Dead Man's Ranch

by Ralph Compton

  “No, you don’t!” Callie crouched low and whipped her chair at him, catching the small Italian in the thigh. The man trained the pistol on her, his eternal smile replaced with the sneer of a cornered wolverine.

  “Callie! Get down!”

  The startled girl turned and dropped to the floor just in time as the boom of a shotgun filled the small room. Everyone winced and Darturo slammed against a shattered wall of shelves, half of the contents now ruptured, debris filling the air. The stricken man groaned and staggered to the doorway. Impossibly, he remained upright, leaning against the doorframe. Smoke and the stink of burned powder filled the room. He thrust upward once more with his pistol and squeezed off a shot out the door.

  “No, not my brother!” Mere seconds after the first shotgun blast, another followed it. Darturo’s body whipped out the door as if yanked, pitching headfirst down the steps. He rolled onto his back in the packed dirt of the yard, his horse stamping and thrashing, but held fast to the hitching rail. Brandon too was flopped on his back beside the dead Darturo, the youth’s soiled white shirt flowering with blood. They all stumbled outside. Brian dropped the shotgun and held his gut with one hand as he staggered down the steps. He dropped to his knees beside Esperanza in the dirt at Brandon’s side.

  Brandon’s lids fluttered open and he swallowed, looking with new clarity up into the face of Brian. “Oh, so you are my brother.” He smiled, one hand held tight between Brian’s massive white hands, the other squeezed tight in Esperanza’s hands. And then Brandon’s last breath left him.

  Esperanza pushed away the last of his ragged cap of bandage, smoothed the boy’s coarse red hair. “So like his father. So very like his father.” A single tear slid down her nose. “A hard life…but he is now at peace.”

  The chickens slowly approached, their wary clucks rising into the stagnant midday heat.

  Callie and Esperanza carried Brandon inside and laid him on his father’s bed by the fireplace. Esperanza silently arranged his hands on his chest, pulled a blanket up to his chin as if he had taken ill and needed warmth.

  Brian stood at the table, leaning hard against a chair back. Callie checked his wound, her hands trembling from the madness that seemed to have dropped on them all.

  “Where did you get the shotgun, Brian?” she said in a whisper, as much to fill the awful silence as any need to know about the gun.

  He managed a weak smile and looked over at his nurse. “Esperanza suspected trouble was coming for days now. I don’t know how, but she knew. She taught me how to use it, though we never shot with it—I think she was afraid it would open up her fine stitching.”

  “Pardon me,” said a weak, deep voice, little more than a whisper. It was Mica, propped up on sodden blankets in front of the cook stove. “But I think you’ll find those whipstitches are mine—pure cowboy sewing job there.” He grunted and leaned back again, gray-faced.

  “Please…stop talking.” Esperanza focused on her young son’s face.

  No one said anything else for several minutes. Soon the familiar sound of rapid hoofbeats drew closer. Callie ran to the door. “Junior!”

  Junior Grindle dismounted, drew his Remington, and stared down at the body of Darturo. Callie had to tug on his arm to get him to speak. Finally he looked up as if seeing her for the first time. “Who shot him? I came here to kill him, but someone beat me to it. He’s a bad man, the worst kind.” He turned to face the people on the step. “I didn’t know. Callie, you have to believe me. I didn’t know. I do now, but then, I was drunk, a fool! You have to believe that, Callie.”

  She hugged him tight. “Junior, whatever it is, it’s okay now. You’re among friends.”

  Junior shook his head. “No, no, it isn’t, sis.”

  She pulled away and looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong? Wrong, Callie?” He doubled over as if gut-punched, as if he’d just heard the funniest thing he’d heard in years. “I guess to hell it’s funny.”

  “What do you mean, boy?” Mica squinted at the young man.

  “I did this.” He waved his arms wide. “I think I hired him. But I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

  “I was drunk, damn fallin’-down drunk. I don’t remember.”

  Callie held his arm, and led him inside. “But why?”

  “For the ranch, the Dancing M.”

  “But it is not yours. It never could be.” Esperanza’s voice was edged with a growl none of them had ever heard.

  “I know that now, Esperanza….But now it’s too late, too late for us all….” He stood just inside the door and looked up for the first time, and saw Brandon. “How is Brandon?”

  “He is dead.” Esperanza’s words quieted the room.

  “No, not Brandon!” He staggered across the room and collapsed at the boy’s side, grabbing at the blanket covering him.

  As they dragged him away from Brandon, Junior looked back outside, stared at Darturo dead in the dust, then looked up at the faces staring at him. These were people who had known him his entire life. Then his eyes settled on Brian as if seeing him for the first time.

  “It wasn’t Brandon who did this to Middleton. It was me. Me!” He gripped his head with his hands, knocking his hat to the floor and pulling at clumps of his sun-colored hair as if to pluck his head clean in his white-knuckle rage.

  Callie tried to put an arm around his shoulders, but he pushed her away. “I was drunk.” He slumped, shaking his head as if he was denying everything he’d ever done wrong in his life. “I don’t know why. I suppose I was trying to make the old man realize I wasn’t a kid anymore.” He looked up, an innocent half smile on his mouth. “I thought that if I could just get the Dancing M for him, free and clear, wouldn’t he be so proud of me?”

  He smiled, his tearing eyes looking up at the ceiling, his head slowly shaking side to side as if in slow disagreement with his words. He looked at the gaping faces, at the hurt on his sister’s face, at Mica’s disappointment, at the anger burning hard in Espy’s face, at Middleton’s disgust and confusion.

  “If I could change this, make things different…but it’s too late, too late for Papa, too late for us all.”

  “What do you mean it’s too late for Papa? Junior, you’re worrying me. Has something happened to Papa?” Callie grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Junior?”

  The boy’s sudden racking sobs filled the room, his fist bunched around the grip of his pistol. “I killed him, sis. Killed him, sure as I pulled the trigger myself!”

  Horses thundered in close out front. Junior jumped to his feet and fingered back a curtain on the little window over the table.

  “It’s the sheriff,” he said, as if to himself. “And the boys from the D.”

  The lawman’s voice boomed from without: “Junior, it’s Sheriff Tucker. We know you’re in there; we see your horse here.” He paused, waited for an answer, then said, “Did you shoot this man, Junior? Can you hear me, boy? Come out and we’ll figure out this mess together.”

  Inside, Junior’s face relaxed for the first time since he had arrived. He smiled as he shucked the bullets from his revolver’s cylinder. They dropped, one by one, plinking to the floor. In a small voice, he said, “If I could only make it right. Even just a little bit…” And he walked to the door.

  Before anybody could stop him, he raised his .36 Remington and aimed it as if he were about to fire at the gathered posse members. There were shouts as the men dropped to the dirt and fired in self-defense. Junior’s body spasmed on the top step. The bullets that didn’t drive into him flew past, twanging inside and splintering the wood of the opened door, pocking the rough log-and-stone adobe structure, inside and out.

  As the shooting ceased, Junior half turned toward the roomful of stunned friends as if he were about to take a bow. He smiled at them, a look of sad apology in his eyes; then he tumbled backward down the steps and into the dirt to lie beside Mortimer Darturo, the dead outlaw.

&nbs
p; The echo-filled air of the little farmyard cracked with Sheriff Tucker’s voice as he staggered, unharmed, into view and looked between the dead boy and the kitchen. “Oh God, Junior, this is not what I wanted. Not at all, not at all.”

  The sheriff turned to face the silent men behind him, thin wisps of smoke still curling from their pistol barrels. “Squirly was right all along,” he said, shaking his head. “And I ignored him. So help me, I should have listened to Squirly Ross.”

  Chapter 52

  Two weeks later

  “It was good of you to sign over the Dancing M to Esperanza.”

  “I have no real claim to it. Besides, it’s rightfully hers.” Brian stared at the wide blue river before him.

  Callie nodded. “And there’s no one alive who knows more about ranching than Mica Bain.”

  Brian’s brow creased for a moment. Then a half smile formed on his face. “Are you saying…Esperanza and Mica are a couple?”

  Callie looked up at him as if he had just asked her if water was wet. “Of course. Mica will ask her to marry him any day now. I think he would have already if all this hadn’t happened….”

  The big man nodded. They stood silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “So, do you think Sheriff Tucker will go back to his job?”

  “I hope so. He’s a good man. I know he blames himself for all the killings. He was close friends with my father, and misses him.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Then finding Squirly Ross murdered in the alley. I think that was what drove him to quit.”

  “I remember Mr. Ross. He helped me with my baggage the day I arrived.” Brian looked at her, a wry smile on his face. “I’m afraid I wasn’t overly friendly to him.”

  “What an absolute shock, Mr. Middleton. Surely you don’t mean you are a prickly pear?” Callie feigned surprise, a hand to her chest.

  Brian smiled and shook his head. They stood quietly together a few moments more, watching the river, the far-off hills, and then he said, “You know, Callie, when I first met Junior, he told me that land is everything out here. And while I understand that sentiment, I have to disagree.”

  Callie tensed, turned a sharp glare on him. “My brother’s dead now. Can’t you just let it rest? He’s not here to argue with you anymore.”

  “Please hear me out,” said Brian. “Yes, land seems to be the reason behind so much that is good and bad here—everywhere, for that matter—but there is so much more to the notion. It is the urge to possess this land that is at the root of all this evil.” He faced her, stared into her light blue eyes. “But it’s the people, the people, Callie, who are the most important part—it’s the people who are everything out here. I see that now. See it as clearly as I saw nothing of the sort before.”

  Callie turned back toward the river. They stood side by side, but separated by the weighty silence of their thoughts.

  Finally, Callie shivered. “I can’t stand wearing these mourning clothes.” She stood beside him a moment longer, hugging herself as if in a chill wind. She looked out beyond the river. “You’ll be leaving on Tuesday’s train, then.”

  Brian stared at her long enough that she finally looked at him.

  “I have thought about it,” he said. “Lots. And the best reason I can come up with for staying is if you’ll marry me, Callista Grindle.” He watched her face closely, but saw barely a flinch. Those blue eyes seemed to him to burn brighter, though.

  She didn’t unfold her arms. “I will not marry Brian T. Middleton.”

  He felt as if he were struck hard across the face with a quirt. The only question applicable formed on his lips. He almost spoke….

  “But I would consider marrying Brian MacMawe.”

  Again, he felt as if he were smacked hard across the mouth. “Lucky for you, then, for according to that telegram from my grandfather, should I choose to remain in the West, Brian T. Middleton ceases to exist.”

  She stared up into his eyes. Was it hopefulness he saw there?

  “I own very little now, Callie. An old family Bible, this suit of clothes…but no land.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I do. Plenty of it. Besides, the Driving D is just too big for one person.” Before he could speak, she stepped in close to him and plucked off his battered derby. “But I would not consider marrying even Brian MacMawe if he wore such an atrocity on his head.” And rabbit-quick, she threw the misshapen thing hard with a snap of her wrist.

  “Hey! My hat!”

  The much-dented mouse-colored topper curved south and landed smack in the middle of the rolling Maligno Creek, where it bobbed for a moment, flipped over, and sank from sight.

  She looked up at him and said, “I’ll help you choose a proper rancher’s hat when we go to Gleason’s tomorrow. And while we’re in town, you can return that cantankerous little mare to Silver Haskell.”

  He smiled as if he knew a secret, then shook his head. “No,” he said, staring at Callie, then pulling her in close. “I think I’ll keep her.”

  Brian bent down and kissed her. Callie tried to say something, but he kissed her harder. And they stayed that way for a long, long while, beside the slow-moving river on their own hard-earned land.

  Don’t miss another exciting Western adventure in the USA Today bestselling series!

  ONE MAN’S FIRE

  A Ralph Compton Novel by Marcus Galloway

  Coming from Signet in May 2012.

  Wyoming Territory

  1883

  The wagon was supposedly secured against any attempt to rob it. At least, that’s what was said by all the men hired to protect it before it had left Omaha. Enough iron plates were fixed to the sides to make it necessary to add an additional pair of horses to the team pulling the monster on wheels. Slits had been crudely cut into the plates so any of the three men riding inside could fire at anyone foolish enough to approach the wagon without permission. The man who might grant such a boon rode up top in a seat partly surrounded by a thick wooden shell that wrapped around the driver’s back and sides. Another man sat beside the driver, carrying a shotgun that had been stored among several other weapons in the box at the driver’s feet. Strictly speaking, the wagon should have been close to impenetrable. To the young man gazing down at it from atop a ridge south of the trail, it was a big fat egg dying to be cracked apart.

  “What do you think, Eli?” another man asked from behind the younger one. He had a thickly muscled torso wrapped in a duster that had been with him through more hard days than most men saw in a lifetime. Dark brown eyes gazed out from behind narrowed lids set within a heavily scarred face that looked like something a goat had chewed up and spat out. It was difficult to discern which dark streaks on his chin and cheeks were dirt and which were wiry stubble.

  The younger man kept a pair of field glasses close to eyes that were the color of a sky smeared with mist from an approaching storm. His voice had a faraway quality when he replied, “I think I can take her.”

  A second pair of anxious men crouched behind the first two and hearing that didn’t do anything to alleviate their situation. The bigger fellow with the dirty face waved back at them as if he were shooing away a pair of annoying hound dogs. “Either one of you messes this up,” he snarled, “and I’ll use yer carcasses to trip up the team pulling that wagon.”

  Both of the other men settled down quick enough.

  “You sure we can take that thing?” the scarred man asked. “Looks like a rolling fortress.”

  Eli lowered his field glasses to get a look at the wagon with his own eyes. Smiling at what he saw, he said, “You brought me along this far, Jake. You about to stop trusting me now?”

  “Ain’t about trust. It’s about a job that we can or can’t do. I won’t charge into a slaughter just so you can scratch that itch you always got for stealing.”

  “That itch has served this gang pretty well so far.”

  “Sure has,” one of the men farther down the rise said. He was definitely older than Eli, but carried himself like the you
ngest of the bunch. A wide, round head made his eyes look more like holes knocked into a pumpkin with a roofing nail. White knuckles were wrapped around a Spencer rifle, and every muscle in that arm trembled at the prospect of putting the weapon to use.

  “Shut up, Cody,” Jake snapped. “When I want your opinion, you’ll know about it.” Once Cody was sufficiently cowed, the scarred man hunkered down and gazed down at the trail where the wagon was still rolling. “How many men you think are on that thing?”

  “There’s two up front,” Eli said. “Couldn’t tell you for certain how many are inside.”

  “Hank?”

  The fourth man in the group was the most raggedy of them all. He resembled a scarecrow thanks to his wiry build as well as the tattered clothes he wore. Even his long hair was stringy enough to look more like strands of wet straw plastered onto his scalp. Three guns were strapped under his arms and at his hip. For all Eli knew, Hank could have had three more besides the .44, .45, and derringer. Ever since he’d lost his left eye, he seemed one twitch away from gunning down anyone in his sight. That twitchiness made it awfully hard for anyone to sneak up on him and he prided himself on being able to get to anyone before he could be hurt again. Those things made him a perfect spy. “There’s five in all,” he said with absolute certainty. “If you see two up front, that leaves three in the wagon.”

  “You’d stake our lives on it?” Jake asked. “Because that’s what we’d be doing.”

  “I watched them load up myself.”

  Jake showed Eli an ugly grin and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “All right, then. I suppose we should get moving before all the money in that wagon gets away.”

  Eli looked down at the trundling wagon as if it were a fat, limping goose on Christmas Eve. “No danger of that. We’d be able to hear it from a mile away even if we did let it get out of our sight.”

  “How much money are we talking about again?” Cody asked.

  Jake was looking down at the wagon hungrily as he told him, “At least twenty thousand. You hear any different, Hank?”