Tucker (1971)

by L'amour, Louis

  Yet I had to go ahead.

  Slipping the thong off my gun-hammer, I went softly along the boardwalk and opened the door with my left hand. It opened out slowly ... all was dark inside.

  This was something new for me, and I did not want to get myself killed, and as pa always warned me. "If you go among the Indians you have to think like them."

  Stepping through the door, I found myself in a narrow hall. On my left was a door that might lead to a storeroom or cellar. A stairway went up to the rooms on the second floor.

  Walking along the hall toward the back, I found myself facing a door, invisible except for the white porcelain knob. On my left was the newel post at the foot of the stairway. Putting my left hand on the post, I went around it to the first step.

  Something was on my foot ... mud dropped by the girl, no doubt. Pausing, I scraped my instep off against the edge of the stair, then started up.

  Pd taken two steps when that door behind me opened. I turned, my left hand going to the wall as I sank to a crouch on the steps, my right hand coming up with my gun even as a shotgun belched a twin bore of flame. The thundering roar in the narrow hall drowned the two shots from my pistol.

  There was a moment when I crouched in stunned silence. Scraping my foot had saved my life, for he had been counting my steps and believed I was one step higher. He had aimed for my waistline and had missed me by a foot or more.

  It was only a split second that I was still, then I went up the steps two at a time. A door was opening a crack; it was not quite dark inside.

  My shoulder hit the door and smashed it open; somebody fell to the floor with a crash.

  By a dim reflected light in the room I could see a bed topped with a gray blanket, the brass bedstead gleaming dully, a dresser with a white bowl and pitcher. Stepping back, I held my gun on the fallen man and said quietly, "Get up slowly and light a light I can see you well enough to shoot and I've just killed one man."

  Whether that was true or not, I did not know, but I figured to see where I was and who I was with.

  "Don't shoot! For God's sake, don't shoot!"

  Slowly the man got up, struck a match, and lit the kerosene lamp. Then he turned to face me . . . a perfect stranger.

  "Mister," I said, "I'd no right to bust in. I was hunting Kid Reese, Bob Heseltine and them."

  "They pulled their freight" he said, "Heseltine, the girl, and another gent One of them was layin' for you."

  "You knew that?"

  "Heard talk." He jerked his head toward the wall.

  "Nobody builds walls thick enough these days. I heard some talk, but I'd no idea what it meant Then when the girl come up the steps, I seen her. Right off, she and two others left."

  "How?"

  "Yonder." He indicated the balcony. "A feller can step from this balcony to the next one pretty easy. There's a stairway down.*

  I took up the lamp and went down the stairs. I could hear voices, and folks coming along the street.

  The dead man lay sprawled at the foot of the steps only he wasn't dead. I'd put two bullets in him, all right. but he was alive and staring up at me.

  "Doc," I said, and I still held the gun, "I want my money."

  "They . . . they got it"

  "You're not carrying any of it?" I kicked the shotgun and bent over him.

  Just then the door opened and Duggan came in. Con Judy was with him.

  "I think this man is carrying some of my money," I said.

  "Take it off him then," Duggan said. Looking down at Doc Sites he said, "You shot high, boy. You got to watch that"

  "It was in the dark, and when he came out of that door I dropped on the steps. He'd counted wrong and figured I was one step higher."

  Opening Sites's coat, I saw a thick money-belt and took it from him Sites lay still, staring at me. "Help me!" he said hoarsely. "I'm dying."

  "My pa died." I said. "because of you and them."

  Duggan was sizing up the situation. Doc Sites's position, the place where the double charge of buckshot had hit the step and my own bullet holes in Sites made it clear enough.

  The man into whose room I had burst came down the steps. slipping his suspenders over his shoulders. They'd been hanging loose when I had him light the lamp.

  "It's like this here man says," he told them. was fixin' for bed when I heard all this sudden scurryin' about and seen them take off across the balcony.

  "Somebody it must've been the wounded man went down the steps in the dark an' I heard the door close at the foot of the steps. Now that there is an empty room, and it didn't seem right, somehow, a man goin into an empty room in the dark.

  "Then I heard this man, comin' cautious-like. I opened the door for a peek, then closed it. Heard the shots and opened it again."

  The smell of gunpowder hung in the narrow hall. Sites still stared up at us. "You goin' to let me die?"

  "Serve you right," Duggan said, "but I'll see you're fetched."

  I showed him the money-belt. "I'm taking this along,"

  I said. "It's part of my money."

  Duggan shrugged. "Lucky to get yourself part of it, but was I you I'd take after those others."

  Back at the Clarendon I opened the money-belt and counted out the gold. One hundred pieces one hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces, but it was only a small part of what I had lost.

  "Either they haven't divided it up even," I said, "or they have and Doc cached most of his share."

  "We'd better search his room," Con said thoughtfully, "and right away, before somebody else does."

  "Con," I said, "I don't believe we'll find it."

  He studied me, then he smiled. "You're learning, Shell.

  You think the others took it along?"

  "Figure it out for yourself. From what I know of them I'd say they'd steal from each other as quick as from me and pa. Doc was going to lay for me with a shotgun.

  They figured he'd get me, but in case he didn't "

  "And if he did? And found his money gone?"

  "They'd give it back. He wouldn't dare brace Bob Heseltine and call him a thief. They'd just say they took care of it for him."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  I shrugged. "Sleep. In the morning I'm going to put most of this in the bank I'm going to keep two hundred dollars as part of my share and use it to live on whilst tracking them down.

  Before I went to sleep I sat down, and taking some paper the hotel provided, I struggled through the writing of a letter. I addressed it to Burton J. Ely, who was our neighbor, and who'd had a share in the herd.

  Chapter 6

  By noontime everybody in Leadvine seemed to have heard about the shooting. Doc Sites was alive and might remain so, and I hoped he would. I had no need in me to kill Doc Sites, despite the fact he'd laid for me with a shotgun.

  Because I had dropped on the steps, my shots had gone high, and his double charge had gone right past my head, a little high and to the right. At that close range the shots hadn't begun to scatter, but they blew a hole in the step you could put a fist through.

  At breakfast men stopped by the "able where I sat with Con Judy. "Served him right" they said. One added "Only next time make it a mite lower. We don't need his kind."

  We heard nothing of Heseltine or Reese. It seemed likely they had pulled their freight Con had business in town so I nosed about, keeping the thong off my six-shooter just in case.

  Con cautioned me, "Let them run and hide. Ruby won't like that and we both know it Money's no good unless they can spend it and she will get tired of being holed up with two jumpy outlaws."

  "What I can't figure," I said, "is why they're so scared.

  Heseltine is surely better than me with a pistol, and for that matter, Reese must he too."

  Con shrugged. "When they knew you back in Texas you were just a shave-tail kid, and when they braced you back on the trail you weren't much more. They had only contempt for you, Shell. Men will often take advantage of anyone they believe is helpless to retaliat
e.

  "The change in their thinking started when you took after them. That worried them, because it showed you weren't afraid to meet them. They probably didn't know who I was, and they were worried because you were no longer alone.

  "Despite all the talk you hear about gunmen, most of them stay in their own district and avoid people on the other side of town. When you came to Leadville you seemed to have connections, and that would worry them. You can bet they heard talk; they knew you had cleared yourself with Duggan, and you seemed to be friendly with businessmen around town. You were no longer somebody to be treated with contempt `Then after somebody took that shot at you, that put them in the wrong. It was a shot from the dark and it was a damn fool thing to do because it put them on record for the kind of men who would dry-gulch a man, and it also showed they weren't sure of their own position."

  It made sense, of course. Nevertheless, I was worried about that money. If they had hit the trail I might never get any more of it, and I didn't like the thought of that Anyway, town was a-fretting me.

  I'd been raised where the long wind blows and the short-grass plains roll away to the edge of the sky. I was used to the smell of a buffalo-chip fire and the feel of a saddle. I'd had it in me too long to get quickly weaned away by fancy grub and store-bought clothes.

  So I said nothing, but laid in a stock of traveling grub and a couple hundred rounds of .44's that would fit either my Winchester or my hand gun.

  "You figurin' on startin' a war?" the man there in the hardware store asked me.

  "Well, sir," I said. "those men taken money we'd been paid for cattle gathered by pa and his neighbors. Those folks sweat hard for that money. They made their gather in rain or shine or hail, and they held those cattle, come storm or stampede. Those folks back yonder trusted us. I figure if it has to be a war, it'll be a war."

  He reached under the counter and come up with a six-shooter. It was mighty close to being new, and it was a fine weapon, fine as a man could wish.

  "Boy," he said, "that gun you're packin' looks mighty used up, and I like the way you shape up. You take this here gun in place of the one you've got, and welcome."

  "I can't afford it."

  "Maybe. But I can. If you get your money, you ride by here and pay me; if you don't, forget it. I wouldn't want to see a man go up against Bob Heseltine with a wore-out gun."

  "Thanks," was all I could say.

  That gun had a feel to it, the right kind of feel. I held it in my hands and felt the balance of it, and I tried it in my holster and they fit as if they were made for each other.

  "That's a fine piece," I commented, "and it's had some use. Is it yours?"

  "My brother carried that gun. He was a good man, but the morning he was killed he wasn't carrying it, but an old one he was takin' to be fixed."

  "What happened?"

  "He'd had words with a man, a good time back. He met the man on the street, and my brother was killed. We buried him two years ago outside of Tin-Cup."

  "Sorry."

  "He knew that man was huntin' him. He bought this gun for the purpose, and he had used it some. He loved the gun, and carried it a lot, but that momin he'd promised to get a gun fixed for our nephew, and it was easier to carry in his holster. Heseltine wasn't even supposed to be around."

  "Heseltine?"

  "Bob Heseltine killed him. My brother might have beaten Heseltine, because he was a good man with a gun, but he hadn't a chance. This here gun that I've given you was meant to be used against Heseltine."

  I drew the gun again, and looked at it. It was like any other Peacemaker Colt, but well, it felt different Maybe it was different Some guns had a different feel to them, some guns felt right to a man. Usually, it was the getting used to a gun.

  A man could always shoot a mite better with his own weapon, but this feeling was something different "Thanks," I said again, and walked out into the street where the morning sun was bright.

  It was warm out there where the sun was shining, but the wind was raw when a man stepped from shelter.

  The gun rested easy in my holster ... a gun bought to kill a man. Or rather, for a man to defend himself.

  Crossing the street, I picked my way around the mudholes and across the ruts cut deep by freight wagons. Some of them had water standing in them.

  Clouds were bunching over the peaks. Some of the peaks you couldn't even see, but the sunshine was still on the street I turned and looked along it. I would have to be careful now; I could walk nowhere without thinking of who might be waiting for me, or who I might come on unexpectedly.

  I had had my first gun battle. I was still alive, and Doc Sites was down.

  Nothing in me wanted to kill Kid Reese, or even Heseltine. All I wanted was my money, and then to ride free, to make a place somewhere for myself.

  When I was a few steps shy of the Clarendon, a man stepped out from the wall. He was wearing a short sheepskin coat, and his black hat had a torn brim.

  "Are you Shell Tucker?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  He was a stranger, a narrow-faced man with shifty eyes, and I did not like the looks of him very much.

  He smiled at me. "Heard about you an that shootin'.

  Heard about them fellers makin' off with your money.

  That there don't seem right"

  "It wasn't"

  "That Reese now, him an Heseltine they've skipped town. They're scared of you."

  Maybe I was a kid, but I didn't believe that. Not for a minute. When I remembered the hard, leather-like face of Bob Heseltine and his cold eyes, I felt a chill. He might be many things but he was not afraid of me.

  "I know they've skipped," he said. He glanced up and down the street and stepped a little closer. "I know they've skipped and I know where they are."

  "You do?"

  'They're holed up in a shack the other side of Independence Pass. Sets back in the qualdes." I knew that mountain folks often called the aspens "qualdes," from their name of quaking aspen. "Good run of water close by," he added. "Figured you'd want to know."

  '"hanks."

  Con Judy was not in the room when I entered, nor was he in the bar. There was a restlessness in me, and I did not want to wait. They were at the Pass ... suppose they left there? How long might it be before I found them again?

  In our room I quickly wrote a note, then taking up my rifle, my saddlebags and blanket roll, I went down the steps and across the lobby.

  My horse was standing three-legged in his stall, and he rolled his eyes at me when I came in, and laid back his ears when I threw the saddle on his back and tightened the cinch. All I was thinking was that they had gone from here, and if I was to have my money back I must follow. Con Judy had his own affairs, and this was mine. Was I a child that I needed him to guide me?

  Ducking my head as I rode through the wide door, I turned my horse down the trail. Once I glanced back. A man was standing on the walk staring after me, a man in a short sheepskin coat ... the man who had told me where I could fine Heseltine.

  A spatter of rain fell and I slipped into my slicker. It began to rain harder, and the trail became slippery. I rode off it into the sparse grass beside it, and kept on, listening to the sound of rain on my hat and on my shoulders.

  The rain would wipe out the tracks, but there were few anyway. The tracks of a lone rider going into Meadville seemed about all.

  When I had been riding an hour or more the last shacks had been left behind. On the trail I could see only the lone set of hoof prints going opposite to the way I rode.

  It would be dark early, I thought. The water was standing in small pools, and the cold rain slanted across the sky.

  I went on. Once my horse slipped on the greasy trail, but he scrambled and got his footing. We kept on for what seemed like a long time, and presently I could see the thin ghost of smoke from a chimney The trail took a bend, bringing it nearer the cabin where the smoke lifted. Suddenly I realized I was tired, and that I had been hours in coming this far. With
in another hour it would be dark, and here was a chance for a meal, fodder for my horse, and rest.

  The rider who had left the tracks I had seen had stopped here, too. In fact, he had mounted his horse by the gate. Despite the rain I could see his tracks clearly in the mud.

  The man in the sheepskin coati The man who had told me where I would find Heseltine. He had stopped here at this house.

  He had come into town only minutes, perhaps, before he talked to mP IAA." would a man ride in and make such a point of delivering news of where I'd find Heseltine? How would a man from out of town know I was hunting them?

  I stared at the house. It was shadowed and still. Only the slow smoke rising, only the tracks of man and horse leading from the stoop. Suddenly I knew this was no place for me.

  I had dismounted to open the gate, but suddenly I turned, and catching a closer grip on the reins, I stabbed my toe at the stirrup.

  Instantly the evening was ripped apart by the ugly bark of guns. Something hit me and I staggered half falling against the horse. Something hit me again, but my toe slipped into the stirrup and the forward lunge of the horse sent me into the saddle.

  Hanging low in the saddle, I rode on up the trail, away from the house. Behind me another gun slugged the night and still mother. My horse staggered under me, gathered itself, and went on.

  Up the hill we went, making a quick turn into the trees and weaving through them. Behind me I heard a shout, and galloping hoofs.

  Through the trees we dodged and turned. The horse was laboring hard now but it was game. Suddenly I saw a notch in the rocks below me and pulled up, sliding to the ground. As I did so I pulled the drawstring on my blanket roll so that it fell into my hands. Then I grabbed my Winchester and, slapping the horse with the flat of my hand, I turned and slid through the notch. As I went down with a rattle of stones I heard the trotting hoofs of my horse, moving on.

  Going through the notch in the rim had landed me on a steep slope of talus. I slid on this broken rock, clinging to rifle and blanket roll, then rolled off it to the grass and went on down a slope through the aspens.