Call Me Lonesome by Brett Cogburn

Author:Brett Cogburn [Cogburn, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Bill Tuck moved through Canadian Camp with a purposeful stride, as if anything or anyone that got in his way would get stepped on without so much as a bit of hesitation on his part. He always walked like that when he had worries on his mind or a definite chore to attend to. The stub of an unlit cigar was jammed in one corner of his mouth as solidly as if it had been thrown like a knife and stabbed there, and the Colt Open Top .44 flopped on his right hip in rhythm with every step. The pistol itself was unusual, for Tuck rarely wore a belt gun. The Hilltopper strolled behind him, and the bored, sleepy expression on his undertaker’s face was in contrast to his employer. Everybody gave them wide berth, both recognizing Tuck’s mood, and wanting no part of the giant heel-hound following in his wake.

They reached the tracks and Superintendent Duvall’s private railcar, and Tuck stopped and pitched his cigar stub to the ground and scowled as if it suddenly became distasteful. The look he gave the door to Duvall’s Pullman made him frown worse.

“Son of a bitch thinks I’m at his beck and call,” he said. Then he looked at the Hilltopper and thought he saw him smirk. “You seem in an unusually fine mood this morning.”

“No business of mine,” the big man said.

“Well, it’s my business, and I don’t care for it one bit. Mr. High and Mighty railroad superintendent sends for me and thinks I’ll come running just because he orders it.”

“Seems like he was right,” the Hilltopper said.

Tuck gave him a cold look. “Careful there. It’s my coin jingling in your pocket and my whiskey you’re swilling down every night while you’re laid up with my whores. Best you don’t forget that.”

The Hilltopper shifted his booted feet on the roadbed, and the sound of the chat gravel crunching beneath them grated on Tuck’s nerves like fingers raked across a chalkboard.

“You seem to be forgetting a lot of things lately,” he added and turned and faced the Hilltopper. There was nothing in his stance that showed he recognized that his henchman outsized him by a considerable margin. He took a step to close the distance between them. “I’m the one man in this camp that isn’t afraid of you. You get cross with me and I’ll tear you down to the quick.”

“All right,” the Hilltopper said, but there was that same, smug boredom written all over his face that Tuck couldn’t put a finger on.

The Hilltopper was always hard to read, but normally a dependable man who knew his place. Slow but steady, and loyal as long as his appetites were fed. You used him like a tornado that you could control. Gave him plain instructions for whatever unpleasantry you required, who you wanted scared or maimed, and the thing was as good as done the instant you said it.

But there was something different about the way he was acting then, almost defiant, and a version of himself that Tuck had not seen in a long time.

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