Ralph Compton Brother's Keeper

by Ralph Compton

“Galt is on his way up,” Ned informed them. “Him and all his deputies besides.”

  “Oh hell,” Crawford said.

  Chapter 32

  Before Thal could close the door, Trevor Galt appeared on the landing down the hall. “Stay hidden,” Thal said to his sister and Jesse Lee, and shouldering Ned aside, planted himself in the doorway. He pulled the door partway shut, enough that Galt couldn’t see inside. “Did you come to tuck us in?” he joked as the self-appointed mayor and his pack of gun hands approached.

  Galt didn’t find it humorous. “I’m looking for Bull,” he said, glancing up and down the hall.

  “He’d be hard to miss.”

  “I left him here to make sure you and your friends weren’t disturbed.”

  “By who?” Thal said.

  “Drunks and such,” Galt said. “You don’t know where he got to, do you?”

  Thal was worried that Bull might regain consciousness any moment and let out a bellow. “He hung around for a short while after you left. Then I heard him talkin’ to someone out here.”

  “To whom?”

  “I didn’t look,” Thal said. “When we went down to stable our animals, Bull was gone.”

  “You didn’t hear what was said?”

  “The only thing I heard was Bull saying, ‘All right, I’ll come.’ To be honest, I wasn’t payin’ much attention. I was talkin’ to my sis.”

  “How very strange,” Galt said, and turned. “Shotgun, you stay here with me. I want the rest of you to go downstairs and ask around. Someone must have seen Bull leave.”

  “On our way,” Rafer said.

  Galt rubbed his chin. “It’s not like Bull not to do as I tell him. Whatever it was that caused him to leave must have been important.”

  “No doubt,” Thal said.

  Galt stared at the door to Ursula’s room. “Your sister has already turned in, I take it?”

  “She has,” Thal said, adding to his lies.

  “What a shame. I would have liked to talk to her more.”

  “There’s always tomorrow,” Thal said.

  “Yes, I suppose there is.” Galt smiled and started to turn, but stopped. “I’ve been meaning to ask. That young friend of yours, Hardesty, I believe his name is. . . .”

  “Jesse Lee?” Thal said. “What about him?”

  “When we were at the restaurant, he kept giving me dirty looks. What was that all about?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Thal said. “I have no idea.”

  “You might want to talk to him about it,” Galt said. “I let it pass but I won’t be so charitable if he keeps it up. I won’t tolerate disrespect, from him or any other man.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Thal managed to say with a straight face.

  “I’ll send Myles to collect all of you for breakfast. Say, about six o’clock?”

  “That early?” Thal said. “My sister was hopin’ to sleep in. She’s plumb tuckered out.”

  “How would eight be, then?”

  “That would be fine,” Thal said. Especially since they would be that much farther from American City when Galt realized they were missing.

  “Eight it is.” Galt took a couple more steps but stopped again when Myles fell in beside him. “What are you doing?”

  “Comin’ with you. What else?”

  “I should think you’d like to spend some time with your brother,” Galt said. “He came all the way from Texas. The two of you must have a lot of catching up to do.” With a flourish of his cane, he ambled off.

  Myles didn’t look happy. “Well?” he said.

  “Beats me,” Thal replied.

  “What is there to say?” Myles said.

  “I know one thing,” Thal said, since he had been wondering about it himself. “Ma and Pa will want to know when you’re comin’ home. You don’t aim to stay in the Black Hills forever, do you?”

  Myles shrugged. “I can’t rightly say how long it will be. I like it here. I like that I work for the top rooster, and he only has to crow and folks fall over themselves to do anything he wants.”

  “You like the power.”

  “I reckon I do, at that,” Myles admitted. “Here, I’m somebody. Back in Kansas I was just another farmer.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Pa’s a farmer.”

  “I don’t see you wearin’ bib overalls and chewin’ on a piece of straw. The farmin’ life didn’t appeal to you any more than it did to me.”

  Thal had to concede that Myles had him there. “Even so. There’s a big difference between nursemaidin’ cattle and unlimberin’ that scattergun on someone.”

  “Not that again.”

  “I can’t get over that you kill people,” Thal confessed. “Anything else, I might have accepted.”

  Myles’s jaw muscles twitched. “I don’t need your acceptance, big brother. I won’t be judged, by you or anyone else. If all we’re goin’ to talk about is that, you might as well go to bed.”

  “What else, then? Our years growin’ up?”

  “What would be the point? I’m not the tender-heart I was as a boy. Fact is, I don’t think about those days much.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “If you ask me, sis and you live too much in the past. People change, Thalis. If I were to go home, I wouldn’t enjoy myself. I’d be restless to come back to the life I like.”

  “Ursula and you were always close,” Thal reminded him.

  “When we were knee-high to a calf,” Myles said. “It was fun playin’ in the hay and runnin’ through the corn and all the other things we did. But that was then. I don’t play in hay anymore, and the only use I have for corn is to eat it.”

  “You’ve grown hard, Myles.”

  Myles shrugged a second time. “I see the world as it is, not as I used to. It’s dog-eat-dog, and if you want things in life, you have to be the hardest dog around.” He softened a little, and smiled. “Look. It’s good that you like bein’ a cowpoke. It seems to fit you, just as what I do fits me.”

  “If you say so.”

  “There you go again. You think I should be more like you, and won’t accept me as me.”

  “Ursula isn’t happy about the change in you either.”

  “That’s too bad. She’s always been a good sister. I’m sorry if I hurt her feelin’s, but she has to do some growin’ up of her own. I’m not the little boy she remembers, and the Black Hills ain’t Kansas.”

  “Some say they’re hell on earth,” Thal said.

  “Then hell’s not as terrible as the parsons paint it. It’s got all the things I like, and then some. When I die, I hope I end up in hell and not the other place.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Myles sighed. “Do you see how you are? Talkin’ to you is pointless.” He cradled his scattergun, wheeled, and departed. At the landing he looked back, sadly shook his head, and descended out of sight.

  Thal coughed to be rid of a constriction in his throat. When someone touched his elbow, he didn’t need to look to know who it was. “You heard him, sis?”

  “Every word,” Ursula said.

  “It was a mistake, us comin’ here.”

  “He’s our brother.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Oh, Thalis.”

  Thal turned. Her eyes were misting, and he hugged her. “It hurts, I know. But it’s the truth. Any ties we had aren’t there anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Ursula said. “Myles would be there for us if we really and truly needed him.”

  Thal very much doubted it. Their brother was lost to them, in spirit if not in flesh. “He won’t shed any tears when we go.”

  Jesse Lee stepped around the door. “About that. What time do you want to light a shuck?”

  “Three or so,” Thal said. B
y then Galt and his special deputies would have turned in, and the streets would be mostly empty.

  “My pard and me will wait in her room,” Jesse Lee said, taking Ursula’s arm. “She needs to get some rest.” Beckoning to Crawford, he ushered her to the next door.

  Thal went to his bed and sat. He was so tired he wasn’t sure he was thinking straight. Tired, and sad. He’d always liked his brother, always liked that they had always gotten along. Until now.

  Thal completely forgot that Ned was there until Ned spoke.

  “We trussed up the buffalo while you were jawin’ with Galt. He won’t get loose without help.”

  Thal slid to the corner of the bed and peered over.

  Bull was wrapped from boots to neck in coil after coil of rope. His wrists and ankles were bound, and something blue stuck out of his mouth.

  “You gagged him with your dirty bandanna?” Thal realized.

  “It was the only thing handy,” Ned said.

  Thal sank onto his back with his fingers laced behind his head. He should try to get some sleep too, but his mind was galloping like a horse.

  “Why do you suppose your sister picked Jesse Lee over me?” Ned asked him.

  “Not now,” Thal said.

  “Is it that he’s her age? And easy on the eyes? Or is it that accent of his? I hear ladies are fond of accents.”

  “Did you also hear about the puncher who shot his pard because his pard didn’t know when to hush up?”

  “Ha-ha,” Ned said. “My heart is broke and you make jokes.”

  “You’ll live,” Thal said, “and there will be other gals.”

  “Not for me. Your sister was my one and only. I fell head over heels the moment I laid eyes on her.”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  “What for?”

  “You have brown goo tricklin’ out your ears.”

  “You mock true love?”

  “I mock you,” Thal said. “Or have you forgotten that filly over to San Antonio? The one you fell in love with. The one you pined after for months. The one who was goin’ to be Mrs. Ned Leslie.”

  “She would have been too, except that someone else asked her first,” Ned said.

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “I can tell you’re in one of your moods.” Ned went to the window and gazed out. “I’ll be switched.”

  “Is your filly out there?”

  “Olivant and Tiny are. They’re across the street, lookin’ up at our window.”

  Thal sat up. “Don’t let them see you.”

  “Too late.” Ned made a show of looking up and down the street, then closed the curtains. “Come see for yourself.”

  “No need,” Thal said. It might seem suspicious if he were to look out the window too.

  “Do you reckon Galt left them there to keep watch on us?”

  “What else?” Thal said. Which meant Trevor Galt had suspicions of his own. “We’ll have to sneak out the back of the hotel when we go.”

  “The livery is only a couple of blocks away. We should get there with no problem.”

  Thal didn’t share his friend’s optimism. “You know,” he said, as a troubling thought occurred to him, “none of us went along when Galt had our horses tended to. How do we know he took them to the livery? What if he took them somewhere else to keep us from leavin’?”

  “If his brain is as devious as yours, he might have,” Ned said.

  Thal got up and took to pacing again. Just what he needed. Something else to worry about.

  “I’ve been thinkin’,” Ned said.

  “We’re in trouble.”

  “I’m serious. Remember when we were out on the range? And I said how I was hankerin’ to go gallivantin’ around and see more of the world?”

  “I do,” Thal said.

  “I didn’t realize how good we had it. There’s a lot to be said for havin’ a steady job and earnin’ decent wages and not havin’ someone out to shoot you or knife you or beat on you with their fists.”

  “So our world tour is off?”

  “Go to hell,” Ned said, but he grinned as he said it.

  “Didn’t you hear my brother?” Thal said. “We’re already there. The trick will be to make it out alive.”

  Chapter 33

  Ursula couldn’t sleep no matter how she tried. She’d curled up on the bed while Crawford dozed in the chair and Jesse Lee kept watch at their window. A little while ago he’d whispered that two special deputies were across the street, keeping an eye on the hotel.

  That worried her. Escaping from American City might not be as easy as she’d hoped.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of Trevor Galt, and the man’s sheer, unmitigated gall. No man had the right to impose himself on a woman, and that was exactly what Galt was trying to do.

  She’d only been in the man’s company a short while, but that was enough for her to read the man’s character as if he were a book. Trevor Galt was all about Trevor Galt. He saw himself as God Almighty, at least as far as American City was concerned. His interest in her had been sparked by one thing and one thing only: pure and simple lust. She saw it in his eyes.

  Ursula felt only revulsion for a man like him. All those times he’d touched her at the restaurant—it made her skin crawl. She’d been tempted to slap him, but that would aggravate matters.

  As it was, she had unwittingly placed her brother and his friends in peril.

  If she’d stayed in Kansas, none of this would be happening, but what sort of sister would she be if he hadn’t wanted to see with her own eyes that Myles was all right?

  Myles. Just thinking about him almost brought tears to her eyes. He’d changed so much. He wasn’t the nice, friendly boy he’d been on the farm. He’d become twisted somehow, deep inside. He’d shown so little warmth toward her, she had to wonder if any had ever truly been there.

  She tried to put everything from her mind so she could rest for the ride ahead, and couldn’t. She was too overwrought. For once, her calm demeanor failed her.

  Along about one in the morning, she decided enough was enough, and sat up.

  Crawford was still asleep in the chair.

  Jesse Lee stood to one side of the window, leaning against the wall, his arms folded. He looked over and smiled. “You look right pretty with your hair mussed like that,” he said quietly.

  Sliding off the bed, Ursula went to the mirror. In her tossing and turning, she’d made a mess of her hair. “Wonderful,” she said. She took her brush from her bag and set to putting herself in order.

  Jesse Lee came over, his spurs jingling slightly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s not the hair,” Ursula said. “I’m worried about all of us getting out of here in one piece.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “There are a lot of those special deputies,” Ursula mentioned, “and Galt himself.”

  “He strikes me as the kind who lets others do his killin’.”

  Ursula stopped stroking, and scowled. “If any of you lost your lives on my account . . .” She didn’t finish.

  “This is on Myles’s shoulders, not yours. He’s the one who came here. He’s the one who got involved with Galt. He’s the one who took to usin’ a scattergun for his livin’.”

  “I know.”

  Jesse Lee wasn’t done. “If Myles was half the brother you thought he was, he’d be mad at Galt for tryin’ to force himself on you, and see you safely out of town. A brother should stick with his family above all else.”

  “I know,” Ursula said again.

  “Then quit blamin’ yourself.” Jesse Lee leaned in to plant a kiss on her cheek.

  Turning, Ursula kissed him full on the lips instead. She yearned to melt into his arms, but they weren’t man and wife yet. So she sett
led for a lingering kiss and a tender embrace.

  “That was nice,” Jesse Lee said when she drew back.

  “Wasn’t it, though?” Ursula said dreamily. “A thing like that could get to be a habit.”

  Jesse Lee grinned. “A habit like that is one I’d do a lot.”

  “I certainly hope so.” Ursula placed her cheek to his chest and wished she could keep it there forever. For a few moments she forgot about Trevor Galt and American City and Myles and all the rest.

  Then there was a soft knock on the door, and she gave a start.

  Placing his hand on his Colt, Jesse Lee went over. Poised to draw, he jerked the door open. “You,” he said.

  Thal slipped inside. “I’ve changed my mind. We’re not goin’ to wait until three. We should go while the streets are still fairly crowded. It will be harder for Galt or his deputies to spot us.”

  “You know about the pair across the street?” Jesse Lee asked.

  “I do.”

  “Has Bull come around?”

  “He started to, but Ned hit him over the head again. Two or three times.” Thal smiled at Ursula. “Be ready in five minutes.” Without waiting for a reply, he slipped back out.

  Ursula’s gut balled into a knot. They weren’t out of the room yet, and she was scared. Not for herself. For Jesse Lee and Thal and the other two.

  Jesse Lee had closed the door and gone to the chair. “Pard?” he said, and shook Crawford.

  The older puncher mumbled something.

  “Craw, consarn it,” Jesse Lee said. He glanced at her. “Wakin’ him up can be like tryin’ to wake Methuselah.” He shook harder.

  Crawford blinked and sat up and adjusted his hat. “What is it?” he asked sleepily. “I was havin’ the pleasantest dream.”

  “We’re leavin’ sooner than we thought,” Jesse Lee said. “Thal’s idea.”

  “Suits me,” Crawford said, stretching. “This place doesn’t agree with me. Too many sidewinders.”

  Jesse Lee grunted. “I never saw anywhere where so many snakes need stompin’. Which is why I have a favor to ask.”

  “Anything,” Crawford said.

  “If somethin’ happens to me, you’re to look after her.”

  The mere notion of harm coming to Jesse caused Ursula’s heart to flutter. She noticed that he’d avoided looking at her as he said it.