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  DEAD MAN’S SHOT

  “What’s that? Who’s there? Who…?” Junior spun, and there was Middleton, raised on one elbow and leaning toward him, trying to see through the night air. Beneath him Brandon MacMawe stirred, squinted up just as Junior looked down at him. No thought at all came to Junior as he drove downward with the pistol’s clublike handle at the boy’s temple. MacMawe was stilled with the single blow—it felt to Junior like a death blow—and he turned back to who he hoped was the lesser of the two adversaries.

  “Say, what’s the matter here?”

  As Junior spun, he swung the pistol low and hard and connected with nothing but chill night air. The force of his swing spun him backward and over Brandon’s unmoving legs. The big stranger was nearly on his feet now, and Junior managed to rise to his knees. He grabbed the pistol with his left hand and spun it in his palm, the deadly end pointing at the dark hulking mass in front of him.

  Ralph Compton

  Dead Man’s Ranch

  A Ralph Compton Novel

  by Matthew P. Mayo

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2012

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57706-6

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  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.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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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

  Table of Contents

  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 1

  Mortimer Darturo shook his head and waved away the cards offered him. He rapped his chest and worked up a low belch, then beckoned the fat barmaid. A good girl for remembering, he thought, as she set before him a whiskey in milk. She turned to go, but he grabbed her thick wrist and waved a finger at the other three men also seated at the baize table. She nodded and left. She was afraid of him, he knew, for her eyes, the color of a high summer sky, looked liquid, on the verge of tears, her lips set to scream. Good.

  He raised the squat glass to his mouth and looked over the rim at the other three. To a man, they looked at him, unbidden disgust sneering their mouths. He smiled as he sipped. Keep them guessing, he thought, and almost laughed.

  The girl brought the drinks to his game-mates. They each raised their glass to him and sipped. Fine, fin
e, fine, he thought. Drink and talk. Get to it. He would sit out this hand. The belch was the least of his worries. He wanted to hear more from the loudmouth lawyer sitting across from him. Mort sensed there was something boiling up in the little fat man, itching to be told. The night was still green and Mort was still sober and this man had something to reveal. Many times in the past he’d heard useful information at the games tables just because he listened.

  A tall man in a gray hat and striped gray suit immediately to Darturo’s left arranged his bad cards two, three times. They won’t get any better no matter how often you rearrange them, thought Mort. This much I know. I’ve tried. Then the man cleared his throat, sent an expert stream of brown chew juice dead into a half-full spittoon by his chair legs, and said, “You were saying, about New Mexico Territory, I mean….” He nodded toward the little fat lawyer in the green suit. The lawyer nodded back, barely looking up from his cards.

  Go ahead and talk, thought Mort. Talk before the booze makes you quiet and sad. For surely yours is a sad little life. He almost smiled then, but instead he concentrated on making the man talk.

  As if to prove that such a thing could be forced, the green-suited lawyer downed the last of his drink and said, “New Old May-hee-co, yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh well,” said the man who spoke first. He continued shuffling his five cards. “I have to sell my wares elsewhere soon and I wonder what the situation with the savages is like these days. Might try my hand south of here.”

  The third man, a scruffy character in a greasy buckskin shirt that looked to Darturo as if it had been dipped in a gut pile and then dried, said, “You’d do as well to stick with Denver. This town’s got it all.”

  “And what makes you so expert?”

  “Never said I was expert at nothin’, but I been down to New Mex before and it ain’t no treat. Can’t trap a critter to save my ass down there. Ain’t a cent to be had thataways, leastwise not from pelts, no, sir.”

  The green-suited lawyer spoke up. “I cannot speak of pelts, naturally.” He winked at the men. “But regarding land, I beg to differ, sir.” He pulled the chewed cigar nub from his mouth and set it on the table edge.

  It looks like something a sick dog would have left in the alley, thought Mort. Now continue talking, he urged as he stared at the man.

  “I have a client down there. He’s a landowner of righteous proportions, and besides being dead…” This last comment seemed to him a funny thing, for he snorted through his nose, then apologized. “He was my client. Now he’s just a dead landowner…or something like that. Big mess with his family, though. God, remind me never to have children. Always grubbing for money….” He set his cards down, facedown, and thumped the table as if he were in court.

  You are drunk and a fool, thought Darturo. But keep on talking, little man, he urged him with his mind, with his eyes. Keep talking.

  “Kids ain’t worth the time, if my client’s life is anything of an indication….Prime land all over the good Lord’s creation and what does he get? He’s dead and his beneficiaries can’t find their asses with both hands….” This was funnier to him than his last funny statement, and the little fat lawyer laid his head right on the poker table and laughed, pounding the surface with a plump fist.

  “You ain’t gonna play, then call out. Otherwise, I take it as an open offer to let me see your cards. So here.” The smelly trapper slapped down his cards. “I call.” He grinned.

  Darturo grinned too. I want to hear more before the night is through, he thought. Now that I know there is more worth hearing. For maybe I need a new plan, a new way of doing things. A new way around the old tree, as the man once said. Hell, he thought. Why go all the way around it? Why not just cut down the tree?

  Maybe it is time I find a place to call home, a ranch perhaps. He had taken things that were plenty bigger than the deed to a ranch, so why should this be any different? After all, I am a powerful man, am I not? And all powerful men need a place where they operate from. And if the ranch happened to be one of the best in the region, and one of the biggest too, naturally, then who am I, Mortimer Darturo, to argue? Perhaps I will become a judge, for that is what land barons do. He almost laughed, even as a plan flowered in his mind, opening as if in full, hot sun after a soaking rain.

  Two hours later, in an alley a few buildings down the street from the saloon, Mortimer Darturo slipped a thin, three-inch blade in and out of the drunk attorney’s gut five times before the man thought to scream. Red bubbles rose from the fat mouth that opened and closed like the lips of a fish. Every time it’s the same, thought Mort. Like jabbing a sack of meal. Would no one ever lash back? Had they all grown so soft as to take such a thing as their own killing as something not to be bothered with? He sighed. For as long as he lived, Mort knew that he was destined to be disappointed by people. He would never understand them. Never.

  “It is hard to speak when your throat is so full, huh?” Light spiking down from a whore’s upstairs window that overlooked the narrow alley let Darturo stare into the man’s wide eyes. I made this happen, thought Mort. It is only right that I am the last thing he sees. When the lids relaxed, Mort let the fat little lawyer ease to the dirt, wiped the blade on the dead man’s sleeve, and as he straightened his own jacket he looked up at the window. Nothing shaded the world from such a private act that, from the looks of things, was nearing its end.

  He half smiled and thumped his chest, working up a fresh belch. “Animals,” he said as the gas bubble emerged. As he strolled from the alley, wiping the blade clean on the inner hem of his frock coat, Mort snorted a laugh. He walked to the livery, pockets filled with fresh cash and his mind filled with a sudden urge to see New Mexico Territory.

  Chapter 2

  The steel wheels of the Santa Fe and Rio Grande Western screeched low and long as they churned to a stop. Steam valves released, pluming at the ground and swirling the dust.

  The last passenger to step down from the train’s club car stood on the gravel, an oversized white kerchief pressed to his face, his wide chest convulsing in coughs.

  “Who’s the dandy?”

  The station agent squinted through the dust, looked down at a note in his hand, then up again at the stranger.

  “I said…who’s the dandy?” The chunky little man speaking looked up at the station agent from his seat on the nail keg.

  “Huh?” said the agent, still squinting at the stranger, who hadn’t moved but was now staring at the brocade bag just dropped at his feet. “You say something, Squirly?”

  The man on the keg crossed his feet and leaned back. “Nah, nah. You know me, Mr. Teasdale. I don’t speak unless spoken to.”

  The agent looked down at his companion with raised eyebrows. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and retrieve the man’s bag? If it’s who I expect, then we ought to welcome him, make him feel at home.”

  The pudgy man looked as if he’d just been forced to drink from a spittoon. “Just who were we expectin’?”

  But the station agent had already gone back inside his office for his official coat and hat. Squirly looked again at the stranger, who seemed well and truly lost. He stood like a lost steer, thirty yards down the track, and finally looked back at Squirly.

  “This better be worth my time.” Squirly grunted to his feet and clumped down the platform, the few remaining fringes on his old buckskin coat wagging with each step.

  “Well, this wire told me to expect…” Teasdale looked down at the nail keg to which he was speaking and shook his head.

  Squirly grabbed the leather loop handles of the man’s bag and made for the platform. “Teas—uh, the station agent tells me you’re expected.” He didn’t turn as he spoke.

  “See here.” The stranger caught up with Squirly, grabbing his arm with a gloved hand. “Just where do you think you’re going with my luggage?”

  The pudgy man looked down at the hand on his arm and said, “Was headed for the platform but now looks like I’m headed for the calab
oose.”

  “If that’s a hotel, then—”

  “It ain’t. It’s the jail.”

  “The jail? Why?”

  “ ’Cause I’m ’bout to drop you like a sack of cornmeal, mister. Less’n you back off.”

  Then he felt the bag being pulled from his grasp from behind. “What the…?”

  “I’ll take it from here, Squirly Ross. Thanks for your help.”

  The squat older man rasped a pudgy hand across his chin. “Dry work, Teasdale. Luggin’ them fancies.” He gestured at the woven bag.

  “What’s going on here?” said the stranger.

  He was a tall man, the agent noted. Broad in the shoulders, and judging from his light whiskering, he had the red hair to boot. Hard to tell under that derby hat, so tight was it pulled down. He’d give him that much; it was a windy day.

  “Welcome to Turnbull, sir.”

  The man ignored Teasdale’s outstretched hand and leaned out past the edge of the little depot building to look up the main street. A fresh gust whipped the mouse-colored derby from his head and carried it like a runty, determined tumbleweed straight up the dirt track.

  Teasdale smiled and looked at Squirly, then nodded at the young man’s hair.

  Squirly squinted, looked hard at the young man. “It ain’t…”

  Teasdale smiled, nodded slightly, and rocked back on his heels, a hand in his pocket.

  The young stranger turned back to them with a mix of surprise and scowl on his broad face, green eyes ablaze, and the wind tousling a mass of red hair.

  “It is!” Squirly took a step back, hand over his mouth.

  “My hat…the wind…” The young man waved a broad hand up the street in the direction the hat had traveled.

  Station Agent Teasdale stepped forward and smiling, said, “Welcome to Turnbull, Mr….um…” He looked down at the note in his hand. “Mr. Middleton, that’s it. Welcome home.”

  Chapter 3

  “I assume you received my wire,” said the tall young man.

  “Yes, indeedy.” Teasdale shook the note as if drying it. “And I took the liberty of reserving a room at the hotel for you.”