Ralph Compton Tucker's Reckoning (9781101607770)

by Compton, Ralph; Mayo, Matthew P.

  “I’d say I did the world a favor!” Tucker took a last quick look at everything in the weapons crate and blew out the lamp so Vollo couldn’t draw close enough to drive a shot right into his skylined shadow. He could tell by the sound of the Mexican’s voice that the foul man was edging closer as they spoke.

  “Okay, then, I am about to do the same to your friend. Perhaps the world will feel the same way.”

  Arliss! The buzzard wanted to kill Arliss. Was he bluffing or did he even have him prisoner?

  “How do I know you have anyone there?”

  Tucker heard a mumbling sound, as if Vollo was speaking low to someone. Heck, Arliss was probably arguing with Vollo. Tucker wouldn’t put it past him. “It’s me, Tucker. Don’t give up the gold for me, damn it. I’m old—I ain’t worth it!”

  The sly old devil, he’s trying to set up Vollo. Tucker nodded in the dark, all the while loading a six-shooter with bullets. He finished that one, strapped it on, then hefted the rifle. He had time enough to snatch up a handful of shells before he heard a rustling sound draw close, made by boots stepping slow in branches and leaves.

  “Hey, gringo—I got your buddy, right? So now you toss out the gold he speaks of and maybe I won’t slice him an ear-to-ear smile, eh?”

  Nothing doing, thought Tucker. Longer I play it quiet, the more seconds I can gain before Vollo calls my bluff and hurts Arliss—or worse. Tucker dropped to one knee right beside Grissom. The fat man moaned and Tucker sneered, rapped him again on the bean, this time with the butt of the six-gun. Another grunt and the man was out again. Too much of that and the fat fool won’t have any brains left to bargain with. All I really want from him is whatever paper it is that Emma said she needed. Something about the loan being paid off. If he doesn’t have it, then Tarleton does, but it might be possible that Grissom knows where it’s kept. A long shot, but the only one they had.

  “Gringo. Oh, gringo? I am going to kill your friend now.”

  The voice sounded close by, just outside the corner of the tent to his right. How had he crept so close? And with Arliss in tow? Not likely. As if in answer to his silent question, he heard Arliss, or what he assumed was the old feisty man, making strangled half-formed sounds, as if his mouth was bound with a gag. And it sounded from far back, near where Tucker had left him with the stock.

  Vollo wanted that alleged gold, figured he’d keep Arliss safe for now—just in case he needed him to make some sort of deal, maybe trade him to Tarleton to get in his good graces. Maybe he wanted Grissom too. And now the mention of gold was all it took to get Vollo lathered for a big take.

  Tucker nudged the canvas in front of his face with his head, tried to keep his breathing low, even, and quiet. The tent flaps weren’t tied. A plan of some sort was what he needed, but he had a half second available, and then there wasn’t even time for that.

  Somehow Vollo had crept closer, because Tucker saw the bottom of the tent at the corner rising in the dull glow of moonlight and sand-colored canvas. Higher and higher, like the handiwork of a letch lifting a dress, the edge of the tent fabric rose. And then he saw the hands, part of a head, a ragged white bandage hanging from it, and then an eye swiveling.

  Tucker held his breath, kept his pistol aimed at the leering face, could even smell the man’s sweat and breath stink. And then the roving eye fixed on him and the corner of the mouth rose in a wider leer. With finger-snap speed, a pistol barrel appeared beside it. Vollo’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Tucker dropped flat to the trampled ground beneath the tent even as he pulled the trigger on his own gun a sliver of a second before Vollo fired. The world bloomed bright with the twin flashes filling the space. Smoke and the stink of gunpowder clouded the tent. Tucker held in a cough until he could be sure the man was dead.

  He heard nothing for the ringing in his ears. Then he heard a squealing beside him. It was Grissom, shaking all over, thrashing his head side to side. Maybe he’d been hit. The thought didn’t bother Tucker much—he knew what the man was capable of. As the smoke cleared, he saw Vollo’s hand flat on the ground, the only part of him poking into the tent.

  Tucker wriggled backward, not feeling as though he’d taken a bullet at all, and not daring to exit the tent in the spot—just in case the man was alive and playing possum. He made it out under the far side of the tent and rolled to his left, pistol cocked and aimed at the spot where Vollo should be.

  The man was there all right, and he lay still. Tucker got to his knees, then stood, all the while keeping the pistol aimed on the prone man. He walked up, toed him. No movement. He kicked away the pistol, flipped the man over onto his back, and as he did so he saw an injury to the man’s head.

  He heard the strangled guttural cries of Arliss off near the horses. He’d just have to wait. This Vollo wasn’t a man he wanted to worry about in the future, so he went back into the tent and fired up the lamp again. He brought it back outside and bent over Vollo. The man’s head had been severely creased. A line of bright red blood arched from the forehead over his left eye, straight back through bone and brain. Blood pumped out with a steady but slowing rhythm. Fragments of bone poked outward as if the unwashed brute had had part of a crown embedded in his head.

  That man was dead, and Tucker didn’t feel bad about making it happen. Should have done it sooner, he thought.

  He heard Arliss’s gurgling rants again, so he headed that way and freed the old man. “About time somebody let me go.” He rubbed his arms and swung them to get the circulation back.

  Tucker was breathing hard now and his pulse had quickened following the shooting. “I think that folks should thank us for ridding the earth of the last of two of the most worthless creatures ever to roam it.”

  “You are a peculiar man,” said Arliss. “There’s no doubt. Shoot a man in the head and then say a thing like that.”

  Tucker looked at Arliss. “You of all people tell me that? I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

  Arliss touched a black finger to the side of his nose and winked. “You’ll do. Now, them folks leave anything in the way of foodstuffs?”

  “You bet they did—and a whole lot more. Plus, I have a surprise for you.”

  “Oh? I like those. I hope it has to do with a hot bath, a small Chinese lady who’s good at massages, and a slug or two of who-bit-sam.”

  “Close,” said Tucker, pulling open the tent flap. He held the lamp low, and staring up at them from the ground was Bentley Grissom.

  He squinted, his fat cheeks bunching. “Arliss? Arliss Tibbs, my old friend, is that you? Oh, thank goodness.”

  Arliss stepped into the tent and took the lamp from Tucker. He set it on the table and turned up the wick. The interior lit, he set to looking in earnest for something.

  “What do you need, Arliss? Food’s in that one.” Tucker pointed to one of the opened crates.

  “Nah. I’m looking for the place you found that there gun. I want to kill this fat tub of lard. He’s caused enough grief for the Farradays in the past few years, and I aim to see he don’t do the same to no one no more!” His old chicken neck stretched as he poked in the various crates, found the one with weapons, and withdrew a pistol.

  “What are you going to do, Arliss? Kill him?” He moved close to the old man and spoke hurriedly into his ear. “You’ll make him a martyr instead of serving any purpose to his death, and he’ll be revered in these parts. The most important part of this whole thing is that we get that paper Vollo and Rummler killed Payton for on Grissom’s behalf. If we kill him now, we won’t be able to use him to get that paper. If it even exists anymore.”

  “Oh, I am quite sure it exists,” said a haggard voice from the ground by their feet.

  Tucker and Arliss looked down. Despite the double thumping he’d received, Grissom was smiling. Arliss hauled back and drove a grimy foot into the jowly man’s face. T
hey both shouted in pain.

  “Feel better?” said Tucker.

  “No,” said Arliss, looking down at his burlap-and-blanket-scrap-wrapped feet. They were the only things they could find after the fire, since the old man had left his room without tugging on his boots. “I aim to get me some boots and do it up right next time.”

  Grissom growled something indecipherable and spat.

  “You keep it up,” said Tucker, “and I’ll just leave the tent for a while.” He turned to Arliss. “Help me rummage through the rest of this stuff. We’ll take what we need, lash it to the animals. The rest we’ll smash. Anything we can do here to destroy their instruments and gear will help slow them and their plans down. Not a lot, because a man like Tarleton has unlimited resources, but we’ll do what we can.”

  “Sounds dandy to me. And lookee here,” Arliss said, holding up a bundle of clothing and, under them, several pairs of boots. “Must be for anyone who gets wet while working in the woods during the day. From the looks of things, they sure was planning on a siege or a long-term campout up here. And on Farraday land too!” he crowed.

  Again, Grissom laughed. “You are fools, the both of you.”

  Arliss hauled back to kick him again, but Tucker stopped him.

  “Go ahead and kick me. I might even deserve it, sure. But this land isn’t yours. Not legally, not anymore. And what’s more, if a man such as myself, with my influence and power and financial wherewithal, couldn’t deter Lord Tarleton, then you are fools to think you can do a thing to stop him.”

  “Oh, I don’t plan on stopping him,” said Arliss. “I aim to kill him. You too, you big sack of gristle. Just as soon as we get Emma free.”

  “So that’s the plan, is it?” Grissom, rolled to the side, grunting, trying to sit up. “Because mine is even better. And with my plan, at the end we all come out with exactly what we want.”

  “And what’s that?” said Tucker, eyeing the fat man.

  Grissom grunted again and managed to accomplish nothing, so he sagged in defeat. “I get my holdings back, you get dear little Emma back, plus your land—full title too—and we both get to see Lord Tarleton and his minions hightail it out of Klinkhorn.”

  Tucker was about to ask him for specifics when they heard a horse’s hooves thundering away from the camp. He dove through the tent flaps and came up on his knees, pistol poised, but saw only the diminishing back end of a horse in the slivered moonlight. His breath rose in cold streams. Arliss crouched low beside him.

  Vollo! He spun, his pistol pointed at the dead man . . . who wasn’t there. He scrabbled around the outside of the tent. “Arliss! Get that lamp out here.”

  It was no use—the dead man was gone and a trail of heavy blood led to where Vollo and Grissom had tied their mounts however many hours before when they’d arrived together at the camp.

  “Still alive,” said Arliss, staring in wonder at the glistening splashes on the mottled earth.

  “It looks like it. And headed to town to tell Tarleton what we’ve been yammering about in there.” He pulled in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “It seems like the element of surprise has been taken from us.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? Arliss, you know what you’re saying? Even with that slim sliver of nothing, we had next to no chance of defeating Tarleton at whatever is his game, but now he’ll be expecting us.”

  “And I say good. Because now we know where we stand. And”—he turned toward the tent—“we have a bargaining chip. Let’s get some food and play us some poker.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Bright morning sun slanting through the window warmed Emma’s face and awakened her. Scraps of memories came to her. She’d been locked in the room by that English dandy, dragged in there by his two hired fools, and then after she’d tried to break out of the room he’d come in and . . . stabbed her with a needle!

  The rush of memories awakened her further and she tried to rise but found herself held down. She lifted her head, tried to open her eyes wider, and saw she was bound by her hands and feet to the bed. And she was not wearing the clothes she’d come in with. She was now wearing a long white dress. How had she managed to change her clothes? A sudden stab of fear of what might have happened chilled her. She struggled harder against the bonds that held her strapped to the bed.

  Whatever it was Tarleton had dosed her with had worn off. She felt thirsty and the light from the now-unboarded window soon became harsh and brittle. She’d had too much whiskey once in the past and she recognized the feeling as close to what it had felt like the following morning. Arliss had made sure she’d gotten up at dawn, eaten a full breakfast, and worked hard all day—while he chattered like a jay.

  Arliss! The ranch, something about the ranch, those men in black. Tarleton, showing his true colors, had been about to do something bad, something wrong. . . .

  “Hello, my little cowgirl. How are you feeling?”

  Emma turned her head to the right, toward the voice. It seemed to echo. She forced her eyes open, and they blurred, focused.

  “That’s it. Take your time. You’ve had a hard night of it, what with all that anger and shouting you were doing. I imagine your throat is sore, poor little bird. But now look at you, all pretty and dressed for your big day.”

  She finally got a bead on him, and it made her heart crawl up her throat. Because at the same instant she saw Tarleton, all duded up in finery, she knew two things at once—he meant to marry her today and it came back to her with the force of a hard-driven post maul just what Tarleton had told his two men in black to do the night before. “Oh no, tell me you didn’t do what I remember. . . .”

  “Why, little bird? Whatever do you mean?” Tarleton rose from his chair by the wall and bent low over her. She smelled the cologne he wore, a musky odor that reminded her of a scent her father had had in a tiny glass bottle that he’d kept on his dresser. He’d never worn it when he was alive, but he had let her smell it a few times. It had been a gift to him on his wedding day from Emma’s mother, and he kept it dust free, like a special little statue. Bay rum, he had called it. When they had buried him, Emma had dabbed some on his cheeks and wrists, and then she’d tucked it into his breast pocket and that had been that.

  “What did you do? Did you burn my family’s home? Is Arliss hurt? And Samuel?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, dearest. And I am not familiar with anyone named Arliss or Samuel, but I can assure you that the last I knew, the Farraday family ranch was as right as rain. The only thing I’ve done to it is bestow on it a grand gift of longevity. A lifetime free of the woes no money can bring.”

  “I . . . I don’t believe you.” This didn’t seem right to Emma, somehow. Something about his talk made her angry, uneasy. Something told her to not trust him. “Why am I tied up if everything’s so rosy?”

  “Emma, Emma, shortly after you came here last night to tell me you loved me—”

  She shook her head no.

  He continued. “That you wanted to marry me and spend your life at my side, bear my children, and teach them to be perfect little frontiersmen, how you wanted to marry immediately, that you liked the terms I had laid down before you . . . why, something happened to you. Your very demeanor changed and you acted as though you wanted to hurt yourself. You began lurching about the room.”

  “No, you lie. You had those two animals who work for you drag me in here. You locked me up like a prisoner, boarded up the window.”

  “You are mistaken, my dear.” Tarleton leaned over her face, close to her, smiling down, speaking in a low, smooth voice. “You were unruly. I had to get you calmed down. I suggested you take a nap, but you kicked at the walls. The window, however, was something you did not try to jump through, thank the heavens.” He leaned closer to her face, spoke softer. “And it was not boarded up, I assure you, my dear.�
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  “Liar!” She whipped her head upward and rammed her forehead into his nose. She heard a quick snapping sound and Tarleton screamed and flipped backward, one arm milling, the other hand clutching his nose. He staggered backward, bumped into the wall, and knocked over a glass of water from the chair’s arm. “You . . . you wench. You have broken my nose. Never has the nose of a Tarleton been subjected to such savagery! And on my wedding day!” Then he ran to the front of the room, banged into the door, then lurched out of the room.

  Emma thrashed on the bed, then stopped, winded and frustrated. She breathed slowly, tried to calm herself. She relaxed against the bonds and found that the lengths of knotted sheet about her left wrist were loosening. One hand, that’s all she needed—one hand free. She pulled her thumb into her palm and made her hand as small as possible. It was enough, and after long seconds that seemed to take hours, she was able to slip her hand free. She wasted no time—despite the dizziness that threatened her and brought dark, thudding pains in her head, she managed to sit up. She touched the spot on her forehead where she’d rammed it into Tarleton’s nose. It was tender, a goose egg forming there, but it had been worth it. She felt renewed and reawakened.

  It took her but the work of a few seconds to loosen and then free the three remaining bonds. Soon she was off the bed and her bare feet hit the floor and she winced in pain.

  She’d stepped with her foot on something sharp that cut her—a sliver from the drinking glass that he’d knocked to the floor. She scooped up the largest pieces, stuffed a couple under the mattress by the head of the bed—just in case she’d need them later—then set one on the windowsill behind the curtain. She grasped the bottom of the glass, a round, jagged thing perfect for stuffing into that nasty royal face.

  She tiptoed across the room and peered around the not quite closed door into the outer room. Tarleton wasn’t there. She leaned farther into the room and saw no one. Across the way, the outer room’s door leading to the third-floor landing was also ajar. Nothing ventured, she thought, and bolted for it, wishing she had her boots. She’d find them later. Right now she had to get out of there.