Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 13

  The shooter had ground-tied his horse beside a large pine, but again this revealed no clues, and Fletcher hadn’t expected to find any. The man was a professional and would know how to cover his tracks well.

  Fletcher headed back toward the Bear Den. Now that he had a full eight hours of daylight ahead of him, he planned to search the foothills for Matt Baker.

  He passed scattered groups of cows, all wearing the Lazy R brand, with no PP Connected stuff mixed in with them. Pike Prescott had been murdered before he got a chance to move his herds, and it seemed that his daughter, for now at least, was not following in her father’s footsteps.

  Fletcher crossed Lost Gulch again and rode south. He planned to ride past Bear Den then swing around and head north again along Park Creek to check out the mountain’s eastern slope. It was possible the shots had been fired from there.

  A small herd of antelope scattered as Fletcher rode toward them, kicking up puffs of snow that caught the cold sunlight and glittered like diamond chips.

  He saw some wolf tracks, but no horse prints. Near the spot where Strawberry Creek ran alongside the southern slope of the mountain, he came across the half-eaten carcass of a yearling steer. There were plenty of wolf tracks around the kill, and a large area of snow around the animal was stained red with its blood.

  Fletcher reined up and studied the land around him.

  The country was vast and magnificent, a breath-taking panorama of hills and jagged mountain peaks, the arrowheads of the pines dark green against the white of the snow. Ahead of him lay the shining arc of Strawberry Creek, thin sheets of ice already forming on the shallower water along its banks. Above, the sky was a magnificent pale blue arch, streaked here and there with narrow bands of white.

  Fletcher’s breath smoked in the cold air. Anxious to be going, the sorrel tossed his head, the bit jangling.

  A shout behind him made Fletcher turn. He saw two riders approaching from the south. One of the men raised a hand in greeting, and as he grew closer, Fletcher recognized the rider and relaxed. It was Garnett, the Lazy R hand, and with him was the freckled towhead in the sheepskin coat Fletcher had met earlier.

  The two men exchanged some friendly banter with Fletcher. Then the towhead looked at the dead steer and said bitterly, “That’s the third dead cow we’ve seen since yesterday. Damn wolves.”

  “You boys hunting?” Fletcher asked.

  “Yeah,” the towhead said. “Wolves.”

  Fletcher understood the ranchers’ attitude toward wolves, since they were the ones that suffered the livestock losses. But he believed nature had given the wolf a vital role to play, since he usually pulled down only the weak, sick or old and thus improved the health of the herds.

  But this wasn’t the time to reason with the punchers, especially standing over the carcass of a young Lazy R steer.

  “Well, good luck,” Fletcher said, touching his hat brim.

  He stopped. “Have you boys seen Matt Baker by any chance?”

  Garnett shook his head. “We haven’t seen anybody since we left the ranch yesterday.”

  “Not even a damn wolf,” the towhead added bitterly.

  Fletcher nodded. “I’d like to stay and talk with you boys, but I got to be riding on.”

  Garnett began to raise a hand in farewell, but he never completed the gesture. He was blown backward off his saddle as the sound of a heavy rifle racketed around the surrounding hills.

  “What the hell!” the towhead exclaimed, yanking the Winchester out of the boot under his left leg.

  The rifle barked again, and the left side of the cowboy’s head where it met his hat vanished in a thick, scarlet spray of blood and brain. Without a sound, the young puncher, his remaining eye wide and unbelieving, slowly toppled off the side of his horse and thudded onto the ground.

  Fletcher saw a thin wisp of smoke rise from a stand of scattered lodgepole pine about a hundred yards away. He yanked his Winchester and put the spurs to the sorrel. He charged toward the spot, cranking the lever and shooting as he rode.

  Fletcher fired at the smoke, then quickly dusted shots to the right and left. He was thirty yards away and closing fast when the hidden gunman’s rifle slammed again.

  The sorrel staggered like he had been hit by a massive sledgehammer, then pitched forward, his nose digging into the snow.

  Fletcher went flying over the horse’s head. He held on to his Winchester and met the ground rolling, ending up on his belly. He threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired into the lodgepoles, cranked the lever and fired again.

  The echoes of his shots hammered around the hills then slowly faded into silence.

  A few tense seconds ticked by as nothing stirred among the pines. Fletcher rose to his feet. Then, crouching low, he angled to his left and reached the tree line. He sprinted the last ten yards and threw himself into the sparse underbrush. Fletcher stood and treaded carefully, working his way toward the bush-whacker’s position. The man could only be about twenty yards or so ahead, and Fletcher held his rifle at the ready, his finger on the trigger.

  Jays quarreled in the branches above his head, and the acrid smell of powder smoke hung heavy in the air.

  A twig cracked loudly under Fletcher’s foot, and he stopped, every muscle of his body tensing for a rifle shot. It never came.

  The rifleman, whoever he was, had escaped again, drifting silently through the trees to his waiting horse like a puff of smoke.

  Fletcher cursed long and loud. He scouted the area for a few minutes, then walked out of the pines and back to where the two Lazy R hands lay staining the snow with their blood.

  A quick glance told Fletcher that the towhead was dead. But Garnett, blood flecking his lips and mustache, still clung to life.

  Fletcher kneeled beside the dying man. “How are you feeling, Garnett?” he asked.

  The man managed a weak smile. “I don’t feel a thing,” he whispered. “What the hell hit me?”

  “A bullet,” Fletcher said. “A real big bullet.”

  Garnett strained to look down at his blood-splashed chest. “Hell, I’m all shot to pieces.”

  Fletcher nodded. “I won’t try to fool you, Garnett,” Fletcher said gently. “You’re shot through and through, and your time is very short. Is there anyone I can tell? Family?”

  Garnett shook his head. “No, no one. I was orphan born.” He tried to look around him. “How is Lem?”

  Fletcher glanced across at the young towhead. “He’s dead.”

  When he looked back to Garnett, he too was gone.

  Slowly, wearily, Fletcher rose to his feet. The attack on the Lazy R hands had been sudden, deadly and merciless. Who had ordered the killings? Was it the PP Connected, now owned by Pike Prescott’s daughter? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, he thought, and perhaps the girl shared her father’s ambitions.

  Fletcher shook his head. It was possible, but something about all this didn’t add up, something he couldn’t put his finger on ... something as elusive and insubstantial as a will-o-the-wisp.

  A single glance at the sorrel was enough to tell Fletcher that the big stud was dead. Part of his dream was gone, lying lifeless in the snow, and it was in Fletcher to wonder why he still remained in the Dakota Territory. What was holding him here? Was it really the falling-down cabin and one hundred and sixty hardscrabble acres on the Two-Bit?

  He had no answer for that. Unless... could it be Savannah, if she was still alive? Or Judith Tyrone?

  The gunfighter would not let himself admit that two beautiful women could have such a hold on him.

  Fletcher loaded the two dead men onto Garnett’s gray and mounted Lem’s lineback dun. He led the gray and headed southwest, toward the Lazy R—and Judith Tyrone.

  Windy Flats lay about a mile ahead of him when Fletcher saw a small figure alone on the buffalo grass. As he rode closer, he made out Bob, the English landscape painter, sitting on a fold-up stool at his easel and dabbing a brush on a large canvas. A leggy bay that looked like
he could run was picketed close, and a loaded grulla packhorse grazed a distance away.

  When Fletcher rode up, Bob pulled a piece of canvas over his picture and waved a hand in greeting, smiling. Then he saw the two dead men, and the smile changed to a look of horror.

  “Oh my God, Buck, I heard the shooting. What happened?”

  Briefly Fletcher described the bushwhacking and the deaths of the two Lazy R hands. “They didn’t get any chance,” he finished. “Lem was dead when he hit the ground, and Garnett didn’t live but a couple of minutes.”

  Bob shook his head, clucking his tongue. “Buck, I fear this conflict between the PP Connected and the Lazy R is about to burst wide open. God knows, Judith Tyrone doesn’t want a war, but when she sees this, well...”

  “From what I’m told, Pike Prescott’s daughter is only sixteen years old,” Fletcher interrupted. “She’s only a child.”

  Bob smiled. “Not in these parts. At sixteen there are girls around here already married with a couple of kids and a household to run. And she could be getting advice from that gunman Higgy Conroy. He’s no child.”

  “It’s possible,” Fletcher admitted reluctantly. “Conroy is a snake, and he may have his own agenda.”

  He let his eyes wander briefly over the Englishman’s rangy bay and then the packhorse. The grulla was loaded with a spare easel, rolled-up canvases, wooden boxes of paint, a picnic basket and a large rectangular leather case that Fletcher guessed must contain wood to make stretch frames for the canvases. Except for the Colt strapped around his waist that he’d seen Bob use so well in Buffalo City, Fletcher saw no other guns.

  “Buck, where do you stand in all this?” Bob was asking.

  Fletcher allowed himself a rare smile. “So far, I’ve been trying to keep out of it. But it seems somebody doesn’t believe that and is trying his damndest to kill me.”

  “Conroy?”

  “Maybe. But whoever it is, he uses a mighty big gun. He missed me but damn-near blew my cabin door apart. That just doesn’t fit Conroy’s style. He fancies himself a drawfighter, and he would want to get up close and personal.”

  “When this range war starts, you’re going to have to choose a side, Buck,” Bob said solemnly. “I think someone fears you’ll sell your gun to Judith Tyrone, and the attempt was made on your life to force you out of the country.”

  The Englishman’s face was small and pinched, the sunken, wrinkled cheeks as brown as saddle leather from exposure to all kinds of weather. His eyes were blue and mild, the eyes of an artist, a dreamer.

  Yet, as Fletcher considered his answer, he recalled how well this man had used a Colt. But what was so peculiar about that? Plenty of the great Renaissance artists had been as handy with a rapier as they were with a paintbrush.

  “I’m not selling my gun to anyone,” Fletcher said finally. “I want to find Savannah Jones, wherever she is, and then I’ll think about what I should do next.”

  The Englishman shook his head. “Buck, forget about Savannah. I believe she’s already dead. I don’t know who she was or what she was doing in the Dakota Territory, but I think she discovered something, something she wasn’t supposed to discover. Pike Prescott tried to have her murdered, and when that failed, his daughter completed the job.”

  “It’s thin, Bob,” Fletcher said, shaking his head, his eyes bleak. “Mighty thin.”

  “The truth often is,” Bob commented dryly.

  “It seems to me Prescott’s plans were pretty straightforward,” Fletcher said. “Claim all the grass for miles around the Lazy R and box in Judith Tyrone so she’d be forced to sell. What could Savannah have discovered that was such a big secret?”

  “I don’t know,” the Englishman admitted. “Unless Pike Prescott and now his daughter are fronting for somebody else. It’s possible, I think.”

  Fletcher nodded. “All things are possible.”

  He touched the brim of his hat. “I have to be riding on.”

  “Buck,” Bob said, “before you go.”

  “Yes?”

  “Judith Tyrone needs you. She’s a woman alone, and she needs a man like you now more than ever. That’s something to think about.”

  Fletcher nodded. “It is indeed.”

  “First my husband, and now Lem Wilson and Hank Garnett,” Judith Tyrone said, tears brimming in her eyes. “Buck, when is all this killing going to stop?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know, Judith. I don’t know what’s behind it.”

  “I do,” Judith said, dabbing her eyes with a small lace handkerchief as she poured coffee into Fletcher’s cup. “I believe Amy Prescott, for all she’s just a child, is as ruthless and ambitious as her father. She wants the Lazy R, and she’ll do anything in her power to get it.”

  Fletcher’s eyes wandered to the kitchen window. Outside, a dozen Lazy R hands were gently taking down the bodies of their two dead compadres. The men were muttering to each other: the hard, angry drone of war talk.

  Judith’s eyes followed Fletcher’s, and she said, “My men are just ordinary punchers, Buck. They don’t understand all this, and I can’t send them against Higgy Conroy and the rest of Amy Prescott’s hired guns. They’d be slaughtered.”

  Fetcher nodded absently. What Judith was telling him was true enough, but not quite accurate.

  As he rode in, he’d recognized Tex Lando and the longhaired, buckskin-clad Tin Cup Kid hanging around the bunkhouse.

  Lando had been a Texas Ranger for three years and had later run wild with John Wesley Hardin and that hard crowd in DeWitt County during the Sutton-Taylor feud. A few months ago, he’d killed Happy Tom Bear, the skilled Bodie gunfighter, and then a Mexican pistolero of known reputation in El Paso.

  There was man down in the Nations who called himself the Tin Cup Kid, but this one was the genuine article: fast with a gun, and with four killings to his credit, one a deputy sheriff in Ellsworth.

  Maybe Lando and Tin Cup wrangled cattle occasionally when times were hard, but they were no punchers. These two were men to be reckoned with. When Judith hired them on, did she know what she was getting?

  Fletcher doubted it. Such men, confident of their gun skills, were not normally given to boasting. They usually kept their tracks well-covered.

  He took out the makings of a smoke and gestured to Judith. “May I?”

  “Of course.” The woman studied Fletcher for a few moments, her eyes on his strong hands as he rolled his cigarette. Then she said, “Buck, I want you with me. I need you to stand with me.”

  Fletcher did not reply at once, thinking this thing through. Finally, he said slowly, “Judith, my gun is not for hire. I’m finished with all that.” He lit his smoke and nodded toward the angry hands gathered on the other side of the kitchen window. “Did you know when you hired on Tex Lando and the Tin Cup Kid that they were gunfighters?”

  Judith raised her head defensively. “Yes, I did, and I’m not ashamed of it. Amy Prescott has Higgy Conroy and other hired guns, so why shouldn’t I?”

  “Men like that,” Fletcher said carefully, “are hard to control. They go their own way, and they’ll step lightly from one side of the law to the other. I know, because up until very recently I was one of them.”

  “Men like that are what I need,” Judith said, the defensive fire still in her eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes to save the Lazy R. I’ll try to stay within the law to keep what’s mine, but Amy Prescott’s calling the tune, and I can’t hold my men back any longer.”

  Fletcher sat bolt upright in his chair. “Judith, what are you planning?”

  “In less than an hour from now, I’m leading my men to the PP Connected. We’re going to burn Amy Prescott’s place down around her ears. She and her father started this war; now I’m going to take it to her and finish it.”

  Judith’s fingers lightly touched the back of Fletcher’s hand. “Buck, she’s already tried to kill you to stop you from taking my side. Please, ride with us.”

  The woman looked radiantly beau
tiful this morning, though there were fine lines at the corners of her eyes and at each side of her mouth. Fletcher realized with a vague pang of guilt that the strain was already beginning to tell on her.

  “Judith,” he said, “listen to me. I sense something here. I’m a man who’s spent years relying on instinct to warn me of trouble, and now it’s telling me that there’s something very wrong here. I can’t put my finger on it, but I sense... well, for want of a better word, I sense evil. I believe there’s someone behind all this, playing both you and Amy Prescott like puppets. I don’t know what his agenda is, but he badly wants this war. That I do know.”

  Fletcher took Judith’s hand in his own and held it. “I don’t think the man who killed your hands and maybe Savannah was carrying out orders from Amy Prescott. I think he’s acting for someone else. But who that someone is, I just don’t know.”

  Judith took Fletcher’s hand and pressed it against her firm breasts. He felt a sudden hot jolt of desire run through him.

  “Buck,” she said, “ride at my side.” She rubbed the back of his hand gently over her breasts; first one, then the other. “You won’t ever regret it.”

  It was there. A promise. And now it lay between them.

  Fletcher felt himself drift, the sweet, womanly smell of her filling his head. He moved closer to Judith across the small table. Her full lips parted, betraying her eagerness. His mouth met hers, and now there was no thought, no consciousness as he gave way to his overpowering passion, melting into her as they joined and became a single living entity.

  Their lips parted, and Judith whispered huskily, “Take me to the bedroom, Buck. Now, before we leave.”

  Fletcher looked into Judith’s eyes. What he saw there made him take a quick step back to reality. He’d expected to see a flaming passion to match his own; instead, there was only a dispassionate coolness and more than a hint of triumph.

  Like a punch-drunk boxer, Fletcher shook his head. He said huskily, “No, Judith, not like this. You can’t buy me with your body.”