Ralph Compton The Guns of Wrath

Prologue

Eden's Ridge

You're shaking," Tobias said.

Hope used her other hand to steady the gun, hold it true. She straightened her aim. "Better?"

"Much," Tobias said. "Don't forget your breathing. You are immovable."

"I am immovable," Hope repeated in between inhaling and exhaling slowly as he'd taught her.

"Remember, there's a slight crosswind, so-"

Hope pulled the trigger. The gun shuddered in her grip. The bullet hit the tin can dead center, sending it flying up into the air. The metal caught the light, flashing like polished chrome as it fell, turning over and over to land in the brush a second later. The sound of the gunshot echoed like a thundercrack in the open space, repeating itself over and over. She shot the other two cans in rapid succession, clearing the top of the fence posts of their targets.

Her father whooped. "Thatta girl! Damned if you ain't a daughter of mine!"

"I take it you approve," Hope said coolly, holstering her pistol.

"Damn right I do! Now how's about you show me what you can do with that cat-o'-nine-tails you favor."

Hope rolled her eyes. "It's not a cat-o'-nine-tails, Pop. It wasn't funny the first time you said it, and it's not funny now."

Tobias set three more tin cans on the fence. "Well, it's funny to me." He stepped back, far enough away that she would not catch him with the whip. "Go on, then. Show me what you've got. Let's see if that fool uncle of yours has taught you anything."

"Gladly," Hope said, freeing the bullwhip from her belt.

With a quick flourish of her left wrist, she brought the tongue of the whip to bear on the first can. The braided leather made a sharp snapping sound as she repeated the move, knocking the other two cans clean off the top of the fence. She slowly coiled the whip back up in her hands.

"As you can see, I've been practicing."

Tobias Cassidy shook his head in stunned disbelief. "Well, I'll be . . ." He reached inside his jacket and retrieved his hip flask. "I reckon this calls for a toast."

Her father unscrewed the cap, took a hearty swig, then handed the hip flask to her. Hope lifted it to her lips and gulped the whiskey down, the fire in her throat catching her breath. She coughed and spluttered as she passed the flask back to him.

"Good for you, eh?" he hollered, patting her on the back.

"I don't know how you drink that all the time," Hope said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

Tobias shrugged, took another drink from the flask, then screwed the cap back into place. "Let me tell you something. There's been times the only thing keeping me going is a toot from that flask. Especially when I'm tracking some murderer down or chasing the tail of a bandit. The ride gets lonely. It can eat at you sometimes, get right under your skin. A man's gotta have his vices."

"I guess you would know all about that."

Tobias cocked an eyebrow. "Know about what? Chasing criminals or chasing vices?"

"Both."

Her father's mouth curled up into a wicked smile. "You're cut from the same cloth all right."

They walked back to their horses, hitched securely to the posts at the back of the field.

"When do you ride out again?" Hope asked.

"Not for a few days at least."

"It'll be good to have you home. I think Father Flanagan wants to see you."

"He does? Well, if he thinks I'm about to enter the confessional, he's got another thing coming." Tobias stopped walking. He laid a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "I know it gets lonely, you know, at the house. Especially with your mother gone. I'm sorry I have to do what I do . . . that it takes me away."

"Don't apologize," Hope said. "You know we always understood what you do."

"I know, I know. I just . . ." Tobias frowned, searching for the right words to use. "I worry about you. I guess that's what I'm trying to say here. I don't like leaving you. I know it's been hard since your mother passed, and I haven't exactly been around to help you through it. It ain't been easy. I know that. Believe me, that reality ain't ever far from my thoughts."

Hope patted his hand. "Like I said, there's nothing can be done about it. You have to do what you do. And I've got to get used to life without her, Pop. It's nobody's fault she's gone. Certainly wasn't hers. It just worked out that way."

His face softened. "You mean that?"

"I miss her all the time. The house is empty without her. I'm empty without her. But we have to keep going."

He regarded her a moment. "How did you get to be so damn wise, Hope? You certainly didn't get it from me!"

They continued on to their horses. "I guess I'm plenty like Mom, too."

Tobias threw his arm around her shoulders as they walked together. The sun was a ball of red flame on the horizon, casting long blue shadows as it sank beneath the lip of the world. "You are indeed," Tobias told her. "You're the best of us both."

Maria Cassidy passed in June.

Hope sent word to her father but he didn't receive it for two weeks. By the time he read the telegram and rode back to Eden's Ridge, the funeral had been held and Maria buried in the town's cemetery. After all, the dead do not keep.

Tobias reached the house late one evening, his horse covered in foam and breathing so hard from exertion, it sounded as if it were at the brink of collapse. Hope opened the door and her father wrapped his arms around her, holding her close to his breast.

"I tried to make it back in time," he said.

"I know," Hope said.

Together they rode up to the cemetery and Hope looked on as Tobias fell to his knees by Maria's graveside, weeping like a child. She had never seen him cry, and it was hard to witness such a big, burly man so diminished by grief. He had always been a transient presence in her life, coming and going between assignments, riding out into the wilderness to chase the bad men, the specters of the night, a hero fighting evil. But when he was home, Tobias was a wonderful father. He took her fishing, taught her how to hunt, to handle a firearm. He imbued in her his knowledge, his wisdom, and he was always available with answers to whatever she asked of him. The only thing was, he never spoke of the past, never told her stories from his youth. She had no idea where he came from or what he had been before becoming a US marshal. Hope's mother warned her never to ask. She said, "For your father, the past is painful to recount. Best to leave it where it belongs. Focus on the here and now, Hope. Do not make him dredge up what was. He's a better man for it."

She wasn't the traditional daughter of a traditional father-she was more like his understudy-but it worked in its own way and neither Hope nor Maria resented him for his absences. They understood that his was a life of service, however much they might have wished it to be otherwise.

Tobias had been called away while Maria was sick. At the end, it was just Hope and her mother facing the inevitable alone. At times it was like staring into an abyss, into an all-consuming darkness from which there was no turning back. Still she did not resent her father for not being there. He had his service and she had hers. And when her mother had gone, Hope wondered what would be next for her. She would have to forge her own path in life; she just didn't know what that would turn out to be.

As they rode for home with the light dying around them, Hope’s thoughts once more turned to her future. It was November. The days were getting shorter, the nights longer. The wind had a decidedly frosty edge to it that had not been there before. The last foliage from the trees had settled on the ground, the bare trunks and branches like skeletal imitators of what they had once been. Her father would soon be off again, she knew. There’d be a bank robbery somewhere, or a murder, and he would be called away to wield the might of the law against the perpetrator. She looked at him smoking a cigar as they rode casually across the fields and met the road.

"Tell me about your last job," Hope said.

"I'm sure you don't want to hear about all that."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have asked."

He smiled. "Well, for a start, you know perfectly well they're not jobs, Hope. They're assignments. Cases. I'm not a bounty hunter or a gun for hire. I'm a lawman."

"Sorry. Tell me about your last assignment."

Tobias drew on the cigar, exhaling slowly from his nostrils. "I was out at this place. Little town called Delphine. Way out in the sticks."

"What happened?" Hope asked.

He drew one last time on the cigar, extinguished it by pinching the end of the stub between the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, then pitched it away. He held the horn of his saddle as the horse moved beneath him. "Two bandits. Turned over a farmhouse, took everything they had, then burned the place to the ground."

"Really?" Hope gasped. "What about the family?"

Tobias shook his head slowly, heavily. "Gone. They killed them all. The father, the mother . . . the children, too. Left 'em where they fell, outside, like culled cattle, for all the world to see."

"Why?"

"There's evil everywhere," Tobias said. "Men that'll do whatever they please, no matter who they hurt, no matter the consequences. I tried to find 'em, but they were long gone. I searched for days. They were headed in this direction, but I lost their trail. Sometimes that happens."

"What will you do when you catch up with them?"

"If," Tobias corrected her.

"Okay, if you catch up with them."

"I doubt I will." Her father's face hardened. "But let me assure you, they ain't gonna make it to no court. That's for sure."

Hope looked ahead.

"You know, you should ride out with me one time," Tobias said.

"Really?"

"Why not? You just proved to me you can shoot the whiskers off a mountain lion. And if your gun slips out of your hand, I'm confident you could learn that mountain lion some manners with a few licks of that whip you've taken to. You been ridin' since you were a kid. I think you can handle what's out there. Maybe I'll teach you my line of work, not that you don't know a lot of it already. But there's some things you have to pick up as you go along. You know, as you live 'em, so to speak. Think of it as being like boots."

"Like boots?"

"Yeah, the way you have to wear 'em in. It's no good just puttin' 'em on. You gotta cut your feet to ribbons first. Understand?"

"Yes."

"So come with. I'll teach you what I know. If you're lookin' to get in my line of work, that is."

Hope laughed dismissively. "I don't think they're about to appoint lady marshals to the service, Pop."

"I've heard tell of several women who've been made deputy marshals, matter of fact. It's not beyond the realm of possibility."

"Really?"

"Damn straight," her father said, peering at the horizon. "The world moves on. That's what I've come to understand about life. The world moves on, and we all have to move with it, or get stuck in the past. Some folk are happy doing that. Sticking with what's comfortable. That ain't never sat right with me."

"Perhaps you're right, Pop."

"Do you know how many lady bounty hunters and gunslingers I've come across over the years?"

She shook her head.

"I've lost count. The world ain't like Eden's Ridge, where there's hard-and-fast rules. Everything in this town operates a certain way, and it works because there's law and order, very little unrest or criminality. That's why when it came to settin' down roots, your mother and I chose Eden's Ridge. It felt like a good place, and it is. We weren't proved wrong on that score. But when you're out there, you soon realize the world don't necessarily work the same as it does back home."

"What d'you mean?"

"Anything goes. I can't begin to tell you the strange stuff I've seen over the years. If it's possible that a thing can be, you can guarantee that it is somewhere."

Hope wondered if it might open her mind to what she could do with her life. Perhaps riding out with her father would help her decide what to do with herself. It would at least allow her to see a little more of the world. When her father described that world as always moving, she pictured one of those globes important men kept in their offices, and herself as an ant running on its surface, struggling to keep pace.

"I guess I could ride out with you when you leave," Hope said.

"You'll see things that might disagree with you or upset you in some way, but I know you're not naive," Tobias said. "You've listened to enough of my stories to have a notion of what the criminal world is like. But it'd feel good having you with me, rather than leaving you here all by yourself. You're seventeen. Home ain't gonna be your anchor forever. Might've been different if your ma were still alive. But she ain't, and we both gotta adapt to a new way of living."

Hope felt a lump rise in her throat. "I wonder if she'd approve."

"Probably not," Tobias said with a chuckle.

They crested a rise. A column of black smoke rose up into the slate gray sky.

Hope frowned. "Oh, no, where's that coming from?"

"Come on!" Tobias said, jamming his heels into the sides of his horse.

The beast neighed, bucked a little, then surged forward at a gallop. Hope followed suit, quickly catching up with her father.

"Pop, what is it?" she called.

"It's coming from home."

"Are you sure?"

He drew his pistol. Held it at the ready. "I'm sure."

"What do we do?"

"You got anything left in that shooter of yours?"