Ralph Compton Tucker's Reckoning (9781101607770)

by Compton, Ralph; Mayo, Matthew P.

  Before the huge animal rolled over him, Rummler squeezed off a pistol shot. It drove like a freight train straight into Tucker’s shoulder. The shot slammed him backward, pinning him to the graveled drop. But only for a moment.

  Then gravity took over and he pinwheeled down the slope, bouncing, it seemed to him, from boulder to boulder. His head slammed against the slope, his arms, akimbo, flailed outward, hitting trees and doing little to stop his rapid descent. He’d lost track of the flailing horse and Rummler, until he managed to slow himself enough to glance upslope.

  And what he saw drove a big, hard lump up into his throat from his gut. The man and horse gained speed, whipping diagonally shoulder to rump and back again. The horse’s neck looked broken and the head slammed down, then with the next surge lifted upward, only to slam down again. And Rummler’s long, limp body whipped high, arms outspread and reaching as if he were in prayer to the heavens, before slamming again into the slope.

  As Tucker watched, the man’s body, joined by the stirrup to the horse and caroming into massive trees, seemed to be wedged for a split second, before it continued downslope. Branches, dust, clods of mossy dirt, a welter of horseflesh and legs, and the pulped rag-doll remains of Rummler all boiled down the slope straight for him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tucker jammed his bootheels into the gravel and kept sliding, but managed to pitch himself onto his left shoulder—white-hot pain blossomed up his side from the newly cracked ribs and burst out through the bullet wound. But it wasn’t far enough over to avoid the tumbling wreckage of Rummler and his horse.

  The tangle of legs tripped him up and sent him rolling again. Something hard slammed into him—the horse’s head—the lifeless eye of the beast told him it was dead, or nearly there. They came to an abrupt stop, a heavy weight pushing against Tucker’s chest. He had no strength to move it. He tried to force his eyes open, but saw only darkness. His head wouldn’t move from side to side.

  He waited a few seconds, trying to figure out if he was even alive. Maybe this is it, he thought. Then he gagged as a cough racked through him. He was alive, pinned by the horse. A low moan rose and Tucker thought he’d made the sound, but he’d need to breathe in order to do that. A thin trickle of air leaked into him as the horse, apparently not yet dead, thrashed atop him once, twice, then spasmed, stiffening. Tucker tried to time an escape from under the horse with the animal’s thrashes, but it seemed impossible. A squeak of air leaked into his lungs. He was able to twitch his left hand. He scrabbled for anything he might grab, desperate and aware that each second brought him closer to death.

  There! A nub of branch, no longer than his hand and thick around as a thumb. . . . He held it tight and jammed upward once, twice, three times—and the horse, all but dead, convulsed once more. Now or never, Tucker told himself, and he rolled onto his left shoulder—the very one that had been shot. It was enough to pull in air. He also saw light for the first time and realized he was wedged not under the great belly of the horse, but under its shoulder and neck.

  Atop him, the horse shuddered, then relaxed, sagged down on him. Have to get out of here, he told himself, wheezing and feeling as if the rest of his bones might snap any second. He lay flat on leaves and pine needles at what he guessed was the bottom of the ravine. The thickness of the matted flora allowed him to drag himself, an inch at a time, outward toward the head of the horse.

  Another few wriggles and he was able to swing his arm upward and grasp the horse’s harness. His fingers curled around the leather and he pulled himself toward it. For agonizing seconds nothing budged. Then it felt as if something popped. He closed his eyes and pulled, his breath coming in short grunts. Soon the pressure on his chest lessened and he collapsed back.

  “What you doing down there? It’s you . . . you son of a gun!”

  The words rained down on him from high above. He looked upward, but between the dirt in his eyes and the sunlight dappling through the trees, Tucker couldn’t see much. But he didn’t need to see who it was to know who it was—Vollo. Had to be. The buzzard was alive and, from the sound of it, angry over pretty much everything and looking for revenge. So why hadn’t he shot at Tucker yet? The distance, had to be it. It was too far for him.

  Tucker knew the last thing he should do was sit there and argue with himself about why the man wasn’t shooting at him. He dug at the earth with his elbows and managed to drag himself out from under the dead horse.

  At last his boots were freed and he glanced upward again, but saw nothing. Maybe he’d imagined what he’d heard. He didn’t dare take the chance, though, and dragged himself along the decaying leaves, stirring up the musty forest floor that smelled like an old grave. If he is above, reasoned Tucker, then I can at least get behind the bulk of the horse, should he figure out how to shoot at me.

  His right leg felt near useless, though not broken, but his left throbbed like a tight hatband. He was able to bend it at the knee and help push himself forward. His left arm pulsed with each slide along the ground, and he was worried what he’d find inside his coat. He felt the warm stickiness of blood, but kept crawling.

  “Hey, you down there!”

  Tucker paid no attention to the man. A tumble of gravel pelted down at him, and he looked up again. Had to be Vollo at the top, trying to figure out a way down the slope.

  If he comes down here, I have to defend myself somehow. He realized that somewhere on the steep trip down, he’d lost his grip on the pistol he’d grabbed from Vollo. No matter, there might be a weapon strapped to Rummler’s saddle. He groped for a knife, a rifle, anything and his hand fell on something that wasn’t a horse—Rummler’s leg.

  But it felt as though the bones had been turned to sand or jelly, and the rest of the thin killer was a dead, pulped mess. Rummler’s head was partially covered by his coat, which had ridden up his bony torso until it had lodged in a circling wad up around his chin. Thankfully what Tucker assumed was the worst-looking side of Rummler’s battered head proved to be the part angled away from him.

  Rummler was not moving, never would be again. Tucker pushed the thought out of his mind, forced himself to recall that he had been one of the men who murdered Payton Farraday and had laughed doing it. And he’d been about to kill him too, until Tucker had forced a different course of action.

  “Good grief,” he said out loud, his voice a hoarse croak. “I am responsible for this mess.” He looked around him, saw the horse’s snapped neck and distended tongue. “Sorry, horse. You had no say in this matter.”

  “You’re alive down there. I see you, you buzzard!”

  “Wish we could trade places,” said Tucker loud enough for a mouse to hear him. Not much else he could do but wait Vollo out, get his feet under him, and head along the ravine. Bound to lead to the river. He might find a landmark, and tried to recall all of the trails and river bottom features Arliss had pointed out to him on their rides of the previous weeks. As the minutes ticked by, he found himself fighting sleep, his muscles stiffening, and knew that the longer he stayed put, the worse he would feel later, might in fact not be able to get up and going again.

  There must have been a reason for Vollo not to shoot him before now. He’d have to risk it. With a heaving groan, Tucker used the horse’s belly to push himself up. His searches of Rummler’s battered body and the man’s rifle boot had turned up no weapons, not even a knife. And in a way he was relieved. Another gun would lead to even more he’d have to carry—and standing up was proving to be all he could muster strength for.

  Tucker managed to shuffle forward, dragging his right leg. With the aid of a long forked stick as a makeshift crutch, he was able to take some of the weight off his pained leg. But his left shoulder was shot up, so he ended up holding the crutch in front of him, each dragging step pulling a groan from him. He went on like that for a long time, what felt to him like hours.

  Finally, r
agged beyond anything he’d ever felt, he collapsed to the earth, felt the jamming dull pain of a rock in his midsection, and after a few minutes of rest, found he could not get up.

  Oh, hell, thought Tucker. Here I am, facedown in the dirt, shot, bleeding, busted who knows in how many places, wanted for a murder I didn’t do, guilty of driving a man and his horse off the edge of a ravine, and I’m seeing black spots. For a day with such a promising start, this sure has become one of the worst in my life. And maybe the last. He laughed, tasted the metal tang of blood in his mouth.

  Of course it’s one of the worst days in your life, should be the worst, you fool. The day you die can’t ever be a good thing for too many folks.

  But now that he faced it, once again, he realized he didn’t want to die. He suddenly had something worth living for in his life again. People who relied on him. He liked the feeling. He also realized that in the end, neither he nor anyone else had a say in the matter.

  The last thing he saw before the black spots all fused together like a swarm of blackbirds drawing closer and closer all the time was a single, massive black bird leaning down at him. Couldn’t be, he told himself, fighting to keep his eyes from closing all the way. Can’t be ol’ Scratch, can it? Will I see you finally, Rita and little Sam?

  He said their names and heard the Devil’s own response. “I doubt you’ll die. But only if I choose to help you.” Then a sigh as if someone were about to be mighty put out for their efforts. He heard saddle leather creaking and boots grinding on rock. Something grabbed Tucker by the chin, hoisted his face upward.

  Tucker worked at it, fluttered his eyes open, and saw a man dressed in black with a black horse just behind him—ol’ Scratch himself. Well, hell, thought Tucker. That’s it, then.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Something tickled his nose—a fly? Feathers? What was that? Tucker reached up to swat at it and heard a laugh, light and soft.

  “Rita? Rita, is that you?”

  A warm hand touched his face, a thumb stroked his cheek, a cool cloth on his forehead.

  “Didn’t mean to be away so long . . . the Red . . . too high, took longer than I thought. . . .”

  “Shhh, hush now. Rest easy. You’re safe, safe and home.”

  “Good . . . it’s good to be home.”

  * * *

  Something tickled him again. What was that? He forced his eyes open and saw the hazy outline of fiery blond-red hair, curly, around a pretty face, eyes close to his, looking concerned? What for?

  “You are not Rita,” he said, his voice sounding small and weak to him.

  The person said nothing in return, but whoever it was had been touching his face, pulling at his eyes. “The doctor said to keep a watch on your eyes, make sure the centers don’t go too big or too small.” The voice was a woman’s, lower than Rita’s, but echoing, as if coming to him through a long, hollowed-out tree.

  “What?” His voice sounded small.

  “Samuel, you were in a fall. Your head got knocked pretty hard.”

  It took him a few moments to figure out just what that meant. “Fall?”

  “Yes, you should sleep now.”

  That sounded like a very good idea to him. Maybe when he woke up, this person would stop tickling his face, tell him where Rita was.

  Out in the hallway, a low voice said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do, girl, but I tell you one thing, and I don’t give a care what all that talk in town was about, we ain’t gonna let no blamed strangers take over Klinkhorn, nor the Farraday spread. I got too much pride to let that happen. And we got ourselves a stranger to take care of! I feel responsible as hell for it. Shouldn’t have left him alone. Some townsfolk likely come onto him. And now he’s been all shot up, took a nasty knock to the head, looks to have been dragged up one side of a mountain and down another—”

  “Arliss, this isn’t helping. We have to figure out how to get to a lawyer, maybe, or a judge. Somebody who knows the law who can help us.”

  “Lawyer? Only one in these parts is Grissom, the very man we’re having trouble from. I rue the day when we fall so low we gotta call on a common vulture to stoke our fires for us.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Yes, I’ll go back to town for the marshal. See what that sloppy sack of guts can do. Leastwise I can round up a few honest men—I daresay there are a couple three left in Klinkhorn—and get them on out here, make a stand. That’s the old way. You got something worth protecting, you protect it with a good gun and an even better aim.”

  Tucker had drifted away on a layer of something soft, moss, maybe, or leaves, the smell of pine trees all around him. The thought popped free something plugging his memories, and they flooded in unbidden, as if a crack in a weak wall had given way. And he knew everything that had happened to him. One thing after another welled, bubbled, then boiled to the surface, right on up until the man in black grabbed his face and stared at him, a large black horse looking on.

  Tucker jerked himself upright, pulling in a deep breath. “Emma! Arliss!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A bitter wind had kicked up along the trail, slicing into Emma’s lungs and making her wish for spring even before winter started. It would snow soon, and despite the beauty it laid on the world, within another month, they would get snow that stayed throughout the long winter months, not as much as some places to the north and west of their valley, but there would be stretches when the temperatures dropped like a stone and the snow stacked up and it seemed as if all the world held its breath waiting for spring.

  Pounding the trail back to Klinkhorn on Cinda, Emma mused for the tenth time that day that nothing was going right in her world, hadn’t seemed to since Tucker came into their lives. No, that wasn’t fair. It hadn’t started because of him, just at the same time as he showed up.

  And now there was a stranger coming into the valley as if he owned it, as though he owned their land. As if they hadn’t had enough to worry about with Grissom. What had her uncle Payton been thinking in taking out a loan? Had she been so much a child that he felt as if he shouldn’t share their money problems with her? She felt foolish for not having been trusted and angry with him for going against what her father had intended—no outside money, no loans, and especially not from someone like Grissom, a man for whom her father felt nothing but anger. Unless what Arliss guessed was true and her uncle had been keeping her father’s wishes in mind.

  By the time she made it to Klinkhorn, the massing gray clouds began a slow weep, not of rain but of snow. She had to get there soon to find the marshal. She knew that Arliss would be sore with her, but there was no other way. Marshal Hart was the only person in Klinkhorn she knew for certain who might be able to help them. She had to figure out some way to get that proof that the loan had been paid off. It had to exist, and since Grissom stood to gain the most out of it, she was sure he was the one who held it.

  She crested the rise that led to the town’s main street, paused there to take in the normally bustling scene and let Cinda blow. The town seemed quiet, maybe because of the fresh, heavy snow scudding down and building up a thick layer. Once it warmed, there would be mud and slush, but for now it was pretty.

  She continued on down the slope. As she drew closer, she saw strangers, all men, hurrying in and out of the hotel. They were dressed not as so many of the local ranch hands or miners, but in thick wool trousers, heavy mackinaws, wool caps with earflaps, and most striking of all, they were strangers to her. They were also lugging all manner of strange tools and implements. They appeared to be residing in the hotel, and from the number of them, they had probably taken it over lock, stock, and barrel. They had to be the surveying crew Tucker had come across.

  * * *

  From across the street, Lord Tarleton, standing inside the hotel’s lobby, caught sight of movement in the street out fron
t. He parted a lace curtain and stared into the gray light of the street, the snow dropping steadily.

  He could tell by their grumbling and the brusque slamming of equipment into the wagons that his men did not want to go out into the woods today. In a way, he did not blame them, but he had a sudden and different reason: the striking young woman who had just arrived in town, who even under concealment of a man’s wool jacket could not hide her curves. She wore men’s denims, work boots, leather gloves, and a broad-brimmed hat that looked not to be donned for show.

  This creature, he realized, was the first Western woman he had seen who looked like what he’d long hoped one of their breed might resemble—a creature of obvious beauty who might also look stunning in a dress. One who also wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and ride a horse as it was intended to be ridden—forked, as the cowboys said.

  It took Halley, the hotelier of the establishment in which they were all encamped, three gentle inquiries before Tarleton heard him. “Oh, Halley, good. I have something I need you to do for me.”

  “Yes, sir, but if I may, I need—”

  “Your needs are not important to me right now, Halley.”

  “Yes, sir. How may I help you?”

  That’s more like it, thought Tarleton, nodding. “I would very much like it if you were to arrange for the young woman who just entered the marshal’s office to meet me here at the dining room at one p.m.”

  “Funny you should mention her, sir. She’s the one who now owns all the land you and the boys are after.”

  Tarleton stared for long moments between the falling snowflakes at the spot where the girl had been, and a slow smile spread across his face. This was going to be a lovely day after all.

  “Gentlemen,” he said to the men gathered about him in the lobby, “I thank you for your attention to the gear, but I will now ask you to go on without me. Something has come up that requires my attention here in town. I believe you should expect the best but prepare for the worst where the weather is concerned. And since it is a foul day and we are getting off to a later start because you have all been dragging your feet, you will need to count on spending the night in camp. I will see you all back here tomorrow evening. Stick with my plans. I expect that last section to be surveyed by the end of the week.”