Louis LAmour - Tucker: A Novel

Contents

To Rex Martindale,
of Montana, Wyoming,
and California.

Chapter 1

W HEN I RODE up to the buffalo wallow pa was lying there with his leg broke and his horse gone.

It was mid-afternoon of a mighty hot day and pa had been lying there three, four hours. His canteen was on his horse, so he had nothing to drink in all that time. I got down and fetched him water with my canteen.

Thanks, boy. Looks like I played hob.

Well, I said, you got you a busted leg, but your jaws in good shape. You been arguin at me for months, now, so you just set back an argue some more whilst I fix up your leg.

You got to saddle and ride, boy. A body could see he was fighting pain. Everything we own and most of what our neighbors own is in those saddlebags. You just forget about me and hunt down that horse.

If Id been older in years instead of being just man-size I might have thought about the money first, but likely not. There was twenty thousand dollars in those saddlebags, and less than a third of it was ours. It was the sale money for a steer herd wed driven up the trail from Texas, and folks back home was a-sweating until we got back with that money.

Well take care of your busted leg first, I said.

There was mighty little to do with out there on the prairie, but I broke some mesquite and trimmed it with my knife, shaping some splints for pas leg.

Wed never been much on gettin along together, pa an me, and we wrangled most of the time on something or other. Here I was, seventeen and feeling uppity with the growing strength in me and the need to make folks see me as a man. About all I could do, come to think about it, was ride a horse and shoot a gun.

Pa objected to the company I kept, and down deep inside I moren half agreed with him, but stubborn-like, I wasnt going to be told. Pa objected to me spending time out in the gully practicing gun-slinging. He was forever telling me that no gunman hed ever heard tell of ever had anything but a bad reputation with folks who mattered.

Time of trouble, I objected, a man who can handle a gun is good to have around, and on your side.

Sure, pa would say, but when trouble is over folks cant get shut of him fast enough.

Well, Id always told myself I could make as big tracks as any man, but now I was faced up with it and had no idea what to do.

One thing I knew. I needed a water hole and some shade for pa. Once he was bedded down I could hightail it after that horse. The quickest way to water might be to trail pas horse, anyway, so I hoisted him into the saddle with some help from him, and wed taken after pas gelding.

That fool horse ran straightaway, then slowed to a walk. From time to time we could see where the horse stopped to look back, or to nibble on some mesquite or such. When the tracks began to edge off toward the southwest I was hopeful he was headed for water.

Pa sat up in the saddle and he didnt say aye, yes, or no. This was up to me now, and we both knew it, and he held his jaw. It had me feeling guilty and responsible all at the same time. And then an hour short of sundown we fetched up to some other tracks.

They came in from the northwest and they were shod horses. Three in the bunchand theyd caught pas horse.

Half the outlaws in the country lived in that part of the territory, and the chances were that anybody riding across here was an outlaw, or kin to them. Not to say that many a man who passes for honest wouldnt help himself to twenty thousand dollars and a lost horse.

Dont you take notions, son. You aint about to go up against three men. Not with me in this condition.

It was shy of sundown when we came to the creek. It wasnt much. Two, three feet wide and a few inches deep, running through a sparse meadow between low-growing willows, with here and there a clump of cottonwood. When I had pa off his horse and bedded down, I unslung my canteen and filled it at the creek.

You set quiet, pa. Ill go fetch that horse.

Dont be a fool, Edwin. You stay here.

Pa never called me Edwin unless he was mad or upset, and it was plain to be seen now that he was a worried man. Well, I was some worried my ownself.

Pa had always taken on about what it meant to have a good name, and how a man was judged by the company he kept. Whenever he saw me strutting it around with Doc Sites, Kid Reese, and them, he would read the riot act to me.

They bragged they had rustled cows, and maybe they had. They never worked that I could see, but they always had them a few dollars, which was more than I could say, and pa kept me working morning until night.

For the first time I was beginning to understand what it might mean to have a good name. If we showed up back home without that money some folks would believe our story, but others would recall that Id been trailing around with Doc Sites and Kid Reese, and they would talk it up. Some others would come to believe thered been something wrong, and the first thing you knew theyd give pa a bad name as well as me.

Wed never had much. When I was born pa lived back east, but after a bad time he came west and got himself some land of his own. Fire burned him out that fall, and the following spring he put in a crop with borrowed seed, and the grasshoppers taken the crop.

He worked almighty hard, but two years of drouth followed, and we lost the place. Ive heard folks talk as if anybody who didnt have money must be no-account, but they didnt know some of the hard-working folks Id known.

We moved to Texas then and filed on a claim and worked like dogs for three years. We built a house and a barn, and got a couple hundred head of stock. Then Comanches raided us, burned us out, and ran off the stock. They killed my Uncle Bud that time.

The herd we had just sold was the first wed been able to put together, and once we got home with that money wed have an edge on the future for the first time. We were headed home when pa and me had a big argument and I rode off and left him, mad as all get-out and swearing not to come back.

Only a few hours later I did turn back, and lucky I did. Pas horse had shied at a rattler and throwed him, breaking his leg. If I hadnt quit sulking and turned back he might have died right there.

Had I been with him I could have caught up his horse and wed have only the broke leg to worry about. As it was we stood to lose all we had, and all our friends had as well, and theyd trusted us.

Well, anyway, I taken after our horse and those men, and hadnt gone more than a mile from where Id left pa before I smelled smoke. They had them a fire under some cottonwoods alongside that same creek where Id left pa, and before they saw me coming Id recognized them. It was Doc Sites, Kid Reese, and a square-shouldered man in a cowhide vest and a black hat. That had to be Bob Heseltine.

How many stories had Doc and the Kid told me about him? He was, they said, the best rider, the best shot, and the fastest man with a gun anywhere around. Bob Heseltine had held up the Garston Bank. He had killed Sheriff Baker in a gun battle. He had, they said, made two Texas Rangers back down. All they talked about was Bob Heseltine and the big things theyd do when he got backand here he was.

He was a mite shorter than me but wide in the shoulders, and the hide of his face was like tanned leather. He wore his gun tied down, and a body could see he was a mighty tough man.

There was pas horse, still saddled. The saddlebags were off and the money dumped on the blanket. They would be some disappointed when they saw me riding up to claim it.