Tucker (1971)

by L'amour, Louis

  Huddling near the fire, I shivered. One side of me was icy cold, the other burning. I fed more sticks into the fire, then wrestled a heavier piece and still another into the blaze.

  Then for the first time I saw a bootjack, and hooking my boot into it, I managed to draw off one and then the other. After that I tumbled back to the bed and crawled under the covers. At first I still shivered, but at last I grew warm and slept again.

  It was a restless sleep, with shifting scenes. In one I stood alone in an icy field and saw a line of men on horseback charging down upon me. Their knees were drawn up like jockies', and they wore black leather shields and carried curved swords. I fought and struggled as one rushed at me, swinging a blade. I felt it bite deep, and I fell.

  For a long time I lay there in the cold, and then my eyes opened.

  I had fallen to the floor; the fire was down again, and the room was still dark. Crawling to the fireplace, I fed sticks into the coals and the flames leaped up. I listened to the wind and rain . . . how long would this night last?

  The wind lashed the trees outside, and rain whipped against the cabin. I managed to pull myself to the window, but I could see nothing, only the blackness and the windowpane running with water. Somehow I got back onto the bed, and could only stare up at the ceiling.

  Later, I once more got up and added fuel to the fire.

  The supply of wood was getting low. Soon it would be gone.

  Again I slept, and again there was nightmare. Only this time I was on a great slippery rock with waves breaking over it, cold waves that rushed over me as I clung to the rock.

  I dug my fingers into a crack, and with each wave that came I was stiff with fear. My fingers became numb. How long could I hold on? ...

  And then I was awake and it was day. The rain had stopped and the wind was gone. The cabin still stood. I was too weak to move. My wound had bled some more, but that had stopped. My mouth was dry, but I had no wish to stir. My fingers did move, to feel for the gun . . . it was still there.

  For a long time I dozed. But at last I was awake, really awake. Light from the windows was the dull light of a cloudy day, or maybe the light of evening.

  Turning my head, I could see the fireplace. Some coals still remained, and a thin thread of steam rose from the pot. Only two sticks were left.

  When I tried to rise my head swam, but -I made it.

  Without fire, I doubted if I could survive another night.

  I got up slowly, added the two sticks to the fire, and poured another cup of tea.

  Huddling there, I drank it. Then with an effort I got to the bed, took up the gun, thrust it into my waistband, and stumbled to the door.

  For a moment I leaned against the door jamb, watching outside. Not thirty feet from the door there was a woodpile. Holding my hand against my side, I made it to the pile and gathered three or four sticks together, about all I figured I could carry. I was just stooping to pick them up when I heard hoof-beats on the trail ... more than one horse.

  Clumsily, because of my side, I dropped to one knee.

  The woodpile was about five feet high, and thick through. Wood had been taken from the place where I crouched, leaving a notch in the pile, and in this I waited, gun in hand. Four-foot lengths of wood almost surrounded me.

  Heseltine's voice was the first I heard. "Aw, he's dead, Kid! We're wastin' time."

  "I'll believe it when I see it. We figured to have him twice before."

  "There's no way out of that canyon, and even if there was, how could he crawl all the way over that mountain? Anyway, the canyon heads up off south of here."

  "Just the same, I'm lookin' around."

  A saddle creaked, and footsteps sloshed over the wet earth. I heard a step on the porch; momentary silence, then the door creaked open.

  "Nobody in there," Reese said doubtfully. "The fire's almost out."

  "If you two will stop being such fools," a girl's voice said, "we can be on our way before somebody comes back and wants to know what we're doin' here."

  "So?"

  "What are you going to tell them, Kid?" Ruby Shaw's tone was contemptuous. "Everybody in Leadville knows we've had trouble, so if Tucker shows up dead, they'll know we were hunting him."

  "She's right, Kid."

  Reese still hesitated, but finally, grumbling, he went to his horse. Stirrup leather creaked again, and for a moment I had a wild urge to step out just as they rode away. I was sure to get one of them . . . maybe both.

  Good sense warned me. In my condition I couldn't even be sure of putting a bullet close to them ... even be sure of holding a gun at arm's length.

  Dry-mouthed, gun in hand, I listened to them ride away. Slowly I holstered my gun and picked up the armful of wood. I'd taken two staggering steps toward the house when a voice said, behind me, "Thought there for a minute I was goin' to see a shootin'."

  I stood very still.

  Walk on, I told myself, walk right up to the steps. If he was going to shoot he would have done it already.

  Walk right inside and put the wood down. Get your hands empty.

  Don't look around, don't turn, just act as if you didn't even hear.

  I started toward the cabin. At the steps I paused automatically to scrape the mud from my boots on the scraper there, but I did not look around. I went on inside and carefully dropped the wood into the woodbox.

  Behind me, in the doorway, a dry voice said, "Mister, I'm friendly, so when you turn around your hands better be empty."

  Slowly, I turned.

  A wiry man was standing in the doorway. He held a rifle in his hands and it covered me. Had I planned to draw, I would never have gotten halfway around before he'd nailed me.

  Then I saw something else. From a window which had been soundlessly pushed open another rifle was pointed at me.

  "I never drew against a full house," I said. "Come in and make yourselves to home."

  The man stepped inside. He was all of fifty, maybe older, and he had a lean old face that looked hard enough to have worn out two or three bodies.

  "Come in, Vash. This is him I was tellin' you of."

  A girl appeared behind him, carrying a rifle. She was young, slender, and large-eyed.

  With her free hand she brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes and came on into the room, seeming to take very short steps. Without thinking, my eyes dropped to her feet. She wore men's shoes.

  When I looked up, she was walking by me, her face flushed.

  The man pushed the door shut behind her, then glanced around the room. "You et?"

  "No, sir."

  He looked at me and said, "You'd better set down, son.

  You look as if you're all in."

  "I've been shot," I said, and dropped weakly onto the bed. "They got lead into me. I done the best I could with it."

  "We'll eat," the old man replied, "then Vash will see to it. She's good with gunshot wounds. Started learnin' on me when she was ten year old."

  She had taken off her man's coat. She had a figure, all right, and maybe wasn't as young as she looked there to start. She might be all of sixteen.

  She picked up the teapot, looked into it. "Well, you had sense enough for that, anyway."

  She went about fixing something to eat whilst the old man barred the door and put up the shutters. "Seen you down to town," he commented. "You've stirred up some talk."

  He hung up his hat and coat, added wood to the fire, then sat down and took a pipe from his pocket. He held it up. "Learned it from the Injuns, as a boy. Been at it ever since." He gestured toward the girl. "Her ma was an Ogalalla."

  "I hear they were the best of the Sioux," I said, "and had the handsomest women."

  "Well, depends where a body stands, I reckon. If'n they had good chiefs they reckoned to be right pleasant folk, often enough. Them Hunkpappas now, I had trouble with them a time or two, and with the Arickaras.

  "I come west in '33. Trapped fur up north, lived with the Sioux for nigh onto twenty year."

&
nbsp; He struck a match. He jerked his head in the direction the riders had gone. "Them the ones you're after?"

  I nodded.

  "You had you a chance."

  "I decided against it. Didn't know whether I was strong enough to draw a bead on them. I might have taken one, but the other one would have killed me, weak as I am. I let 'em ride off. There'll be another day."

  "Well," the old man said dryly, "you ain't a total damn fool."

  He paused for a minute. "When you tangle with them, boy, don't let that woman go without judgin' her careful.

  She's worse'n either of them, I'm thinking."

  "Her?"

  "Yes, her. She's poison mean, and quick with a gun, too. She killed a man up to Weaverville, a year or so back."

  As I sat on the bed the warmth of the fire after the cold outside was making me sleepy. I tried to hold my eyes open, and for a while there I could manage it.

  Then somewhere along the line I just faded out.

  When my eyes opened again the room was dark except for the firelight. I stayed still, wondering what had happened.

  My boots had been taken off, and my pants. For a time I just stared up at the ceiling. Then I swung my feet to the floor, and that girl was sitting by the fire, looking into the coals.

  She turned her head when I sat up, and she said, "Well, you took long enough! You'd better have some of this soup now."

  "Thanks."

  I was almighty weak, but I made it to the fireside and sat down on the wide hearth. The cabin was warm now, and I could hear the easy snores of the old man.

  "You been living here long?" I asked.

  "Well, pa built this place, maybe fifteen years ago when he was down this way. We've come to it two or three times."

  "Prospector?"

  "Hunter, mostly. Oh, he looks around. He finds rock now and again, but he would rather shoot meat and sell it to the miners. Pa likes to come here. He reads a lot."

  "Him?"

  She looked up quickly. "Don't you be underrating pa.

  He had ten years of schooling before he came west, and he went to good schools. His name is Lander Owen, and he comes of an educated family, only he liked it in the West. You should have heard Mr. Denig and pa talking ... and Mr. Denig was one of the smartest men there was."

  "Never heard of him."

  "We can't all be smart. He was a fur trader, came west the same year pa did, I reckon, and he married an Indian girl ... two of them, in fact."

  "That makes it nice."

  She gave me a quick, angry look. "His first wife wasn't well. Should he throw her out because of that? A man has to have a wife ... so Mr. Denig just taken on another one.

  "He knew more about Indians than almost any white man I ever knew. He wrote about them. Some of his things were published back east. Folks came west to talk to him about Indian ways. Edwin Thompson Denig was his name."

  She was proud, and I liked the way she was quick to speak, chin up, eyes flashing.

  Denig. I made a note of the name I surely had a lot to learn.

  The soup was hot, all right, and it tasted good. I finished the bowl and had another, and then sleep began to catch up with me. I dearly wished to talk. It was the first time I'd talked to a girl a young one in months.

  "Your pa called you Vash. Is that your name?"

  "Vashti. Pa got it from the Bible, but it's a Persian name. A man told pa it meant beautiful one."

  "He sure named you right. You are beautiful."

  She flushed, shot me a quick glance, and then looked away. "You're just saying that because you want more soup. Well, I'll give you some you don't have to say it."

  "I meant it. And I can't eat any more soup."

  "You don't like my soup?"

  "Sure, I like it. Here, give me another bowl."

  I surely didn't need that last bowl. I was already about as full up as a man could get, but I didn't want her to think I was slighting her cooking, so I ate it, down to the last drop.

  Her grandpa's name was The Swan, she told me, and he'd been a great chief and a fine orator. Well, I'd heard talk of him. In Dodge, where we sold our cattle, there was talk about him from an old buffalo hunter we met.

  He'd told us that while The Swan had been chief of the Ogalallas they had been better fed, better clothed, and in less trouble than any time.

  While she was washing the soup bowl I went to the bed and was asleep almost as soon as I stretched out.

  And there was no nightmare this time.

  Chapter 9

  It was light when I woke up, and the old man was gone from the cabin. Vashti was working around, but when she saw that I was awake she came over and looked at me critically.

  "You should shave more often."

  Now that was a contrary sort of attitude. "Ma'am," I said, "I been busy saving my hide. I had no time to think of it."

  "You've time now. I'll heat some water."

  Meanwhile she put some bacon in the pan, and I could smell it, and was getting hungrier and hungrier.

  After a while I sat up and pulled on my pants when her back was turned, not fastening my belt tight because I wanted no pressure on that wound.

  "You showed sense getting that metal out of there," she said. "At least you didn't forget everything."

  When I started to speak, she cut me off. "Pa brought your saddle down. Got it off your horse."

  "He went through all that brush? And those dead-falls?"

  "There's an easier way, but it's roundabout. Pa knows every trail in these mountains, I do believe."

  She brought me some hot water, soap, and a razor, and I shaved. And it felt good.

  By the time I'd finished she had put food on the table.

  She poured coffee and sat down across the table from me.

  "Well," she said at last, "you're not a bad-looking boy when you're shaved."

  "I'm no boy."

  She let that pass, but said, "What do you plan to do now?"

  "Follow them. Soon as I'm able."

  "I would think you'd had enough of that. Next time they'll surely kill you."

  "No, ma'am, they won't. They suckered me into a trap."

  "Twice," she said dryly. "You played the fool twice.

  Why walk into a dark hall when you know men are waiting for you? Or go riding off because some passer-by tells you where to find them? If I were Bob Haseltine I'd not be worried."

  Well, sir, she was getting under my skin. My face was flushing, but I held my tongue.

  "At least it didn't hurt your appetite any," she said, as I finished the bacon. "Will you have some more coffee?"

  "Please."

  "Well," she said, "somebody taught you manners, anyway. Was it Mr. Judy?"

  "What do you know about him?"

  "He's your friend, isn't he? Pa says you've been getting about with all those high-toned, high-falutin' folks down to Leadville. Pa thinks quite a lot of Mr. Judy."

  "Seems as if ever'body does. I wonder how a man gets to be liked that much?"

  "There's nothing so surprising in that, Shell Tucker. A man is liked because he is likable, and most often I suspect because he likes other people. I've heard pa talk about Con Judy.

  "He's had a lot of men from time to time on mining and railroad jobs, and he's always been honest with them. He wants a day's work for a day's pay, but he stands by those who work for him, as well as those he works for, and if anybody has any argument Con is ready to meet them anyway they choose only most of them don't choose."

  "He's a good friend," I said. "I can say that."

  I was feeling weaker than a cat. It was good just to sit still and enjoy the sunlight of the day. And a comforting thing it was to have Vashti moving around, doing little things to straighten up the place. Pa and me had been batching these last years, and it was surprising, watching her, to see how much we'd overlooked doing in keeping a place looking shipshape. Vashti, she never missed a thing, and no waste motion, either.

  "Is that all you have to do? Si
t and watch me?"

  "I was admiring how handy you were. I never did see a girl do so much with so few moves."

  We talked a bit, and then I stretched out so's I could rest. I thought about Heseltine and Reese. More than likely they were gone, but they might come back. I'd have to be ready for that.

  After a while I sat up and found the stuff Owen used in cleaning his rifle, and I cleaned mine, and my six-shooter, too. Vashti looked at me from time to time, but she said nothing.

  Meanwhile I was studying about those two men. All I'd figured about Ruby Shaw would still hold true, I thought. She wouldn't want to be holed up in some cabin with two irritable outlaws, even if she was the girl of one of them. She'd want a town where money could be spent, where she could have some fancy clothes and wear them, and so far all she'd had was trouble. Come to think of it, she wouldn't be thinking very kindly of me.

  "I should think you'd want to get a job and make something of yourself," Vashti said suddenly.

  Took me a moment to get my thoughts in line. "I've got to get those men to give me back that money," I said. "I swore I'd pay back every dime we were trusted with. I've got it to do."

  "Maybe you could earn it faster."

  "It would take me years, ma'am. Years, to make that much. And those men have got to be made to pay for what they've done."

  We talked the question back and forth, but in the midst of it I fell asleep again. Which was probably the smartest thing I could have done.

  When I woke up, who should be sitting by the fire but Con Judy. "When you get shot up," he said as I opened my eyes, "you take care to do it where you have a pretty nurse right close at hand."

  Vashti blushed, but she was pleased, too. Especially as it was coming from Con, who had a way with him.

  Its the only way to go," I said, grinning at him.

  "How'd you get up here?"

  "Lander sent word. He figured I'd be worried, and I was, you taking off like that." Then he added, "They're gone. They pulled their freight, all three of them."

  "You went over there?"

  "Thought I might have a word with them. That was before I ran into Lander Owen Lander and I have been friends for some time. But I'd already started tracing you down. I got a tip in Leadville that Heseltine had been making inquiries about that cabin, so I went up there."