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  KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSE.

  Charlie turned to see Rollie a dozen feet from him, a wide smile on his face, the revolver’s hard black snout once more aimed right at his own big chest.

  “Not a prayer, Big Boy. Besides, where you gonna go?” Rollie smiled that split-lip grin, his swollen eyes creased into yellow-black slits. “We got us Injun killers behind, in front, to the left and right. You’d be dooming the poor, pitiful town of Gamble, with all that gold hid away and ready for the plucking.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed.

  “Besides, strength in numbers.” Rollie leaned forward, as if he were sharing a secret, though he was still a good ten feet from the big man. Everyone in the camp had hushed and seemed to lean in too. “You need us more than we need you, Big Charlie. If that’s what you’re calling yourself now.”

  With the suddenness of a gunshot, Charlie realized that Rollie knew something about him, something he’d worked long and hard to keep quiet, keep hidden. He thought back to that bar in Monkton. Had to be he heard it there, maybe from that bigmouth, Dutchy.

  Charlie ground his teeth together so tight he thought for sure they might powder, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was snap that whelp’s head off. “I should have finished you last night when I had the chance.”

  Ralph Compton

  THE HUNTED

  A Ralph Compton Novel by Matthew P. Mayo

  SIGNET

  Published by the Penguin Group

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

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.

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

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-1-101-61378-8

  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.

  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

  Excerpt for Tucker’s Reckoning

  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

  “That’s what you got for me? That?” The dealer nodded toward the cards laid before him. His words came out too loud, and as if he’d been waiting long minutes to say them. The thin man with oiled mustaches, black visor, and arm garters shook his head and winked at the gawkers gathered about his table.

  Across from him, his customer sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. He was a mammoth man with a broad back turned to the rest of the room.

  The dealer and the others clustered by the table flicked eyes at each other, then settled back on him. The player’s rough-spun coat, the dark color of axle grease, strained across the shoulders as he brought a hand up to scratch the stubble on his face. “I’m out,” he said quietly, nodding toward the table.

  “You about were anyway.” The dealer shifted his cigarillo to the other side of his slit mouth and winked at the watchers. Their soft laughs chafed Charlie, but he’d earned them. Coming in here half lit and feeling as if he knew more about playing blackjack and bucking the tiger than any man alive. Heck, three hours and he’d spent more time running from it than wrangling the tiger, and what did he have to show for it? A whole lot of empty in his pockets.

  He had his emergency five-dollar piece in his vest and that, plus his mule, Mabel-Mae, and his meager kit, was about all he had in the world now. Three hours earlier he’d been halfway to owning a sizable chunk of land in a pretty mountain valley. Now he’d set himself back by two years—that was how long it had taken him to earn that two thousand dollars. Those two years had all but killed him, he’d worked so hard. And now? Now he was two years older, and as his father used to say of his family’s lot in life, he was poorer than an outhouse rat.

  “Hey, how about letting someone else take up space in that chair?” The dealer squinted one eye against the slow curl of silver smoke rising up the side of his face from the cat-turd cigarillo. Charlie wanted to smear the smugness off his face, but he’d avoided jail for too long now to cozy up to the idea of being near broke and tossed in the calaboose in Monkton, Idaho Territory.

  He pushed away
from the table, the chair squawking back on the boot-worn boards. He kept his eyes on the dealer’s the entire time he stood, taking longer than he needed to. It wasn’t much, but showing off his height was about all he had. It worked. The dealer’s grin sagged at the corners and his cigarillo drooped as his eyes followed the big man’s progress upward.

  He’d not been there when Charlie sat down at the table, so he didn’t know how big the fellow he’d been mocking was. And what he saw was a giant of a man, closer to seven feet than six. Charlie was wide enough at the shoulder that by now, at thirty-eight years of age, he naturally angled one shoulder first through doorways and ducked his head a mite. It didn’t guarantee he’d not rap his bean on the doorframe—there weren’t too many weeks of the year when he didn’t have a goose egg of sorts throbbing under his tall-crowned hat.

  Charlie’s stubbled jaw—he’d not taken time to clean up before hitting the saloon for the first time in many months since he’d sold off his latest claim—was a wide affair beneath a broad head topped with brown curls, tending to silver, forever trapped beneath his big hat. It added nearly another foot to his height, but he didn’t mind. It suited him somehow. His hands too were wide, callused mitts with thick tree-branch fingers more suited to dragging and pounding and stacking than tapping out cards. He should have known better than to think he could best the house.

  The dealer eyed Charlie’s hands covering the entire top of the now-wobbly wooden chair he’d been seated in. He swallowed once, began to speak, gulped again as the big man took his time straightening his coat, squaring that mammoth hat. The big man still didn’t look away from the dealer’s face.

  The dealer finally managed to whisper, “Thank . . . thank you for your patronage, sir.”

  Charlie nodded once, turned, and heard the dealer let out a stuttering breath of relief. Despite his new financial situation, Charlie half smiled. At least he had his size. It wasn’t worth much, but this big body could, by gum, still earn him a day’s honest wage most anywhere labor was needed.

  The big man strode the length of the narrow room, making the long walk toward the front of the saloon, the floor squeaking and popping under his weight. Everyone he passed gave him the hard stare. He felt certain they all knew he’d lost all but his shirt.

  Midway to the door he passed a cluster of men at the end of the bar. He felt relief that they were chattering among themselves and not concerned with him. Then he heard a voice that about stopped him in his tracks.

  “Shotgun? Why, by God, it is! As I live and breathe, it’s my old friend, Shotgun Charlie Chilton!”

  Though it had been many long years since he’d been called that, Charlie’s step hitched, as if out of dusty reflex. He paused right there in the middle of the room and closed his eyes. He knew a couple, three things: He should have kept on walking, he’d never had many friends and most of them had died away in the war, and the man who all but silenced the room with his drunken shouting was no friend. Anybody who called Charlie by that old name was no one he wanted to know anymore—and should by all rights be dead by now anyway.

  Charlie knew he should have kept right on going out that door, headed to the livery where he’d intended to bed down for the night in the stall beside Mabel-Mae, his old mule. And then come tomorrow he’d lick his wounds out on the trail, put some distance between himself and the town of Monkton. And once he did, he’d cipher out a way to earn money again, make up for the last couple of years’ wages he’d blown at the faro table.

  Though Charlie knew all these things and thought all these things, he still opened his eyes and slowly turned to face his past. And that’s when what had begun as one of the best days of his life, which had gotten pretty bad, got a whole lot worse.

  For who he saw annoyed him to no end. Jacob “Dutchy” Erskine. They had called him Dutchy because he looked as though he might be a Dutchman, though he wasn’t any more Dutch than Charlie was the king of China. But the fool was grinning at Charlie, and judging from his rheumy eyes and leering mouth, his boilers looked to be half-stoked with liquor too.

  Charlie turned back to the door. He hadn’t gone another step before the voice stopped him again. All eyes were on them both now. Even the lousy banjo player in the corner had stopped.

  “Shotgun Charlie, as I live and breathe!” Dutchy slid away from the elbow-smooth bar top and stumbled the few steps toward Charlie.

  The drunk man was still a good couple of strides away when Charlie held up a hand. “I . . . I don’t know who you are, nor what you’re after, but you’ve mistook me for someone else.”

  The man halted, weaving in place, his smile drooping. “What? Charlie . . . aw, you’re funnin’ me.”

  Charlie pinned a broad forced smile on his wide, windburned face. He looked left and right, nodding and smiling at the staring faces. Seemed as though there were a whole lot more people in here than when he’d come in. He felt his cheeks redden even more. Curse Dutchy for a fool.

  “I’m telling you . . . fella,” he said in a lowered voice. “I ain’t never seen you before. Now do us both a favor and back off.”

  “No, no, I ain’t neither. Come on over here, meet my new chums. You can buy us all a drink with your faro winnin’s.” Dutchy’s smile turned pinched; his wet eyes narrowed. “Unless you’d rather reminisce all about the old days right here in the middle of the bar.” He raised his arms wide to the room.

  Charlie saw the two missing fingertips on Dutchy’s left hand. They had healed poorly after they’d been shot off long before Charlie ever knew him. The hard pink scar nubs looked like pebbles or warts, and Charlie had always wanted to pare them off with a knife. If they had been on his fingers, he’d not have been able to live with the look, nor, he suspected, the feel of them.

  Dutchy giggled, looked around at the silent, expectant faces. “Maybe you’d like to tell ’em all about the last time we seen each other. Wichita, wasn’t it? Something about a lousy Basque, wasn’t it? All them sheep running all over the place, and Charlie here, he . . .” Dutchy stopped and leaned forward. “What’s the matter, Charlie? You look like you seen a ghost. Maybe one of a little girl? One who’s been all trampled by a . . . horse?”

  It had been a long, long time since Charlie had dreamed of the little girl. But it hadn’t been any longer than that afternoon that he’d thought of her. He’d been walking on into town leading Mabel-Mae when he’d seen the children playing before a white-painted schoolhouse a few streets away from Monkton’s main street. He thought of her every day, in fact, and this man, this damnable Dutchy, was fixing to rip it all wide open again.

  Big Charlie Chilton had tried hard since that accident to make sure he was slow to start a thing. But once he set to a task, he dedicated himself to it and rarely gave it less than his all. But when his great ham-sized right fist drove like a rock hammer square at Dutchy’s grinning face, Charlie hadn’t known it would happen. Like the old days he’d worked so hard to put behind him. No warning, just action. He hated the fact that it felt good when his tight knuckles jammed hard against Dutchy’s leering face.

  The strike happened so fast that the entire room was still silent, listening with rapt attention to the drunk’s account. The next thing they all heard was a muffled snap and Dutchy’s head whipped to one side as if he were gawking at a passing bullet. His body followed suit and spun in a dervish dance before slamming into the bar leaners behind him. They parted fast and let Dutchy drop, his head clunking the mud-scraped brass rail.

  The early gasps had given way to scraping chairs and now yammering as standing people leaned, trying to get a look at the collapsed victim.

  “He dead?” someone asked.

  As if in response, Dutchy groaned and rolled his head to and fro, the left side of his face already swelling and purpling.

  An old man with a cob pipe leaned close over Dutchy. “Naw. It was his jaw that cracked.” He plucked the pipe from its customar
y spot in his mouth, the groove worn by it in his teeth. “He ain’t dead, but he ain’t gonna be right by a long shot for a long time to come, mark my words. . . .”

  That was the last thing Charlie heard as he bulled his way through the double front doors, the glass panes rattling as he pawed them shut behind him. His big granger boots punched squelching holes in the slushed mud of the early October street as he stepped off the sidewalk. The livery. That’s where he had to get to. Had to get on out of here before someone set the law on him.

  Charlie didn’t hear the doors open and close again behind him, fast footsteps hammering the boardwalk in the opposite direction, toward Marshal Watt’s office.

  Chapter 2

  Mud muffled the blue roan mare’s slow steps. Two women bobbed in time with the animal’s measured pace, a pair of carpetbags jostling in counterpoint draped on the horse’s rump behind the second rider. Mud caked the hems of their layers of limp skirts, of once-gay coloring that would have looked right on a warm, sunny spring day. But on this darkening autumn afternoon in the hill country of the western edge of the Rockies, their clothes, horse, bags, and skin took on the bleak, russet hues of spattered mud and the grime of long days spent traveling hard. The horse’s gaunt frame worked to continue on, but she slowed, then stopped. A last step ended with a forehoof paused in the air, as if in middecision. Finally she set it back in the ice-rimed mud and stood still, head bowed against the coming dark and numbing cold.

  “Delia?” the larger of the two whispered to the woman in front of her in the saddle. “Are you awake?” With a shawl-wrapped hand she gently nudged the smaller woman.

  The figure nodded, finally said, “Yes, yes, I’m here. So cold, Hester.”

  “I know, Delia. Me too, but we have to get to that town. I swear I saw lights a few minutes ago. That next rise ought to put us in view of it again.”

  Delia forced herself to sit upright. “Do you think that might be Gamble?”