Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 22

  But there could be no rest. Not now.

  Unless his instinct for danger was wrong, and it had rarely failed him before, the attack would come before nightfall.

  Judith Tyrone was hunting trouble.

  Chapter 23

  Fletcher put up his horse, slid his Winchester from the boot, then quickly told the others what he’d seen on the hill.

  “I believe we’ll be attacked very soon,” he concluded. “And right now I’m not inclined to give favorable odds on our chances.”

  “How many men does Judith Tyrone have?” asked one of the punchers, the skinny youngster with the bandaged head.

  “Enough,” Fletcher replied. “Somehow we’ve got to even the numbers.”

  “We could ride out now and lay for them someplace,” another Connected puncher, a man named Walker, suggested. “They won’t expect to be bushwhacked.”

  Fletcher shook his head at the man. “There are too few of us. Judith’s men are experienced gun hands. They won’t be stampeded easily, and they’re not the kind to ride into an ambush. If they catch us out there in the open, we’ll be in a world of trouble.” Fletcher’s worried expression suddenly cleared. “Unless ...”

  He took the three Connected hands aside and spoke to them briefly and urgently. Walker, a wide-shouldered, blue-eyed man with a thick dragoon mustache and sandy eyebrows, grinned widely and nodded. “It might just work.”

  Fletcher smiled grimly. “It’s got to work, or we’ll all be dead as hell in a preacher’s backyard before the moon spikes itself on a pine tonight.”

  Despite the man’s protests, Fletcher kept the wounded youngster at the cabin while Walker and the other puncher saddled up and rode out. They retraced the route Fletcher had taken earlier and were soon lost among the pines.

  “Buck, do you really think we’re in danger?” Savannah asked, her face pale and frightened.

  They were inside the cabin. Gates, the young puncher, stood at a window, his Winchester in his hands, alertly gazing out at the surrounding country, where a few flakes of snow were falling, unhurriedly drifting to earth.

  “Savannah,” Fletcher said, “I’ve got to give it to you straight. I believe by this time Judith knows you and Amy are here and that there’s no better time to get rid of you both. That Texas gunman up on the hill must have seen Matt ride out, but Judith probably figures she can deal with him later. Right now her concern is with you and Amy ... and maybe,” he finished grimly, “me.”

  Savannah was scared, but now she demonstrated that she had backbone. “She’ll have to work for it,” she said, her eyes blazing and determined. “I won’t go without a fight.”

  “Me neither,” Amy said. The girl had her own rifle, and Fletcher figured that, like most ranch-born girls, she knew how to use it.

  Fletcher smiled at Savannah. “You’ll need more than that derringer stingy gun.”

  The girl nodded. “I’ve got Jeb’s Henry, and there’s plenty of shells for it.”

  “I ain’t no slouch with this here rifle gun either,” Gates said from the window, grinning. “I fit Comanches when I were just a younker, and I’ve used it some since.”

  “You know,” Fletcher said, “I was feeling pretty bad about this earlier. But now I got the notion that maybe Judith Tyrone is about to bite off more than she can chew.”

  He didn’t really. But he knew this was something the others would like to hear him say. “Bolstering morale,” they’d called it in the army.

  He had two girls and a wounded man in the cabin, and if the plan he’d earlier hatched with Walker failed, he didn’t give much for their chances against Judith’s skilled gun hands.

  Fletcher was tired, worn out by the constant pain in his side and now his worry for Savannah and the others. He swayed slightly on his feet and sat down heavily on the bunk.

  “Buck,” Savannah said, her face concerned, “you’re all in. Why don’t you catch some sleep while you have a chance?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I’m not tired. I can make it.”

  “You’re not going to be much good to us in a gun battle if you’re completely exhausted,” Savannah persisted. “Now just lie down and get some rest.”

  “Okay, you win.” Fletcher smiled. He stretched out on the bunk. “See, I’m lying down. Does that make you happy?”

  Savannah nodded. “Yes, it does.”

  But Fletcher didn’t hear.

  He was already asleep.

  Fletcher woke with a start. The light had changed in the cabin, fading from bright daylight to the transparent, cobalt blue of early evening.

  An oil lamp flickered on the table, surrounding itself with an orange and yellow halo, and the fire glowed cherry-red in the stove.

  Savannah stepped to his side. “You’re awake, I see.”

  “Douse that damn lamp!” Fletcher yelled sharply, swinging his legs off the bed. He rose to his feet, feeling the room spin around him. “If the Lazy R is going to attack us, it will be now, before it gets any darker,” he snapped. “I don’t want us outlined against a lamp as easy targets for a rifleman.”

  Savannah blew out the lamp. “Sorry,” she said, “but I’m new to this kind of thing.”

  “New or not, any damn fool knows not to light—”

  Fletcher saw the sudden hurt in Savannah’s eyes and checked himself. “I mean ...” He shook his head, annoyed and ashamed of his outburst. “Hell, I don’t know what I mean. Just ... just don’t light that lamp again, okay?”

  He was groggy with pain, and the nap had not refreshed him. He was tense, uneasy and teetering right on the edge of exhaustion.

  “Anything you say, Major Fletcher,” Savannah returned stiffly, snapping off a smart salute. She sniffed, tilted her nose on the air, then stalked away, heels clacking as she took her place by the window and studiously ignored him.

  Fletcher shook his head. Thank heaven they’ll never allow women in the army! he thought.

  He picked up his Winchester and strolled over to Gates. “See anything?”

  The man shook his head. “Not a thing.”

  “They’ll come,” Fletcher said. Then, almost as if reassuring himself: “I know they’ll come.”

  The attack came ten minutes later, just as the day was slowly fading into night and the moon began its climb into a pale, starless sky.

  There were eight of them, and they charged the cabin at a fast gallop, trusting to the word of Judith Tyrone’s spy that they would take Fletcher and the others by surprise.

  The horses of the Lazy R gunmen kicked up high flurries of snow from their churning hooves, the breath from their flared nostrils smoking in the cold air.

  Fletcher, seeing the horsemen come fast, realized it was their plan to charge right up to the cabin and force their way inside, shooting down everyone they found before the occupants had a chance to react.

  In that, they were sorely disappointed.

  Gates was firing from the window, Savannah shooting beside him. Amy, firing her rifle steadily and well, stood beside Fletcher.

  Fletcher saw one rider throw his arms in the air and fall from his horse. Then another went down, his terrified mount crashing on top of him. The man’s shrill scream cut across the night above the roar of the guns. Then he was silent.

  Fletcher, by training and inclination a revolver fighter, laid down his rifle and stepped to the cabin door. He threw the door open wide and stepped outside, the Colt in his right fist hammering as soon as he located a target.

  A rider fired at him, a gout of orange flame flaring from the muzzle of his rifle, and Fletcher fired back, emptying the man’s saddle.

  Another rider swung his gray horse around and charged at Fletcher, the man letting his mount have its head as he fired his two Colts. Bullets kicked up angry Vs of snow around Fletcher’s feet and split the air around his head as he thumbed off two quick shots at the oncoming gunman. Both missed.

  Fletcher fired again, and the rider went down with his horse, an explosion of snow scattering
into the air as man and animal crashed heavily to the ground.

  Knowing that they had lost the element of surprise, the surviving riders drew off a hundred yards or so and bunched together, getting themselves in a frame of mind to charge again. But there was to be no rest for them.

  Walker and the other puncher opened up from the hillside where Fletcher had sent them. Quickly, two riders went down. The others, seeing they were caught in a lethal crossfire, swung their horses around and galloped away, a few of them firing some last defiant but futile shots in the direction of the cabin.

  The attack had ended as suddenly as it had begun.

  And for the Lazy R gunmen, it had been a disaster.

  Six men were down, staining the snow around them with their blood. A horse kicked and screamed, its back broken. Fletcher put the horse out of its misery with a well-aimed shot to the head, then looked around him at the catastrophe that had befallen Judith Tyrone’s gunmen.

  The others came from the cabin. Walker and the puncher with him were riding slowly down the hill toward them, their rifles at the ready.

  “Oh my God,” Savannah whispered. “They’re all dead.”

  Fletcher nodded, his face set and grim. “Most of them. I shot one ranny over there who’s still breathing, but I doubt he’ll last much longer.”

  Amy’s eyes were huge in her pale face. “This isn’t worth it,” she gasped. “All the money in the world isn’t worth so much death.”

  “It is to Judith Tyrone,” Savannah said bitterly. “She doesn’t care how many die just so long as she gets rich.”

  Fletcher stepped up to the dying gunman and looked down at him without sympathy. “Been a long time, Mickey.”

  The man managed a wan smile. “Down to Colfax County that time when you and me was runnin’ wild with Clay Allison and that bunch.” The gunman’s face took on a puzzled frown. “Though I don’t rightly recollect what side you was on in that war.”

  “The losing side,” Fletcher said. “I had to light a shuck out of Texas pretty fast.”

  Blood stained the gunman’s lips as he chuckled. “Ol’ Clay Allison, he’s something, ain’t he, Buck?”

  Fletcher nodded. “I’d say he is.”

  “Well, you’ve done for me, Buck, but that happens in our business. One day a ranny’s your friend, another day your enemy. I got no hard feelings.”

  “No hard feelings,” Fletcher said, unbending enough to give a dying man a little comfort.

  Mickey nodded. “That’s how it ought to be.”

  Then death rattled in the gunman’s throat, and his open eyes looked out on nothing but darkness.

  “Was he a friend of yours?” Gates asked, glancing at the dead man as he stepped beside Fletcher.

  Fletcher shook his head. “Our paths crossed a few times. His name was Mickey Foster. He liked gray horses, and he was good with a gun.”

  Gates was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “Not much to say about a man, is it?”

  An emptiness inside him, Fletcher nodded. “No, Gates. I guess it isn’t.”

  He looked at Savannah. She was staring at him, her eyes troubled, trying hard to reach out to him.

  Fletcher looked away quickly, his face flushing.

  “We got some burying to do,” he said to Walker and the other puncher as they reined up beside him. “Up there on the hillside, away from the cabin.”

  “Never knew what hit them,” Walker said, grinning. “I mean, your idea to catch them in a crossfire threw them for a loop.”

  “It ain’t something that makes me real proud,” Fletcher said.

  Chapter 24

  The dead were buried shallow in ground too hard for graves, and it was almost midnight when the difficult and melancholy task was completed.

  Matt Baker and Graham rode in an hour later, the Deputy United States Marshal obviously irritated at being forced to ride so far from the delights of Deadwood.

  But after a bowl of hot stew and coffee sweetened with good bourbon, Graham visibly relaxed and lit a cigar, the closeness of pretty female company also helping to mellow him.

  “Matt here showed me the letter allegedly written by Judith Tyrone,” he said from behind a cloud of smoke. “You know it’s not going to stand up in court.” Graham shook his head, his face puzzled. “I just find it hard to believe that Miz Tyrone would have a hand in murder.”

  “Tell that to the six dead men buried up there on the hill,” Fletcher said bitterly.

  Graham took the letter from the inside pocket of his coat and studied it. “The paper is of excellent quality, but typical of the stuff the better hotels supply for their guests. If this had been written on paper you could prove was exclusively used by Judith Tyrone—imported from abroad, say—then maybe we’d have a slight case.”

  Graham sighed, his long face unhappy. “But as it stands, this letter is worthless. It’s just too easy to forge somebody’s handwriting. I’ve seen it done.”

  “I took that letter off the body of Birmingham Bob Spooner,” Fletcher said. “You heard of him, Graham?”

  The lawman nodded. “Contract rifle killer, an’ a good one by all accounts. Got his start down along the Rio Grande as a scalp hunter as I recollect.” Graham shrugged. “But the fact that Bob was carrying it still doesn’t prove the letter is genuine.”

  “I sent his horse back to the Lazy R,” Fletcher said. “Judith knows something happened to her hired killer, but she doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. That gives us an advantage.”

  “What kind of advantage?” Graham asked warily.

  “Advantage enough to get her to confess to the murder of her husband, Pike Prescott, and many others.”

  Graham shook his head. “I don’t get your drift.”

  Fletcher smiled. “I have a plan.”

  Quickly he outlined his scheme to Graham, and the expression on the man’s face grew more and more shocked, his chin dropping lower to his chest with each of Fletcher’s words, until finally he exploded. “Hell, no! I won’t do it! That’s highly irregular.” He looked around at the circle of faces in the cabin and spread his arms wide. “You folks understand, don’t you? Suppose it doesn’t work? It’s more than my job is worth.”

  Savannah’s eyes were blazing and merciless. “You’ve got to do it, Marshal. It will be more than your job is worth if you let a cold-blooded killer like Judith Tyrone go free.”

  Matt Baker smiled without humor. “One of the perks of being a Pinkerton agent is that you get to make some powerful friends in Washington. Graham, if I have to, I’ll call in some favors from mighty high places and get you busted down to swamper in the county jail.”

  Graham looked like a trapped animal. For a few tense moments, he thought the thing through. Then, his long, homely face gloomy, he admitted defeat and said slowly, “Okay, I’ll do it, but only under protest.” He looked around at the people surrounding him. “You folks sure know how to gang up on a man.”

  Fletcher and the others saddled up just as dawn was washing the blue shadows out of the ravines and coulees among the surrounding hills.

  Graham, grouchy and ill-tempered, stood a little apart from the rest, tightening the girth on his balky dun, muttering to himself, now and then looking up at a lemon-colored sky streaked with narrow bands of red.

  But the lawman carefully checked his shotgun before sliding it into the boot, and he removed the thong from the hammer of his Colt, easing the gun in its holster.

  Whatever else he was, Fletcher decided, Graham was a professional. When the chips were down, there would be backup in him. Maybe, after all, he was a man to ride the river with.

  Fletcher was about to swing into the saddle when Savannah and Amy appeared from the direction of the barn, leading their horses.

  Both women wore long skirts split for riding, and they had donned short sheepskin jackets, scarves and gloves.

  “You two aren’t going,” Fletcher said, shaking his head. The morning sky touched his face with red, making him look as ha
rd and impassive as a cigar store Indian. “If shooting starts, it will be too dangerous.”

  “How come you didn’t say that last night, Major?” Savannah asked, her eyes bright with mischief.

  “Last night we were all fighting for our lives,” Fletcher replied. “This is different. There’s no need for you and Amy to risk your lives.” He laid a hand on the saddle horn, his left foot on the stirrup, preparing to swing into the saddle. “And please stop calling me Major. The war ended a long time ago.”

  “This one hasn’t,” Savannah said. “And that’s why we’re coming with you.”

  “Oh no you’re not,” Fletcher said, stepping into the saddle.

  “Oh yes we are.”

  Fletcher looked at Matt Baker and spread his hands helplessly. “Matt, talk some sense into your fellow Pinkerton.”

  Baker grinned. “Can’t be done, Buck. Savannah has resigned from the Pinkertons as of a couple of weeks ago.”

  Surprised, Fletcher turned to the girl. “Why did you do that?”

  Savannah smiled. “Because I plan to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “Oh no, you’re not. I won’t be tied down by a woman.”

  Savannah swung gracefully into the saddle. “That’s what you think.” A pause, then: “Major.”

  Fletcher looked around him. The Connected hands were grinning, and even Graham’s gloomy face was lit up with a smile.

  The gunfighter made a little yelp of frustration in his throat and said, “All right. Boots and saddles.” He turned to Savannah. “Just stay out of my way.”

  The girl snapped off another smart salute. “Yes, sir!”

  Fletcher groaned.

  The eight riders, Fletcher and Graham in the lead, followed Two-Bit Creek as it curved to the southwest, passing Dome Mountain and then Anchor Hill, where they caught their first sight of the rising sun. Water still splashed free in the creek despite the coldness of the season, and along its banks the snow sparkled in the sun. The surrounding pines, lit up by the bright morning, looked green instead of black and stirred restlessly in the wind that had again started to blow long and chill from the north.