Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) Read online

  Con said nothing more, but he surely didn’t need to. He could ask questions a man found hard to answer, questions that made him face up to himself. When a man answered questions like that he found himself a lot wiser about himself and the world.

  Like Con said one time, a man should stop ever’ now and again and ask himself what he was doing, where he was going, and how he planned to get there. And the hardest thing to learn is that there aren’t any shortcuts.

  His questions nagged at me because whilst I had big ideas of what I wanted to do and become, I hadn’t any way of making them into reality. I could imagine myself riding fine horses and wearing the best clothes, buying drinks in saloons, and maybe gambling a little for big stakes, but nowhere could I see where the money was coming from.

  I said as much.

  “Can you read?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then read. Read anything, everything. You’ll come up with an idea. But about the gambling for big stakes…forget it. That’s just a way of showing off. If a man is something and somebody, he doesn’t have to show off.”

  Come sunup, we were on the trail to Leadville.

  The night we rode into the town there had been rain, and the clouds hung low among the mountains, right down over the store-tops, in fact, because Leadville was a high-up town. We’d had to stop again and again to let our horses get their breath.

  The trail had been wet, and here the streets were muddy. Chestnut Street was empty when we slopped up the road between the rows of buildings. A horse was standing three-legged in the rain, bedraggled, woebegone, and miserable-looking.

  We glimpsed a book-store sign, and one for a Justice of the Peace, then Goldsoll’s Loan Office, with a doctor’s rooms upstairs.

  We drew rein, sizing up the town, and looking for a saloon or a restaurant. Bob Heseltine and the others would be spending and gambling, and the sooner I could get our money back the more there would be to get.

  Midnight was already long gone, but when we rounded a corner we saw some saloon lights shining through the rain, and beyond them a livery stable.

  We put up our horses, walking through the place to see if any of the horses was familiar. The hostler watched us, his eyes gloomy. “Huntin’ somebody?”

  “Might be.”

  “They come, they go.”

  “Three men and a woman, a young woman…might be a dance-hall girl.”

  He studied us. “You’d not be wanting them. Not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  “They’ve got friends. In this town you’d better have the right friends or you have nothing. And if you don’t have the right friends all you’ll have is enemies.”

  We walked up the street to a saloon and went up to the bar. Wet as it was, there were a good many men there.

  The bartender started to place a bottle on the bar, then looked up and saw Con Judy. “Oh? Didn’t recognize you, Mr. Judy.”

  He put the bottle away and got out a fresh one, a good brand of Scotch whiskey.

  “Have you seen Bob Heseltine?”

  “I saw him. He’s over on State Street with a couple of friends and a girl…Ruby Shaw. She has friends over there…if you know what I mean.”

  Con filled our glasses. “Who’s marshal now?”

  “Mart Duggan. He’s mean and dangerous, but he doesn’t hunt trouble unless it hunts him…unless he’s drinking.”

  “Ben…this is my partner, Shell Tucker. A favor to him is a favor to me.”

  Ben extended a hand. He was a medium-built man with sandy hair plastered down over a round head. He had a quick, friendly way and a firm grip. “Ben Garry here. I’ve known Con for quite a spell.”

  We finished our drinks, and then pushed our way through the crowd, studying every face we saw. At the door Con stepped out first, and when I joined him, indicated the room we had left with a jerk of his head.

  “They’re all here, Shell. Rounders and drifters from every mining and cattle camp in the country. There’s money to be made here and they can smell it. Ever do any mining, Shell?”

  “No, sir. I’m pretty good with a pick and shovel, but no mining.”

  A lighted window showed a restaurant still open, and we crossed the street.

  “There’s beef,” the man said, “and beans and potatoes. Might scare you up a piece of pie, but I ain’t cookin’ no more tonight. I’m done played out.”

  “It’ll do…if there’s coffee.”

  “There’s a-plenty.” He brought a fire-blackened pot to the table. “We fix a fair meal in the evenin’, and there’s breakfast, if’n I get up in time.”

  He put beef and beans on the table, and some slabs of homemade bread and butter. “Make our own butter. Have our own cows. We got us four Holsteins and we’re buyin’ more. Brung ’em over the trail m’self.”

  We ate in silence, but finally I asked a question that had been on my mind for days. “Do you think they know they’re being followed?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then we might run into trouble when we don’t expect it?”

  “You must always expect it. When you start hunting men, they can hunt as well. Regardless of that, it pays to be on your toes. This town is rough, and the country is rough.”

  It was raining harder outside. If they were in Leadville the chances were slight they would attempt to leave in this storm. The trails were slippery and narrow, with always the danger of slides. Mountain country was new to me, and worrisome. There were too few trails and passes.

  “The best trails are the Indian trails,” Con advised. “Not many know of them. Indians traded back and forth across the country, traveling hundreds of miles…like the merchant caravans of the Middle Ages.”

  Now, I’d never heard about merchant caravans and wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by the Middle Ages, so I kept my mouth shut and listened.

  “Up in Minnesota they mine a soft red stone that is easily carved and smoothed. They call it pipestone. You will find that kind of stone among Indians all over the country.

  “Shells, too. There are different types in different waters. Most of them are classified. Men have devoted years to studying the various types of shells.”

  Con Judy, who rarely talked more than two or three sentences at a time, told me then of the trade trails left by ancient Indians.

  “Ancient Indians? You mean different from the ones here now?”

  “Yes. Just as we have pushed them back, they pushed others before them. It’s happened all the way across the world, Shell, and you’ll see it happening right here.”

  “Then the best fighters end up by owning the country?”

  He chuckled. “Not exactly, Shell. Let’s put it this way: the ones who wind up on top are usually those with the most efficient life-style.”

  Just what he meant by that I wasn’t sure, but before I could ask him he said, “We’d better get some sleep,” and pushed back from the table.

  “And then I’ve got to find Heseltine,” I said. “It isn’t likely they’ll be traveling on a night like this, not with a girl, and all.”

  “They’ll hole up,” Con agreed.

  He paid for our meal and we started for the door. I was studying about what he meant by life-style, and I had just pushed open the door when I remembered my Winchester. I’d left it lying across the table next to ours.

  Turning sharply, I bumped Con hard and we both staggered and almost fell.

  But we both heard the gun and we heard the bullet strike.

  Had I not turned just as I did, I’d have been a dead man.

  Chapter 4

  *

  BEHIND US A light went out, then another, and there was darkness. Neither of us moved. I was on one knee just inside the door, my heart pounding.

  Scared? Well, I should reckon. It taken some time to get used to the idea that I’d been shot at. A body thinks of such things, but thinking isn’t like the real thing. Somebody out there had shot, and shot to kill, and he’d been shooting at me.
/>   That takes some getting used to. In all that gunplay I’d practiced and all the gun battles I’d played out in my mind, there’d been nothing like this. That man out there was trying to kill me!

  Kid Reese? Doc Sites? Or was it Heseltine?

  “Stay right where you are, Shell,” Con warned.

  You want to know something? I wasn’t figuring on going no place a-tall.

  Turning my head ever so slightly, I could see what he meant. The light from the window next door fell across the room, and anybody moving would surely be seen. Whoever had done that shooting was good.

  So we just set still while the moments passed. It seemed a long time. My heart slowed down after a bit, and my hand got so sweaty on my gun butt that I moved to wipe it off on my britches.

  “Give him time, Shell. Whoever he is, he’s standing in the rain yonder between the buildings. He’ll get tired of it before we will.”

  “I ain’t movin’,” I said. “I’m fixin’ to spend the night—only that gent over there don’t know that.”

  “You ever been shot at before, Shell?”

  “No, sir. Not really. Had some Injuns one time who cut loose at the house. They were shootin’, all right, but not at nobody in pa’ticular. That gent yonder was mighty pa’ticular, I’m thinking.”

  So we waited. My rifle was close by, but I hesitated to reach for it, although I doubted if it was where it could be seen.

  “Crawl around close to the wall, then through the kitchen door. I’ll cover you.”

  After I started to crawl I could reach my rifle, so I latched onto it, and when I got into the kitchen I stood up in the dark doorway and looked out at the rain-sodden street. I could see nothing but the slanting rain across the window.

  Con crawled the other way and joined me.

  We heard the cook stirring, saw the glow of his cigar. “You boys always pack trouble with you? Or is this here somethin’ new?”

  “You got a back door?”

  “Yonder.…If you boys was figurin’ on havin’ breakfast, there’s a good restaurant on the other side of town.”

  “You’ll never get rich sendin’ business away,” I said. “We like your place.”

  “I might not get rich,” he said dryly, “but I’ll live a lot longer. Well, come back if you’ve a mind to. On’y, if you boys don’t mind I’ll stand my ol’ Sharps alongside the door. If anybody shoots into my kitchen I’m goin’ to shoot back.”

  “You don’t sound like a restaurant man,” Con Judy commented.

  “Hell, I cooked for m’self nigh onto twenty year, an’ for cow camps and the like. Seemed to me it was a sight easier than sweatin’ it out down in one of those mines.”

  At the back door we waited a minute and studied the layout. I reckoned the risk was mine so I stepped out first. But I’ll own to it…I was scared.

  Con Judy followed and we slopped down the alley, circled back of a couple of buildings and went to the livery barn. We didn’t want to go hunting a place to sleep when the very place we found might be where our enemies had holed up, so we got our bedrolls and crawled into the haymow.

  When we stretched out Con said, “Do you still have it in mind to hunt those boys down?”

  “I got it to do,” I replied. “I’m not anxious to get my head blowed off, but pa surely would have hung on, was it him. I can’t do any less.”

  “They’ll have divided it up by now.”

  “Maybe. But you got to think about that girl. She won’t want any divvying done, if she can help it. She won’t want to see all that money getting away.”

  Another thing worried me. The jingle of money in my jeans was a disappearing sound. Those few dollars were about gone, even with riding the grub line part of the way, and spending careful. Leadville was a town where folks lived high, and money wouldn’t last long. I had no idea how Con was fixed, but it was enough that he shared trouble with me, without carrying the load of feeding both of us as well.

  Lying there, hands behind my head, staring up into the dark and listening to the rain on the roof, I studied the situation I was in.

  In most places there was no law that extended beyond the limits of a town, although county governments had been formed here and there where they had a sheriff who would chase criminals if he felt like it. Jim Cook was, according to Con, making an effort to get marshals and sheriffs to work together against the bad ones.

  But when it came right down to it I had no legal case against anybody. They had found a lost horse, and even if two of them knew who the horse belonged to they could deny it, and I hadn’t any proof the horse and money was mine.

  What lay between us was a simple matter of justice, and I was in no mood to let them steal the money of hard-working folks who trusted us. Nor mine either, when it came to that.

  Pa was dead, and had it not been for my fool bullheadedness and their stealing, he might still be alive.

  Yet I did not want to get killed, and that bullet into the doorjamb showed me they knew we were on their trail, and they were ready for us. I studied about it, but came to no good conclusion. Of course I was scared, but it wasn’t in me to quit. Well, maybe it was…but not yet.

  Toward the end, before I fell asleep, I got to thinking about Con Judy.

  Why had he come with me? To see that I didn’t get my head blown off? Because he was ready to drift, anyway? Because he didn’t like to see injustice done? Here I was riding partner with a man I hadn’t known at all. About all I knew about him now was that I figured he had more education than I’d ever have. But I was learning things from him.

  When morning came and I was brushing off the hay I’d picked up during the night in the loft, I laid it out for Con. “I want that money back. I’m not vengeful, but I aim to get it.”

  Putting on my hat, I added, “I’m surely going to have to get it quick, or rustle some work. I’ve only got a little money left.”

  “How do you figure to get it?”

  “First off, I’m simply going to them and ask for it.”

  Con made no reply until he had tugged on his boots. He got up and stamped them into place on his feet. “That is about as simple a method as anybody could suggest. And when they refuse, as they surely will, what then?”

  “I’ll tell everybody in town what happened.”

  “They may say you’re just crying. In this country a man fights his own battles.”

  “You’re surely right, but I’m beginning to find out there’s a whole lot they don’t know. Pa was forever trying to tell me things, but I wouldn’t listen. I thought pa was a stick-in-the-mud, and Doc and the Kid knew more than he did.”

  Belting on my sixshooter, I took up the Winchester. “What I figure is this. I want folks to know where I stand. I want folks to know why I am after those three, and just what they’ve done…”

  “Do you think that will help?”

  “I just ain’t sure. But if it comes to a shooting affair and I kill one of them, I want folks to know I’m not just a murderer.”

  He nodded. “That’s good thinking. But if you tell that story around, one of them is sure to call you a liar.”

  “And there’ll be shooting? Is that what you mean?”

  We climbed down the ladder from the loft and studied the layout. Neither of us wanted to be dry-gulched. “When you tell that story,” Con said, “wear your gun loose. You’ll surely need it.”

  We started off to get breakfast. “Have you ever been in a gun battle?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t try a fast draw. You’ll get yourself killed. Take your time, get your gun out, and make the first shot count…you may not get another.”

  “I’m pretty fast.”

  “Forget it. You’ve no idea whether you’re fast or not, and the only way you’ll find out is against somebody. If you’re wrong, you’re dead.

  “Anyway, most of the fast draws I’ve seen ended with the first shot going into the dust right out between the two of them. So take your time, and make your
first one good. If your man goes down, or staggers, continue to shoot. But slowly…and carefully.”

  After a moment he added, “I’ve seen men kill with half a dozen bullets in them. Don’t count a man as dead until you’ve seen them fill in his grave.”

  There seemed to be nobody watching the restaurant. A good many people were coming and going along the street, and some rigs were tied here and there, or were passing. The street was chewed up and muddy. The clouds had broken and a ray of sunshine was bright on the face of the restaurant.

  We crossed the street, pausing once to let a freight wagon pass, drawn by half a dozen bulls. On the boardwalk we stamped the mud from our feet. My eyes happened to go up and I caught a flicker of movement at a curtained window.

  “Somebody up there. First window over the hardware store.”

  “All right,” Con said, “let’s go inside.”

  The man who had served us the night before was on the job. He was a hard-bitten old man with gnarled hands that looked as if they’d spent years wrapped around a pick handle.

  “I got the Sharps,” he commented. “I don’t take kindly to folks shootin’ into my place of business.”

  “Ought to be a law against it,” I said.

  He didn’t wait to take our order. He just brought out a big stack of flapjacks and a pitcher of syrup and set them on the table. “I got eggs and meat if you want them.”

  “I’ll stick with flapjacks,” I said. “I got me an eggs-and-meat appetite, but a flapjack bankroll.”

  “Eat up. If a man’s going to get shot coming out of my restaurant I want folks to figure he ate well, anyhow.”

  We ate. The meat was venison, fresh shot in the mountains. The eggs were fresh laid—sometime or other.

  The man was a talker, like many lonely men I’ve known. They herd sheep or cattle, or prospect by themselves, and when they come into town they talk, just to hear the sound of their own voice and somebody answering.

  He told us about Leadville. It hadn’t had the name for long, and actually, he said, there was more silver than lead. The town had been Oro City for a while, and before that it was Slabtown. Back around 1860 a man named Abe Lee had done some placer mining in California Gulch.