Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) Read online

  There was a bench there, and after a while he sat down on it and spent a good part of the afternoon right there. And while he studied the station and watched what went on, I studied him.

  He carried a sixshooter in a holster on his right hip, but he also wore a coat, whereas most riders simply wore a vest, because it gave them shoulder room and had pockets for tobacco, matches, and such-like.

  As I watched, he put a hand into the left side of his coat several times—a movement I was sure he wasn’t aware of. What was there that occupied his mind? Money? Could be. A weapon? More likely. There was no bulge that I could see at this distance, but why not a derringer—insurance against those little occurrences that sometimes happen?

  It would be a thing to remember.

  The next day the man with the polished boots was no longer around, but there was another one, and this one I had no trouble recognizing, for it was Reese.

  He was less patient than the first man, who I surmised was Pit Burnett. Reese would sit for a short while, then move off and stroll along the street, and presently return. Everybody on the street was too busy to pay them much mind, for western towns had few men just idling time away. Every man had a job to do and he was busy doing it.

  The next day I was supposed to take my trip on the stage to study the route, and I was restless to be going. But as I waited there in the back room, all of a sudden a buckboard came rolling up the street with two men on the driver’s seat, one of them carrying a Winchester. Riding behind was another man, also armed. Reese was half asleep on the bench across the way, but when that buckboard showed up he got up as quick as if he’d been bee-stung. On the side of it was painted the words, GOLD HILL MINING CO.

  When I looked at the bench again Reese was gone.

  This then was it. I wasn’t going to get a chance to take that first ride over the road. This shipment would be going out on tomorrow’s stage, and I’d be riding with it.

  After a few minutes the buckboard rolled away and I got up. One of the men who had come with it had evidently remained behind.

  Rollins opened the door and stuck his head into the room. “Come in here, Shell. I want you to meet somebody.”

  He was a short man, square and heavy around the middle, but the eyes that measured me as I went into the room were sharp and steady.

  “Shell, meet Do Silva. He’ll be riding with you.”

  “We can use him,” I said, but I was not happy over it, and he noticed it.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “You do not like me, amigo?”

  “I’ve got nothing against you,” I told him. “You look like quite a man. Only I was on this deal alone and was planning to handle it alone.”

  He shrugged. “I can listen.”

  I hesitated. “Well, I don’t know how I can handle it, only I don’t want to kill Kid Reese or Bob Heseltine unless I have to.”

  He just looked at me, so I explained. “All right, unless we have to. Who are the others?”

  When I told him about Burns King and Pit Burnett, he shrugged again. “They are bad men, amigo. Burnett will shoot. So will King if he is pushed. I do not know the others.”

  “You saw Reese. He was the puncher who got up off the bench as your buckboard rolled by. I saw you look at him.”

  “That was Reese? He was watching?”

  “Uh-huh. And before him Burnett was here. At least, I think it was Burnett.” I described him, and the Mexican nodded.

  “I think so. I think it is him.”

  The more I talked to Silva, the better I liked him. He was thirty-five or so, not over five feet five, but he must have weighed close to two hundred pounds. Only a little of it was fat. He moved quickly and easily, and I figured he would handle himself well in a battle.

  We sat and talked, drank coffee and ate frijoles, tortillas, and beef, and speculated on tomorrow. I explained to him my thinking about the country—the slow climb, the hilltop, and then the fast downhill trip. He listened but offered no comment, and I had no idea whether he agreed or not.

  When morning came it was cloudy and cool, with a feel of rain in the air. Nobody was around when we put the solidly built chest that held the gold into the boot under the driver’s feet. Tobin Dixie was driving, Do—it was short for Fernando, I learned—would ride on the box. I would ride inside. There were no passengers.

  “Are there any stops?” I asked. “I mean where we might pick up passengers?”

  “Two,” Tobin answered, “but we don’t often pick up anybody until along toward the end of the week. Friday, maybe.”

  There were few people on the street when we rolled out. Tobin Dixie was on the box, and he started at a good clip. Seated in the stage, I leaned back and got set to get a little rest while we crossed the flats, before we came to the hills.

  When the stage started the long climb, I sat up and kept my eyes open. There was no sign of movement anywhere except a bunch of antelope that took off as we approached, and a couple of jackrabbits. With a pair of field glasses belonging to Rollins, I checked out the country. Once I thought I saw dust, but it vanished and there was nothing more.

  We made the climb and drew up for a breather. Silva got down from the box and walked back.

  “How are they going to stop us?” he asked. “Do you think they’d shoot the horses?”

  “I doubt it.” I was puzzled. All the signs had pointed to a holdup. We had the gold aboard and the bandits knew it. They also knew Silva was riding shotgun, and that he was a dangerous man, but an express messenger is wide open to being killed from ambush. Almost nobody ever shot a stage driver…that was almost as bad as killing a woman or a child. In the minds of most western men a stage driver was something special, and outlaws had long made it a practice to leave them alone…not that there hadn’t been accidents.

  We had stopped on the crest, a bank of earth and rock about six feet high on our right, the slope falling steeply away on our left. The slope was dotted with stunted pines. A few rocks had fallen off the bank and lay across the road. A camp-robber jay came down and perched on one of the rocks near the top of the bank.

  “Tobin,” I asked suddenly, “are there any banks down there along the road? Any cuts the road goes through?”

  “Sure. There’s a dozen, anyway. This here road was cut and blasted out of the mountainside.”

  “Ever have any rockfalls along the road?”

  “Ever’ time there’s a storm.” He glanced at me, his expression suddenly thoughtful. “Why?”

  “What do you do when you see a rock fall?”

  “Why, slow up, of course. Some of those rocks are big enough to upset a stage, and a man has to be careful of his horses.”

  Silva had turned around and was looking at me. “You’re right. That could be it.”

  Tobin turned around. “Let’s go see,” he said.

  “The second or third fall, probably. I doubt if it would be the first one.” As I spoke, he nodded, then swung up to the box.

  Opening the shotgun, I checked it. Two cartridges. There was a box on the seat beside me and I dropped half a dozen from it into my pocket, then took the thong off the hammer of my sixshooter.

  The stage started to move before Silva was quite seated. Tobin jumped the horses into a run and started down the grade. He put the horses around bends as if no such things were there, making time while he could.

  We had run for nearly a mile before I suddenly heard a yell from Tobin and the stage began to slow down. From the side window I could see a spill of rocks and small boulders across the road.

  We slowed up and drove around them, and just as Tobin was about to let the horses go again there was a yell from the bank above the stage.

  “Hold up there! Move those horses and I’ll kill you!”

  The voice, I was sure, was Heseltine’s. At the same moment three men dropped into the road and ran toward the stage, one of them holding a rifle on Tobin.

  Silva fired, no doubt at the man on the bank whom I could not see, and kicking
the door wide I dropped into the road and yelled, “Tobin! Let ’em go!”

  The man with the rifle half turned to fire at me, and I let him have a barrel in the chest. Then wheeling, I fired at the second man.

  Tobin, with a yell, cracked his whip at the third man and the frightened horses lunged into a run.

  A bullet kicked dust at my feet, and I leaped for the brush, tripped over a root and fell headlong, clinging to my now empty shotgun.

  I came up, sixshooter in hand, but there was nothing in sight except the body in the road. Breaking the shotgun, I plucked out the empty shells with my left hand, fed two cartridges into the barrels, and snapped the gun shut. I reholstered my pistol, and crouched, waiting.

  It was very still. It was warm in the sun, but here in the partial shade of the pines it was cool. A lot of shooting had taken place, much of it lost in the confusion of my own actions, and I had no idea how Silva or Tobin Dixie had fared.

  I was alone, on a mountaintop with a dead or wounded outlaw and his three companions.

  Where were they? Silva had fired—several times, I thought, and he had been shot at. My first shot had nailed the man at the horse’s head; my second shot had gone wild, but I might have gotten a few more shots that counted.

  Ever so gently, I eased back, took one quick glance to see the way, and moved swiftly through the rocks and bushes in the direction the stage had taken.

  From where I stopped I could survey the mountainside. It was brush-covered, with scattered pines toward the crest, pines that thickened into a forest lower down. The red bank from which Heseltine had spoken, and from which the rocks had been pushed to stop the stage, lay before me, about thirty yards off. On my left front was a white cliff of fractured rock that was fifty to sixty feet high. Brush grew along its base. I decided their horses must have been tied somewhere near the base of that cliff, which cut them off from the uphill direction.

  To escape, if that was what they planned, they must go down the mountain on my left. As they would not be likely to take the stage road, they would probably try to get through the mountains by some prearranged route that must also be to my left.

  But they might not try to escape. They knew I was here, and they knew I was on foot. They might try to kill me.

  They must know the stage driver would send a posse back to look for me and to hunt for them. Would they try to put distance between them and the scene of the holdup? Or would they try to hunt me down?

  I was crouching there in the hot sun when suddenly a voice called out: “Bob? King is dead.”

  My position was a good one, with a field of fire in every direction. Well down behind the rocks, I called out, “Bob? Reese? I want my money back!”

  There was a moment of silence, then Heseltine’s voice came. “Tucker, lay off, d’you hear? Lay off, or I’ll come after you!”

  “Come on, Bob. I’m right here, waiting—only bring my money when you come.”

  “You go to hell!”

  “Scared, Bob? You were supposed to be the tough man. You get that money back to me, Heseltine, every cent of it, or you’ll never rest another day as long as you live.”

  “Burnett,” I yelled, “you’re a fool to tie up with a man who’ll be watched every minute. Any job you try to pull off will fail!

  “We were waiting for you today, Pit. We knew you were coming. But I don’t want you, I want my money. Reese and Heseltine took it.”

  There was no answer, and I did not talk any more. I watched from my cover, but they did not come. Some distance off, I heard the pound of hoofs, and then silence.

  I waited perhaps half an hour and then I moved, striking for a clump of boulders and the trees beyond. I heard no sound, no movement anywhere.

  After a while I found tracks near the stage road and followed them. There were drops of blood here and there on leaves or grass. Near the white cliff I found where horses had waited.

  They were gone.

  Slowly, shotgun in hand, I plodded back. Birds were singing and the air was bright, but the afternoon was waning. At the scene of the holdup I found Burns King. He had taken my shotgun blast full in the chest, and must have been dead before he hit the ground.

  Dragging the body to the side of the road, I waited. A posse would come, and perhaps the stage itself would return, its delivery made.

  Of them all, Burns King deserved killing the least, I thought, but when a man starts out to break the law it is one of the risks he takes.

  I was no nearer recovering my money. As a matter of fact, it was growing less likely all the time.

  When I had been waiting more than an hour and had about decided to build a fire, a buckboard appeared, and then another. There were three men in one, four in the other, all armed. Do Silva was one of them.

  We loaded King’s body into a buckboard and I climbed in too. Silva had been shot through the upper arm at the first blast, had lost his grip on his rifle, and had only managed to get off a few shots.

  He was angry with himself. He looked at me, and said, “You’re game, amigo. You went right after them.”

  “I intended to. I still intend to. I want a horse, and when I get one I’m coming back and try to pick up their trail.”

  And that was the beginning of it, the beginning of six long months of riding, six months in which I stayed on their trail during every waking minute, six months in which I gave them no rest, no time to gather their forces or to spend the money.

  To Animas City, to Farmington, to Socorro. There had been five hundred dollars on Burns King, and I used the reward money to follow the others. In Kingston I heard Pit Burnett had deserted them.

  I came face to face with him in a saloon.

  Chapter 11

  *

  HE TURNED TO face me as I neared the bar. He was unshaven and haggard-looking. “Is it me you’re lookin’ for?” he asked.

  “No, Pit. I want your friends.”

  “They’re no friends of mine. It was a sorry day that I met with them. I’ve left them, and good riddance.”

  “I’m sorry about King. It was the breaks of the game.”

  Burnett shrugged. “It could have been me. Or you. When a man takes gun in hand there is only one end to it, come soon or late.” He glanced at me. “Is it after them you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “I broke from them at Horse Spring.” He jerked his head toward the west. “I doubt if they came to Socorro.”

  “Where’s Ruby?”

  “I’d not be knowing that, but Heseltine gave her money, quite a wad of it, and she left them and took the stage for Santa Fe.”

  “Did I get much lead into Reese?”

  “A dozen or so buckshot into his hide, but no damage done except that he’s scared. You’ve got him scared from his wits.”

  “What about Heseltine?”

  “Nothing scares him. Nothing at all. But you’ve made it impossible for him to pull a job. You’re always too close, and you give him no time.”

  He looked hard at me. “How long are you going to keep it up?”

  “Until I have my money, or he’s dead. Until both of them are dead.”

  Pit finished his drink, and I bought him another. “Thanks,” he said. “You might say you owe me this much. I haven’t made a dollar since you took after us.”

  “Broke?”

  He grinned at me. “You betcha. This here drink was my last. I hoped to find a friend who would stake me.”

  “You have,” I said. “I’ll grubstake you.” I put a twenty-dollar gold piece on the bar. “Take that, and do one thing for me.”

  He fixed his eyes on me. “And what would that be?”

  “Stay away from them. I think you’re a good man, Pit, and when I tangle with them I wouldn’t like to find you in the way.”

  “You won’t.” He picked up the money. “I’m taking this as a loan.” He turned toward the door, but stopped and came back. “Why should I cover for them? They brought me nothing but bad luck. So I’ll tell you this.
<
br />   “Ruby Shaw went to Los Angeles. She’ll be registered at the Bella Union Hotel, and she’ll wait for them there.”

  If Pit Burnett had left them at Horse Springs and they were now en route to Los Angeles, they had a good lead on me, and my horse was about used up. So I made a swap at the livery stable, giving a little to boot, and owned a strawberry roan mustang that took me down the trail toward Prescott.

  It was a far piece, and a man had to ride with eyes for Apaches. They haunted the canyons of the Mogollons, alert for lone travelers or isolated cabins.

  Angling north, I came on a company of freighters—twenty huge wagons, drawn by bull teams, and twenty-five men, including the cook, two wranglers, and the boss. I told them my name, and I shared their beans and beef, adding to the menu with three turkeys I’d killed shortly before. Around the fire there was good talk.

  “Shell Tucker?” the cook said. He was a hard old man, who had been a buffalo hunter and a mustanger. “I know that name.”

  “I’m from Texas,” I said.

  “An’ Colorado. I heard about you.”

  “There’s not much to hear.” I filled my coffee cup. “I’m headed for Los Angeles,” I added.

  “Is that where they’ve gone? I heard you was follerin’ after them pretty constant.”

  When I said nothing the cook went on, “I heard about Bob Heseltine, and I know Burnett. He carries a derringer, too.”

  “Burnett’s out of it. I saw him in Socorro.”

  “Kill him?”

  “Why? He’s left them, and he’d never done anything to me. It’s Heseltine and Reese I want.”

  When I left them I went on my way toward Prescott.

  The sun was low over Thumb Butte as I rode down Gurley Street and watered my horse in Granite Creek. My eyes had been busy as I came through town, but I saw no horses like the ones Heseltine and Reese had been riding when I last saw them.

  There wasn’t much activity in town. I took off my chaps and brushed the dust off my boots as best I could. The water in the horse trough did for a looking glass as I combed my hair. Then I hitched my six-gun into place.