Ralph Compton Double-Cross Ranch by Matthew P. Mayo

Author:Matthew P. Mayo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Meanwhile, back at the Double Cross . . . After he watched the men depart, Clewt headed back into the ranch house. A grin spread wide on his craggy features, like a slick of spilled lamp oil.

“Oh, woman! Woman?” he shouted, standing in the open doorway. He spread his arms wide and laughed, a rasping, coughing sound, the result of years of smoking cheroots down to the nub, pulling the dark thick smoke deep into his lungs, holding it there, savoring the burn, then expelling it.

It always made him feel a little like a dragon pluming smoke and flame into the sky. He recalled, now and again, his grandmama reading a story to him about a man who slew a great winged beast that flew all over the countryside, making life miserable for everyone he came across. Then a strange man had slain her, with young Clewt hiding under the bed, gnawing his own knuckles to keep from crying out at the sounds of his grandmama’s pain.

The thrashing the man had given her, the almost crushing feeling of the bed pressing down on him, again and again, his grandmama’s cries growing fainter all the while. Then her hand had dropped over the side of the bed, blood trailing from it, dripping before him on the wood floor of the safest place he had ever known.

Clewt remembered wanting to hold her hand as the fingers trembled their last, but he was too afraid to touch it, all the blood, the man still there. Then he saw the boots slam to the floor, and the sagging weight of the bed suddenly lifted off Clewt. The man opened the wardrobe, slammed around in the chest of drawers, tossing about grandmama’s precious things. Clewt had brought his hands tight to his face, only his other senses taking in what was happening.

But then he smelled smoke, something that was not fire but a cigar. He had seen men sucking on them in the streets, in the fancy parlor where grandmama went to work. And the smoke made him think that the man must be a dragon, a dragon in boots, making life miserable for everyone, and somehow it had been their turn.

Clewt could not utter a peep. Dared not. . . . Even for hours after the big leather boots slammed out of the room, after the smell of smoke faded away, after the boots stomped down the steps, the sound of crunching gravel becoming less and less.

The thought that the man must have been a dragon gave Clewt much comfort, and he recalled always wanting to be that dragon, wanting for years as he grew up to be that great and mighty beast, spraying trouble all over the countryside, making people hurt and scream and shout and sometimes even fight back.

Sometimes they even said, “No! You shall not do this thing! I and I alone will stand up to you!” And yet every single time, Clewt and his lesser dragons, the ones who

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