As a small boy Tucker had seen Boston, and moving west his family had passed through the huge city of Philadelphia. Omaha's shack and shanty construction paled before those metropolises. But there was a vigor, a raw and impatient energy about the western jumping off place that tingled the spirits. Hints of adventure and danger floated in the air. Indians loitered about, and guns, ropes, and long bladed knives were at hips and saddles.
Unlike the ordered discipline of Great Salt Lake City, Omaha appeared on the edge of chaos. Men cursed, smoked, and publicly swilled liquor. Fist fights blossomed in saloons and spilled into streets. The drunken lurched about, a few bright with alcoholic jollity, more of sodden countenance and clumsied movement.
Wagoners swore endlessly, jockeying their teams without regard for rules of the road. Tobacco spitters coated floors and walks with their wet brown splatters, and a billion flies rose and fell in wave-like swarms on the ankle deep manure and dust of Front Street.
Goods of every description crowded mercantile buildings and spilled from disordered displays onto the irregularly planked walkways. Horse and mule teams dozed or tossed and stomped irritably at log hitching posts driven deep along the street edge. Loafers slouched against the same posts and their joining rails, arguing, bargaining, discussing, and continually smoking, chewing, and spitting. Deals were struck and agreements made. Wagons backed to loading ramps disgorging or taking on cargo. A gun fired and another answered. Heads barely turned. The shooting was probably innocent celebration and the business of others anyway.
Tucker observed the scene with wary enjoyment. Omaha city was not a safe or comfortable place to reside. He felt separated and not a part of the rough confusion. Smokers, chewers, and cursers were rare in Salt Lake.
A pair of buffalo skinners, reeking of their trade, reeled a drunken path through the turmoil of teams and horsemen. Somehow they stayed erect, surviving the threats of hooves and wheels. They disappeared within a saloon, their loud caterwauling still reaching the street. Hard men who could turn mean, Tucker thought.
During the day, brawls were fewer and tended toward fists and perhaps hastily clutched bottles. The dark of night changed things, and fighting could turn vicious with knives appearing and brass knuckles and leaden saps doing their brutal work. At dusk, the good people of Omaha closed their shops and retreated to the relative safety of backroom or upstairs living places. Even there, stray bullets were known to pass through or lodge in walls or floors. Night was most dangerous.
Tucker Morgan had not experienced Omaha's night violence, but the sounds sometimes reached the Payne-Weston camp, and men shook their heads and spoke of what was surely happening.
Because the sights were new and exciting, Tucker's senses were sharpened. He stayed clear of others and watched the milling and jostling with suspicion. Without particular attention or conscious concern, he saw a pair of tough looking men working his way. They moved with determination, and for an instant, Tucker thought they looked at him. Other interests diverted his attention, but he was aware that the two had reached the sidewalk. Tucker's eyes turned to them almost in time. One of the figures loomed closely, eyes glared into his and a rock hard fist sledged straight at him.
At seventeen, reflexes are lightning. Muscles flow like quicksilver and joints slide effortlessly. Tucker's instincts dropped his head and buckled his knees. His arms rose protectively—but an instant too late.
Coy's blow was a savage, overhanded, clubbing smash. He aimed it for the middle of Tucker Morgan's face. With his victim unsuspecting, Coy set himself to add leverage and weight to his blow. The boy looked over unexpectedly and Coy hurried himself. His fist drove like a rammer—too high as the boy ducked—but still a solid crack high on the head. Agony fired Coy's knuckles, and he clutched his fist, twisting in pain even as he saw the boy going down. Damnation! He had surely broken his hand.
Tucker tried to duck. It was not reasoned, just an automatic, self-preserving response. His sudden hunching drop dislodged his hat and the sledging knuckles struck high on his forehead. Within his skull the blow set off a monstrous boom like internal thunder that seemed to echo through vast, empty galleries inside his head.
As though a spectator, Tucker felt his legs collapsing. He seemed to sit awkwardly, and he attempted to brace himself on an extended arm that was as limp as a rope. He slumped to his side, feeling the rough wood of the walkway scraping through his leather shirt. He wondered a bit vaguely why he did not get up and shook his head to clear it.
From his hiding place, Bartholomew Elton saw the might of their vengeance. Time had hung motionless as John and Coy, his powerful new arms, closed on their victim. Coy's blow had been satisfyingly crushing. Through his ecstasy, Bartholomew heard his brother's muffled whimper. William apparently lacked the stuff for genuine repayment.
Morgan went down as though stricken. Bartholomew's breath hissed in gratification, and he braced for the rest of the punishment.
Then it all went wrong, and the more timid William heard his brother's gasp of disbelief followed by dozens of incomprehensible but tortured rumblings.
Coy clutched his shattered knuckles, pressing them to his waist and whirling away. Every brawler knew that head bones were tougher than knuckles. Slugging skulls often broke hands, and Coy had done just that.
Coy whirled—straight into his advancing brother. John was momentarily staggered. He cursed fervently, stepped clear, and judged his distance for good kicking. Morgan had curled into a ball, knees drawn tight to his chest, but John's boots were heavy, and he knew how to use them.
Tucker's mind cleared almost instantly. His head pained mightily, reminding him of a time he rode into a low branch. But this was no accident; he had been slugged. He was in a fight, and he knew how those usually went. Street brawlers liked to get their man down, then kick him into submission. Instinctively, Tuck squeezed himself into a protective shell, knees high, elbows in tight.
In growing, Tucker had been in few fights, and those had been only boyhood scrabbling. But men sometimes fought, and those slugging, scratching, kicking, and biting battles had engraved themselves in his mind. Tuck Morgan did not know why he was in a fight or with whom he tangled, but he knew pretty well what would be coming next.
Thoughts of outside help flashed across his mind. Where was Holloway? A memory, sharp as the lightning that had followed burst into his thoughts. For an instant, he again crouched in the rain drenched rocks, and Pin Larkin stood over him about to crush his life away, but between his hands Tucker saw a new figure loom. It closed and planted a leg, the other already swinging into a brutal, hard-toed kick.
Tucker uncurled like a striking rattler. From chest height his knees straightened. Like a pile driver, a foot axed into his attacker's supporting knee. Powered by fear, anger, and desperation, with all of his lithe strength behind it, Tucker's foot drove against the kicker's knee joint—and kept going.
The breaking was transmitted through Tucker's nerves even before the stomach churning crunch of disintegrating knee bones reached him. Tucker's moccasined foot ached with the impact, but his attacker crumpled as though shot with a buffalo gun.
His weight balanced firmly on his planted left foot, John's kick was too far along. The boy's lashing strike came from nowhere. John barely saw it start, but its terrible smash ripped his knee apart, collapsed him onto the sidewalk, and forced a scream so agony filled that it froze most nearby activity. John's fingers clutched at his ruined knee and another horrified screech formed in his lungs. Any interest he had in Tucker Morgan fled forever. Only the agony of his injury touched the brawler's tortured mind.
His brother's scream turned Coy back to the fight. Dumbfounded, Coy saw his brother on the boardwalk, grabbing a leg that bent horribly in a wrong direction. The boy, still on the ground, scuttled like a crab into the street trying to escape their clutches. Broken knuckles forgotten, features twisted in rage, Coy lunged for their victim. Gone was intent to merely mark the boy. Tucker Morgan had hurt them both. H
e would pay. Oh, how he would pay.
Tucker clawed for distance. He had his man down, but he wasted no time judging injury. He thudded off the walk and into the filth of the street, eyes on his enemy but moving fast. Then another started for him. From the ground, the second man appeared a monster. How many could there be? Where was Holloway?
Tucker struggled to rise, but his balance was still affected. He scratched on hands and knees for a seeming eternity before he got clear of the ground and ready to fight.
Coy was almost within reach when the boy got his feet under him. A large and strong man, Coy had no doubts. Eyes murderous, he closed in.
Tucker did not come up empty handed. No clubs lay near, and his Joseph Smith rifle was in pieces on the gunsmith's bench, but he used what he found within reach. Each hand fisted all it could carry of the manure and pounded dust filth of the roadway. Without pause, Tucker hurled it into his new enemy's straining features. Then he ducked aside, stumbling awkwardly, but ready to run as far as he needed to escape the thugs trying to do him in.
Close passersby had quickly moved away from the street fight. Others more distant just as quickly came closer. An instant circle had formed around the fight, and Tucker's hurried scramble ricocheted him from the wall of spectators and almost back to his opponent. Tucker's hands came up to defend himself, but his attacker was standing in place, cursing wildly and clawing at eyes blinded by the street filth Tucker had flung. With no other enemies appearing, Tucker picked a hole in the encirclement and started for it.
Then watchers were flung aside as though struck by a stampede, and Holloway was there. Fear fled Tucker Morgan as if it had never been. He almost managed a grin, but Holloway's eyes were on the tough still on his feet barely beginning to regain his vision.
Speaking of general things, Grant Holloway and Paul Laban had stepped from a store into the almost blinding daylight. An agony- filled scream stopped their talk, and Laban saw a swirl of motion within a swarm of nearby pedestrians. Then Holloway was gone. The artist believed he heard Holloway rumble as if imitating a grizzly bear before the guide struck through the gathering crowd like a hard driven splitting wedge. Laban rushed to catch up, but the space closed in front of him, and he could see only a little over the hats and bonnets. It looked like a fight to Laban, but what could Holloway's interest be?
Coy cleared his eyesight. The brat of a boy could not have gotten far. Coy turned, searching, and saw Grant Holloway looking dead at him. Coy's heart would have quailed, if there had been time.
Holloway asked no questions. His short Hawken rifle reversed in his hands, and he stepped in with it. Coy was far behind Holloway's quickness. The rifle's steel butt plate sank from sight in Coy's gut just above the belt buckle. Air blew from Coy's lungs. Stricken, he doubled forward, head barely waist high.
Without pause, Holloway slapped Coy's hat from his head and snatched a handful of the man's greasy hair. Two steps the guide dragged the windless tough, until his face looked uncomprehendingly down on one of the thick pole hitching posts. With little resistance, Holloway raised Coy's head so the man could look into his eyes. Then, emotionless as a cook finishing a chicken, Holloway slammed Coy's head into the flat top of the deeply driven pole.
Coy dropped as though dead, and a moan of shared anguish rose from the crowd. Holloway did not even look. His attention split between watching for other trouble and the condition of Tucker Morgan.
"You all right, Tuck?"
Numbed by the swift action and its violent conclusion, Tucker fought for his words.
"I'm all right, Mister Holloway. One of 'em hit me an awful whack on the head, but it's getting better fast. Who are these people, anyway?"
Holloway was grim. "We're going to find out." He spoke to the still thickening crowd. "Anybody know these two?" No one volunteered an identification.
Holloway's moccasins were silent as he stepped onto the sidewalk and stood over the moaning thug clutching his shattered knee. The man stared through his pain, and his voice begged.
"Somebody help me. My knee's broken clear through."
Holloway's voice stayed cold. "You'll get help after you tell about this fight."
"We had the wrong man. It was a mistake."
The guide jammed the muzzle of his Hawken into the prostrate man's good knee and eared back the hammer. His finger lay light on the trigger. "You've got one more time to tell it true. Lie, and you'll have a really bad knee to take your mind off the one you're clutching."
John folded. Resistance had no point, and Holloway's threat was too real. He admitted two men had hired him and his brother. The employers were part of a religious group, and Tucker Morgan had read false scripture. The employers had not offered names, but John described them.
Holloway gave advice. "When your brother comes around see that the two of you make yourselves scarce. Go downriver, 'cause if our paths cross again, I'll scalp your dead bodies. You understand all of that?"
John understood.
Paul Laban had gotten through to watch the toughs' final humbling. Raised within gentler societies, Laban was shocked by the guide's explosive justice. Holloway's cold, brutal efficiency both repelled and intrigued the artist.
Laban knew he could never have responded in time and would not have known what to do anyway. It was a pointed reminder of how vastly different American Westerners could be from their tamer Eastern and European cousins.
Until the crowd closed in, the Elton's lookout had provided a decent view. When Holloway ploughed into the middle of it, Bartholomew turned away. William crowded his heels. Their simple plan had gone terribly awry. Their best course was to swiftly depart. Safely away, they might concoct another and better scheme. Bartholomew lashed their team unnecessarily.
Tuck Morgan found himself exhausted. The fight had lasted only moments, but its fierceness had drained his strength like a spigot emptying a keg. A hardware offered plank seating in front of its small windows, and Tucker sank onto the rough comfort. He touched his head gingerly, finding a large swelling. Paul Laban had recovered Tucker's old hat, but with his head a few sizes too large, it would not fit.
His fingers gentle, Holloway examined Tucker's wound. "Don't appear bad, Tuck. Looks as though someone laid a length of kindling along your knob, but if s not bleeding and your skull isn't cracked."
"It was just his fist, Mister Holloway."
The guide marveled. "By golly, Tuck, you had 'em licked. All you had to do was finish off the one you'd blinded."
Finishing off had been the farthest thing from Tucker's mind. All he had wanted to do was get far away from his attackers.
Holloway smiled, teeth white against his weather-blackened skin. "Didn't know you were such a fierce street fighter, Tuck. You been sneaking into saloons learning how it's done?"
Tucker tried his own smile. "I was purely lucky, Mister Holloway. If that punch had landed a hair lower I'd have just been lying there."
Holloway's nod agreed. "Yep, a man startin' a brawl ought to make his first one good. It's like shooting game. Put in the first bullet and you won't need more. Hit poor and you might need six."
Holloway again smiled in satisfaction. "To this child, the fight appears to have turned out just about right."
Riding to camp they talked more about the attackers and what the religious group might be. Holloway recalled the crazy preacher back across the prairie who had tried to whip Tucker, but there seemed no connection.
Holloway said, "Well, we'll just keep an eye out. Could be we gave 'em a message, and they'll ride wide of us."
Tucker's grin was rueful. "Tell you what, Mister Holloway. You do the campfire reading for the next month or two, and I'll come to your rescue if anybody takes offense."
There were chuckles all around, but Tucker Morgan planned on keeping both eyes open. He would feel a lot safer when he had his Joseph Smith gun again lying ready across his forearm.
Chapter 8
Tucker Morgan stood on his horse's rump, well behind his
saddle roll, and used his telescope on distant antelope. The band grazed undisturbed and widely spread as they searched out the tastiest short spring grass.
Each time Paul Laban saw Tucker standing on his horse, the artist ached with the richness of it. The horse, still scraggly with unshed winter hair, was anchored by a dropped rein. Beyond, the empty plain rolled to seeming infinity, although when painting Laban planned to spot in distant buffalo. Except for the broad and floppy brimmed hat, Tucker seemed all leather. His garments were held together by leather lacings and decorated with a few sliced-in leather fringes. The doeskin hunting shirt lay soft and disguised its wearer's lean, muscled body. A hide hunting pouch, overlaid by a powder horn, draped one hip, and a scabbarded knife nestled against the other. A cotton neckerchief hung loosely, and when using his telescope, Tucker slung his rifle across a shoulder by a leather strap.
Both Tucker and Holloway favored Shoshoni moccasins. The soles were doubled elk hide which lasted well and were replaced when worn through. The outer layer of hide had its rough side exposed to better grip stirrup or ground. The uppers were soft leather and could be worn folded about the ankle or laced high on the calf. Watching Tucker's feet shape to the horse's rump, the artist could almost feel the moccasins' comfort. In comparison, his own wooden-pegged boots were stiff and clumsy. Laban promised himself similar footwear when their party reached the Shoshoni.
Tommy Bell sat alongside Paul Laban on the artist's wagon seat. Tommy was thirteen years old and had come in with the late wagon. He was a fragile boy, pipe stem skinny, pale and narrow featured from chronic lung sickness. An American nephew of James Payne-Weston, young Bell had been sent west to save his life. Some claimed that the clean freshness of the plains and mountains could cure weak lungs. Paul Laban guessed that the western wilderness was Tommy Bell's only hope.
As usual, the boy's eyes were glued to Tucker Morgan. Where older men might see Grant Holloway as an example, to Tommy Bell, Tucker Morgan shone like a morning sun. A boy should have a hero, and offhand, Paul Laban could not name a better for Tommy than Tuck Morgan. Even after you gave it thought, Tucker came out looking right.
Tuck Morgan, Plainsman (The Gun of Joseph Smith) Page 4
