Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page A

over at me. “You’ll be Shell Tucker. I’ve heard about you.”
    “Me?”
    “By this time,” Con Judy replied, “everybody in town has. When you’re looking for a man or men the story doesn’t take long…especially on State Street.”
    “Bob Heseltine is a bad man, Tucker,” she said. “If I were you I’d forget it.”
    Well, I just looked at her for a moment, and then I said, “Thank you, ma’am, but I have it to do.”
    She studied me for a moment. “I like you, Tucker, and you have a good friend here in Con. I’ll tell you this: Ruby Shaw was always friendly to Minnie Purdy.”
    “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, and she moved on.
    Con watched her go, thoughtfully. “There’s a strange woman, Shell. Here they call her Madame Vestal, but once she was a mighty important woman, important in society, and even more important during the war.”
    “Her?”
    “She was Belle Siddons then, a noted spy, and a daring young woman.”
    Pa used to tell stories about her. I remembered them now, and looked after her, wondering. These last few days I’d met some people mighty different from any I’d ever met before, different in many ways. And Belle Siddons, or Madame Vestal or whatever her name was, had been helpful.
    Minnie Purdy might know where Ruby Shaw was—the woman with Bob Heseltine—and where Ruby would be, there’d be Bob Heseltine close by. I had my lead, my first good one.
    “She won’t be likely to tell you anything, Shell,” Con said.
    I shrugged. “Didn’t figure on it, but maybe if I keep my mouth shut and sort of scout around I can locate some sign.”
    So whilst Con Judy picked up with old acquaintances, I sat by and studied about Heseltine and the others. First off, they knew I was in town, for they’d shot at me. Having tried once, they would surely try again. That I had to take into account. All the time I was hunting them, they’d be hunting me.
    Now you might think, in a town no bigger than Leadville, that it would be easy to find somebody, but as a matter of fact there were all those dives along State Street, and a lot of shacks and cabins around, and there were half a dozen clusters of buildings round about Leadville, each with its own name, and they might be holed up in any one of them.
    There was Tintown, Jacktown, Little Chicago, Malta, Finntown, and a dozen other places along the valley of the Arkansas, up Stray Horse Gulch or Evans Gulch. A man who wanted to stay hid could do it.
    Would they all hole up in the same place? It was likely.
    At the same time there’s gossip. With all the comers and goers in a boom town like Leadville, there’s talk, and Ruby Shaw was a pretty woman, by most accounts, and pretty women are hard to keep out of sight.
    It would be easier if it wasn’t for all those little communities around. There was no way a man could watch them all. But I had an idea that folks with money on their hands weren’t anxious to stay holed up. Nor did they worry much about me.
    What they were running from more than from me was simply the knowledge they’d done wrong, and not wanting to be faced with it. Con Judy had done me a favor, too, by introducing me to the big men around town…that was going to worry them some.
    Their horses…it was easier for a man to hide himself than to hide his horse. They’d have to keep their horses close to hand, and the horses would have to be fed.
    We went back to the Clarendon, and you can bet I kept an eye out for trouble, but there was none.
    And then I had one of those breaks that come to a man if he’s keeping his eyes and ears open.
    The lobby of the Clarendon had half a dozen people in it, and smelled of cigar smoke. Sitting on a leather settee was a man smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper.
    There were a couple of others talking and sharing a brass spitoon. Con Judy had gone upstairs to get some papers he wanted to discuss with a man in the lobby and I was just sort of idling about. All of a sudden a girl came out of the