Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

Other than not wanting to lift her head from what she obviously considered a sweet meal, Gracie proved no trouble for him to catch. He was amazed each morning to find he still had her. Something about the sad old brown-eyed horse, her faithfulness to him even through these lean times, warmed and shamed him, for he knew she deserved better. He was on a fast slide downhill and she seemed content to be along for the ride, a last, bittersweet link with his old life.

He led her around the man and she gave the body a suspicious sidelong stare. They hadn’t walked but a few yards when his boot stubbed something in the grass. There lay the dead man’s pistol, a Colt Navy. Tucker looked back to the dead man. Still dead. He hefted the pistol. He could tuck it into the man’s holster, but he didn’t warm to the idea of disrupting the body all over again.

Then it occurred to him that he might be able to use it to identify the man. He dropped the reins and turned the pistol over in his hands. Gracie resumed grazing.

The ebony handles shone from long use. He could pick out no other discerning marks, but as he tipped it up, he noted, etched into the butt, deeply gouged letters.

“P.F.,” he said.

Gracie kept eating.

“Bound to help.” The pistol slid too easily into his waistband. Finally he pulled it free and kept a grip on it, lest it slip down his pant leg.

It took him three tries to remount. He straddled Gracie’s bony spine, his eyes half-shut, dizziness and pinprick blackness crowding his vision. Finally he kneed her forward, and she resumed her walk. He didn’t have the heart to urge her to move faster. He knew better than anyone how much effort it took to keep on moving forward, from nothing, toward nothing.

His saddle was long gone. Even the blanket he’d managed to hang on to since he’d sold the saddle had also disappeared a month or more back, maybe in that harsh little Mormon-infested town, though he couldn’t be sure.

As they walked, the way became recognizable as a trail. Tucker followed it, and his thoughts soon turned over and over the man’s last words: “Tell Emma . . . heart . . .”

“I wonder what that means,” he said out loud, and sighed. “Guess we better find this Emma and break the sad news, Gracie. Maybe she’ll have a charitable side and feed us.” After suitable grieving, of course. It had been his experience that most people got a leg up and over their heartsickness sooner than later.

Only you have never crawled out of yours, have you, Samuel Tucker? You’ve been weak as water for a long time now, boy. But the good news is that your weak ways are almost at an end. You can’t hold out much longer this way. The very center of your sagging self will give way, Tucker, and that, as someone once said, will be that.

He frowned at the thought. The bitterness of self-doubt parched his tongue and left a dry, sandy feeling in his mouth. He kept his eyes closed as Gracie walked right on past another lane that angled sharply to the right.

SIGNET

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Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2012

Excerpt from Tucker’s Reckoning copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2012

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ISBN 978-1-101-61182-1

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