Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 15

  Chapter 16

  Buck Fletcher stood amid the smoking ruins of the PP Connected, facing a hostile circle of the surviving punchers, the ranch cook, Higgy Conroy and Amy Prescott.

  “He and Judith Tyrone set this up,” Conroy snarled. “He came here with all his empty peace talk to lull us into a false sense of security so our guard would be down when the Lazy R gunmen attacked.”

  The cook, his eyes hard and unforgiving, held a sawed-off Remington 10-gauge shotgun, its barrels pointed directly at Fletcher’s belly. “Just say the word, Miz Prescott, an’ I’ll cut this ranny in half,” he said. The man’s voice was level and calm, free of anger, and that made him all the more dangerous.

  The girl shook her head. “No, Clem. I won’t spill a man’s blood on my doorstep after I’ve welcomed him into my home.”

  “Amy, please believe me. Judith Tyrone had nothing to do with this,” Fletcher pleaded. “She gave me three days, and she would never go back on her word.”

  “It seems that she did,” Amy Prescott said, apparently without malice. “My ranch is destroyed. All my winter feed is gone. Three of my men are dead, and another won’t last until first light. I don’t know about you, Mr. Fletcher, but I’d say she’s very much gone back on her word.”

  “Enough of this empty talk,” Conroy snapped. “Amy, do what your pa would have done. String this man up from the nearest oak.”

  “Amy,” Fletcher began, ignoring Conroy, “I know in my heart this is none of Judith’s doing ...” He faltered into silence, looking around him at the circle of unfriendly eyes, realizing how lame his words sounded. He shook his head. “There’s someone else behind this, Amy. You’ve got to trust me.”

  But the girl’s clear hazel eyes revealed no trust, just an icy resolve.

  “Mr. Fletcher, Clem wants to shoot you, and Hig wants to hang you, but I will permit neither. Not today at least. However, I want you to carry a message to Judith Tyrone.”

  Fletcher nodded silently. Whatever he was about to hear was not going to be good.

  “Tell her these things, just as I now speak them. Tell her I come of a long line of Tennessee hill folk, and I was born and bred to the feud. Tell her that from this day forward, there can be no peace between us. Tell her that I will visit on her what she visited on me and the PP Connected. Tell her that the visitation will be of fire, destruction and death. Tell her I will take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

  The girl took a step closer to Fletcher, her eyes blazing. “That’s a fairly short and uncomplicated message, Mr. Fletcher. Can I trust you to deliver it accurately?”

  Again Fletcher nodded without speaking, knowing he had no words that would erase what had been done here.

  Amy Prescott turned to one of the hands. “Bring Mr. Fletcher his horse.”

  She looked at Fletcher again. “The only reason you’re riding out of here alive is that you were a guest in my home. When we meet again, that will no longer apply. From now until the ending of time, Mr. Fletcher, you are my sworn enemy.”

  The girl turned on her heel and walked into the ranch house, the only building left standing at the PP Connected.

  The hand brought Fletcher his horse, and the gunfighter stepped into the leather.

  Conroy looked up at him, his yellow eyes narrow and mean.

  “If I see you around the Connected, I’ll kill you,” he said. “Fletcher, you’re real good at hiding behind a woman’s skirt, but next time, Amy Prescott or no, I’ll draw down on you.”

  Fletcher nodded. “So be it,” he said. “Conroy, you and I will meet again soon. You killed a harmless old man who was my friend, and you shot my dog, and now these things stand between us. There is a showdown to come.”

  Fletcher’s cold eyes were bleak. “I tell you these things just so you know.”

  He rode away. from the PP Connected without looking back, realizing that behind him were implacable enemies, people who lived by a harsh code that held little of forgiveness but much of vengeance and hate.

  He would also have to deal with Higgy Conroy, and that would only make matters worse.

  The war he’d tried to avoid was about to tear this country apart, gaining strength from its own headlong momentum. There could be no stopping it.

  The time of the reckoning had come.

  As the night gave way to morning, Buck Fletcher rode north, avoiding as much as he was able the open grassland where he could become a target for a hidden rifleman. He kept to the bases of the hills, riding close to the welcome cover of the tree lines.

  The attack on the PP Connected had shaken Fletcher to the core. He couldn’t let himself believe that Judith Tyrone had ordered it. But if it wasn’t her, then who? And why had the Lazy R hands obeyed him?

  One of the riders had recognized Higgy Conroy and had been surprised when the PP Connected foreman shot him. Could Conroy be the man behind all this? It was possible, but somehow Fletcher couldn’t believe the snake-eyed gunman possessed the necessary brains and cunning.

  No, it had to be someone else. But who?

  And to top it all off, where was Savannah Jones, and why did the mystery man, whoever he was, want her dead?

  Fletcher shook his head. As usual, there were plenty of questions running through his mind and mighty few answers.

  Windy Flats and the Lazy R ranch still lay twenty miles to the north as Fletcher rode past a low, flat-topped butte, its slopes covered in spruce and thick brush. There were still several inches of snow on the ground, reflecting the pale light of the morning sun. A long wind, heavy with the scent of pine, stole softly across its glittering surface.

  Something flashed on the slope of the butte, the sudden glimmer almost hidden by the trees. Fletcher caught the flash out of the corner of his eye, and he jerked his Winchester out of the boot.

  Was it the sun reflecting off a gun barrel?

  He kneed his horse toward the slope, his rifle ready. There it was again! But this time the light was steady, like a lamp flame burning. Puzzled now, but still wary, Fletcher rode to the base of the butte and dismounted.

  He stepped into the pines, his eyes searching the slope of the butte. The pines grew thick here, and even though he was closer, he could no longer see the light. He walked carefully until he reached the base of the rise. Then he began to climb.

  Over thousands of years, earth tremors had loosened rock that had tumbled down the slope accompanied by fans of tumulus, and Fletcher found it hard going, especially when his broken ribs began to pain him unmercifully from the unaccustomed exertion. He climbed upward from rock to rock until he was about five hundred feet above the ground.

  Despite the morning chill, he was sweating heavily. He took off his hat and wiped the band with his fingers, looking around him.

  About twenty feet above his head, where he’d mentally marked the spot of the light, there was an outcropping of rock shaped like the prow of a ship, its lower edge banded by a seam of quartz about a foot thick.

  Fletcher settled his hat on his head and climbed up to the outcropping. He rested his rifle against a boulder and studied the quartz seam thoughtfully.

  The quartz was rotten, and Fletcher was able to crumble off a small piece from the seam. It was the quartz that had glimmered from the slope. The light of the sun must have reflected on the snow and lit up the seam at exactly the right angle. A man could have ridden past this spot a thousand times and never seen the outcropping, let alone the wide seam of quartz.

  Fletcher studied the piece in his hands closely. It was only about an inch in diameter, but even so he saw gold gleam within the quartz, looking like thin, spattered raindrops.

  The seam rounded the outcropping and disappeared into the butte. To the right of the outcropping there was only about twenty yards or so of slope before it broke off abruptly, ending in a sheer cliff that dropped to the flat.

  Could any trace of the seam be seen from the cliff face?

  Fletcher picked up his Winchester and scrambled across the slope
of the butte to the cliff, stepping carefully now that he was so close to an almost vertical five-hundred-foot drop.

  He stepped close to the cliff face and looked around. The drop wasn’t as sheer as he’d first thought because a ledge varying in width between three and six feet crossed the entire face of the cliff about twenty feet below where he stood.

  Laying down his rifle again, Fletcher slid down the sandy rubble of the incline until he reached the ledge. He stepped onto the ledge and walked along it carefully, aware of the shattering fall that would result should he stumble or the soft rock of the ledge give way.

  He’d only walked about ten yards or so when the ledge led past a narrow opening in the rock. Fletcher quickly realized this was a man-made opening, not a natural formation, and he could still make out the marks of a pick on the walls.

  The opening was narrow, and Fletcher had to turn sideways to enter. Once inside, he discovered that the hole had been dug about ten feet into the rock, enough to expose the quartz seam that angled downward into the bluff.

  Despite the dim light, Fletcher’s unbelieving eyes saw that the seam was at least three feet thick. When he thumbed a match into flame, he caught the unmistakable glint of gold. The quartz was loaded with it, and although he was no miner, Fletcher knew he was looking at a mother lode.

  There was a fortune waiting to be dug out of this butte—and someone already knew it.

  The match burned Fletcher’s fingers, and he dropped it, shaking his hand. He stepped back out onto the ledge.

  The exploratory hole had been dug into the butte to check out the location and width of the quartz seam, and the lack of weathering suggested this had happened very recently.

  Was this the reason someone wanted a war between the PP Connected and the Lazy R?

  The butte was on PP Connected range, and what better way to get at its gold than to wait until the ranch had destroyed itself in a range war, then move in and take over by buying out Amy Prescott—or by force if necessary, an easy task against a weakened adversary.

  The why of all this suddenly made sense to Fletcher, but he was still no further along in guessing the who.

  Who was the mastermind behind all this? Who was playing Judith Tyrone and Amy Prescott like puppets for his own gain?

  Fletcher had no answers and no guesses.

  Maybe if he could find Savannah Jones, she could help him—if her memory had returned, but that was far from certain. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.

  Fletcher retrieved his rifle and climbed back up the slope. He chipped off a few more samples of quartz and placed them in the pocket of his shirt.

  He turned away from the seam and walked through some thick underbrush. The toe of his right boot hit something hidden in the brush that clicked with a dry, rasping sound.

  Fletcher pushed the brush aside with his foot and saw what he’d kicked—a skeletal hand outstretched from the rest of the body.

  There were two complete skeletons lying close together. The dry, cracked leather of their belts had survived, as had the boots on their feet. They were lace-up boots, not the high-heeled boots of cattlemen but the rugged footwear of miners.

  The dead men’s story was not difficult to piece together.

  Evidently the two miners had been hired by someone to dig the exploratory hole in the cliff face. Then, as soon as the quartz seam had been exposed, they’d been shot to keep them quiet.

  Fletcher realized he was dealing here not only with a cold, calculating intelligence, but someone who was utterly ruthless and would kill—or order it done—without a moment’s hesitation.

  Whoever he was, this man had to be found and stopped. Soon, before it was too late.

  After one last look at the outcropping, fixing the place in his mind, Fletcher made his way down the butte again and found his horse.

  He had it in mind to talk to Judith Tyrone and find out who had ordered the attack on the PP Connected. That might give a clue to who was behind all this, and maybe he could end it once and for all.

  Fletcher mounted and headed north, toward the Lazy R. It was still early, and the land smelled clean and fresh, the scent of the pines borne on the wind.

  He continued to ride close to the tree lines, his eyes constantly scanning the country around him. But as far as he could see, it seemed empty of life.

  Around him, stretching for miles, lay rich grassland and here and there the sudden, dramatic rise of craggy hills and buttes forested with pine. The deep canyons were great, narrow chasms of windswept rock, some of them brush-covered, others bare, worn smooth by the slow turning of countless centuries of severe weather made all the harsher by extremes of heat and cold.

  The smell of raw iron mingled with the scent of the pines as the quiet afternoon whispered a forecast of snow. To the north, clouds were piling up in tall, mighty fortresses of black and gray.

  Fletcher rode steadily, for now letting the buckskin set the pace as it eagerly homed toward the Lazy R and its warm barn.

  He was in need of coffee but had none, hopefully something Judith would rectify when they met.

  The topmost spires of the Badlands barrier had just risen into view to the east when Fletcher stopped and checked his back trail. Nothing was moving. The rising wind stirred some feathery white plumes from the surface of the snow, and the pines moved and whispered restlessly. But he saw no sign of life, animal or human.

  He kicked his horse into motion again—and a giant fist struck him hard in the chest.

  Fletcher was blown off his horse, crashing on his back into the snow. He heard the distant boom of a rifle, the sound finally catching up with the bullet. He’d been hit hard.

  He rolled on his stomach and saw blood staining the side of his mackinaw, a dull red patch that was spreading as rapidly as his strength was draining.

  The buckskin, startled, had run for a short distance and now stood, unconcerned, about a hundred yards away.

  Fletcher drew his Colt and studied the country around him. That he’d been shot by the mysterious rifleman, he had no doubt. The question was, how badly was he hit?

  Out in the open like this, he had no time to open his mackinaw and study the wound. The pain, like a hot fire, was low on his left side, but there was another, sharper pain high on his chest.

  Had he been shot twice?

  He’d heard only one rifle report, but there could have been two, very close together.

  Fletcher transferred his gun to his left hand and shoved his right inside his mackinaw. His gloved fingers came away bloody, confirming a second wound. That fact filled him with concern not unmixed with fear.

  He was miles from the Lazy R. This lovely but merciless country could kill a weakened man very quickly.

  Within the limit of Fletcher’s vision, nothing stirred. The rifleman, confident of his aim, had fired and seen him fall. He would figure his work was done and ride away.

  Perhaps.

  Fletcher had to get out of the open, where he was an easy target, and into the trees. He tried to rise, stumbled and stretched his length on the ground, the pain in his side spiking into him like a red-hot knife.

  He rose again, and this time managed to stay on his feet. His Colt ready, he tried for his horse, staggering like a drunken man, the reeling horizon of hills, canyons and trees tilting this way and that as if he were on the heaving deck of a storm-tossed ship.

  The buckskin, scenting blood, crow-hopped nervously away from him. Fletcher whispered reassuringly to the animal as he got closer. But the horse would have none of it. To remain in this place was to smell blood and endure more snow, the first flakes already falling. Beyond, across the grass, lay his warm barn. The buckskin made his choice and ran, stirrups flying, until he was lost from Fletcher’s sight.

  The gunfighter cursed horses in general and the buckskin in particular. He knew with terrible certainty that to be out here in this vast wilderness without a horse was a death sentence.

  But it was not in Buck Fletcher to give
up so easily.

  The trees were close, growing thickly on a low hillside, and he painfully staggered across the snow, fell, picked himself up, then fell again. The pain of the wound in his side was a living thing, gnawing savagely at him, and his chest felt like it had been hit by a sixteen-pound sledgehammer.

  He rose and stumbled forward for a few steps, then again pitched face first into the ground. Fletcher lay there for a few moments, stunned, gasping for breath, his teeth gritted against the pain in his side and chest. He glanced over at the aspen and the scattered pine. Not far. He could make it.

  This time he did not attempt to walk. He crawled forward on his belly, leaving a long streak of blood to mark his path.

  Closer now.

  Fletcher reached the trees and crawled among them, burrowing through the slender trunks and underbrush like a wounded animal hunting a hole in which to die. He grabbed the trunk of an aspen and hauled himself painfully to his feet. Just a few yards to his right, a deep, narrow gorge had been carved by water runoffs from the hillside. A pine had fallen, and it lay across one rim of the gully, adding height to the shelter.

  Staggering, holding on to the aspens for support, Fletcher reached the gully and half-fell, half-sat against the wall protected by the fallen pine. At least here he was out of the wind and could maybe start a small fire from the dry branches of the pine.

  Fletcher reached up a hand and began to snap off small, brittle twigs. The movement flared the pain in his side, and now his broken ribs began to hurt badly. He dropped his arm, the few twigs he’d gathered falling from his fingers.

  “Buck,” he whispered to himself, “no doubt about it, you’re in a real fix.” He lay his head against the wall of the gorge and closed his eyes. His chin slumped slowly onto his chest, and he let darkness overtake him.

  Chapter 17

  When Buck Fletcher woke, day had shaded into night. A few scattered flakes of snow were falling through the surrounding trees, and it had turned bitter cold.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, Fletcher struggled to his feet and again snapped off twigs and a few larger branches from the pine. Sheltered by the aspen, the branches were still dry, as were the brown pine needles that clung to them.