Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 24

  The orange glow of the lamp reflected on the stony faces of Fletcher and the PP Connected hands. Savannah and Amy stood off to one side, their long skirts flattened against their legs by the keening wind, their hair tossing around their shoulders.

  “Anybody?” Baker asked again in quiet desperation.

  Finally, Fletcher said, “Let it rest, Matt. None of us feels much inclined to say the words.”

  “So be it,” Baker said.

  And one by one, they turned away from Judith Tyrone’s grave and walked back to the ranch house.

  It began to snow, and within a very short while the graves were covered over, looking no different from the white and silent land around them.

  Chapter 25

  They saddled up at dawn and prepared to leave the Lazy R.

  Amy Prescott, Gates and Walker were headed back to the PP Connected to rebuild what had been destroyed.

  “You’re a rich woman now,” Fletcher told Amy as she stood by her horse. “There’s enough gold in the mesa to rebuild the Connected even better than it was before.”

  Amy Prescott shook her head at him. “There’s been enough dying over that gold,” she said. “From now on, I plan to call it Dead Man Mesa because I believe it’s cursed.” Her eyes determined, she added, “The gold will stay right where it is. My father left me enough money to rebuild the Connected, and I’ll go right on selling beef to the Deadwood miners and the army.”

  The girl smiled. “I’ll get by. I don’t want to get rich. I just want to stay on my ranch and run it the way my father would have wanted me to.”

  She stepped lightly into the saddle. “I’m going home, Mr. Fletcher.”

  Fletcher, Savannah and Baker watched Amy and her riders leave. Then they mounted up and headed for the cabin on the Two-Bit.

  It took Fletcher and Baker several days to round up the horses that had belonged to the riders who had attacked the cabin. The animals had wandered far, foraging for grass in the coulees and ravines among the hills that were still relatively free of drifting snow.

  “Since, according to Graham, these horses are now government property, I guess we should build some kind of corral,” Baker suggested once the animals were herded close to the cabin. “Otherwise they’ll just up and scatter to hell and gone.”

  While Savannah busied herself in the cabin, the men spent two days constructing a crude pole corral among the aspens at the bottom of the ridge. There was plenty of shelter here from the wind, and the trees would keep out most of the snow.

  Drawing on his account at the bank, Fletcher had wagonloads of oats and baled hay brought from a big outfit near Cheyenne Crossing, paying top dollar for everything. But the supplies would keep the horses alive through the winter, and even if he wasn’t there himself, he could hire a man to live at the cabin and see to their needs.

  A week after the corral was finished and the horses penned up, Fletcher, Savannah and Baker sat at supper. It was warm and welcoming inside the cabin, sheltered from the cold wind outside that gusted and sighed among the aspen and drove tattered black clouds across the wide face of the full moon.

  Baker sat back in his chair and patted his stomach. “An elegant meal, as always, Savannah. I’m going to miss your cooking.”

  “You’re leaving, Matt?” Savannah asked, surprised.

  The man nodded. “Pulling out tomorrow morning. I’m heading back to Washington to be reassigned.”

  Fletcher smiled. “Hard to think of you not being here, Matt. I’ve come to regard you as a fixture around the place.”

  “I can’t stay any longer, Buck. I believe I might be in enough trouble as it is.” Baker grinned. “I think my boss could consider that I’ve tarried here for no good reason.”

  “We’ll miss you, Matt,” Savannah said. “I really mean that.”

  Fletcher rolled a smoke, and, not looking up from the makings, said, “I’m pulling out too. There’s nothing for me here.”

  If Savannah was concerned, she didn’t let it show.

  “We’re both pulling out, you mean.”

  Fletcher nodded. “I guess so, Savannah, but only as far as Cheyenne. Then we go our separate ways.”

  Savannah shook her head. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Startled, Fletcher looked at her. “What do you mean? Riding together to Cheyenne?”

  “No,” Savannah answered. “I mean what you said about us going our separate ways.”

  Fletcher, his face stiff, said, “Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”

  “Yes, we will.” Savannah smiled.

  Fletcher opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Sometimes there was just no reasoning with a determined woman.

  Matt Baker saddled up and prepared to ride out at daybreak the next morning.

  Savannah said her good-byes. Then, her tears getting the better of her, she ran back into the cabin.

  Baker watched her go with sympathetic eyes, then swung into the saddle. He looked down at Fletcher and stuck out his hand.

  Fletcher shook Baker’s hand and said, “Ride careful, Matt. And thanks. I mean, thanks for everything.”

  Baker nodded. “It was a privilege knowing you, Buck.” He studied the gunfighter’s face carefully for a few moments, then said, “I realize you’re not a man who sets much store on advice from others, but what old Jeb Coons told you was right on the money.”

  “What was that?” Fletcher asked warily.

  “That this is your home, here on Two-Bit Creek, and here you should stay. Besides”—Baker looked to the cabin—“there’s a woman inside there who loves you more than life itself. A man shouldn’t ride away from something like that.”

  Fletcher’s face hardened. “You’re right, Matt. I don’t take advice easily, and I don’t intend to start now.”

  Baker nodded. “Figured you to say something like that, so I only have one more thing to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Buck Fletcher,” Baker said, unsmiling, “you’re the biggest damn fool in God’s creation.”

  The Pinkerton touched his hat. “See you around.”

  Then he touched spurs to his horse and was soon lost among the tall hills and the snow and the pines.

  Later that day, a strange restlessness in him, Fletcher let the two Thoroughbred mares and his stud loose on the flat around the cabin, trusting them to stay close to the barn and their supply of food.

  He shrugged into his mackinaw and took a book, clearing snow away from under the tree where he liked to sit and read. The speckled pup, gamely following on three legs, curled up next to him and promptly fell asleep.

  From inside the cabin, Fletcher heard Savannah sing “Brennan on the Moor,” just as his mother had once done back in that misty, forgotten time.

  He laid down his book, testing the breeze. The scent of biscuits and stew teased his nose.

  He knew he should already be riding on, but something was holding him back. Was it this place? Savannah? Or both?

  Fletcher shook his head. He didn’t have the answers. But somehow he felt at ease, suddenly perfectly content. He had a cabin, money in the bank and the love of a good woman. Did he really want or need anything else?

  Then, as the wind stirred the pine branches above his head, the answer came to him.

  What Matt Baker had said was true. There was nothing better than right here.

  He was home. And here he should stay.

  Still, the restlessness had not left him.

  He rose, the pup trailing after him, walked to the cabin and stepped inside. Savannah, her hands white with flour, smiled. “I thought you were going to read for a while,” she said.

  Fletcher shook his head. “Just couldn’t settle to it.”

  He reached for a biscuit, golden brown and hot from the stove, but Savannah slapped his hand. “Those are for dinner. You’ll spoil your appetite.”

  “Just one?”

  Savannah smiled. “I guess one won’t do you any harm.”
>
  As he ate, Fletcher studied the woman as she kneaded more biscuit dough, a stray strand of blond hair falling over her forehead.

  “I kind of like having you around here,” he said, trying to reach out to her. “You ... I don’t quite know how to say it. You please me, I guess is what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “And it pleases me to be here,” Savannah said, smiling. “I like being around you, Buck Fletcher.”

  “You don’t worry about your reputation being compromised? I mean, an unmarried lady being up here in a cabin alone with a man and all.”

  “What people say has never bothered me much,” Savannah said, her face suddenly serious. “Anyway, you’ll be my husband real soon.”

  Taken aback, Fletcher choked on a biscuit crumb. When his fit of coughing had passed, he managed: “Who said anything about marriage?”

  “I just did,” Savannah said.

  “But I’m not up for taking a wife. I mean, not now.”

  Savannah bent her head to the bowl of dough in front of her and smiled. “We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

  The days passed slowly, and, thanks in no small measure to Savannah’s cooking and her constant fussing, Fletcher’s strength grew. The wounds in his side and shoulder healed rapidly.

  “Buck, it’s time you went to see Doc Hawthorne and got those stitches removed,” Savannah said one evening after supper. “Maybe we should ride over there tomorrow.”

  Fletcher laid down his book and nodded. “Suits me fine. I have to buy some tobacco anyway.”

  They saddled up next morning under a threatening sky, the black clouds so low they misted the tops of the higher hills. The air was filled with the raw iron smell of snow, and it was bitter cold.

  Fletcher let his sorrel stay with the mares and rode a rangy hammerhead black that had belonged to one of the Lazy R riders.

  They had just crossed Strawberry Creek when the snow started to fall thickly, driven by a relentless wind blowing from the north. Heads down, their faces muffled by woolen scarves, Fletcher and Savannah rode in silence. Around them the hills were hidden behind a constantly shifting curtain of snow, and their horses were beginning to kick through shallow drifts.

  Fletcher turned in the saddle and leaned close to Savannah. “You going to make it?”

  The woman nodded, only her eyes appearing above her scarf. “Nice day for a ride,” she said.

  Fletcher’s grin widened. “Amazing what a man will do when he’s out of tobacco.”

  The main street of Buffalo City was almost deserted when they rode in and left their horses at the livery stable.

  Like Deadwood, the town was built in a gulch, and the high rock walls protected the rickety wood buildings from the worst of the wind. But the snow still gusted in ragged sheets twenty feet high over the parapets of the gulch, falling on the street like goose down from a gigantic burst pillow.

  It wasn’t yet noon, but the day was so dark that some of the oil lamps along the boardwalk had already been lit, their flickering flames setting circles of orange and yellow light to dancing on the front of the buildings.

  After Fletcher and Savannah left the comparative warmth of the livery stable, they walked to Doc Hawthorne’s office, heads bent against the blizzard, and were ushered by the old man into his waiting room.

  “I have a miner with a case of the rheumatisms to see to, and then I’ll be right with you,” Hawthorne said.

  Fletcher sat in a chair beside a cherry-red potbellied stove and picked up a three-day-old copy of the Buffalo City Times, idly flicking through the pages. Savannah, shapeless in a mackinaw, long skirt and boots, studied the pictures on the wall, faded prints of gallant three-masted clipper ships battling through stormy seas.

  Hawthorne appeared after ten minutes and beckoned Fletcher into his surgery, his eyes lingering for a moment on Savannah. “I’m glad to see you took my advice, young man,” he said when they were alone.

  “What was that?” Fletcher asked. “As I recollect, you gave me a lot of advice.”

  “About finding yourself a good woman.”

  Fletcher grinned. “I think she found me.”

  “No matter,” Hawthorne said, unsmiling. “The effect is the same.” He nodded at Fletcher. “Now pull up your shirt, and let me check on my handiwork.”

  After a great deal of tut-tutting, Hawthorne overcame the traditional medical reluctance to pronounce a clean bill of health and was forced to concede that the wound had indeed healed well and that the stitches should come out at once.

  “They won’t smart quite as much coming out as they did going in,” he said.

  “That fills me with reassurance,” Fletcher said.

  The shoulder wound had also healed, though it had left a deep, puckered scar on Fletcher’s shoulder, joining several others just like it he carried on his body.

  As Fletcher was leaving, Doc Hawthorne laid a hand on his arm.

  “Do you recall what I said about uncivilized men civilizing the West with their guns?” he asked.

  Fletcher nodded. “I won’t forget that particular lecture anytime soon, Doc.”

  “Nor should you. Well, now it’s time for you to move on to other things. I believe, in ten years or so, this Territory will achieve statehood. We’ll need men like you, Mr. Fletcher. Oh, not for your guns—that time will have passed—but for your courage and determination and refusal to bend.” He opened the door, allowing a gust of cold air and scattered snowflakes to find their way inside.

  “When statehood comes, we’ll need senators to send to Washington. I’m not stooping to base flattery when I tell you this, but I think you could well be one of them.” He turned to Savannah and smiled. “I predict this man of yours will make his mark one day, but in a way he never imagined.”

  Savannah returned the old physician’s smile. “Doctor, I have no doubt about that. No doubt about that at all.”

  The snow was falling steadily as Fletcher and Savannah left the doctor’s office and stepped onto the boardwalk. There were still few people braving the weather, but a single ox-drawn freight wagon lurched along the almost-deserted street.

  Not for the bullwhacker the comfort of a seat on the wagon box like that provided for mule skinners; he either sat on the tongue or walked alongside his oxen. This man was walking, head bent against the wind, and he looked neither to the right nor the left as his team made their slow, plodding way along the street. Soon they were lost in the swirling white shroud of the snow.

  Fletcher bought a couple of sacks of tobacco at the general store, then suggested to Savannah that they get something to eat before making the long trip back to the Two-Bit.

  The woman nodded. “Hot coffee would taste real good about now.”

  As they walked along the boardwalk, Fletcher noticed two horses tied to the hitching rail outside the bank, and he considered briefly that this was not a day to be doing banking business.

  He soon dismissed the thought and walked past the bank toward the restaurant.

  Suddenly a shot shattered the silence of the morning, then another. From somewhere close by, a man’s voice yelled, “The bank’s being robbed!”

  Fletcher turned and saw two men wearing long dusters and fur hats run from the bank, a sack in each of their hands.

  The men mounted quickly and swung their horses away from the hitching rail, but the taller of the two suddenly reined up and for a moment studied Fletcher closely.

  “You!” he yelled.

  His gun came up very fast as Fletcher drew and fired. The man threw up his hands and tumbled from his horse. The second man was aiming his Colt right at Fletcher, and the gunfighter knew he was going to be a split second late getting his own gun into play.

  Blam!

  A shot sounded close to Fletcher’s ear, and he heard the man yelp and drop his gun into the snow, clutching at his arm. Booted feet sounded on the boardwalk, and several vigilantes appeared, shotguns quickly covering the wounded robber.

  Fletcher t
urned. Savannah stood close to him, her right arm still outstretched, a smoking derringer in her hand.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I figured I was going to be a shade late.”

  Savannah nodded. “I figured that too.”

  Fletcher stepped onto the street. The wounded man on the horse was a youngster he didn’t know. But he recognized the man he’d shot. The robber’s hat had fallen off, exposing close-cropped hair. He looked older and maybe thinner than the last time Fletcher had seen him, but there was no mistaking the blue eyes and the hard gash of a mouth.

  It was Bill Buford, a scarlet circle of blood slowly growing in the middle of his chest, the driving snow already settling over his body.

  “I figured I had you cold, Fletcher,” he said, his face defiant. “Didn’t work out that way.”

  “It seldom does, Buford.”

  It came to Fletcher then that he’d stripped this man of his dignity and now his life, and it was in him to give something back. He smiled and said, “You came close, Wild Bill.”

  The dying man grinned. “Wild Bill ... I like the sound of that.”

  He was still grinning, his eyes gazing blankly at an iron sky, when death took him.

  Fletcher and Savannah shrugged off the thanks of the beaming bank manager, who told them over and over again that they’d saved him from ruination.

  “If you ever need anything in the banking line, don’t hesitate to call on me,” the man said. “My door will always be open.”

  “Right nice feller, wasn’t he?” Fletcher said as he and Savannah stepped into the livery stable.

  The woman smiled. “Try asking him for an unsecured loan. See how nice he is then.”

  Fletcher stood at the door of the stable, glumly studying the worsening blizzard.

  “Maybe we should get rooms at the hotel,” he said, “until this thing blows itself out.”

  Savannah shook her head at him. “No, Buck. I want to go home, home to our cabin on the Two-Bit.”

  She threw her arms around his neck. “Buck Fletcher, from now until the day I die, I never want to be apart from you—not for a day, an hour or a single minute.” Her lips met his, and when she drew away, she whispered, “I love you.”