Ralph Compton Comanche Trail (A Ralph Compton Western) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for Best Debut Novel. He was also the author of the Sundown Riders series and the Border Empire series.

Carlton Stowers is the author of the Ralph Compton novels Comanche Trail and Phantom Hill.

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Part One
Chapter 1

Kansas, summer 1873

Thad Taylor’s lanky body throbbed with pain and the bright morning sun forced him to shield his eyes as he stepped from the front door of the jail. His recollection of the previous night was hidden away in a drunken fog—too many whiskeys and an argument in Stubby’s saloon down the dusty Independence, Kansas, main street, a flying chair or two, then a full-scale free-for-all. The fact that one eye was almost swollen shut, his knuckles were raw and blood-crusted, and his ribs felt as if an anvil had been dropped on them was all the hungover Taylor needed to realize he’d been on the losing end of whatever fight he’d likely instigated.

It wasn’t the first time.

He was making a futile attempt to smooth his tangled rusty brown hair and wipe the dried vomit from his torn shirt when he saw his sister glaring at him from a nearby buggy. Once again the sheriff had called her to fetch him and, despite earlier vows that she would never again do so, she had come to take him home.

Thad nodded in her direction, aware that a tongue-lashing was soon to come.

“Get in, Thaddeus,” Sister said, hoping passersby would not take notice and quickly spread the word that the doctor’s boy had again gotten himself in trouble with the law.

He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Gotta find my hat,” he mumbled through swollen lips.

“Get in . . . right this minute.” Her tone made it clear that finding his hat would have to wait.

They rode in silence on the trip out to the Taylor Farm, sweat beading on Thad’s forehead despite the cool morning breeze. Sister kept her eyes focused on the mare in front of her, her knuckles white as she held tightly to the reins and her temper.

The weathered old farmhouse was in view before she finally spoke. “Thaddeus,” she said, careful not to look toward him, “you’re past your twentieth year and still whoring and drinking and carousing, doing absolutely nothing worthwhile with your life. It’s a shame, if you ask me. Are you ever going to amount to anything?” A tear ran down her cheek as she spoke.

“Reckon not.” He was sorry for his response as soon as the words escaped his mouth. “Where’s my horse?”

“Unlike you, he came home last night,” Sister said. “I unsaddled him and put him in the barn.” She gave him a stern look. “Just like I always do.”

“He okay?”

“Much better than you. I’m just glad Daddy’s away and not here to see what a frightful mess you are.”

After cleaning up and pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot that hung above the fireplace, Taylor declined Sister’s offer of breakfast. His stomach churned at the very thought of food. Instead he headed toward the barn and the small room he’d converted from what was once a place for storing saddles and tools back when the home place was still a working farm. It had only a bed and a small chest, most of its faded paint peeled away. But the place provided him solitude, away from the big house that he’d stormed out of three years earlier, following yet another argument with his father.

He fell onto the bed, resting an arm across his eyes, hoping the dizziness would soon go away. And, as was his routine following each of his boozy misadventures, he took stock of his miserable station in life. As was always the case, he didn’t like the scenes that played in his mind.

His father, Independence’s only doctor, was one of those bigger-than-life characters. He’d lost count of how many children, his own included, he’d helped bring into the world, how many broken bones he’d mended and lives he’d saved. If the stories Thad had heard since boyhood were true, Dr. Winslow Taylor, a portly Scottish immigrant with a booming voice, had been a fun-loving man in his younger days. He was quick to help out friends and neighbors, ever ready to buy the first round on Saturday nights, loved dancing, playing the fiddle. And, above all, his wife.

That he had been unable to save her life when complications developed following his son’s birth had changed Dr. Taylor forever. His good nature disappeared, his delight in the company of others waned. While he continued to carry about his medical responsibilities in a professional manner, he was never the same after Maggie Taylor was buried. Doc Taylor became a bitter man. Often, on late nights when he sat alone in his library, sipping whiskey and smoking his pipe, he would quietly talk to himself. His words, part curse, part an expression of haunting disbelief, were always the same: I can heal others but couldn’t save my own.

The only thing that brightened his spirits was his daughter, Peggy, whom everyone had begun calling Sister even before her younger brother was born. She had her mother’s features—high cheekbones, eyes so blue as to be almost hypnotic, shiny auburn hair—and a warm, generous nature. In Sister’s company, Dr. Taylor was able to think back on happier times.

Thad, on the other hand, was a constant reminder of the darkest day in his life. And, while the doctor had never said as much, his son was certain that he was blamed daily for the death of his mother. Thad had long since resigned himself to being the family curse, robber of all of his father’s joy. He’d so balked at the doctor’s insistence that education was the path to a man’s success that when he’d stopped going to the schoolhouse, no argument was offered. Whatever small effort at guidance the elder Taylor had tried ended in such grand failure that he’d long since halted the useless exercise. By the time Thaddeus reached adulthood, he couldn’t even remember when he’d finally given up on any effort to win the doctor’s approval.

In exchange for doing handyman jobs around the farm—milking, mucking out stalls, carpentry when the roof of the house leaked, clearing brush, and tilling Sister’s summer garden—he lived on the family place and enjoyed his sister’s cooking. Otherwise, he and his father were as distant as strangers, seldom speaking, seeing each other rarely, and then only from a safe distance.

What little money Thad earned came from odd jobs he did for folks in town who occasionally tried to reach out to the young man whose life they perceived to be painfully lonely, filled with anger, and without real purpose.

If Independence had a bona fide outcast, it was Thaddeus Taylor.

• • •

The day was nearing an end under a gray sky that was forewarning a thunderstorm by the time he was wakened by a gentle knock at his door and the sound of Sister’s voice. “You feeling good enough to eat something?” On her arm was a basket that held a plate of tomatoes, corn bread, beans and bacon, and a large slice of apple pie.

“Looks like I’m gonna live,” he said as he realized that his appetite had returned.

Sister sat silently watching her brother as he began to eat ravenously. He wasn’t exactly a handsome man, she thought, but if one looked beyond the bruises, swollen eye, and unkempt hair, overlooked his need for a shave and new clothes and another ten pounds on his skinny frame, there was something about Thaddeus Taylor that she assumed women might find attractive. Not just whores, but good women like those who attended church at the Calvary’s Cross Baptist. She was certain she wouldn’t always be the only one to love her brother—if he straightened up.

“I’m sorry about what I said today,” she said.

Thad smiled for the...