Ralph Compton the Evil Men Do (7 page)

Ohio was a good place to grow up.

The land was fertile, crops thrived, and Donald Connor did well by his wife, Martha, and their four sons and two daughters. He did so well that he got it into his head that he'd do even better if they moved west of the Mississippi River, where the land was a lot cheaper. Instead of the two hundred acres he had, they could have thousands.

Don had a plan. He'd homestead, add more land as his finances allowed, and in a few years he and his wife would be sitting pretty. He worked it all out on paper and showed it to her.

Martha didn't want to leave the home she loved, but she was willing to give the West a try. If her husband said they could do it, they could. He was the brains of the family. After all, he'd had schooling up to the sixth grade and she had only gone as far as the fourth.

They sold their farm, loaded their possessions onto a Conestoga, and set out.

Martha fretted about the dangers, but everyone assured her that the Indians were mostly peaceable and outlaws were few and they'd do fine. It wasn't like in the old days when half the tribes were on the warpath and banks and trains were being robbed right and left.

The days of the famous gangs like the James brothers and the Youngers were long over.

Don picked Kansas for their new home. He'd heard that the earth was as rich as Ohio earth and crops would grow with a minimum of tending. He'd been told the land was flat as a plate and easy to plow. That the summers were mild and the winters saw less snow than most Eastern states.

As it turned out, everything he'd been told by people who had never been there was wrong.

For starters, the land was a lot drier. Where Ohio received over thirty inches of rainfall a year, most parts of Kansas were lucky to see fifteen to twenty, and most of that came in the form of afternoon thunderstorms that didn't do crops a lot of good. Considerable irrigating was called for to make a large farm prosper.

As for the claim that the ground was easy to plow, Don found that it was so hard-packed and hid so many rocks that plowing was a Herculean effort.

And then there were the winters. Bitterly cold winds howled out of the arctic north, and the temperature plummeted to ten degrees. That same wind made it seem like fifty below. As for the snow, two to three feet wasn't uncommon, with drifts of six to eight.

Within a year of their move the family was barely getting by. They were so destitute that Don did something Martha resented for the rest of her days. He sold their oldest son as an indentured servant to a man who ran a freighting outfit.

The custom was well established. In the early days of the Colonies and for a long while after, a lot of immigrants came to America as indentures. It was popular with the poor because it enabled them to come to the land of opportunity, and after working as an indenture for a set number of years, they were given their freedom and could do as they pleased.

In recent years the practice had been on the decline, but it was still done now and then.

Don met the freighter in Salina. Over drinks at a saloon, Don shared his tale of woe. It was the freighter who
suggested he'd be willing to take on the oldest boy as an indentured servant for, say, a hundred dollars. The boy would have to work for ten years to pay the debt off and then would be set free.

So it was that young James Connor, who had just turned twelve, found himself doing a man's work under the always critical eye of a taskmaster who seemed to delight in taking a switch to him for any excuse whatsoever.

Young Jim had been in shock. That his own pa had done this to him crushed him. He cried a lot those first weeks, and if the freighter caught him, he was switched until he bled. After a few times of that, Jim made sure not to be caught.

He grew to hate being indentured, and to hate the freighter even more. The man worked him to the bone from dawn until well past dusk, seven days a week, month in and month out.

The only real rest Jim had was when the freighter let him handle a team. He was a top driver by the time he turned fifteen.

They freighted all over. His master, as the freighter called himself, liked to boast that they'd haul freight anywhere, and that they did: from Missouri to New Mexico, from Texas to Montana.

By his sixteenth year Jim had put on weight and muscle. So much so his boss stopped using the switch. But the freighter still treated him as if he were less than the mud that clung to their boots when it rained.

One day Jim made bold to ask if there was anything he could do to get out of being indentured early. Sure, the freighter laughed, give him the hundred dollars, plus interest. How much interest? Jim asked. Another hundred should do, was the freighter's reply.

Two hundred dollars. To Jim it was a fortune. He had no money of his own, and no need for any. His clothes and his food were provided by the freighter.

Acquiring the two hundred became Jim's dream. His
obsession. He would somehow get his hands on it and be free to live his life as he pleased. The mere notion was a tonic for his spirit.

The “how” eluded him.

Then one day they were in Kansas City. The freighter had gone off to see a man about a job. Jim was left to watch the wagons and happened to notice several black men rolling dice in an alley. He drifted over to watch, and the oldest of the men asked him if he wanted to sit in. Jim said thanks, but he didn't have anything to bet with. The black man asked why not and Jim told him about being indentured.

Jim would never forget the look that came over that man, or what he said.

“They even do it to their own.”

To Jim's astonishment, the black man peeled a bill from his hand and held it out. “What's this?” he'd said.

“Your first step on the road to freedom,” the man said, and wagged the bill. “Five dollars. Take it. It's yours.”

Jim had protested, saying it wouldn't be right, but the black man pressed the bill into his hand and made him take it. Even more astonishing, the man then prevailed on his two friends to contribute.

That night Jim lay under a wagon, where he usually slept, and fingered the godsend he'd been given. Each of the others had given him three, for a total of eleven. He felt rich, as if all the money in the world had been dropped in his lap. It intensified his yearning to be free.

All he needed was another one hundred and eighty-nine dollars.

Obtaining it became all he thought about.

It was why he took the risk he did.

Jim sat in on a card game.

They were in Denver. The freighter had gone to visit a sporting house, informing Jim he'd be gone all night and to stay with the wagons, which were parked in a freight yard. Other freighters were there, and their loud voices and laughter drew Jim to a poker game. He
watched for over an hour, torn between fear of losing all he had and his desire to add to his Freedom Purse, as he called it. When one of the players left, the others asked if anyone wanted to take his place.

Jim offered to.

It was a friendly game and they were playing for small stakes. Nickels and dimes and quarters. The most a player could raise was a dollar.

Jim lost fifteen cents and then twenty more and was tempted to quit, but his next hand was three of a kind and he won twenty-five. Lady Luck liked him and he ended up winning more hands than he lost so that by midnight, when the game broke up, he was six dollars and forty cents richer.

Jim had found a new passion. From then on, he played poker every chance he got. He had to do it behind the freighter's back, but that just added spice to his pleasure.

He grew better fast. He learned to read the other players, to tell when they had a good hand and when they were bluffing. He learned to bluff himself, to turn his expression to stone and not give his hand away.

In Kansas City he was first called Aces. During a late-night game he won three big hands in a row, all with three aces. The odds against that happening were astronomical. One of the other players started calling him Aces as a friendly joke, and the rest took it up. He liked the nickname.

From then on he called himself Aces Connor.

By the end of his seventeenth year Aces had one hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixteen cents in his Freedom Purse. All he needed was twelve dollars and eighty-four cents.

He won it in Wichita. The moment he had the full two hundred, he bowed out and made for the saloon where he knew the freighter to be.

His master was at the bar, a bottle of whiskey half-gone. He glowered when Aces strode up and growled,
“What in hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be with the wagons.”

“Two hundred dollars, you said.”

“What?”

Aces pulled the Freedom Purse from his pocket and smacked it down in front of the freighter. “Two hundred dollars it is.”

“What?” the freighter repeated himself.

“For my freedom. There's your money. I want out of the contract you talked my father into signing.”

The freighter had struggled to collect his wits. He blinked in confusion and opened the purse. All that money cleared his head right quick. Mumbling, he counted the bills and coins. “I don't believe it.”

“So, are we square?” Aces had said.

“Not so fast,” the freighter said. “Where did you get this? I don't pay you a cent. Did you steal it?”

Aces told him about the poker games.

“So you've been sneaking away when you were supposed to be working?” the freighter said. “I should take a switch to you for that.”

“Try,” Aces said.

The freighter was bigger, although not by much. He gauged the width of Aces's shoulders and the breadth of Aces's chest, and frowned. “You're past that age. But I can punish you in other ways.”

Aces jabbed the purse angrily. “You have the two hundred. What more do you want?”

“You're supposed to be mine for another five years yet,” the freighter said. “This ain't hardly enough.”

“It's how much you told me.”

“I wasn't thinking,” the freighter said. “I didn't take you seriously. I said whatever popped into my head.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Don't talk to me like that,” the freighter warned. “You're still mine to do with as I damn well please, and it pleases me to let you know that it will take four
hundred to buy out your contract.” He shook the purse. “Twice as much as you have here.”

“You greedy bastard.”

“Keep this up and I'll have you thrown behind bars. I'm within my rights. I can't help it if you were stupid enough to think two hundred would do.”

Aces hit him. He'd never struck another human being, but he unleashed an uppercut to the jaw with all his rage-driven strength behind it and knocked the freighter down. Cursing, the freighter stood and Aces punched him again, full in the face. It sent the freighter crashing onto a table, and the table upended, landing on top of him. Aces moved in, set to pound the freighter into the floor.

Only the freighter wasn't moving. Blood flowed from a deep gash on his forehead, and he didn't appear to be breathing.

In a sudden panic, Aces fled. He was sure he'd killed him. Sure that the law would be after him and he'd be put on trial and thrown behind bars.

Aces would be damned if he'd let that happen. He didn't have any money and he didn't have a horse, but he knew of another freighter who was leaving for Texas in the morning, and he asked the man if he could go along. The man was a driver short and happy to have him.

Only later did Aces learn he needn't have run off. His “master” wasn't dead. The bartender splashed water on his face and the freighter got up, grabbed the purse, and staggered out. He never pressed charges. Never sent anyone to bring Aces back.

Texas was a lot to Aces's liking. The folks there kept to themselves and didn't badger others with a lot of questions. He worked as a store clerk in Dallas long enough to buy new clothes and save twenty dollars so he could sit in on a poker game.

From then on, it was poker and only poker. He became a gambler. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat and a black frock coat, and carried a pair of pistols in the
pockets. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, wherever there was a high-stakes game, that was where you'd find him.

Aces might have gone on gambling forever if he hadn't run into a young woman one day while he was strolling about to stretch his legs. Her name was Susie. She was his age, the daughter of a rancher, and the most beautiful female he had ever set eyes on. One look, and he was smitten. He struck up a conversation. Susie was warm and friendly and had the most perfect teeth in all creation.

She made it a point to mention that she came into town once a week with her mother, and Aces made it a point to be on the lookout for her when she did. They'd walk and talk, and at night he'd dream of her.

Aces imagined Susie as his wife. Imagined having a home and kids. Imagined living as he had lived before his father betrayed him. To test the waters he remarked to Susie how nice that would be. Susie said she'd like nothing better and her mother wouldn't mind, but her pa would never let her marry a gambler.

Aces was mulling over how he could change her father's mind when the matter was taken out of his hands.

He killed somebody.

It started over cards.

Aces had learned all the tricks that cheaters used. Marked cards. Dealing from the bottom. Sleeve rigs. He had to. Not so he could use them himself, but to make sure no one cheated him.

He thought of gambling as an honorable profession. Certainly luck was a factor, but so was skill. Cheating destroyed the luck element and made a mockery of the skills needed to be a consistent winner.

Whenever Aces caught someone cheating, it was like a slap to the face. He took it personal. He pistol-whipped a cheater once. Another, he busted the man's nose with the flat of his hand.

He had a reputation for fair play and he stuck to it like a medieval knight to his standard.

Then one day he was invited to sit in on a high-stakes game involving several wealthy ranchers. It was an annual affair. He'd been invited once before and had a fine time. That he came away from the table over four thousand dollars to the better had a lot to do with it.

Little did he know at the time but one of the ranchers resented it. The man was named Sparks. He was a poor loser but clever enough to hide the fact. Since a lot of that four thousand had been his, he conspired to get even.

There they were, Aces and five of the biggest ranchmen in all of Texas. They'd been at the game for hours. The room was thick with cigar smoke. The smell of liquor, the clatter of chips, the quiet slap of cards when they were placed down—the pulse of play was friendly and reserved.

Then Aces saw Sparks dip two fingers into a sleeve. Not up under it, as was normally done when a cheater used a wrist rig, but
into
the underside of the sleeve itself.

And wouldn't you know it? Sparks flourished four kings to win the largest pot of the night.

As Sparks grinned and reached for the chips, Aces had lowered his right arm to his side, close to his pocket with its special leather lining for his pistol.

“I shouldn't think you'd need to, a man with as much as you have,” he'd remarked with an edge to his voice.

Sparks went still, his hand half across the table. “What do you mean by that, Mr. Connor?”

“The size of your ranch, you have more money than you know what to do with. Why cheat?”

The other ranchers shot sharp glances at Sparks. They all knew Aces, knew he believed in fair play and was as honest as the year was long. It was part of the reason he'd been invited to sit in.

“I don't know what in hell you're talking about,” Sparks replied, “and I resent your accusation.”

“Resent it all you want,” Aces said. “But you are a no-account cheat and out of this game.”

“Like hell I am.”

“I'll have a look at that left sleeve of yours.”

“Like hell you will.” Spark slid his arm close to his vest.

“You've taken advantage of your friends. They trusted you to play fair. As have I. If you won't tell us why, we'll at least know how.”

“You so much as touch me and I'll shoot you,” Sparks said.

The rancher who had organized the game said, “Sparks, please. We're all gentlemen here.”

“He isn't,” Sparks snarled, with a nod at Aces.

“What have I ever done that you'd say that?” Aces asked.

“You don't have to do anything. You're a gambler. You put on airs of respectability but prey on the misfortunes of others for your livelihood. You're despicable, each and every one of you.”

“I never knew you felt that way.”

“I'm not the only one. That filly everybody knows you're sweet on? Her pa is a friend of mine. He told me flat out once he'd never let a gambler marry his daughter, not from now until kingdom come.”

“Keep her out of this.”

Sparks had sneered and said, “What's the matter? Don't you like hearing the truth?”

“The issue is you cheatin',” Aces had said. “Show us that sleeve.”

“Go to hell.”

“Then I'll take a look myself.”

Aces had started to rise. Sparks, with an oath, reached under his jacket and drew an Open Top Pocket pistol. He pointed it, but Aces had his own Colt out and up. Aces fired as Sparks went to shoot. The slug smashed Sparks against the back of his chair, but he gamely tried to take aim. Aces fired again. The chair tilted and Sparks heaved out of it, screeching like an enraged bobcat. He got off a wild shot, putting a hole in the forehead of the player on Aces's right. Aces shot Sparks in the face.

Everyone said the shooting was justified. That slit in Sparks sleeve held a queen and an ace. The sheriff refused to prosecute, despite the outrage from Sparks's kin.

Aces should have been happy. His reputation wasn't tarnished. He could have gone on gambling the rest of his days, but he lost his enthusiasm for the game. Part of it was that the cards turned cold. Not just for a game or two. All the time. It was as if he'd been jinxed.

The cards weren't to blame for the final blow to his
gambling days. He'd continued to see Susie until one day her mother came to their rendezvous instead and informed him that the father, who appeared to be the last person in Texas to find out about their secret romance, had become incensed and prohibited Susie from seeing him.

No daughter of his would marry a worthless tinhorn.

Rumor had it that a relative of Sparks had whispered their secret into the father's ear to get back at Aces.

Aces was heartbroken. He lost all enthusiasm for cards and the saloon life. Even the taste of whiskey went flat in his mouth. He kept on playing, but he lost every cent he'd socked away.

Six months after his heart was crushed, Aces was busted and drifting. He got rid of his gambler's duds. There was no sense in dressing as one when he wasn't.

There he was, twenty years old, with no life to speak of. He had no prospects whatsoever.

Then he ran into a rancher he'd played cards with a few times. The man took pity on him and offered him a job as a cowhand. Just until he was back on his feet, the rancher said.

With nothing else to do and about ten cents to his name, Aces figured he might as well. He would eat regular and have a roof over his head when he was at the bunkhouse.

He could ride and he could rope, so it wasn't as if he was worthless at it. He got better at the roping and learned as much about cows as he'd learned about cards, and something unexpected happened.

Aces found that he liked it. He liked being a cowboy. Liked being outdoors, liked working cattle, liked the company of other cowhands. He soon became a top hand and was well respected by his brothers in the profession.

He was also more than a little feared.

Aces discovered that a shooting marked a man for life. Everywhere he went, people whispered and pointed.
He wasn't just Aces Connor, cowboy. He was Aces Connor, gun shark. Aces Connor, shootist. In his own eyes he was no such thing, but what he thought didn't matter. He was whispered about, and pointed at.

Aces had a brainstorm. To escape his past, he left Texas and drifted as far as Wyoming before he found a job that suited him, working for Mr. Horrell. The whispering and the pointing stopped.

For years he didn't shoot anybody. Then came that cardsharp and the rustler and the drummer, and Mr. Horrell, as decent a man as ever drew breath, had had enough and let him go. It was nothing personal, Horrell said. He just couldn't have a man-killer on his payroll. It gave a ranch a bad reputation.

Now here Aces was, riding south with an old lawman, a kid with an attitude, and a poor soul bound for the gallows. It was the day after he drove off the Arapahos and they had been riding for most of the morning when Marshal Hitch brought his bay alongside the palomino.

“Mind if we talk?”

“So long as it's not about those men I shot.”

“It's about why you're taggin' along. Cheyenne is a far piece and we're all strangers to you.”

“What else do I have to do?” Aces said, not without bitterness. “No one in these parts will hire me.”

“Man-killers aren't all that popular, I'm afraid,” Fred said.

“Yet folks gab about them no end.”

The marshal shrugged. “That's human nature, I reckon. Most people live humdrum lives. They go day in and day out with no excitement whatsoever. So when they hear about someone like you, it makes you special.”

“Special, my backside,” Aces said.

“It's like back in ancient times. You ever hear of a place called Troy? Or a warrior called Achilles? Or how about Robin Hood? There was a book written about him not long ago.”

“Now you're bein' ridiculous.”

“It's the same thing, I tell you. Folks look up to those who do things they couldn't do. Brave things. Excitin' things.”

“There's nothin' excitin' about shootin' somebody.”

“There is to those who never have,” Fred insisted. “Shootists become heroes of sorts, whether they're on the right side of the law or the wrong side. Look at Billy the Kid. Or Wild Bill Hickok. Or John Wesley Hardin. Hell, I could name twenty more.”

Aces didn't say anything. He hadn't ever thought of it that way.

“Like it or not, you've sort of become a hero to some. Take Tyree. I can tell he looks up to you.”

Aces had noticed the boy giving him peculiar looks. “What's the kid's story anyhow?”

“His folks died when he was in the crib and he grew up in an orphanage. That's all he's been willin' to tell me.”

“He seems a little young to be going after bounty money,” Aces observed. Especially since most of those who had bounties on their heads wouldn't hesitate to do in whoever was after them.

“There's more to him than meets the eye,” Fred observed. “I don't have him entirely figured out yet, but I'm workin' on it.”

Aces put the kid from his mind. It was none of his affair. Then that night, as they sat around the campfire drinking coffee and not saying much, he caught the boy giving him that peculiar look again. “Cut it out.”

“Cut what out?” Tyree replied, sounding surprised.

“You know damn well. I won't be gawked at, thank you very much.” Aces had had his fill of that.

“You've shot three men,” Tyree said.

“Four, but who's countin'?” Aces frowned and rested his elbows on his knees. “Shootin' a man isn't anything special. Sometimes it has to be done. You do it and get on with your life and hope others will forget, but they don't.”

“You know you can squeeze the trigger when you have to. That's somethin'.”

“How so?”

“What if you had it to do but didn't know if you could?” Tyree said. “I shot at McCarthy there—”

“And hit a horse,” Fred interjected.

Tyree glared at him, then said to Aces, “But he's the only one I've ever shot at, so I can't say as how I'll be when I have to do it again.”

“Why is that so important to you?” Aces asked.

“It just is,” Tyree said sullenly.

Aces sipped coffee and pondered. He hadn't lost his knack for reading people, and he read something here. “Tell me,” he said. “How'd you get that scar?”

“I've had it since I was in diapers. And the how is none of your business.”

“You were a baby?” Fred said.

“Let it be,” Tyree said to him.

Aces refused to. “I was just askin'.”

“And I'm just tellin' you it's not anything I'll talk about, now or ever. So let it be.”

“It looks like someone cut you.” Aces had seen more than a few knife wounds. Some were downright ugly, like this one.

“Who would cut a baby like that?” Fred said.

“Someone who wanted the baby dead,” Aces said.

Tyree set down his tin cup so hard his coffee spilled. Heaving upright, he spat out, “You will not pry into my past, you hear me? You're nuisances, the both of you.” Wheeling, he stormed off.

“Where does he think he's going?” Fred said. “We're in the middle of nowhere.”

Tom McCarthy, who had been disconsolate all day and refused to say much, now stirred. “You hurt the boy's feelings. What do you expect?”

“He's sure a puzzlement,” Fred said.

“Not if you can add two and two,” McCarthy said. “He's already told us his parents were murdered when he was a baby.”

“So?” Fred said.

“So whoever murdered them tried to kill him and cut him like that.”

“That's terrible,” Fred said.

“Worse things have happened.”

“I can't think of anything worse than hurting a baby,” Fred said.

“Instead of badgering the kid, you should try to help him.”

“You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.”

“You can try,” McCarthy said.

They fell silent.

As for Aces, he drank more coffee and did more pondering. And a seed took root and sprouted.