The Burning Range Read online

  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

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  WHISKEY RIVER

  BUSHWHACKED THROUGH BROKEN GLASS

  As another bullet smashed through the window and whined viciously off the iron stove, Drake threw the table aside and ducked behind the window.

  He looked at the Pinkerton.

  The man had a bad cut across his forehead, but the scarlet splash of blood on his right shoulder spoke of a more severe wound.

  Drake removed the five .44-40 shells from Withers’s pocket and reloaded his Colt. He hammered two fast shots out the window, firing at rain and wind.

  Withers stirred and groaned.

  Drake knelt beside him.

  It looked like the bushwhacker’s bullet had entered the meat of the man’s right shoulder, ranged upward, then exited at his collarbone before burning across his forehead.

  “Wha-what’s happening?” the Pinkerton asked.

  A bullet slammed into the cabin, then another.

  “Somebody’s trying to kill you, Withers, or me, or both of us.”

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, December 2010

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2010

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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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  eISBN : 978-1-101-47661-1

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  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

  Chapter 1

  When a gambler is trying to outrun a losing streak he sometimes forgets the rules. That night Chauncey Drake misplaced two of them: He was playing poker under a blood moon, always unlucky for him, and he’d stubbed his toe on a dead man.

  In more prosperous times, he’d have sat out the unlucky night in his hotel room with a bottle and a couple of whores who were a credit to their profession.

  But these were not thriving days for Chauncey Drake.

  And he suspected that harder times were coming down.

  “The game,” Peter J. Grapples said, “is poker.”

  The eyes peering over the top of the banker’s glasses nudged Drake gently. A man doesn’t push a known and named gunfighter too much.

  “I’m studying on it,” Drake said, staring at his cards.

 
“It’s not difficult, Mr. Drake,” Grapples said. “I raised you ten.”

  “Man’s got the right to take his time,” Ed Winslow said.

  “But not all night,” Grapples said.

  Winslow nodded. “No, not all night. Truer words were never spoken.”

  Drake studied his cards. Aces and eights, a dead man’s hand.

  Nothing about the damned night boded well.

  Grapples wasn’t pushing him hard, and Drake understood why.

  But what the banker didn’t know was that Drake’s blue Colt currently reposed in Sy Goldberg’s Pawn and Mercantile on Second Street, tagged, bagged, and pigeonholed.

  In return for the revolver, Drake had received, from Sy’s own hand, as befitted a regular customer, a ticket and ten dollars.

  The ten dollars now sat in front of him, and there was not another thin dime in his poke.

  Ed Winslow’s eyes moved to the saloon window. “Blackest night I’ve seen in a spell,” he said. He cocked his head, listening into the darkness. “Coyotes are hunting close.”

  “There’s blood on the moon,” Grapples said.

  “Unlucky for some,” Winslow said.

  “Maybe for you, Mr. Drake,” Grapples said, smiling. “Or me.”

  The banker’s smile faded and he sighed. “The game is poker,” he said for a second time.

  Drake made up his mind.

  He pushed his ten into the pot. “I call.” He spread his cards. “Got me a dead man.”

  “Too little and way too late,” Grapples said. He tossed his hand onto the table. “Three ladies.”

  “Unlucky for some,” Winslow said.

  Grapples gathered up the deck. “Shall I deal?”

  Drake shook his head. “I’m done.”

  He rose to his feet, a slim man of medium height, dressed in patched and faded gambler’s finery.

  “Another time, perhaps,” Grapples said.

  Drake nodded. “Yes, another time.”

  He walked to the door and stepped outside.

  The blood moon was rising, but for the moment it had spiked itself on a pine at the edge of town. The night gathered close and along First Street, kerosene lamps glowed red in the darkness and smoked like the cinders of fallen stars.

  Drake found a ragged cigar stub in the pocket of his frockcoat, then took a seat in one of the rockers scattered along the saloon porch.

  Across the street, outside the marshal’s office, the dead man was propped up in a pine coffin, illuminated by the railroad lantern on the boardwalk in front of him.

  The man’s face was as blue as marble, his eye sockets pooled in shadow, and he showed his teeth in a death grimace.

  The reason for the grotesque display was that when Marshal Dub Halloran killed a man in the line of duty, justice had to be seen, by the whole town, to be done.

  The dead man was a small-time thief and all-around nuisance by the name of Bates or Baxter—nobody knew for sure.

  He’d stolen a side of bacon from a farmer’s smoke-house, and Halloran had tracked the man to a box canyon north of the farm. Bates or Baxter had promptly surrendered, but, for convenience’ sake, the marshal had gunned him where he stood and dragged the body back to town behind his horse.

  Nobody much cared. Sy Goldberg pretty much summed up the town’s attitude when he declared that the man’s death was a case of “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  Drake didn’t have much sympathy for Bates or Baxter either.

  On his way to the saloon he’d tripped over the man’s coffin, and everybody knew how unlucky that was.

  Drake took a last draw on his cigar and ground it out under his shoe.

  He was busted. Broke. Destitute. Penniless. And it hurt.

  He’d sold his horse a while back, then his watch, then his diamond stickpin, then his emerald ring. Sy Goldberg had his Colt and the shoulder holster that went with it.

  Farther down the street he saw the lights of the Bon-Ton Hotel. He couldn’t go back there until the manager left for the night. The man had been pressing Drake for money and had threatened to padlock his room if the eighty dollars he owed was not paid “instanter or even sooner.”

  A six-month losing streak had exacted its toll, and that night Drake knew he had scraped the bottom of his last barrel.

  He rose to his feet and stepped to the edge of the boardwalk.

  A cowboy walked past, leading his horse, neither looking to his left nor right. He was followed by one of the respectable matrons of the town. Drake touched his hat to the woman, but she lifted her nose and ignored him.

  Despite his gloom, Drake smiled. Could people sense poverty? Or did they not care to look at a man who was wrapped up in his own gloomy shadow?

  Round as a coin, the moon had broken free of the pines and was riding high in the sky, spawning crouching shadows all over town. Out in the darkness coyotes yipped, their fur rippled by a rising wind.

  Drake was seized by the urge to flee, to steal a horse and outrun the tiger. But flee to where? To yet another hick town in the middle of nowhere, where no one would be glad at his coming or sad at his leaving?

  From the frying pan into the fire.

  “Evening, Chauncey. Still prospering, I see, huh?”

  Drake turned. Savannah Swan stood on the boardwalk, a smile on her scarlet lips.

  “That obvious?”

  “I’d say. You’ve mended them britches you’re wearing so many times they look like Grandma’s patchwork quilt.”

  Drake said nothing, and Savannah said, “Still trying to buck a losing deck?”

  “That sums it up.”

  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  That sounded harsh and Drake sweetened it with a smile. “How’s business?”

  The woman shrugged. “Tuesday night. It’s slow. All the married ones are home with their skinny wives and the drovers don’t get paid till Friday.”

  “Things are tough all over,” Drake said.

  Savannah ignored that and said, “Why don’t you talk to Loretta?”

  Drake shook his head. “Loretta ain’t exactly a whore with a heart of gold. She stung me on my ring.”

  “She likes you, Chauncey. And I know she’s holding. Got a big roll.”

  “Smooth that out for me.”

  “Like I said, she’s holding. Ask her for a grubstake.”

  “I’ve got no, what they call, collateral. Loretta has my ring and Sy Goldberg has my gun.”

  “So? You ain’t going anyplace, are you?”

  “Loretta is holding, you say?”

  “Big roll.”

  “I’ll study on it.”

  Savannah smiled. “Don’t study on it too long. She’s leaving town tomorrow to visit a sick aunt—be gone for a week.”

  “She’s home right now?”

  “Washing her hair. She’s had no gentlemen callers and isn’t expecting any.”

  “Maybe I’ll go talk to her.”

  Savannah smiled, looking over Drake’s shabby clothes and down-at-heel shoes. “Maybe you should.”

  She gathered her shawl around her naked shoulders. “I’ve got to get down to the Alamo. There will be no customers, but Hank Bowman expects me to be there on the chance that somebody gets horny.”

  The woman glanced at the sky and shivered as she walked away. “Blood on the moon, Chauncey,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” Drake said.

  Chapter 2

  Loretta Sinclair lived in a gingerbread house on the edge of town. The place had two stories, a covered porch, and a small garden that grew a fine crop of bunchgrass and cactus.

  As whores go, Loretta was more successful than most and she charged top dollar. Her great height, six foot four in her spike-heeled boots, added to her attraction and had earned her the nickname High Timber.

  “Hell, when she stood next to me, the top of my head only reached her bush.” Drake had heard one overawed customer say.

  Lo
retta and her high timber had many admirers, and her sprawling house with a carriage and matched pair out back in the barn testified to her popularity and prosperity.

  Drake stopped, straightened his celluloid collar, and smoothed his mustache. He removed his plug hat, licked his fingers, and patted down his hair. He was wishful for lavender water but had none.

  He settled the hat back on his head and looked at the moon. It was still red against the sky, like a drop of blood on black velvet.

  The wind gusted, flapping the legs of his pants, and it smelled of shadowed places and dead things.

  It seemed that every oil lamp in Loretta’s house was lit and elongated rectangles of yellow light spilled onto the sand of the yard.

  Suddenly Drake became aware of the hopelessness of his mission and deep inside, little bits of him began to curl up and die.

  Loretta Sinclair was a whore with a heart of iron, a cold-eyed businesswoman with no good reason to grubstake a bum.

  Drake swallowed hard, put one foot in front of the other, and slowly walked toward the door.

  He would have to rely on his charm. And, as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he knew with an awful certainty that his empty words would fall on the deaf ears of a woman who had heard it all before.

  Drake knuckled the oak-and-glass door and waited.

  The groaning wind tugged at him, trying to drag him away from there.

  He knocked again.

  Nothing.

  Amazed at his own boldness, or desperation, Drake turned the polished brass doorknob and stuck his head inside.

  “Miz Loretta, are you home?” he called out.

  He was answered by an echoing silence, as though the house was holding its breath. Waiting.

  “It’s me! Chauncey Drake, as ever was!”

  In the quiet his voice boomed, hollow as a drum.

  Drake waited a few moments, then tried again, louder this time into the hush. “Miss Loretta!”

  No answer.

  Savannah Swan had said Loretta was home. Then where the hell was she?

  Drake stepped inside and removed his hat.

  There was a gilded, oval mirror on the wall to his left. He parted his hair in the middle with his fingers and smoothed it into place on each side of his head.