[Buck Fletcher 01] • Showdown At Two-Bit Creek by Compton Ralph

Author:Compton, Ralph [Compton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Goodreads: 8884391
Publisher: Otis Audio
Published: 2003-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

“First my husband, and now Lem Wilson and Hank Garnett,” Judith Tyrone said, tears brimming in her eyes. “Buck, when is all this killing going to stop?”

Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know, Judith. I don’t know what’s behind it.”

“I do,” Judith said, dabbing her eyes with a small lace handkerchief as she poured coffee into Fletcher’s cup. “I believe Amy Prescott, for all she’s just a child, is as ruthless and ambitious as her father. She wants the Lazy R, and she’ll do anything in her power to get it.”

Fletcher’s eyes wandered to the kitchen window. Outside, a dozen Lazy R hands were gently taking down the bodies of their two dead compadres. The men were muttering to each other: the hard, angry drone of war talk.

Judith’s eyes followed Fletcher’s, and she said, “My men are just ordinary punchers, Buck. They don’t understand all this, and I can’t send them against Higgy Conroy and the rest of Amy Prescott’s hired guns. They’d be slaughtered.”

Fetcher nodded absently. What Judith was telling him was true enough, but not quite accurate.

As he rode in, he’d recognized Tex Lando and the longhaired, buckskin-clad Tin Cup Kid hanging around the bunkhouse.

Lando had been a Texas Ranger for three years and had later run wild with John Wesley Hardin and that hard crowd in DeWitt County during the Sutton-Taylor feud. A few months ago, he’d killed Happy Tom Bear, the skilled Bodie gunfighter, and then a Mexican pistolero of known reputation in El Paso.

There was man down in the Nations who called himself the Tin Cup Kid, but this one was the genuine article: fast with a gun, and with four killings to his credit, one a deputy sheriff in Ellsworth.

Maybe Lando and Tin Cup wrangled cattle occasionally when times were hard, but they were no punchers. These two were men to be reckoned with. When Judith hired them on, did she know what she was getting?

Fletcher doubted it. Such men, confident of their gun skills, were not normally given to boasting. They usually kept their tracks well-covered.

He took out the makings of a smoke and gestured to Judith. “May I?”

“Of course.” The woman studied Fletcher for a few moments, her eyes on his strong hands as he rolled his cigarette. Then she said, “Buck, I want you with me. I need you to stand with me.”

Fletcher did not reply at once, thinking this thing through. Finally, he said slowly, “Judith, my gun is not for hire. I’m finished with all that.” He lit his smoke and nodded toward the angry hands gathered on the other side of the kitchen window. “Did you know when you hired on Tex Lando and the Tin Cup Kid that they were gunfighters?”

Judith raised her head defensively. “Yes, I did, and I’m not ashamed of it. Amy Prescott has Higgy Conroy and other hired guns, so why shouldn’t I?”

“Men like that,” Fletcher said carefully, “are hard to control. They go their own way, and they’ll step lightly from one side of the law to the other.

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