Tucker dismounted and walked Ben along the street, looking around the saloons, the windows, the shadows big enough to hide a bushwhacker. Except for horses tied to hitching rails, the street was empty, the saloons packed with cowhands whooping it up. And always the piano music that never ceased, the beat matching Tucker’s thumping heart as he approached the dead man.
He looked around a final time, and squatted next to the body. Ben snorted his displeasure, and Tucker held the reins tight. He hooked the toe of his boot under the dead man and rolled him over. He sighed with relief; the man wasn’t Blue Boy—fortunate for Lorna, unfortunate for the vaquero with the single hole in his forehead, just one of the many men visiting Cowtown too slow or too drunk to prevent his own death. His pockets had been butterflied and his gun belt stripped. The boots were ripped up the sides, so they had been left.
Tucker coaxed the mule to the first saloon and tied him at the hitching rail between a mustang fighting his reins and a large dun gelding with a wild look to him. As he skirted the broken glass in front of Pearl’s Saloon, Tucker knew he had little to go on. He had never seen Blue Boy, and, if Jack were right, Blue Boy looked like every other white man in the territory. Except he was unusually large, and that was what Tucker had in his favor; he’d look for the biggest man he saw and hope to hit pay dirt.
He paused at the open doors and surveyed the saloon. Trail hands stood shoulder-to-shoulder the length of a long mahogany bar, nicks and gouges and other marks of combat forever etched in it.
Somewhere to the back of the salon a woman’s voice crooned off-key to the beat of a brassy clavichord. Tucker strained to see through the smoke until he spotted the girl singing behind a cage suspended over the floor. Two guards sat cradling Greener doubles on either side of her to make sure she made the next show without being kidnapped by some amorous cowboy. Tucker didn’t spot another, but he was certain a third guard secreted himself somewhere in the crowd.
Tucker looked a final time before entering. The faro dealer smiled with his three remaining teeth and nodded to an empty chair. Tucker shook his head and made his way to the bar. He felt eyes on him, sizing him up, and knew the manner with which he carried himself among men such as these might determine if they singled him out for a gunfight or not. “Beer,” he called to the bartender over the singer’s lament.
The Mexican bartender missing one side of his scalp topped off a mug and handed Tucker his beer. It was more head than liquid, and warm, but it was better than anything he’d had this past week. “What happened to that feller out in the street?”
“He was robbed,” the bartender grinned, “of his money and his gun.”
“And before he ended up in that position?”
The bartender frowned as he worked wax into his handlebar mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “He was killed. No, senor, he was murdered. He was drunk. The other man was sober. And so fast.” He pointed to the street. “Miguel was allowed to get his gun out of his holster before the other drew and killed him.” He held up his hand. “I swear.”
“The other was not your usual trail hand, amigo?”
The bartender shook his head. “I have said too much already. I live because I keep to myself—”
“Was the other a very large man?”
The bartender looked around, but all eyes were on the singer, who had started taking her clothes off to the whoops and hollers of watching drunks. “This man was small. Almost as small as a boy. So young.” He shook his head again. “And so fast.”
“Which way did he go?”
“Next door,” the bartender motioned. “To the Mud Puppy.” He laid his hand on Tucker’s forearm. “Do not go there looking for him, amigo.”
“Good advice,” Tucker said, finishing his beer. “I’ll go across the street to Sadie’s.”
“A wise decision, senor.”
Tucker left a half dollar on the bar, when it suddenly occurred to him what Aurand told him while he was in his jail cell. Aurand claimed to have taken three eagles—thirty dollars in gold—out of Tucker’s pocket that Aurand claimed he stole from the roustabout. If that were the case, why had Aurand left him with twelve dollars and not taken that as well? Just one more thing to ask Aurand if he ran into him.
Even before Tucker walked into Sadie’s Saloon, the sound of breaking glass reached the street, accompanied by echoes of delight from cowboys inside egging on others in a fight. Tucker entered and stood off to one side. A circle of drunks formed around combatants in the center of the floor. Tables and chairs had been moved aside to make way for the fighters.
Tucker looked over the heads of the men in front of him cheering the fight on. He caught sight of a man on the floor struggling to get up. Blood stained his once-white apron from his nose, which had been mashed to one side of his cheek. Flesh showed through skin like a book that had been opened to reveal some truth. That truth, Tucker knew, was that the bartender had better stay down on the floor. “Bartender got hold of a wild one?” Tucker asked a cowboy next to him.
One of the men leaning against the wall beside Tucker glanced sideways at him as he picked his teeth with a piece of straw. “Damned fool got between that big guy fighting and another one who came in that made the bigun’ there look like a circus freak.”
“Some big guy, you say?”
“Big?” The cowboy threw his hand over his head, indicating the man’s height. “That guy standing over the bartender picked a fight with the big guy. Lasted for one punch, and he laid that guy out.” He nodded to the man kicking the bartender. “Pissed that one off, and he’s been taking on all comers ever since. Bartender should have let him have his fun.”
As if to punctuate the cowboy’s statement, the big man in the middle of the floor reached down and took the bartender’s head in his hands. The crowd cheered. Watching men demanded the ultimate.
They got it.
A crack sounded as the big man twisted the bartender’s head violently, breaking his neck. The man tossed the body away, and the crowd roared its approval. The fighter stood to his full height, and Tucker drew in a breath—Jess Hammond. And, where Jess was, Aurand wasn’t far behind.
Jess grabbed a beer from a man standing beside a table and downed it. He looked over the crowd through one swollen eye. Bloody flesh hung from a torn scalp over one ear. And when he shouted at the crowd, he spat a broken tooth onto the floor. “Who’s next?” he roared.
Tucker started backing out of the saloon. Blue Boy had just been here. Tucker needed to find him in town, and the last thing he wanted was for Jess to recognize him.
“Who’s next?” Jess bellowed again.
“Tucker Ashley,” a voice called just behind him. He turned, but Philo Brown stuck a gun barrel into his back. “Keep your hand away from that hogleg of yourn.” He reached around Tucker and snatched his gun from his holster. Philo jammed it into his waistband.
The cowboy Tucker had been talking with turned, and his hand fell on his own gun in a cross-draw holster. Philo leveled Tucker’s gun at the man’s head and cocked the hammer. “I ain’t killed anyone today, little man,” Philo said. “But then, today’s not over yet. Scat!”
The man pulled his hand away from his gun and backed out of the door.
“What’s your play?” Tucker asked.
Philo lowered his gun to waist level and jammed it in Tucker’s back. “You,” Philo said, his words slurred, but his demeanor as deadly as any sober man. “You’re my play. See, I could kill you right here, right now. And I should for that little trick at the jailhouse.”
“But I’m betting you think that’ll be too quick?”
“You’re smarter than you look.” Philo grinned. “It would be too quick. And Aurand would be almighty angry at me for cheating him out of the pleasure of killing you. Now, if Jess there kills you in a fair fight, well Aurand couldn’t fault him for that. Jess there”—he motioned to the center of the saloon floor—“is a man bent on killing someone tonight. Anyone. As you can see, he’s already k
illed the bartender, and killing you as well would suit him just fine. Jess has been pissed since that great big feller waltzed in and knocked him out. He’s been on the prod since. And you’re next, ol’ salt.”
Philo shoved Tucker past men standing in the circle away from Jess, looking at what they must have thought was a mad bull. “Make a break for it,” Philo said, “and I’ll kill you outright.” He shouted over the crowd, “Here’s your next man—Tucker Ashley.”
At Tucker’s name, Jess stopped with his beer mug halfway to his lips and smiled wide. He slammed his beer onto a nearby tabletop. The mug shattered and showered the floor with broken glass.
“The gun belt,” Philo ordered.
Tucker took off the belt and draped it over a chair. “Just see to it nothing happens to my gun.”
Philo tilted his head back and laughed. “Like you’ll ever have need of it again in a few seconds?”
CHAPTER 18
* * *
At the ragged edge of a fitful sleep Aurand bolted upright. The hairs stood straight on the nape of his neck, and, without realizing it, he had drawn his gun. Where his head swiveled searching for what had alerted him, the barrel of his gun followed.
“No need for that,” a gravelly voice said from somewhere away from the periphery of the campfire.
“That you, Red?”
“It is if you put that gun away.”
Aurand holstered his gun and stood. He shook off the stiffness in his legs as Red came into the dim campfire light, leading his horse. He hobbled the mare in the grass beside Aurand’s grulla, while Aurand stacked more driftwood onto the fire. He set the coffee pot atop the coals and warmed his hands over it. “Where’s our man?”
“Not until I have a cup,” Red said.
The iron pot spewed steam, and Aurand took two tin cups from his saddlebag. He blew dust out of them before pouring the coffee. Red wrapped his hands around the cup to warm them and daintily blew into the hot liquid to cool the coffee.
“All right,” Aurand demanded. “Where’s Tucker?”
“First thing,” Red said, “I want to tell you I admire the man. I know you don’t want to hear that.”
Aurand pinched his nose between his thumb and finger. “But it looks like I’ll have to endure it.”
Red sipped his coffee and looked at the stars as if formulating his thoughts. “I found a shallow grave a couple days ago.”
“Graves are everywhere,” Aurand said. “I’ve filled a few myself a time or two.”
“But two Lakota in one arroyo, covered up by rocks? It took me a mite longer to figure things out, but, near as I can decipher it, those two Indians ambushed Tucker and Jack Worman. Should have had them dead to rights, them having the high ground. It should have been Tucker and Jack in those graves, but it was not.”
“How’s that tell me where he is?”
“I am getting to that.” Red nodded to Aurand’s saddle. “You got the makin’s?”
Aurand nodded. He grabbed his tobacco pouch and papers from his saddlebag and handed them to Red, who began rolling a smoke as he continued. “Right after I found the grave, I followed Tucker and Jack for some time but lost their trail . . .”
“You?” Aurand said. “Lost their trail?”
Red shrugged. “Even I do now and again when the hunted is particularly trail savvy. Anyway, I worked on ahead and saw the Indians were headed toward Cowtown, and that bothered me. ‘Why,’ says I to myself, ‘would Indians be riding toward a white man’s town?’ ”
“And did you come up with an explanation?”
Red frowned and patted his shirt for a match. Aurand handed Red a glowing sage brush branch from the fire, and he lit his smoke. The paper flared, catching the tobacco on fire and raining hot ashes down the front of Red’s calico shirt. When he had patted the ashes out, he explained. “Made no more sense to me than it did that Tucker and Jack Worman were trailing those Indians.”
Aurand felt anger rise up within him. “Just tell me where the hell Tucker is.”
“Do you not want to know what man has been following you since you left the steamer?”
Aurand sat upright and peered into the darkness.
“Don’t worry about him,” Red said. “He is gone as well.”
“Who’s gone? Who are you talking about?”
“Like I said, some feller who got off the boat ’bout the time we did, be my guess. He has been hanging back, not a mile from your posse, leading his donkey like he has not a care in the world.”
“A donkey?”
“A donkey.”
“What the hell is someone doing with a donkey in these parts?”
“How should I know?” Red poured more coffee. “Maybe he’s a priest. I just tell you what I seen.”
“You get a look at him?”
“Never saw him. All I know is he is trail savvy like I’m trail savvy. He broke off following you this morning, after he watched from a butte a half mile back. Sat there for some time until the sun set, then he headed into Cowtown.”
“So I don’t have to worry about this feller?”
“You worry about whoever you want. All I can do is tell you how your back trail reads.”
“Does my back trail tell you anything about Tucker Ashley?”
“It tells me Tucker and Worman separated tonight. Tucker went west, following them Lakota.”
“So where’s Tucker?”
Red looked to the stars once again. “My guess is he is in Cowtown by now.”
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Jess Hammond stood in the middle of the circle formed by cowboys, drifters, and criminals awaiting the spectacle. Jess grabbed another man’s beer and downed it. He grinned at Tucker through chipped teeth and a swollen eye. His shirtsleeves were rolled up over massive forearms, and his bloody fists clenched and unclenched, a broken knuckle popping as he did so. His torn shirt revealed his heavily muscled, blood-matted chest, and one suspender dangled broken from his waist. He drew in great gulps of air, the smile never leaving his face as he circled Tucker.
Tucker had seen a man beaten to death in a prize fight in St. Louis before the war, and he always remembered it as a particularly gruesome manner of death. He knew he did not want to die that way, alone, here in Cowtown. With Lorna still a captive.
As Tucker looked around, he knew he had no friends here. These drunks would just as soon see him beaten to death as they would like to see Jess beaten to death. It mattered nothing to them, as long as their blood rage was satisfied.
Tucker circled to match Jess’s movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Tucker saw men making bets against him. Philo stood with his gun hand concealed under his vest as he took ten-to-one odds that Tucker wouldn’t last two minutes. If he could have right then, Tucker would have bet all he had on himself. It would have been even more of an incentive to stay away from Jess’s fists.
Philo shouted at Tucker, and he looked over at him. He held his beer high as if to toast the fight, while his gun bulged hidden under his coat. When Tucker turned back, Jess had stepped into the center of the saloon floor.
Tucker circled until he spotted the back door visible through the crowd. He filed it in his mind as he met Jess in the middle of the circle of cowboys. He sized Jess up, and he didn’t like the size. Though Tucker was several inches taller, Jess had him by thirty pounds of muscle. And the man felt no pain. But Tucker also knew he was sober, and Jess was not. If he could move to Jess’s left, away from his power side where his swollen eye was closing, Tucker might have a chance. Either way, he didn’t have time for a dragged-out fight. He needed to find Blue Boy before he fled town.
But if the cowboy he talked with earlier was right, Jess was vulnerable—Blue Boy had laid him out with a single punch. Tucker prayed for such an opening just as Jess stopped circling. Finished sizing Tucker up like professional fighters do their opponents, Jess came straight at Tucker.
Tucker lashed out with a left jab that landed flush on Jess’s jaw but
didn’t slow him down, and he followed up with a straight right. Jess moved at the last moment, deflecting the blow, and threw his own punch. Tucker felt the blow too late to roll with it. It landed on his cheekbone, and he staggered back against the circle of drunks. Hands propelled him forward. He lost his balance and stumbled right into a stiff jab that felt as if Jess had hit him with a right. And then he did, and Tucker dropped to the floor. He wiped blood from his split lip and looked up. Jess accepted a beer offered by a spectator, giving Tucker time to stand. He bent over to catch his breath. He had seen what Jess did to the bartender when he was unable to toe the line, and he wanted no part of Jess’s hands on his head.
Jess motioned for him to stand. Tucker gathered his legs under him and sprang at Jess. He head butted him in the stomach. Jess doubled over. A storm of putrid air rushed out of him, and Tucker jerked his head up violently. The blow caught Jess on the point of his jaw, and his head snapped back. Jess’s eyes rolled in his head, and Tucker lashed out with a wicked left hook to Jess’s swollen eye that floored him.
It was Tucker’s turn to accept a beer from an onlooker, and he downed it in one gulp. The crowd cheered Tucker, and cowboys looked to Philo, the big mouth who had given ten-to-one odds on Jess.
Jess struggled to his feet as he wiped blood from his closed eye. He pawed with his left jab, judging the distance. Suddenly, the stupor left the big man, and he feinted with a right cross. Tucker moved out of the way of the punch and ran into a hard left hook, then a right uppercut that jarred his jaws and chipped a tooth. He flew back, his legs flailing the air, and hit the floor. Jess bent over Tucker and grabbed him by the front of his vest.
“Now we finish this,” Jess said and hit him on the chin. Tucker’s head snapped back, hitting the wooden floor. Jess pulled him closer and hit him in the face twice. Three times. Tucker gradually became immune to the pain. Like a wrestler’s second wind, he realized that the life was being beaten out of him by the big man who straddled him.
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