Ralph Compton Tucker's Reckoning (9781101607770) Read online

  Tucker finally shifted his eyes from the food, nodded to the bartender. “I’ll take a whiskey. Leave the bottle.” The bartender didn’t move, just stared with that same dark-eyed look of concern. Ah yes. Tucker smiled and nodded, opened his hand to reveal his coins.

  “I can pay. Don’t worry.”

  The bartender placed a gleaming glass and a full bottle before Tucker, who reached for them both. He could taste the stuff already.

  “You should eat first,” said the bartender, sliding the sandwiches toward him. “Eat.” He nodded at the food.

  “Thank you. I . . .” Tucker snatched up a sandwich. Overwhelmed for the moment with so much good fortune, he didn’t know which to reach for first, and ended up trying for both, made a soggy mess of it, and sucked whiskey from the grainy bread, licked drops of if from his beard. He looked up to see the barkeep smiling. The look did wonders for the stony man’s appearance.

  “You’d do best to make up your mind before you start a thing.”

  Tucker paused at that. Truer words. . . , he thought, then took a big bite of soggy beef-and-cheese sandwich and smiled. He was well into his second, chewing and sipping, the whiskey of decent flavor, not that anything resembling such blood fuel wouldn’t be, and softening the meat with the whiskey—his teeth had taken to wobbling at the root lately—when the saloon door opened. The heat of the place, the fine high feeling of food in his gut and whiskey heating his face made Tucker look over toward the door as if he owned the place, and any noise was a distraction to be tolerated, but barely.

  A big man wearing a star filled the doorway. Tucker looked back down to his drink. Then his eyes widened and he said through a mouth half-filled with chewed food, “Sheriff?”

  “Town marshal,” said the man in a big, deep voice.

  “Marshal, then.” Tucker nodded, chewing vigorously. “Good. I was going to go find you after I finished here.”

  The man’s expression didn’t change as he walked closer, arms folded over a broad chest. “What a coincidence.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? You showing up here and all.” Tucker began to get that tight feeling at the back of his neck, creeping up his scalp. Should have gone to the law first thing when he rode into town.

  “No, it’s a coincidence because you say you were looking for me, and I have been looking for you. Didn’t take me too long to find you. Soaks usually end up in a saloon before anywhere else.”

  Slide that one off with a laugh, Tucker, he told himself. He kept chewing, sipped again, then smiled at the man’s approach.

  The man walked closer, leaned one elbow on the bar, his red-and-black-check wool mackinaw peeled back with a meaty fist resting on the man’s solid waist. His knuckles grazed the dark, polished-wood grips of a revolver, snug in a gleaming black holster that creaked with the slightest movement from the big man.

  “Why were you looking for me, Marshal?”

  A meaty finger prodded a fawn wool hat back, revealing a tall hairless forehead, bushy gray eyebrows beneath. “Uh-uh,” he said, shaking the big head slowly, the eyes not moving from Tucker’s. The middle of the lawman’s face bore a thick, gray-daubed mustache, trimmed above the lip but long at the ends, that gave his face a stern look that he had fixed squarely on Tucker.

  “Pardon?”

  “You tell me why it is you were on the scout for me. Once you’ve had your food and drink, that is.” The smile that followed was cold, and tightened the rest of the skin on Tucker’s head, like a sudden whisper in a dark room on a cold night.

  “My horse, she’s poorly.”

  “I know.”

  “So I brought her to the livery. On my way to your office, I . . . I haven’t eaten in days, a week. I don’t recall. I thought I’d fill my belly, warm up.” He lifted the shot glass, his hand trembling.

  “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Warm up.”

  “I am considerably warmer than I have been in a long time, yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, what was it you were coming to see me about?”

  “Well, sir.” Tucker looked at the bartender busying himself at the far end of the bar, clinking noises rising from the glassware he was probably washing. “Marshal, it might be best if we discussed what I have to tell you in private, maybe back at your office.”

  This seemed to be something the big man hadn’t expected hearing. The lawman’s great hairy eyebrows rose, then settled back lower, into a hard state. “I have about had enough of you, soak.” Then the big man reached behind himself, underneath his coat.

  Tucker faced him, backed away, his hands raised. “I’m not looking for any trouble, Marshal. I told you I was—”

  “Shut up.” Then the marshal pulled free a large ebony-handled pistol, a Colt Navy, and set it on the bar top between them, butt facing Tucker. “That look familiar?”

  Tucker stared at it a moment, then nodded, the warmth of the whiskey leaving him. He wasn’t sure how the big man covered the space between them so quickly, but the next thing Tucker knew, a big hand had grabbed him by the back of the head, those thick fingers locked tight in his stringy hair, then bounced his chin on the bar and pushed his head flat against the polished surface. Pulsing starlight filled his eyes, and chimes rang in his head.

  They stood close now, and Tucker saw the man’s gut, solid, but straining at the blue cloth of the shirt, smelled the marshal’s heavy reek of bay rum, coffee, and cigars. Tucker windmilled his arms, swatting at the man, but it was no use. He was too weak and the man was a tree pinning him in place.

  The marshal bent his head down low, the mustache moving like a gray snake. “This look familiar to you? Hmm?” He didn’t wait for a response. “See them initials? P.F.? Know what they stand for?” The man spoke in a grunt through gritted teeth, spittle flecked at Tucker’s face. “They’re the initials of my best friend, fella by the name of Payton Farraday.”

  He held Tucker, pinned in place, for a few more moments, then released him, flinging him back against the bar. “And you can bet your ass we’re going to my office. Some folks call it the jail.”

  The marshal stuffed the big pistol back into his waistband, grabbed Tucker by the neck, and drove him toward the door. Tucker, already dizzy from the whiskey and his chin throbbing from meeting the bar, lurched a couple of steps, then sprawled face-first on the floor.

  He flipped over and scrambled backward to the wall beside the door. “There’s been a mistake, Marshal. I—”

  The big man advanced on him. “No mistake. A dirt-poor stranger comes into town selling my dead friend’s pistol?”

  “What . . . how did you know he’s dead?”

  “You don’t think I’d not investigate such a thing as that gun turning up without its proper owner holding it?”

  Tucker got his feet under him and slid up against the wall until he stood, eye-height, facing the lawman. “But . . . just seeing the gun doesn’t mean he’s dead. How did you know he was dead? I left him there, but that was miles back. . . .”

  “Two men happened to be heading through there on their way back to town. Didn’t have a third horse to bring him in on, figured to send a wagon back for him.” He shook his head. “That ain’t the way, just ain’t the way.”

  Tucker felt the cold creep of soberness wrap itself around his guts, leach its way into every inch of him. “Those men . . . what do they look like, Marshal?”

  The big man smiled, shook his head. “You going to stand there and tell me I’m wrong, I suppose? Not going to make it easy on me, huh? No, I guess you wouldn’t at that.”

  “Make what easy, Marshal? I saw two men kill him, shot him in the back, then in the gut. . . .”

  “Oh, two men, huh? You mean, like the ones who work for this town? Is that what you are telling us? You really want to air this out here? Fine with me. Then
all the folks here at the Ringing Belle can say they saw me drag off the murderer of one of the decentest men who ever drew a breath in the Rogue Valley.”

  “Murderer?” It leaked out as barely a whisper, as if he’d been punched. Tucker shook his head hard and fast. “No, no way, Marshal. I may be a lot of things, but I never murdered anyone.” He had to think, had to fix this thing somehow, but damn it, his head was fuzzy. None of this made any sense. “No, look, Marshal, I never killed him. It’s just like I said. I saw him—”

  The marshal drew his sidearm and leveled it at Tucker’s head. “I daresay there ain’t a person in this town who’d try to stop me or hold a grudge for what I am about to do. Ain’t nobody of consequence in here anyhow. My word against theirs.” He cocked the hammer back fully, his big face red and shaking with rage.

  Now that he was one quick stroke of the big angry man’s fingertip from what he’d been chasing for two years, Samuel Tucker found he did not want death. Not at that moment anyway, and not for being blamed for something he didn’t do. He wanted it on his own terms.

  “Marshal, this is not right.” It was the bartender, his muscular hands planted on the bar, no gun in sight, but he stared hard at the lawman.

  “Like I said, ain’t a soul of any worth in here anyhow. Certainly not a worthless, no-account breed of a breed.” He glanced back toward the grizzled old character in the back. The man looked at his bottle, at his glass, his hands, but never once met the lawman’s gaze.

  The barman persisted. “You have no proof yet that this man killed Mr. Farraday.”

  “Just who in the hell made you circuit judge?”

  “I ask you the same thing, Marshal.”

  “You are one uppity breed—you know that? But you are a mind-sticker. Sort of fella I won’t forget.” The marshal winked at the bartender, then sighed and eased the hammer back down. He lowered the pistol and smiled. “Okay, then. We’ll play it your way. Turn around and head on out of here. But if you move yourself in any direction but the jail, you best have made peace with whatever god it is that soaks worship, because you will die in your tracks, boy. So help me, on Payton’s grave, you will die.”

  As he walked out the door and down the three steps to the street, Tucker noted how dark the sky had become—and how many people were gathered in the street. At the big man’s nod, Tucker headed for the well-lit office diagonally across the street from the Ringing Belle.

  “Nice and slow, soak. We are about to have us a nice chat.”

  Tucker risked a glance back behind him, and saw the bartender standing on the raised sidewalk, staring at them. The crowd parted and most everyone stared, brows knitted in confusion, some looking at Tucker as if he were a pile of steaming dung.

  “Nothing to see here, folks. Got us a killer, is all. A cold-blooded, foul murderer.” The marshal prodded Tucker in the lower back with his boot, sent him to his knees on the step up to the front door of the jail. “Get up and open that door, soak. We got us some discussing to get to.”

  They entered and the marshal jerked his chin toward a wooden chair before a desk stacked high with papers, boxes of cartridges, a hat, and other assorted items.

  “Take a seat, soak.”

  “My name is Samuel Tucker.”

  The marshal shouted out the door, “Everything’s under control, folks. Just go on about your business. I’ll see to it that justice is served. It’s what I’m paid for, after all.”

  He shut the door, holstered his pistol, and slammed the inside shutters on both barred front windows flanking the door, dropping a steel bar in place across each. That finished, he stood before the seated Tucker, arms folded, and smiling hard down at him. “I don’t give a fiddler’s fart just what your name is. You are the buzzard who murdered my friend.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Marshal—”

  The marshal lunged at Tucker, drove his fist hard at his head, and knocked him backward in the chair. “I am afraid you won’t last till the trial, soak.”

  On the floor, Tucker’s head rang louder than ever, tones like those of an Indian flute whistled in his head, and the edges of his vision blackened. He tried to rise, but the marshal set a boot on his chest.

  “You going to kill me now—is that it, Marshal?”

  “Something like that. But slow, so you learn some sort of lesson before you up and die on me.”

  Before Tucker could respond, the big man had dragged him upright, and pinning him by the throat against the wall, laid into him with punch after punch to the breadbasket, his gut, his head. Tucker felt something pop in his chest, figured it was at least a rib or two, and try as he might he couldn’t make his arms do anything more than get themselves bruised in the process. So this is it, he thought. In my prime I could have been the match of any man in this town, and probably this man too. But now two years of booze and little else have reduced me to taking a beating and unable to fight back.

  Then a thought came to him. “Don’t you . . . don’t you want to know what he said? Before he died? Your friend, Payton Farraday . . . He spoke before he died.”

  As if he’d said magical words, the pummeling ceased. Tucker saw the marshal in twos and threes, the shapes of him blurring, coming together, then separating again, like cards in a deck sliding apart, shuffling. It seemed funny somehow.

  Then the big man’s face was right in front of his own, their noses touching. “What did he say, soak?” Again, the man spoke through gritted teeth, his big face trembling with rage. He wasn’t even breathing hard from the beating he’d been doling out.

  “I . . . ” Tucker swallowed back blood, ran his tongue around his mouth. The teeth were all there, but looser than ever. Now, that was funny. He almost laughed, and then the lawman shook him like a doll.

  “Speak or I’ll rip your head from your body.”

  “Uh-uh, not until you stop this. Put me in a cell, but stop this.” He ran his tongue over his split bottom lip, tasted blood. “I deserve a trial and you know it. I can prove I didn’t do it.”

  The man bellowed like a bull grizzly, then slammed Tucker’s head into the timber wall again and let him drop in a heap. Tucker heard him walk away, rummage in the desk, then come back with what sounded like keys. Tucker tried to see, but his eyes were beginning to swell. The marshal grabbed him by the back of his shirt. The ragged old garment rode up, bunching under Tucker’s arms as the lawman dragged him down a hallway, unlocked a door, swung it open, then dragged him another dozen feet into a darker space and dropped him. The marshal unlocked a cell door, squawked it wide.

  Tucker felt himself being lifted. Once again the man’s face was close to his. Through the blood and sweat, Tucker could smell the man’s anger, like the scent a cornered cougar gives off, raw and rank. But there was something else too. Was it fear he smelled? Raw animal fear?

  “You going to talk, soak?”

  Tucker managed to shake his head once back and forth before another fist, hard like a river rock, drove into his temple. And the last word on his mind was fear. But not his own.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Arliss? Did my uncle tell you when he expected to be back from town?” Emma Farraday gripped the middle rail of the stall and stretched her back. It had been another long day at the Farraday spread. If they had many more weeks like this one, they’d head into the winter in the worst shape they’d ever been in. And as much as she hated to admit it, that was no place they wanted to be—up against a whole lot of snow and a range half-full of stock, mixed at that, and with no hands, save for her and Arliss and Uncle Payton.

  “I bet he’s visiting with Louisa,” said Emma, a smile cracking the dust and grit that had settled on her face throughout the long workday. She straightened up and tugged a glove off one hand. Her red-blond hair, the rich hue of a honeyed sunset, had loosened from the leather thong that held it tied in back. She rubbed her scalp and s
hook loose her long hair.

  “How come he didn’t talk with me before he went off anyway? You’d think he was fixing to do something that—” The thought stilled her. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t . . . “Arliss?” Emma continued. “Tell me Uncle Payton didn’t go to town to talk with that foul Bentley Grissom.” She turned, looked toward the tack room. “Arliss? Are you in there?”

  An old man came out, face sunken from a lack of teeth, his chin bristling with salted whiskers. “I heard ya the first time.”

  “Then why didn’t you answer me?”

  He looked at her, eyes wide. “Well, pardon me for a month of Sundays, but a man gets peppered with questions like grapeshot, you think he has time to cogitate on ’em? I got but one thinker.” He tapped a long finger to his temple. “And it ain’t used to such attacks. Now start at the beginning and we’ll work our way through whatever it is you are hounding me about.”

  Emma tugged off her other glove and tried to hide her smirk.

  “You laugh all you want to, but I’m telling you like I told your pappy and I tell your uncle, there ain’t no good can come of a man overtaxing his thinker. Mark my words.” He resumed tapping the side of his head as if it were a pleasant habit. “You think it does Payton any good? Naw, hell no. He says he wakes up in the morning feelin’ like he ain’t moving fast enough. Can you imagine?” The old man’s nose wrinkled as if he’d stepped in a gut pile.

  “As a matter of fact, Arliss, I can. That’s how I feel all the time. But I can’t do it if he’s going to go off and borrow money against the land. Being in debt is no way to live.”

  “Now you sound like your pappy. He was a good man, but when it come to such matters, even if they asked my thoughts, I just stayed out of it.”

  “So you don’t know if he went to talk with Grissom.”

  “I didn’t say that.” The old man turned away, then kept turning and ended up facing her again. “And I didn’t say I did know neither.” He wagged a finger at her as if scolding her.