Ralph Compton Thirteen Bullets Read online

  The Enemy Within

  The other man silently took a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat and held it out. Dan squinted. The cigarette fell out of his mouth.

  “Huh,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “It was on my desk,” Kingsley said tightly.

  “ ‘You have more money than the price on your head. Bring ten thousand dollars to the top of Alexander’s Hill,’ ” Dan read, a look of wonder on his face. “I’ll be damned.” He snorted. “They found you.”

  “What’s to be done?” Kingsley asked tersely.

  Dan shrugged and handed the note back. “I’ll have a look around. Breathe, Kingsley. They ain’t wanting you dead. If they can put that in your house without anyone knowing, killing you would’ve been easy.”

  They’d gotten past him. Dan scowled at the note; its mere existence hurt his pride. He stepped down off the porch, going into the dark.

  For two full hours, he prowled the grounds. From the trees he could see the big house, still all lit up, and shadows moving past the windows, all the people inside. First, he searched without a light, but found no one—and if there had been someone to find, he would have. Then he prowled with a lantern, but found no tracks that didn’t belong and no sign of anything unusual.

  So no one had stolen onto the property, crept through the woods, and spirited in and out of the house to deliver this letter. That meant it had come from someone already inside. . . .

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2022 by The Estate of Ralph Compton

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780593334188

  First Edition: May 2022

  Cover design by Steve Meditz

  Book design by George Towne, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Immortal Cowboy

  Part One: The Thirteenth Client

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two: The Thirteenth Season

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Part Three: Landslide

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  About the Author

  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  PART ONE

  THE THIRTEENTH CLIENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  The pitiful door was so short that Dan almost had to duck to get through, pulling it shut behind him. The whole place was like that, built of poor wood that almost seemed to rot away in front of his very eyes. It creaked like an old sailing ship.

  The hotel was still better off than the man Dan had left in that room, who would likely die soon from the bullet in his leg. Dan stood for a moment in the hallway, gazing at the door, then at the floor, as whoever played the piano downstairs missed a note.

  There was no point in staying. He was reasonably good at a number of things, but healing the sick wasn’t one of them. He’d sat through more than a few Bible lessons as a boy, but they hadn’t taught him to do miracles.

  His boots dragged on the threadbare rug as he went dejectedly to the stairs and started down, only to pause again with his eye on the boy down below. The kid had been about to climb up, but now he just stood there, his eyes on Dan, the awful piano banging on their eardrums. At least the smell of stale beer on the first floor wasn’t as bad as the odor of a festering wound on the second.

  Dan set his jaw and went on down. That broke the kid out of his trance, and he bumped past Dan as he ran up the stairs. Was it bad luck to leave a man that way, dying in his bed? It almost had to be.

  The air outside wasn’t fresh, but it was cold, and that was an improvement. Croshank was the soggiest, sorriest excuse for a camp that Dan had ever seen. This evening he was miserable enough that things like that didn’t bother him so much. The dark was coming on so fast that it was hard not to wonder what the hurry was, and imminent rain was thick on the breeze.

  Dan stepped down off the porch, his boots squelching in the mud.

  Lots of people lingered outdoors, even with a storm coming, more than there’d been an hour ago, and they
were unusually interested in the joint that Dan had just walked out of. The only explanation was that there was something interesting to see. Men, women, and even some children peered at him, and that could only mean that he’d been recognized. Of all the times to have people staring. His suit was rumpled, his waistcoat was missing a button, and he’d misplaced his watch.

  He trudged to Petunia with all those eyes on him, and she snorted and gave him a look. He rubbed the gray mare’s neck and didn’t look back at the tumbledown hotel behind him, but the piano in there wouldn’t let him forget about it. Worse, it drowned out the fiddle being played in the hotel across the street, if street was even the word. It was more like a swamp, and if a big rain fell, it was liable to become a river.

  The mare was nakedly irate, and Dan felt the same way. They both wanted out of this place, but just the thought of climbing into the saddle and riding into that storm—it made his body feel so heavy that the prospect wasn’t even on the table. Petunia wanted to leave, but she had to rest. It had been a long, hard ride to get here ahead of Tom Calvert.

  Dan’s hat was in his other hand; he’d forgotten to put it back on. Now the first raindrop struck his head.

  He beckoned to the boy in the stable, which was by far the sturdiest building in sight. The boy hurried over, trying to hide his apprehension.

  “Put her up,” Dan grunted, handing over the reins. If he just kept his eyes ahead, he could almost pretend that there was nothing behind him.

  Dan began the slog across the way to the other hotel; neither one of them had a sign to let anyone know what they were called.

  Thunder rumbled, but it was another sound that caught Dan’s attention. He stopped short, skin hot, fingertips tingling.

  It came again, and he looked to his right. Coat matted and fangs out, the cat cowered between the legs of the trough outside the stable, staring at him. It was dark down there, and that made it difficult to say—but no, the fur wasn’t black, Dan was fairly certain; it just looked that way in the gloom.

  The bedraggled creature hissed at him.

  “Don’t you do that again,” he warned.

  If the crowd hadn’t been staring before, they would now that he stood in the open without even his hat on, talking to a cat.

  The cat hissed again and Dan hurried the rest of the way, stepping up and kicking a little of the mud off his boots as the gawkers moved aside. He pushed his way through the doors with a little more strength than necessary so they banged noisily against the walls. His nerves weren’t frayed; they’d just given up.

  He went straight to the fire and dropped like a dead man into the armchair there, and it wailed and sagged so badly that it very nearly became a bed. He slouched, his eyes on the flames. At least the chimney worked; the only smoke in the room was from tobacco. He wanted to smoke, but didn’t have it in him to roll a cigarette. He’d quit chewing, but maybe it was time to start again.

  The rain began suddenly, pounding the hotel like a drummer with a grudge. The man behind the bar ambled over.

  “Mr. Karr?” he said.

  It wasn’t the first time that a stranger had known his name, but it hadn’t happened so many times that Dan was accustomed to it. It was because he hadn’t worn his hat—that was the problem. He wasn’t the only tall man on Earth, but folks had a way of remembering his red hair.

  “Do you need some supper?” the barman asked.

  “I need a drink.”

  “I have dark beer. And firewater.”

  This camp wasn’t even a mile from the railroad, and there was no whiskey?

  “Whiskey is in some demand,” the barman said apologetically.

  Dan took a deep breath and peered around at the filthy taproom. There was no faulting the folks who lived around here for taking all the good drink for themselves. He’d have done the same.

  “Not the beer,” Dan grunted.

  The barman brought him a glass of something, and one sniff made his nose hurt and his eyes water.

  The man still hovered beside the chair. Dan looked up at him.

  “My girl is occupied. I have another, but she has trouble with the bottle,” the man said, twisting his hand towel between his hands. “I’m told she’s done poorly today, and I do not think she will work tonight. I apologize.”

  “I don’t need company,” Dan replied, rubbing his eyes.

  The barman still didn’t leave.

  “Of any kind,” Dan added, but the man didn’t take the hint.

  “Is it true you killed Tom Calvert,” the barman asked, finally giving in to his curiosity, “and that is why you cannot bodyguard for gamblers no more?”

  Dan’s first impulse was to deny it, but the statement wasn’t exactly false—it just wasn’t true yet. The residents were unaware that Tom Calvert was still alive or that he was here in their camp. But he would die from that bullet in his leg, and Dan had been the one to put it there.

  What a thing: Tom Calvert the gambler had gotten here without anyone recognizing him, but people recognized Dan.

  “I’ll have another,” Dan said, holding up his empty glass.

  The barman looked taken aback. Dan glanced over his shoulder.

  “And tell them to quit staring,” he added.

  “Yes, sir. I will have a room prepared.”

  The storm didn’t let up as the barman brought him a second drink, then mercifully let him be. Dan took a sip and balanced the glass on the arm of the chair, then leaned forward with a grimace, reaching into his jacket to get the revolver that was stowed in the small of his back. It was the heavy Army pistol that he’d taken from Tom’s room. It was hurting his back in this chair. He pushed it down between the cushion and the arm and settled back with his drink.

  The firewater acted quickly. A gentle haze drifted over his mind, and while it couldn’t kill the melancholy, it did soften it. The fire crackled almost musically, but the noise of the downpour made everything else pointless; there was no hope of hearing music, talking, or whatever went on in the rooms upstairs. That was about as pleasant as Dan could hope for, or it would’ve been if the place wasn’t so leaky. Icy water dripped on his knee, and he grudgingly moved his leg out of the way.

  Tom was across the street, dying, and Dan was here, sinking deeper into this chair. The glass was empty again. He couldn’t coax or lull his mind to sleep, but maybe he could drown it. Drink was a thick woolen blanket providing comfort and hiding away all the things he couldn’t be bothered with—yet even that heavy blanket and the sound of the storm couldn’t block out the footsteps coming for him.

  Dan didn’t care enough to even tense up, so it was just as well that the soaking man who stepped in front of him looked about as threatening as a newborn puppy. His sodden striped suit was as fine as any that Tom Calvert had ever worn, and his watch chain caught the firelight beautifully. Dan tried to gauge his age; he himself would be thirty-one in December, and this man had to be a little older. He’d gotten a little scratch on his face, which wasn’t bleeding so much, although the rain might’ve washed the blood away. His clothes were in total disarray.

  He looked scared. All he needed was a hat to twist between his hands, but he didn’t have a hat at all—just his damp hair, starting to thin a bit. He pushed it out of his eyes.

  “Mr. Karr,” he said with only a bit of tremble in his voice. It was as though he expected the Almighty Himself to kick in the door and put a bullet in him.

  Dan tiredly turned his head to look over his shoulder. The taproom was almost placid, likely due to the storm. There was no danger. What the hell was this man so bent out of shape over?

  “Mr. Karr,” the man repeated.

  “What?” Dan replied. The firewater hadn’t extinguished his irritability, but it had taken a bite out of it.

  “I would like to hire you. Immediately. My name is George Kingsley.” He said it as though he expe
cted people to give a damn—and maybe that was fair. People had looked at Dan Karr with interest, and now the people in the taproom looked at Kingsley in a similar way. He was known to them.

  Dan went to rub his face but paused, alarmed at the way his hand swam in front of his eyes and by the detail that he appeared to have nine fingers. He blinked a few times and glanced at the empty glass.

  “I ain’t for hire,” he said about to wave his hand to shoo the man away, but he thought better of it. It wouldn’t be prudent to do too much moving, and seeing his arm multiply might make him ill.

  Kingsley looked uncomprehending.

  “I have heard your name said and seen it printed,” he said. “I was to believe that your vocation is to protect those in need of protection for a price. And I will pay,” he said earnestly.

  “I ain’t for hire now,” Dan clarified.

  “Are you presently engaged?” Kingsley pressed, confusion on his face.

  It was Dan’s turn to look lost. He spread his hands. “Do I look like a man who is engaged? What do I need with a wife?”

  Kingsley blinked. “My meaning is—are you employed? If so, I will outbid your employer. Handsomely.” His hands were clenched.

  “No, I ain’t employed. I just ain’t hiring.”

  “Well, why not?” the other man growled, losing his composure for a moment.

  This wasn’t the first man to try to hire Dan since he’d shot Tom, but it was the first time one of them had had the spine to ask that question to his face. He gazed past Kingsley at the fire and threw what little strength he had into something like a shrug.

  “I’ve had twelve jobs bodyguarding. I take another and it’ll go bad,” he grumbled.

  Kingsley squinted at him, his face screwed up in bafflement. “What? Is that—is that superstition?” His nerves had vanished, replaced by disbelief and a hint of disdain.

  “What if it is?” Dan replied defensively.