Hard Ride to Wichita (24 page)

“I need to finish this,” Luke said.

“It's already finished. Just let him go,” Carlo said.

Granger's mouth was still forming words, but he didn't have any more air in his lungs to give them sound.

The shooting stopped as the last of the soldiers were cleaned out.

Granger's life seeped away as he lay in the bloody dirt.

The camp burned.

And, for the first time since losing what he'd held most precious in this world, Luke cried.

Plumes of smoke drifted up from two separate spots on the horizon as a third fire crackled behind Luke's back. The sky was dark, but clear enough for him to see the vague, misty remnants of the fires that had consumed Granger's camp as well as the Red Bison. Along with the crackling of the nearby campfire, several young men's voices could be heard as they excitedly swapped stories regarding the day's events. Luke had been told about the raid on the Red Bison before he'd wandered off to be on his own. All that mattered to him now was that Granger and his men were truly gone. All of them.

Before long, Red was escorted by Carlo and another man to the spot where Luke sat. “They're tellin' me I missed everything,” Red said while rubbing the spot where he'd been knocked. “That really true?”

“I wish it weren't,” Luke replied. “Because that way I wouldn't have had to drag your sorry carcass through all those fires.”

“I recall running,” Red said. “Was that just a dream?”

“No, I suppose not. You were shuffling your feet for a while, but it wasn't anything close to running.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose I should thank you.” Rather than make it official, Red nudged his friend and called it a day. Both knew they owed each other so much. Saying it out loud was just beating a dead horse.

“Here,” Carlo said as he handed over the Colt. “You never took this back.”

“Keep it,” Luke said.

“You're through with guns?”

“I didn't say that. I just want you to have that one. It should serve you pretty well.”

“Thanks,” Carlo said as he holstered the Colt at his side. “It already has. Tomorrow most of us are heading west through the state. New orders. Frank here will see that you get home safely.”

“We know the way back to Maconville on our own,” Luke told him.

Frank shook his head. “You'll need someone to watch out for Union troops or lawmen. After you've been seen in our company, folks will be out to hang you. Besides, we've got some personal matters to attend in Missouri, so we'll be riding within a stone's throw of Maconville.”

Looking over to Red, Luke asked, “How many will be riding with us?”

“Just me and my brother.” Turning toward the fire, Frank motioned to one of the other raiders. The young man who joined them was the one with the clean-shaven face and piercing gaze who'd charged through the camp firing two guns with his horse's reins gripped in his teeth. When Frank draped an arm over his shoulder, the young man lost some of the intensity that had been burning within him. Handling the raider in the roughshod manner of one brother to another, Frank shoved him around as if the other man were nothing but a rambunctious kid.

“This here is Frank and Jesse James,” Carlo said. “Frank, Jesse, this is Luke Croft and Red Connover.”

“Hell of a ride you made through that camp,” Luke said.

Jesse nodded once. “We been trying to hunt down Captain Granger for months. Thanks to you, we could finally put him six feet under where he belongs. You handled yourself pretty well. Maybe you should forget about Maconville and ride with us.”

“I don't know about that,” Luke replied.

“Well, any friend of Carlo's is a friend of ours,” Frank said. “My stomach feels like it's got a hole in the bottom of it, so I'm going to get some more of that venison before it gets eaten up.”

Frank and Jesse both made their way back to the fire.

“Think I'll join 'em,” Red said. “I'm famished.”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Sleeping all day while the world burns down around you will do that.”

Red deflected that barbed comment with a grunting wave and hurried off to claim his share of venison.

After a few seconds without hearing any more steps, Luke asked, “You were telling the truth before about wanting to get out of the country, weren't you?”

“You think too much. That keeps getting you into trouble.”

Shaking his head, Luke said, “No. I'm right. You wanted out, and Granger was the one who was going to get you away from here.”

“That's just what I told you so you would help me find Granger,” Carlo said. “Sorry about the lie, but it was necessary.”

“I think that was the truth and you had to change plans once the rest of those Quantrill men caught up to you.”

“What makes you think I was trying to get away from them?”

“Because you were hiding when I found you.”

“That's just a system me and Frank use,” Carlo explained. “We're on the run from law and soldiers alike, so if we're in a new town we hole up in the dirtiest stable we can find like a vagrant and wait for the other to come along.”

“That may be, but if you were waiting for someone, you wouldn't have left with me and Red to go to Wichita.”

“I was hunting Granger. You want proof? Just look back to what's left of that camp.”

“You were more concerned about paying him for your ticket onto that boat,” Luke said with absolute certainty. “Once I told you I knew where Granger was, you could have just ridden off, met up with your friends, and gone to see him yourself. You didn't need me unless you truly were on your own. And before you try to say you just needed my money, I'm sure these men have plenty of it to spare after all the looting they've done.”

“You're not going to let this drop, are you?”

“Nope.” Looking over to Carlo, Luke added, “Not until you admit that I'm right.”

Carlo looked straight back at him. “You're not right . . . about everything. But as far as me wanting out of this contingent goes, yeah. I suppose you are.”

“Can't you just ride away?” Luke asked in a whisper. “Does Quantrill keep you men prisoner?”

“No. We're not prisoners. We are wanted, though. And these men aren't the kind who take it lightly when someone cuts and runs. I had a chance to split off on my own and I did my best to make certain I wasn't being followed. That's why I was staying in those stables. If Frank or any of these others were on my tail, they'd find me and I'd know I couldn't just do what I pleased.”

“Best to look like you're going along with them right until you can split off for good,” Luke said. “Makes sense.”

“You're not the only one who thinks things through, kid,” Carlo said while nudging him with his elbow.

“You could still get away from all of this. You're smart enough to figure something out.”

“I wanted to say the same to you. Only I was hoping you were smart enough to recognize when you had a perfect opportunity to leave and when it was too late to do so.”

Luke gazed up at the stars. “There isn't much of anything for me to go back to in Maconville. Red wanted to enlist with the Union army, but after what we've seen here I'd say we've both got a bad taste in our mouths from them blue uniforms.”

“This is war, kid. There's plenty of ugliness on both sides of the fence. Believe me,” Carlo said while glancing quickly toward the fire to make sure they were still alone. “I've seen more ugliness than I can stomach.”

“I say take your chances in getting out.”

“I will, but I need to wait for another opportunity. Any of us who rode under Quantrill's flag will be hunted long after this war is over, I reckon. You also got a choice to make.”

“I think, with a bit more experience under my belt, I could make a good gunman. I was rattled now and again, but that's only because it was all so strange. That'll pass in time.”

“Why would you want it to pass?” Carlo asked. “You've been through a tough stretch and you saw justice done to the men who hurt your family. This is over. You can go back to a quiet life. Some of us fight awfully hard for that same chance.”

“I've been safe my whole life. Well,” Luke added with a laugh, “until lately. I don't want to go back to a life in a quiet town with nothing happening. I like the notion of riding out, taking what I want, and fighting for what I need. I know I can survive out there, and I think Red is thinking along the same lines.”

“I know all that too. That's what scares me.” Drawing a deep breath, Carlo let it out amid wisps of steam from the chilly night air. “I can't sway you right now. The blood's still racing after all that shooting and things are still twisted around from what happened. Maybe you need to wander around and fend for yourself for a bit, but do me a favor and think twice before you decide to live your life by the gun. While you're at it, think three times.” Carlo stuck out his hand and asked, “We got a deal?”

Luke reached for the hand being offered, but he didn't shake it just yet. “I'll think things over, but I'm not going back to Maconville for a while.”

Carlo started to say something else but stopped short when he heard footsteps approaching. Jesse walked over to them carrying a tin plate of food in one hand and a fork in the other. “Did I hear something about you not going to Maconville?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Luke replied. “But I'd still like to ride with you men for a while.”

“Red was saying the same thing,” Jesse replied in between scooping food from his plate into his mouth.

Carlo stuck his hand out a bit farther. “Just promise me you'll think things over like I asked.”

Luke shook his hand. “I promise.”

“Don't worry none,” Jesse said through a gravy-stained smirk. “Me and Frank will keep an eye on him. Take both of 'em under our wings nice and proper just like Bill Anderson did to me when I first signed up with this contingent.”

Carlo put on a tired smile and let go of Luke's hand. He'd done all he could for now and things had turned out better than they could have. Still, he had an uneasy feeling when he thought about where Luke's and Red's trails might lead. Then again, he'd also seen the two young men push through a whole lot of strife and come out the other side better for the journey. In the end, every man, young or old, rode his own trail. However hard that trail became depended on circumstance as well as that man's character. Carlo could only wish Luke and Red luck with their circumstances and have faith in their character.

Read on for an excerpt

from the Spur Award–winning

Tucker's Reckoning

A Ralph Compton Novel by Matthew P. Mayo

Available now in paperback and e-book.

Despite the creeping cold of the autumn afternoon in high country, and the feeling in his gut as if an irate lion cub were trying to claw its way out, Samuel Tucker reckoned that starving to death might not be an altogether unpleasant sensation. Of course, the warm light-headedness he was feeling might also have something to do with the last of the rotgut gargle he'd been nursing since he woke up.

He regarded the nearly empty bottle in his hand and shrugged. “No matter. Finally get to see you again, Rita, and little Sammy. My sweet girls . . .”

Even the horse on which he rode, Gracie, no longer perked her ears when he spoke. At one time a fine mount, she was now more bone than horse. The sorrel mare plodded along the lush valley floor, headed northward along the east bank of a river that, if Tucker had cared any longer about such things, he would know as Oregon's Rogue River. All he knew was that he'd wandered far north. And he didn't care.

His clothes had all but fallen off him; his fawn-colored, tall-crowned hat, a fine gift from Rita, had disappeared one night in an alley beside a gambling parlor in New Mexico. The top half of his once-red long-handles, now pinked with age and begrimed with Lord knows what, and more hole than cloth, served as a shirt of sorts. Ragged rough-weave trousers bearing rents that far south had invited welcoming breezes now ushered in the frigid chill of a coming winter in high country. And on his feet, the split, puckered remnants of boots. These were the clothes Tucker had been wearing the day his Rita and little Samantha had . . .

At one time, though, Samuel Tucker had cut a fine figure around Tascosa, Texas. With his small but solid ranch, and with a wife and baby daughter, he'd been the envy of many. But that was in the past, before the sickness. . . .
Mercy,
thought Tucker,
two years and I can't think of it without my throat tightening.

“At least I don't have to worry about being robbed,” he said aloud. His laugh came out as a forced, thin sound that shamed him for a flicker of a moment. Then once again he no longer cared.

The land arched up before him in a gentle rise away from the river. Here and there, trees close by the river for the past half mile had been logged off some years before, leaving a stump field along the banks. Ragged branches long since cleaved from the vanished timber bristled upward among still-green undergrowth seeming to creep toward him. He traveled along the river, and the gradually thickening forest soon gave way to an upsloping greensward just beginning to tinge brown at the tip.

He was about to pitch the now-empty bottle in the rushing brown flowage off to his left when the crack of a gunshot halted him. It came from somewhere ahead. Even Gracie looked up. Two more shots followed.

Curiosity overrode his drunken lethargy and the pair, man and horse, roused themselves out of their stupor and loped up the last of the rise. They found themselves fifty yards from an unexpected sight: two men circling one. The man in the center, a wide-shouldered brute wearing a sheepskin coat, sat tall astride a big buckskin. He held in one hand what looked to be a substantial gun, maybe a Colt Navy, but appeared to have trouble bringing it to bear on the two men, who took care to keep their own horses dancing in a circle around the big man. He tried to do the same, tugging feebly at his reins.

What was wrong with the man? Tucker wondered. Was he drunk? He acted as much. And then Tucker got his answer. The man jigged his horse again, and the big horse tossed its head and stepped hard. Then Tucker saw the red pucker, blackened at the edges. The man had been shot in the back.

One of the other men shouted, then shot the big man's hand. It convulsed and the pistol dropped. The shooter's companion, thin and sporting a dragoon mustache and a flat-crowned black hat with what looked like silver conchos ringing the band, laughed, looking skyward. As he brought his head back down, his laughter clipped short. He leveled his pistol on the big man in the sheepskin coat.

One shot to the gut and the victim hunched as if he were upheaving the last of a long night's binge. He wavered in the saddle. The man looked so fragile to Tucker. It did not seem possible that this was happening right there before him.

The first shooter howled this time. Then he rode up close, reached out with his pistol barrel like a poking finger, and pushed the man's shoulder. That was all it took. The big man dropped like a sack of stones to the grass. The buckskin bolted and the black-hatted man leveled his pistol at it, but the other shouted something, wagged his pistol in a calming motion, and they let the beast run. It thundered off, tail raised and galloping, toward where Tucker had intended to ride. How far was the man's home place? Was he even from around here?

With a bloodied hand planted in the grass, the big man forced himself up on one knee. He gripped his gut, his sheepskin coat open, puckered about his gripping hand. From beneath the clawed fingers oozed thick blood that drizzled to the grass. Where did the man get his strength? Didn't he know that he was as good as dead, but just didn't yet realize it?

The man had lost his hat in his fall, and a breeze from the north tumbled it a few strides away. His head was topped with a thick thatch of white hair trimmed close on the sides, but the face beneath was a weathered mask, harder than leather, as if carved from wood. And it was the big man's face that froze Tucker. The man had been back-shot, gut-shot, and more, but his expression bore unvarnished rage. Bloody spittle stringed from his bottom lip, his eyes squinted up at his attackers, both a-horseback a few feet away, staring down at him.

Tucker was too far to hear their words, but he heard the jabs and harsh cut of their voices. These were angry men, all three. But a gut feeling told Tucker that the man on the ground had been wronged somehow.

Surely I should do something, say something,
thought Tucker. Then he realized that if he did, he too would die. Gracie was a feeble rack of skin and bone, as was he. His only possession, clutched in his hand, was a green glass whiskey bottle. Empty. He didn't dare move. Felt sure that if they saw him, he'd be a dead man in short order.

Isn't that what you want?
he asked himself.
Isn't that what you've been doing for more than two years now? Tapering off your days until there is so little left of you that you'll eventually dry up, become a husk rattling in a winter breeze.

And yet, as he watched this big man struggle to live, to fight these attackers, darting in and yipping at him, like wild dogs prodding a downed deer, Tucker knew he had to help this man. But how?

His decision was made for him when the thicker, shorter of the two men leveled his pistol across his other forearm at the big man swaying on his knees. He squinted down the barrel, and touched the trigger. The pistol bucked and the big man jounced again, flopped partly onto his left side, and lay in the grass, hands clutched tight beneath him.