Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) (22 page)

“I asked him if he was Bob Heseltine, and he said he was, and then he said, ‘I can’t keep runnin’ all my life. A man’s got to be able to sleep, he’s got to be able to rest. I’ve tried outrunnin’ him, and it didn’t work out. We tried killin’ him, and he won’t be killed. I got to have some sleep, sometime. You just give him this and tell him to lay off.’”

“Thanks,” I said. “I wish he’d done this months ago…a long time ago.”

“Well, he’s done it now. You going to lay off?”

“Why not? I never wanted him. I have to pay this money—or most of it—to some folks down in Texas.”

The man with the badge nodded. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Looks as if I’m the one should do the buying.”

The bartender brought a bottle to the table. “I want coffee, too,” I said, “and whatever is left to eat.”

“There’s a-plenty,” he said. “The stage wasn’t carryin’ many folks. Just an old man and a girl.”

The door opened for the last of the passengers, and I looked up. And there in the door was Vashti. Vashti and her pa.

“Shell! Oh, Shell!” she said, and she came right into my arms, and it seemed the natural thing to do.

Lander Owen seemed older, more tired. But he looked at me, grinning. “Looks as if you stepped into a loop, boy.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was hurt in a rockfall, and the doctor told me I should go to a warmer climate. I told him I thought I was heading there, and he said I shouldn’t wait until I died, but to go now. So we’re on our way.”

“Con told us you were in Los Angeles,” Vashti said.

“I’ll turn right around and go back,” I said.

The man with the badge had gone out, and only the stage driver was left. He had walked to the bar for a drink and was talking to the bartender.

“I was coming to look you up,” I said to Vashti and her pa. “I’ve got my money back and I’m through with all that.”

“You’re damned right you are!”

Bob Heseltine was standing just inside the doorway, and he was all squared away to kill me.

“Get out of the way, Vash,” I said quietly.

“I thought you’d gone, Bob,” I said. “I thought you’d quit.”

“Like hell! I figured to, and then I got mad all over again and said I’ll be damned if I do!”

“You’ve still got a chance, Bob,” I said. “The road is out there and you can ride. I don’t want anything from you.”

“You’ve played hell with me,” he said. “
Me!
Bob Heseltine! I should have killed you the first time I saw you!”

“Your horse is out there, Bob. There’s no need for this now.”

He was staring at me. “Why, damn you! I could pull a gun faster than you when I was six!”

“Reese is going to make it, I think, Bob,” I said, still speaking quietly. “He had a good doctor and he was drinking lots of milk and taking it easy. And I saw Ruby back where you left her. She was cooking for the stage tender.”

“Cooking?
Her?
”

“That’s right. I—”

He went for his gun and I beat him.

My gun slid into my hand with an easy motion. I had no sense of hurry, no fear. This was the moment for which I had been preparing myself for a long time.

His hand went down, his gun came up, and I shot him in the belly, shooting three times, as fast as I could slip the hammer, a steady roar of sound, with no breaks.

Heseltine got off only one shot—into the floor.

He went to his knees, started to get up, then just rolled over. It was a moment, a long moment, before I could believe he was dead.

Suddenly the man with the badge was in the doorway. “He came back,” I said. “He came back.”

“I thought he would,” he said.

The stage driver stuck his head in the door. “Stage leaving,” he said. “All who’re going, get aboard.”

“Get on,” I told Vashti and her pa. “You get aboard. I’ll ride along after.”

And that was how I returned to California.

1. Thomas Walsh was the father of Evelyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond.
Return to text.

2. David May founded the May Co. stores.
Return to text.

3. Meyer Guggenheim founded the Guggenheim fortune here.
Return to text.

4. The area now called Hollywood; known then as La Nopalera.
Return to text.

5. Now known as Wilshire Blvd.
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About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—

as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

A good storyteller.”

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
Tucker, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.

Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

NOVELS

Bendigo Shafter

Borden Chantry

Brionne

The Broken Gun

The Burning Hills

The Californios

Callaghen

Catlow

Chancy

The Cherokee Trail

Comstock Lode

Conagher

Crossfire Trail

Dark Canyon

Down the Long Hills

The Empty Land

Fair Blows the Wind

Fallon

The Ferguson Rifle

The First Fast Draw

Flint

Guns of the Timberlands

Hanging Woman Creek

The Haunted Mesa

Heller with a Gun

The High Graders

High Lonesome

Hondo

How the West Was Won

The Iron Marshal

The Key-Lock Man

Kid Rodelo

Kilkenny

Killoe

Kilrone

Kiowa Trail

Last of the Breed

Last Stand at Papago Wells

The Lonesome Gods

The Man Called Noon

The Man from Skibbereen

The Man from the Broken Hills

Matagorda

Milo Talon

The Mountain Valley War

North to the Rails

Over on the Dry Side

Passin’ Through

The Proving Trail

The Quick and the Dead

Radigan

Reilly’s Luck

The Rider of Lost Creek

Rivers West

The Shadow Riders

Shalako

Showdown at Yellow Butte

Silver Canyon

Sitka

Son of a Wanted Man

Taggart

The Tall Stranger

To Tame a Land

Tucker

Under the Sweetwater Rim

Utah Blaine

The Walking Drum

Westward the Tide

Where the Long Grass Blows

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

Bowdrie

Bowdrie’s Law

Buckskin Run

Dutchman’s Flat

End of the Drive

From the Listening Hills

The Hills of Homicide

Law of the Desert Born

Long Ride Home

Lonigan

May There Be a Road

Monument Rock

Night over the Solomons

Off the Mangrove Coast

The Outlaws of Mesquite

The Rider of the Ruby Hills

Riding for the Brand

The Strong Shall Live

The Trail to Crazy Man

Valley of the Sun

War Party

West from Singapore

West of Dodge

With These Hands

Yondering

SACKETT TITLES

Sackett’s Land

To the Far Blue Mountains

The Warrior’s Path

Jubal Sackett

Ride the River

The Daybreakers

Sackett

Lando

Mojave Crossing

Mustang Man

The Lonely Men

Galloway

Treasure Mountain

Lonely on the Mountain

Ride the Dark Trail

The Sackett Brand

The Sky-Liners

THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

The Riders of the High Rock

The Rustlers of West Fork

The Trail to Seven Pines

Trouble Shooter

NONFICTION

Education of a Wandering Man

Frontier

The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour

POETRY

Smoke from This Altar

TUCKER

A Bantam Book / September 2004

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam edition published October 1971

Bantam reissue / April 2000

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1971 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

where permitted by law. For information address:

Bantam Books New York, New York.

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Please visit our website at
www.bantamdell.com

eISBN: 978-0-553-90012-5

v3.0