, mining. They were making names for themselves like those Yankees who came first to California, men who were going to be respected when most of the gun-packing lot were only remembered…remembered, but ignored.
Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) Page 17