The Tuckup Trail was a scar across the face of the desert. It was a gash in the plateau, and everywhere was rock, red rock, pink rock, white, yellow, and buff rock, twisted and gnarled into weird shapes. By night it was a ghost land where a wide moon floated over the blasted remains of ancient mountains, and by day it was an oven blazing with heat and dancing with dust devils and heat-waved distance.
Tuckup was a cluster of shabby down-at-heel buildings tucked back into a hollow among the rocks. It boasted that there was a grave in boot hill for every living person in town, and they always had two empty graves waiting to receive the next customers.
Tuckup was high, and despite the blazing heat of the day, a fire was usually welcome at night. The King High Saloon was the town’s resort, meeting place, and hangout. Second only to it was the stable, a rambling, gloomy building full of stalls for sixty horses and a loft full of hay.
Shandy Gamble stabled his horse and gave it a good rubdown. It had a hard ride ahead of it, for he knew that there would be no remaining in town after he had done what he had to do. Lean, gangling, and slightly stooped, he stood in the stable door and rolled a smoke. His shoulders seemed excessively broad above the narrow hips, and the two .44’s hung with their butts wide and easy to his big hands. He wore jeans and a faded checkered shirt. His hat was gray, dusty and battered. There was a hole through the crown that one of the horse thieves had put there.
There was the saloon, a general store, the blacksmith shop, and livery stable. Beyond and around was a scattering of a dozen or so houses, mostly mere shacks. Then there were two bunkhouses that called themselves hotels.
Shandy Gamble walked slowly across to the blacksmith shop. The smith was a burly man, and when he looked up, Shandy saw a deep half-healed cut on his cheekbone and an eye still swollen and dark.
“KT irons ready?” Shandy asked, to identify himself.
“Will be.” The smith stared at him. “Rider from there just here yestiddy. Your boss must be in a mighty hurry.”
“Ain’t that. I had some business over here. Know an hombre name of Kotch?”
The smith glared. “You being’ funny?”
“No. I got business with him.”
“Trouble?”
“Uh-huh. I’m goin’ to beat his head in.”
The smith shrugged. “Try it if you want. I done tried but not no more. He durned near kilt me.”
“He won’t kill me.”
“Your funeral. He’s up at the King High.” The smith looked at him. “You be keerful. Them Junes is up there, too.” He wiped his mustache. “KT, you better think again. You’re only a kid.”
“My feet make as big tracks as his’n.”
“Goin’ in, they may. Comin’ out they may be a sight smaller.”
Shandy Gamble’s eyes were chill. “Like you said, it’s my funeral.”
He hitched his guns in place and started across the street. He was almost to the hitch rail in front of the King High when he saw a fresh hide hung over the fence. It was still bloody. Curiously, he walked back. The brand had been cut away from the rest of the hide. Poking around in a pile of refuse ready for burning, he found it, scraped it clean, and tucked it into his pocket.
He was turning when he looked up to see a man standing near him. He was several inches shorter than Shandy, but he was wide and blocky. He wore his gun tied down and he looked mean. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes small. “What you doin’, pokin’ around hyar?”
“Just lookin.” Shandy straightened to his full height. “Sort of proddin’ around.”
“Whar you from?”
“Ridin for the KT.”
The man’s lips tightened. “Git out of here!”
“Don’t aim to be in no hurry.”
“You know who I am? I’m Tom June, an’ when I say travel, I mean it!”
Shandy stood looking at him, his eyes mild. “Well, now. Tom June, I’ve heard o’ you. Heard you was a cow thief an’ a rustler.”
“Why, you-!” His hand swept for his gun, but Shandy had no idea to start a shooting now. His long left slammed out, his fist balled and rock hard. It caught Tom June flush on the mouth as his hand swept back for his gun and his head came forward.
At the same time, Shandy’s right swung into the pit of the man’s stomach and his left dropped to the gun wrist. The struggle was brief, desperate, and final. Shane clubbed a big fist to the man’s temple and he folded. Hurriedly Shandy dragged him into a shed, disarmed and tied him. The last job he did well.
Then he straightened and walked back to the street. A quick glance up and down, and then he went up the steps to the porch in front of the King High Saloon, and through the batwing doors.
Five men sat around a poker game. Shandy recognized the broad back instantly as that of Nichols, who he now knew was Abel Kotch. At least two of the others were Junes, as he could tell from their faces.
Shoving his hat back on his head he stood behind Kotch and glanced down at his cards. Kotch had a good hand. The stack money before him would come to at least two hundred dollars.
“Bet ‘em,” Shandy said. Kotch stirred irritably in his chair. “Shut up!” he said harshly.
Shandy’s gun was in his hand, the muzzle against Kotch’s ear. “Bet ‘em, I said. Bet ‘em strong.”
Kotch’s hands froze. The Junes looked up, staring at the gangling, towheaded youth. “Beat it, kid!’ he said sharply.
“You stay out of this, June!” Shandy Gamble’s voice was even. “My argyment’s with this coyote. I’d as soon blow his head off as not, but if’n he does what he’s told the worst he’ll get is a beatin’!”
Kotch shoved chips into the center of the table. The Junes looked at their cards and raised. Kotch bet them higher. He won. Carefully, he raked in the coin.
“This is Shandy Gamble, Kotch. You owe me five hundred. Count it out before I forget myself an’ shoot you, anyway.”
“There ain’t five hundred here!” Kotch protested.
“There’s bettern’ four. Count it!”
“Well, what do you know, Windy?” The thin man grinning across the table. “Ole Kotch run into the wrong hombre for once! Wished Buck was here to see this!”
Reluctantly, Kotch counted the money. It came to four hundred and ten dollars. Coolly, Shandy Gamble pocketed the money. “All right,” he said, “stand up mighty careful an’ unload your pockets.”
“What?” Kotch’s face was red with fury. “I’ll kill you for this!”
“Empty ‘em. I want more money. I want a hundred an’ twenty dollars more.”
“You ain’t got it comin!” Kotch glared at him. “Five hundred an’ interest for one year at six per cent. You get it for me or I’ll be forced to take your horse an’ saddle.”
“Why, you-!”
The gun lifted slightly and Abel Kotch shut up. His eyes searched the boy’s face and what he read there wasn’t pleasant. Kotch decided suddenly that this youngster would shoot, and shoot fast.
Carefully, he opened a money belt and counted out the hundred and twenty dollars which Gamble quietly stowed in his pockets. Then he holstered his gun and hitched the belts into place.
“Now, just for luck, Mr. Cattle Buyer, I’m goin’ to give you a lickin!”
Kotch stared. “Why, you fool! You-!”
He saw the fist coming and charged, his weight slamming Shandy back against the wall, almost knocking the wind from him. Kotch jerked a knee up to Gamble’s groin, but the boy had grown up in cow camps and cattle towns, cutting his fighting teeth on the bone-hard, rawhide-tough teamsters of the freight outfits.
Gamble twisted and threw Kotch off balance, then hit him with a looping right that staggered the heavier man. Kotch was no flash in the pan. He could fight and he knew it. He set himself, feinted, and then threw a hard right that caught the boy flush on the chin.
Shandy staggered but recovered as Kotch rushed and dropping his head, butted the heavier man under the chin. Kotch staggered, swinging both hands, and stra
ightening, Shandy walked into him slugging. They stood there wide legged and slugged like madmen, their ponderous blows slamming and battering at head and body. Shandy’s head sang with the power of those punches and his breath came in gasps, but he was lean and hard from years of work on the range, and he fell into a rhythm of punching.
His huge fists smashed at the gambler like battering rams. Kotch was triumphant, then determined, then doubtful. His punches seemed to be soaked up by the boy’s abundant vitality, while every time one of those big fists landed it jarred him to the toes. Suddenly he gave ground and swung a boot toe for Shandy’s groin.
Turning, Gamble caught it on his leg, high up, then grabbed the boot and jerked. Kotch’s other foot lost the ground and he hit the floor hard. Gamble grabbed him by the shirt front and smashed him in the face, a free swing that flattened the bone in Kotch’s nose. Then, jerking him erect, Shandy gripped him with his left hand and swung a looping blow to the wind. Kotch’s knees buckled, and Shandy smashed him in the face again and again. Then he shoved him hard. Kotch staggered, brought up against the back wall, and slid to a sitting position, his face bloody, his head loose on its neck.
Shandy Gamble drew back and hitched his belts into place again. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, while he got his breath back. There were five men in the room now, all enemies without doubt. Two of them were Junes-obviously from earlier conversation they were Windy and Alec.
Shandy hitched his gun belts again and left his thumbs tucked in them. He looked at Windy June. “Found a cowhide out back,’ he said, casually, “carried a KT brand.”
Instantly, the room was still. Windy June was staring at him, his eyes ugly. Alec was standing with his right hand on the edge of the bar; the others spread suddenly, getting out of the way. This, then, was between himself and the Junes.
“What then?” Windy asked, low voiced.
“Your brother Tom didn’t like it. I called him a rustler, and he didn’t like that.”
“You called Tom June a rustler?” Windy’s voice was low with amazement. “And you’re alive?”
“I took his gun away an’ tied him up. I’m takin’ him to the sheriff.”
“You’re takin’-why, you fool kid!”
“I’m takin’ him, an’ as you Junes ride together, I reckon you an’ Alec better come along, too.”
Windy June was astonished. Never in his life had he been called like this, and here, in his own bailiwick, by a kid. But then he remembered the job this kid had done on Abel Kotch and his lips grew close and tight.
“You better git,” he said, “while you’re all in one piece!’
The bartender spoke. “Watch yourself, Windy. I know this kid. He’s the one that brought the boys in from Cottonwood, one dead an’ one almost.”
Windy June smiled thinly. “Look, kid. We don’t want to kill you. There’s two of us. If you get by us, there’s still Buck an’ Pop. You ain’t got a chance with me alone, let alone the rest of them.”
Shandy Gamble stood tall in the middle of the floor. His long face was sober. “You better come along then, Windy, because I aim to take you in, dead or alive!”
Windy June’s hand was a blur of speed. Guns thundered and the walls echoed their thunder. In the close confines of the saloon a man screamed. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder and Shandy Gamble weaving in the floor’s middle, his guns stabbing flame. He fired, then moved forward. He saw Alec double over and sprawl across Windy’s feet, his gun sliding across the floor. Windy, like a weaving blade of steel, faced Shandy and fired.
Gamble saw Windy June’s body jerk with the slam of a .44, saw it jerk again and twist, saw him going to his knees with blood gushing from his mouth, his eyes bitterly, wickedly alive, and the guns in his big fists hammering their futile bullets into the floor.
Then Shandy fired again, and Windy June sprawled across Alec and lay still. In the moment of silence that followed the cannonading of the guns, Windy’s foot twitched and his spur jingled. Shandy Gamble faced the room, his eyes searching the faces of the other men.
“I don’t want no trouble from you. Two of you load the bodies on their horses. I’m taking ‘em with me, like I said.”
Abel Kotch sat on the floor, his shocked and bloody face stunned with amazement at the bodies that lay there. He had taken milk from a kitten and had it turn to a raging mountain lion before his eyes. He sat very still. He was out of this. He wanted to stay out. He was going to make no move that could be misinterpreted.
Slowly, they took the bodies out and tied them on the horses of the two June boys. Shandy watched them, then walked across to the stable to get his own horse, his eyes alert for the other Junes.
When he had the horses he walked back to the shed and saw Tom June staring up at him. “What happened? I heard shootin?”
“Yeah.” Shandy reached down and caught him by his jacket collar with his left hand and coolly dragged him out of the shed, his feet dragging. He took him to the front of the saloon and threw him bodily across his horse. The bound man saw the two bodies, dripping and bloody. He cried out, then began to swear, viciously and violently.
“Look out, kid.” Who spoke, he did not know, but Shandy Gamble glanced up and saw two other men who wore the brand of the June clan-Pop and Buck June-wide apart in the street. Their faces were set and ready. Shandy Gamble stepped away from the horses into the street’s center.
“You can drop your guns an’ come with me!” he called.
Neither man spoke. They came on, steadily and inexorably. And then something else happened. Up the street behind them appeared a cavalcade of riders, and Shandy recognized his boss, leading them. Beside him rode Johnny Smith and Jim Finnegan and behind them the riders from the KT.
“Drop ‘em, June!” The boss’s voice rang out sharp and clear. “There’s nine of us here. No use to die!”
The Junes stopped. “No use, Buck,” Pop June said, “the deck’s stacked agin us.”
The boss rode on past and stopped. He stared at the dead Junes and the bound body of Tom. He looked at Shandy as if he had never seen him before. “What got into you, Shandy?’ he asked. “Wed never have known, but Johnny told us when you heard the Junes were here you got your guns and left. Then Jim remembered you’d been askin’ him about this here Kotch, who trailed with ‘em.”
Shandy shrugged, building a smoke. “Nothin’. We’d had trouble, Kotch an’ me.” He drew the patch of hide from his pocket. “Then there was this, out back. Tom started a ruction when he seen me find it.”
Shandy Gamble swung into his saddle. “I reckon the Junes’ll talk, an’ they’ll tell you where the cows are. An’ boss,” Shandy puckered his brow, “could I ride into Perigord? I want to git me a new saddle.”
“You got the money?” The boss reached for his pocket.
“Yeah,” Shandy smiled, “I got it from Kotch. He’d been holdin’ it for me.”
“Holdin’ it for him!” Finnegan exploded. “He trusted Kotch-with money?”
Kotch had come to the door and was staring out at them. The boss chuckled. “Well, trust or not, looks like he collected!”
A Night at Wagon Camp
NO HORSES STOOD in the corral, no smoke rose from the chimney. Jake Molina slid his rifle from the boot and rode with it across his saddle.
The squat, unpainted shack, the open-faced shed, the pole corral, the stock tank filled with water piped from the spring…..nothing had changed. It was bleak, lonely, and drought stricken as always.…..
Molina dismounted, careful to keep his horse between himself and the house. Pike should have been here to meet him but there was no sign of life, anywhere. The ranch had been abandoned ten years before, and looked it.
Rifle in hand he crossed to the house, pausing on the step to turn for one more careful yet uneasy glance.
The kitchen was empty but for a bare table, and a broken chair that lay on its side. Crossing to the fireplace he turned a charred stick with the muzzle of his rifle, then knelt and
put his fingers upon it for an instant. It was cold and dead.
There were two more rooms. Using his rifle like an extension of his arm he pushed open the doors, but there was nothing but a dried-out, sunbaked boot, and a coat that had been dropped on the floor. There was no dust on the coat however, and it lay in a scuffle of recent footprints…..in this abandoned place here was something that did not fit, something important to his quest.
Crossing to the coat he touched it with gentle fingers, and found a piece of board shoved down in the inside pocket. On it something had been scratched with a nail:
Just rode in, Lew Stebbins—
Monty Short—a stranger.
It was signed by Pike.
He stepped outside and looked slowly around. By now they would be miles from here, for they had not known he was coming. In growing fear he realized what they must have left behind. Grimly, he dropped the coat to his feet and slipped the thong off of his right-hand gun. He listened, and heard only the trickle of water, the wind, and an aimless tapping that came at intervals. The tapping drew him and he walked around the end of the corral toward the shed.
PIKE WAS SUSPENDED by his wrists, arms spread wide and tied to poles of the shed wall. His chin hung down on his chest, and his toes just barely touched the earth. His shirt had been ripped from his body and his body had been beaten by a length of trace chain which now hung over the top bar of the corral. It was the wind, moving that chain in the hard gusts, that caused the tapping he had heard.
Pike had been dead for several hours, yet he had lived long enough.…..With one toe he had scratched an arrow, pointing west.
UNTIL HE HAD met Pike, the trails Jake Molina had ridden were ridden alone, for it was his nature to ride alone, to ask nothing of any man but to be let alone. With Pike he had gone up the trail to Kansas, and he knew what Pike would have done for him, and what he must do for Pike. Above all there was Tom Gore’s family to think of, and those neighbors who had trusted him with their cattle.
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