West of pecos, p.1
West of Pecos, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
DYIN’ IS EASY
“I want no part of this,” Tooley said. He was quaking like an aspen leaf and tears were trickling down his pudgy cheeks.
“Oh, hell,” Cooter said and threw himself to the left, taking his chair with him and drawing as he dived. He was counting on the table to shield him for the second or two it would take to bring his revolver to bear.
But Vantine sprang to one side, drawing as he moved, and he fired as Cooter’s six-gun rose. Cooter shrieked like a gut-shot cougar and tried to steady his arm, and Vantine fired again, fanning the hammer with his left hand. Then he swiveled toward Lester Tooley.
“I can’t draw. I’m too scared.”
“I know.”
Tooley closed his eyes. “Make it quick, will you?”
“Sure,” Vantine said and shot him through the head.
SIGNET
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, February 2005
Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2005
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
eISBN : 978-1-101-17753-2
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THE IMMORTAL COWBOY
This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cow boy.” 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, allowing 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
1
“Are we going to die?” young Sally Waldron asked.
“Don’t talk nonsense, child,” Constance Waldron said. But she had to admit there had been times during their long journey when she thought they might. They had come so far—so very, very far. Day after day, week after week, of lumbering along in their prairie schooner. Of blistering heat and choking dust and the god-awful flies. She dearly wished they had never left their home in Ohio, dearly wished her husband had never heard of Texas.
Tom Waldron was perched on the edge of the seat, his brown eyes fixed straight ahead, his face almost grim. He did not seem to feel it when she put a hand on his arm and gently squeezed.
“Are you all right?” Constance was worried. He had been like this ever since they crossed the Pecos River.
“I’m fine,” Tom said absently.
“Are you sure?”
Tom Waldron turned his gaze from the hazy horizon and looked at his wife. Despite the sheen of sweat on her brow and the stray wisps of sandy hair that had come loose from the bun at the back of her head and the splotches of dirt on her dress, she was as lovely to him as the day he married her. She had made the dress herself, just as she made all their clothes. “Of course I’m sure. What kind of silly question is that?”
Constance’s green eyes flared with fire and she retorted, “Is it silly of a woman to worry about her husband?” Her tone warned Tom he had overstepped himself. She was a feisty woman, his wife, and never afraid to speak her mind.
“Of course not. I have a lot to think about, is all.” It was no excuse and he knew it, and he knew that she knew he knew it, but she had the tact not to dwell on it as some wives were wont to do.
“You still think we’ll find our slice of paradise?”
“As God is my witness,” Tom vowed. But even he could not say where. All he had to go on was a yearning, a sense that somewhere out there was a place they were meant to be. A place where they would set down roots and live out the rest of their days. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Constance smiled. He had been saying the same thing ever since that night almost a year ago when he shocked her by suggesting they sell their small farm and head west into the vast unknown.
“We’re close,” Tom said. “I can feel us getting closer every day.” He resumed staring straight ahead, a big man with broad shoulders and a blue cap on his head, his brown hair a lot longer than it had been when they started.
Constance wished she could feel what he felt. All she felt was tired and worn. More tired and more worn than anytime in her life. Their daily grind was to blame. Every morning they were up at the crack of dawn, and she and the girls prepared breakfast while Tom hitched the team. Then off they went, hour after hour of eating dust and being baked alive by the burning sun. At midday they rested, but only for a short while, long enough for her to slap the dust from her dress and serve something that would tide them over until supper. The afternoon was spent in more monotonous plodding westward. At twilight, Tom would search for a suitable spot to stop for the night. Sometimes there was water; more often there was not, which was why they had to severely ration the water in the barrel on the side of their wagon, to the point where they couldn’t do more than dab at the dirt and the grime. Constance hated it, hated it more than anything, but she endured it for her husband’s sake, and for her family’s.
Tom Waldron felt his wife put her hand on his knee and was spiked by a twinge of conscience. He would never admit as much, but for all his confident talk, he was worried, deeply worried, that he had dragged his loved ones off across the frontier for nothing. He was sure he’d have found a spot he liked by now. A place so special, it would justify uprooting them.
Tom was aware his wife had not approved. She had liked their little farm. Liked her flower garden and the chickens and the few cows they owned, and thought that a hundred acres was plenty enough, thank you very much.
Tom disagreed. He envisioned something better, something greater. He had read of land beyond the Mississippi River, there for the taking. The government offered acreage to anyone who settled, but it was a paltry amount. He had bigger plans. He had some money socked away, enough to make his dream come true.
Tom wasn’t one of those who pined after a million dollars, or a mansion with servants to wait on him hand and foot. His dream was not that grand. All he wanted was a ranch. A sizable ranch of his very own, with enough cattle, so that he and his would never want for the necessities and maybe more than a few luxuries.
His friends thought he was crazy. Fred Dimple down to the feed store told him to his face that he was a damned fool. He was a farmer, not a rancher, and he was taking his family west to get them killed at the hands of marauding hostiles or to have them starve, sacrifice s on the altar of his ignorance. Fred always had a way with words, but Tom refused to listen. He had a dream, and he would follow his dream wherever it led him, and at whatever cost.
“What’s that?” Constance asked, pointing.
Tom blinked, and saw a figure ahead on the baked plain. At first he did not quite know what to make of it. The figure was short and squat and seemed to be some sort of deformed buffalo, but Tom remembered hearing that few buffalo came this far south. Besides, he soon realized the figure had two legs, not four, and that it wasn’t as wide as he thought it was. The heat haze was playing tricks on him.
“It’s a man!” Sally exclaimed. She was ten and the spitting image of her mother, with the same sandy hair and the same green eyes.
“And he’s on foot,” said Heather, their other daughter. At sixteen, she had Tom’s brown hair and brown eyes and a cute cherub face with a button nose. “But what’s that he’s carrying?”
“A saddle,” Tom said. “His horse must have gone lame or died on him.”
“What’s he doing way out here?” Sally wondered.
Tom was tempted to veer wide and avoid him, but the stranger had heard them and stopped and turned. Love thy neighbor, the Good Book said, so Tom kept straight on and soon they were close enough to see him clearly.
Not much over five feet tall, and dressed all in black, the man wore a flat-crowned black hat and black boots with silver spurs. His black saddle was decorated with silver, too, and had a large silver horn, or apple, as Tom believed it was called. But it was not the strange preference for black or the flashy silver that caught Tom’s eye; it was the pearl-handled revolver in a holster high on the man’s right hip. There was something about it, something about the way it was worn, that told Tom the man was not a run-of-the-mill Texan.
The man had set the heavy saddle down and was waiting for them, his face invisible in the shadow of his hat’s wide brim. He did not smile or raise a hand in greeting.
“Is he a cowboy?” Sally asked.
“I don’t think so,” Constance said, and glanced meaningfully at Tom. “Maybe we shouldn’t stop.”
“It wouldn’t be polite.” Tom hauled on the reins. He smiled and looked down into the most piercing gray eyes he had ever seen, eyes so intense, they startled him. “Howdy there, stranger.”
The man’s intent gaze flicked from Tom to his wife to the two girls, who were peeking out behind them. “A rattler got my claybank,” he said.
“What’s a claybank?” Sally asked Tom, but it was the man with the pearl-handled pistol who answered her.
“A horse, girl. Mine was a fine animal. He could go all day and all night. I didn’t like havin’ to blow his brains out.”
“There’s no reason to talk about that,” Constance said stiffly.
The small man in black stared at her a moment, then said, “My apologies, ma’am. I tend to forget how it is with young ones around.”
Tom introduced himself and his family. “You’re lucky we came along when we did. I’d wager there isn’t a town within a hundred miles of here.”
“Vinegar Flats is only ten miles yonder,” the man in black said, with a nod to the west. “I’ll make it by the day after tomorrow, I reckon.”
“Sooner if you go with us,” Tom offered, and was conscious of his wife stiffening beside him. “Throw your saddle in the back and climb on.” He paused. “I didn’t catch your name?”
The man’s gray eyes were fixed on Constance. “I’m obliged. It’s neighborly of you. I hope I’m not imposin’.”
Constance avoided looking at him. “Nonsense,” she said. “We’re happy to extend a helping hand, Mr.—?”
“Folks hereabouts call me Vantine, ma’am.”
“Is that your first or your last name?” Constance asked.
“It’s just how I’m called,” Vantine said, tilting his head. The late-afternoon sun lit a hard face with high cheekbones and thin lips framed by curly hair the color of ripe corn. “You don’t sound happy, ma’am.”
Constance smoothed her dress but she still would not look at him. There was something about those eyes. “My husband has invited you. Mr. Vantine. It would be rude not to accept.”
“It’s just Vantine, ma’am. And I’ve been called a heap of things but never rude to females.” Vantine carried his saddle around to the rear of the prairie schooner and swung it up and in. Then he sauntered to the front, his spurs jangling, and lithely climbed onto the seat.
“I meant you could ride in the back,” Tom said. He was uneasy having the man so close to his wife.
“I like it here better,” Vantine said. “I can see who’s comin’.”
“Who are you expecting way out here in the middle of nowhere?” Constance scoffed. “We haven’t seen a soul in weeks.”
“You’ve been lucky, ma’am,” Vantine said. “Co manches, Kiowas, outlaws, renegades—this country is plumb crawlin’ with curly wolves who would as soon buck you out in gore as look at you.” He nodded at the team. “You’ve been lucky, too, those horses have made it this far. Most folks would use oxen or mules.”
“I picked them on purpose,” Tom said, a trifle defensively. “I’ll need all the horses I can get my hands on when I start my ranch.” He flicked the reins and shouted, “Get along, there!”
The schooner creaked into motion. One of the front axles was in dire need of grease and squeaked like a mouse.
“Homesteaders,” the man in black remarked.
“You make it sound like a disease, Mr. Vantine,” Constance said. “Do you have something against us?”
“Again, it’s just Vantine, ma’am.” He stared at her from under his hat until she looked away; then he said, “I have nothin’ against settlers. It’s just that you’re being damned foolish.”
Sally gasped and Heather laughed and Constance said sharply, “I’ll thank you not to use that kind of language in the presence of a lady and her children. I don’t let my husband do it. I certainly will not let a complete stranger.”
Tom saw Vantine flush red. With anger, he assumed, and he quickly asked, “Why do you think we’re fools? Is it wrong of me to want a better life for my family?”
Vantine sighed. “It’s not wrong at all. But a lot of folks come out here thinkin’ it’s the Promised Land and all they get for their trouble are shallow graves.”
“You’re trying to scare us,” Constance said.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” Vantine admitted. “If you had any sense, you would talk this husband of yours into turnin’ around and headin’ back to wherever you came from. You’ll live longer.”
Constance did not like this little man with his scornful attitude, and she was not one to be belittled. “Who are you to criticize? What have you ever done that entitles you to think we’re idiots?”
“I’m alive,” Vantine said, “and in these parts, that’s sayin’ a lot.” He contemplated his scuffed boots, then said slowly, “It’s nothin’ personal, ma’am. But you don’t belong here. In case you haven’t heard, there’s no law west of the Pecos.”
Tom construed that as a slight. “I can take care of my own, thank you very much. I fought in the war.”
Vantine glanced at the blue cap. “This isn’t Gettysburg or Bull Run. When an hombre’s out to make coyote bait of you, he won’t come marchin’ into your gun sights. He’ll kill you any way he can.”
“Enough talk about killing,” Constance said sternly. She was sorry they had let Vantine ride with them.
For a while, no one said a word. Then Tom cleared his throat and asked, “What was the name of that town you mentioned?”
“Vinegar Flats. But callin’ it a town is a mite much. There’s a saloon and store, and that’s all.”
“A store in the middle of nowhere?” Tom was amazed. “How does the man who owns it make ends meet?”
For some reason Vantine’s mouth quirked upward. “The owner isn’t out to get rich. Maybe two or three times a month travelers like yourselves stop by. I’ve been there before, and it’s a right fine establishment.”
“Are you a cowboy?” Sally piped up from inside the wagon. “A man in Kansas told us there are a lot of cowboys in Texas.”
