The Hunted

by Ralph Compton

  “Are you hurt, Charlie?” said Hester, feeling his arms, patting his chest as though she were drying a ham.

  “Naw, ma’am. I’m just tired. So tired. You know, I can’t remember ever feeling this plumb tuckered.” They stood in silence for a minute, staring into the flames.

  Finally Charlie spoke. “I hope that’s the last angry person set on attacking us tonight. I sure could use some sleep.” He yawned, a long, deep sound that tapered to a sigh. “I reckon things can only get better from now on. In fact, I have a feeling we’ll get to Gamble tomorrow.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, Charlie Chilton,” said Hester.

  “How’s that?”

  “You are the most optimistic person I’ve ever met.”

  “If by that highfalutin word you mean that I am chatty, I will admit to being prone to talk when I’m tired or worked up.”

  A small voice from deep within a bundle of blankets beside them said, “Uh-oh, don’t get him started about his mule.”

  “Hey, now, Delia, you rascal!” said Charlie. “Just for that, I reckon I about have enough steam left in my lungs for a nice, long version of how I come to meet ol’ Mabel-Mae.”

  “Oh no,” said Delia.

  Hester laughed. “How about we hear it tomorrow, Charlie?”

  “I reckon . . . ,” he said, and within seconds he was snoring.

  Chapter 46

  The paltry structures of Gamble looked more impressive to the haggard travelers than the grand hotels, banks, and gambling halls of an enormous coastal city. Hester and Charlie forced their legs up and out of the snow, one step forward at a time. Charlie held tight to Mabel-Mae’s reins, Hester stepping low beside Delia, who lay bundled in blankets on the travois, jouncing and jostling behind Mabel-Mae.

  A handful of people appeared, one at a time, opening doors to dark log huts half buried in the drifted snow. None of them spoke as the odd little procession struggled into the middle of the small cluster of buildings.

  The late-day sun angled low over the trees, shading half the street, leaving the rest in bright light made blinding as it bounced off the glittering white storm-smooth surface. Charlie finally stopped a few yards from a low building with what looked to be fancy uprights holding up a sagging porch roof.

  The heads and shoulders of three people were visible over the snowdrift before the building. An older woman with a whole lot of hair piled on her head, and two men, one dark-skinned and fat, the other smaller, bald, and with a large oiled mustache, stared at him from the porch. Someone had already shoveled a narrow path leading to the entrance.

  “Howdy,” said Charlie, nodding, matching the suspicious stares with his own.

  Hester pushed past him. “We’re looking for Vin. Vincenzo Tantillo. We were told he was here.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Hester continued. “This is Gamble, I take it?”

  Finally the small, bald man with the mustache cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am. You have reached Gamble. May I ask your business with one of our residents?”

  “No, you may not. But I take it that means he’s here.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Clayton,” said the large woman with all the hair. She looked at Hester and smiled. “Yes, honey. He’s here all right. Up yonder, last hovel on the left. But he ain’t alone.”

  Hester nodded her thanks. “I didn’t expect he’d be. I’m obliged to you.” She touched Charlie on the arm. “Come on. We don’t have a lot of time left.”

  Charlie heard her voice shake. He tugged Mabel-Mae forward.

  Hester led the way to the cabin and pulled the Colt from her belt as she bent low before the door. She lashed out with a worn boot and kicked once, twice; then the wooden thing spasmed inward.

  Charlie untied the ropes holding Delia on the travois and lifted the girl. He held her face close to his, praying to feel breath on his cheek—he did, the faintest. But it was there.

  “You there, girl,” said Hester in a matter-of-fact tone. “Get up and out of this man’s bed right now.”

  “Who died and made you all bossy?”

  Hester pulled in a sharp breath and laid a quick backhand across the slattern’s mouth. “Much as it pains me to say it, I am his sister-in-law,” she said in a low growl, jerking her chin at the half-naked hairy man who’d retreated to the corner beside the bed. “The good Lord help me.”

  Hester leaned closer and hissed, “And my sister is here to see her husband.”

  The woman in the bed leaned back, stroking her red cheek. “Big deal. I’m here now. Tell her to come back later. Or better yet, never.”

  Hester leaned in so close her nose touched the other woman’s, her voice shaking with barely contained rage. “She’s dying. And you will be too if you do not get up this second.” She cracked the woman another one, then whipped the covers off her naked body. Charlie turned toward the wall, holding Delia gently in his arms.

  “But I ain’t clothed!”

  “That seems to be your professional preference,” said Hester, pushing the woman out the door and into the snow. She slammed the door, then saw a pair of woman’s worn boots on the floor, hole-riddled wool socks on top, and snatching them up in one hand, she opened the door and fired them out into the snow, then slammed the door again.

  “What?” said Vin in a small voice, leaning forward, tears forming in his eyes. “Dying? Little Delia?”

  “Yes, no thanks to you. And before she is gone, I would have a word with you.” Hester had backed the swarthy little man farther into his corner, his handsome face inches from hers, his roguish eyes fluttering at the barrel of the cocked Colt jammed tight to him, the tip of the barrel dimpling his chin.

  “Now,” said Hester in a low voice. “You are trash, pure and simple. But for some reason my sweet sister Delia set her hat on you from the start.” Her voice cracked, but she kept on. “It is true that she is not long for this earth, and the only thing that will make her happy is to see you again, so I want you to hold her in your arms, so that she dies thinking that she is still in love with the only man who ever swept her off her feet. Even if that love is one-sided, you will hold her in both your arms. Do you hear me?”

  “But—”

  Hester’s gun hand lashed upward with snake-strike speed and she rapped Vin hard on the side of the head with the pistol’s barrel. “No buts. You will do as I say. Now nod your pretty head so I can see you understand me.”

  He wobbled to the bed, holding a hand to the side of his head.

  “Lay her in the bed, Charlie,” said Hester, arranging the rumpled blankets. She looked at Vin. “Now, you, settle alongside her and hold her gently, or so help me . . .” She lowered her quavering voice. “And remember that this was her last wish, you scoundrel.”

  Vin nodded, his eyes, wide with fear, darting from the massive bulk of Charlie Chilton glaring down at him to Hester’s hard-set face to the Colt revolver held tight in her fist.

  Delia responded slowly to Hester’s voice whispering gently to her, and Hester’s fingers softly stroking her sunken cheek. “Delia, honey, we made it. We made it to Vin’s. Open your eyes, honey. Vincenzo’s holding you.”

  Delia’s eyelids, purpled and thin as flower petals, flickered, then parted. Her eyes roved unfocused for a few moments, then settled on Vin’s tearful face. He smiled, wiped his eyes, and said, “Hello, little Delia. How are you? I’m so glad you found me. I was going to come back to you in the spring. I made us a fortune, you see. . . .” He glanced at Hester, who nodded for him to continue.

  Delia smiled. Her voice came out soft and quiet, but all three could hear her. “It’s good to see you once more, Vin. I’m glad to know you’ll do well.” She tried to raise her head but couldn’t. “Kiss me, Vin.”

  He did, and they stared at each other for a moment.

  “Now please go,” said Delia, breaking the spell.
“I want to talk with my family.” She looked to Hester and Charlie.

  Vin rose from the bed, confused. He pulled on a ratty old wool mackinaw and boots and left the cabin.

  “Hester,” said Delia. “I am so sorry for making you come all this way . . . so sorry for everything.”

  Crying herself, Hester wiped away Delia’s tears. “Hush, now, I would do it all over again a hundred times if you asked me to.”

  “I know. . . .”

  “Besides,” said Hester, “it has been a most memorable adventure for us all.”

  Delia’s face relaxed and she smiled. “And you never would have met Charlie.”

  “That’s true.” Hester glanced at Charlie, who had kneeled by the bedside.

  He felt his face heat up and couldn’t do a thing about it.

  Delia raised her thin hands and they each took one. “You take good care of each other, you hear me?”

  “Oh, Miss Delia, you have my promise,” said Charlie, “and when you get better—”

  “Charlie, no.” Delia’s voice grew a little louder. “This is good-bye. And it’s all right. It’s all right.”

  The big man nodded, tears dripping off his nose. He tried to speak, but his voice tightened in his throat and came hard. He held her little hand tight between his two big paws. “I’ve enjoyed every second of our time together, Delia. You are dear to me, girl, and I will never forget you.” Charlie rose from his knees, leaned over, and kissed her forehead.

  He stood and cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you two gals alone now. I expect you have things to talk about.” He squeezed Hester’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll be right outside.”

  Charlie saw Vincenzo standing in the snow away from the cabin, looking small and weak in his long-handles, his old coat, and his slumped shoulders. For all the man’s faults, Charlie reckoned he must have cared for Delia at one time, maybe still did. Charlie walked up beside him and clapped him gently on the back of the neck a couple of times. They stood quietly, not able to speak, not needing to speak, both choked with the overwhelming emotion of the moment.

  • • •

  Hours later, a shiver worked its way up Charlie’s spine and he looked around. Dark had begun to pull its cloak over the sparse settlement. The untouched white landscape took on a silvery tint and the pines blackened against it, disappearing into the bluing sky. Already stars began to wink. It seemed to Charlie that he’d never seen so many all at once.

  Vin was gone, probably to that little cabin with the porch that looked as though it doubled as Gamble’s meeting house and saloon. Light pinched through one small window and colored the snow beneath.

  Charlie heard boots slowly descend steps behind him. Snow squeaked, and then Hester stood beside him. Neither spoke for long minutes. The little cabin sat dark and still behind them.

  Finally, in a quiet voice, Hester said, “Delia is . . . her pain is all gone now.”

  Charlie nodded, said nothing. The clouds of their breaths rose and broke apart in the dark around them.

  “I can’t be too far from her, Charlie.” Hester’s voice was quiet, almost as though she hadn’t spoken but had only thought it.

  Charlie nodded. “I know. Me either.” His hushed voice matched hers.

  “Where is your valley?”

  “Not too far, I can feel it.”

  “You haven’t ever really seen it, have you?”

  Charlie scuffed a boot in the snow, looked toward the black outline of the close-up peaks. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “Then Gamble isn’t it.”

  He looked at her. “Not hardly. Come spring, this place will be crawling with all manner of gold hounds, turning this pretty little spot to dust.” He grew quiet a moment, taking in the dark hills around them. “Might take some time, but I’m close, I can tell.”

  Hester O’Fallon slipped an arm through his, leaned her head on his shoulder. “Then we’ll know it when we see it.”

  For a moment, Charlie’s eyebrows rose. “Yes’m, I reckon we will.”

  “Hold me, Charlie Chilton. Hold me tight.”

  He felt his face heat up, but he wrapped both of his big arms snug around her. “Yes, ma’am. I ain’t about to let go.”

  They watched the silhouette of the peaks sharpen against the blue night sky and the last of the far-off storm clouds parting, revealing a promising and clear pearly moon.

  Read on for an excerpt

  from the Spur Award–winning

  Tucker’s Reckoning

  A Ralph Compton Novel by Matthew P. Mayo

  Available now in paperback and e-book.

  Despite the creeping cold of the autumn afternoon in high country, and the feeling in his gut as if an irate lion cub were trying to claw its way out, Samuel Tucker reckoned that starving to death might not be an altogether unpleasant sensation. Of course, the warm light-headedness he was feeling might also have something to do with the last of the rotgut gargle he’d been nursing since he woke up.

  He regarded the nearly empty bottle in his hand and shrugged. “No matter. Finally get to see you again, Rita, and little Sammy. My sweet girls . . .”

  Even the horse on which he rode, Gracie, no longer perked her ears when he spoke. At one time a fine mount, she was now more bone than horse. The sorrel mare plodded along the lush valley floor, headed northward along the east bank of a river that, if Tucker had cared any longer about such things, he would know as Oregon’s Rogue River. All he knew was that he’d wandered far north. And he didn’t care.

  His clothes had all but fallen off him, his fawn-colored, tall-crowned hat, a fine gift from Rita, had disappeared one night in an alley beside a gambling parlor in New Mexico. The top half of his once-red long-handles, now pinked with age and begrimed with Lord knows what, and more hole than cloth, served as a shirt of sorts. Ragged rough-weave trousers bearing rents that far south had invited welcoming breezes now ushered in the frigid chill of a coming winter in high country. And on his feet, the split, puckered remnants of boots. These were the clothes Tucker had been wearing the day his Rita and little Samantha had . . .

  At one time, though, Samuel Tucker had cut a fine figure around Tascosa, Texas. With his small but solid ranch, and with a wife and baby daughter, he’d been the envy of many. But that was in the past, before the sickness. . . . Mercy, thought Tucker, two years and I can’t think of it without my throat tightening.

  “At least I don’t have to worry about being robbed,” he said aloud. His laugh came out as a forced, thin sound that shamed him for a flicker of a moment. Then once again he no longer cared.

  The land arched up before him in a gentle rise away from the river. Here and there, trees close by the river for the past half mile had been logged off some years before, leaving a stump field along the banks. Ragged branches long since cleaved from the vanished timber bristled upward among still-green undergrowth seeming to creep toward him. He traveled along the river, and the gradually thickening forest soon gave way to an upsloping greensward just beginning to tinge brown at the tip.

  He was about to pitch the now-empty bottle in the rushing brown flowage off to his left when the crack of a gunshot halted him. It came from somewhere ahead. Even Gracie looked up. Two more shots followed.

  Curiosity overrode his drunken lethargy and the pair, man and horse, roused themselves out of their stupor and loped up the last of the rise. They found themselves fifty yards from an unexpected sight: two men circling one. The man in the center, a wide-shouldered brute wearing a sheepskin coat, sat tall astride a big buckskin. He held in one hand what looked to be a substantial gun, maybe a Colt Navy, but appeared to have trouble bringing it to bear on the two men, who took care to keep their own horses dancing in a circle around the big man. He tried to do the same, tugging feebly at his reins.

  What was wrong with the man? Tucker wondered. Was he drunk? He
acted as much. And then Tucker got his answer. The man jigged his horse again, and the big horse tossed its head and stepped hard. Then Tucker saw the red pucker, blackened at the edges. The man had been shot in the back.

  One of the other men shouted, then shot the big man’s hand. It convulsed and the pistol dropped. The shooter’s companion, thin and sporting a dragoon mustache and a flat-crowned black hat with what looked like silver conchos ringing the band, laughed, looking skyward. As he brought his head back down, his laughter clipped short. He leveled his pistol on the big man in the sheepskin coat.

  One shot to the gut and the victim hunched as if he were upheaving the last of a long night’s binge. He wavered in the saddle. The man looked so fragile to Tucker. It did not seem possible that this was happening right there before him.

  The first shooter howled this time. Then he rode up close, reached out with his pistol barrel like a poking finger, and pushed the man’s shoulder. That was all it took. The big man dropped like a sack of stones to the grass. The buckskin bolted and the black-hatted man leveled his pistol at it, but the other shouted something, wagged his pistol in a calming motion, and they let the beast run. It thundered off, tail raised and galloping, toward where Tucker had intended to ride. How far was the man’s home place? Was he even from around here?

  With a bloodied hand planted in the grass, the big man forced himself up on one knee. He gripped his gut, his sheepskin coat open, puckered about his gripping hand. From beneath the clawed fingers oozed thick blood that drizzled to the grass. Where did the man get his strength? Didn’t he know that he was as good as dead, but just didn’t yet realize it?

  The man had lost his hat in his fall, and a breeze from the north tumbled it a few strides away. His head was topped with a thick thatch of white hair trimmed close on the sides, but the face beneath was a weathered mask, harder than leather, as if carved from wood. And it was the big man’s face that froze Tucker. The man had been back-shot, gut-shot, and more, but his expression bore unvarnished rage. Bloody spittle stringed from his bottom lip, his eyes squinted up at his attackers, both a-horseback a few feet away, staring down at him.