Lawless Love Page 16

  “He told me…his mother was a prostitute…in Chicago.”

  A strange look passed over Willie’s face, and she reddened slightly. “And what do you think of prostitutes, Amanda?”

  Now Amanda reddened, confused as to why the woman would ask her that. “I—I’m not sure. I don’t understand why a woman would be that way. But on our trip out here Moss helped me find a place to stay one night—and I’m certain the ladies there were not exactly proper. But they were very kind to me, very kind. I believe that God loves everyone, and therefore I must love everyone…as much as I can. Except people like Rand Barker—I could never love or forgive someone like that. And that’s something I have to deal with myself, I guess. I’d not make a very good nun if my heart held the bitterness and hatred it holds right now.”

  “Time can heal many things,” Willie told her. Amanda toyed with a dish of hot vegetables.

  “Why did you ask me about prostitutes?” she asked Willie.

  The woman looked away and stood up.

  “Let’s talk about Moses Tucker,” she replied. Amanda frowned in curiosity and stabbed at a carrot, then put it in her mouth. She did not know this young woman well enough to pursue the matter.

  “I’m sorry,” she spoke up. “I’m not very good at making new friends, Willie. I spent most of my life behind the walls of an orphanage with people I grew up with. Please go on—about Moss, I mean. I want to know all about him—and who were those men who rode out with him? And where are my things?”

  “Whoa! One question at a time!” She turned to face Amanda again and came back to sit down. “Let’s see now. We’ll save Moss for last. First off, those four men with Moss were Darrell Hicks, Pappy Lane, Johnny Pence and Cal Story. There was a fifth man, Lonnie Drake. He helped track you down. But he had to go back to Brown’s Park. He had business there, and he knows Moss and the others can do a good job of getting Barker’s gang.”

  “Lonnie Drake. He’s the one who—who saw me that night in Barker’s camp at Brown’s Park.”

  “Yes. But he didn’t have enough men with him at the time to do anything about it. So he waited for Moss to come along—which he knew he would—and he helped Moss hunt for you.”

  “It’s so strange—those men caring like that. Are they all outlaws?”

  “Most. Oh, a couple of them are temporarily reformed, till the next easy deal comes along.” She laughed lightly. “Of course, my Slim is through with it, now that he has a wife, and a child on the way.”

  Amanda smiled now. This woman seemed extremely proud of her marriage and her pregnancy.

  “And where are my things—the things I had on the train?” she asked.

  “Oh, they’re still in Bear River City, waiting for your return.”

  Amanda sighed, wondering how she could return now, wondering just how she would start her life over.

  “I need to know more about Moss Tucker, Willie. Do you know him well?”

  “Yes, I do. And most of us who’ve known Moss know the story. Slim knows him well. They rode together for a while. And, yes, Moss was born in Chicago to a prostitute, like he told you. There are all kinds of people, Amanda—good and bad—no matter what their station in life. Just like with outlaws. Some are basically good like Moss, Slim, and the others. And some are very, very bad—like Rand Barker. And there are prostitutes who, although their morals are slightly misplaced, are kind and loving people. And there are bad ones. Moss’s mother was a bad one. She neglected him terribly, and he ran the streets. That’s where he learned to be tough, learned to fight, and got his first lessons in how to steal. He learned that only the strong survive.

  “Moss had no family life to speak of. But he knew people had to live better than he did in Chicago. At thirteen he ran away: away from the mother who shamed and abused him, away from the back alleys. He hopped a train to St. Paul, Minnesota. Moss was always big for his age, he tells us. He lied about his age and got a job in a factory. Worked there till he was eighteen—worked about seventy-five hours a week. He saved his money carefully—told us he had decided to go west into country he’d heard some tall tales about. Country where a man could be free, be his own man, breathe fresh air, and start life over. That was his dream. To make good, to make something of himself. So he saved and saved. Then took his money and went west at eighteen to look for gold. He slaved away in the Sierra Nevadas to find his fortune. And that was when he became more mountain man than anything else—learned to fight Indians, and learned to use a gun to protect himself from claim jumpers.”

  “He told me he once had a claim—struck gold. But he told me he lost it all. He didn’t say how or why,” Amanda spoke up.

  Willie got up and walked over to put some more wood on the fire.

  “Yes, he found gold. Staked his claim. Then he spent five years or better working it all by himself. That was near Virginia City. He set up a bank account there, got himself real organized. Moss is good down deep inside—and a hard worker, Amanda. A real hard worker. He’d work his fingers to the bone for the right person. In this case, it was for himself and his dream: to get rich, find a nice woman to marry, and make something of himself. At twenty-four he sold his claim—made a tidy profit, along with what he already had in the bank. He’d made his fortune, and the time had come to find a wife and settle down. So, he cleaned himself up and went to San Francisco.”

  “The woman,” Amanda said, fascinated with the story. “He told me there’d been a woman in California he loved.”

  “Yes. He met and fell in love with the daughter of a prominent banker. She was wealthy, beautiful and educated. Unfortunately, her interest in Moss—other than his handsomeness and that his big, strong body of his—was the fact that he was rich. In the case of a woman like that, being rich was of the utmost importance. And it was even more important to her father. Yet money alone was not enough. The man had to have background. And while Moses Tucker was following Etta Graceland around like a lost puppy, she was thinking about how much richer she would be if she married him, and her father was having Moss checked out. Well, in a family of money, need I tell you how her father felt about Moses Tucker when he discovered Moss was born a bastard, brought up in a brothel, and ran the streets of Chicago?”

  Amanda moved her tray to the side of the bed. She frowned with pity, and Willie nodded.

  “Yes. James Graceland, prominent, wealthy banker of San Francisco, could not even consider allowing his lovely and well-bred daughter marry a bastard. He was so angry that Moss had kept it a secret that he set out to ruin Moses Tucker and send Moss back into the cesspool of life where he’d come from—put Moss in his place, so to speak. And James Graceland had power. Without Moss’s knowledge of what was going on behind his back, James Graceland made arrangements with the banker in Nevada. The money was funneled out of Moss’s account very cleverly. Of course, to this day Moss has never been able to prove that Graceland was behind the deal. He doesn’t have the power and the connections Graceland has. But it was pretty obvious Graceland was behind it.

  “Then one evening when Moss went to pick Etta up for an evening at the theater, the girl was in tears. She read Moss up one side and down the other—asked him why he lied to her about his past, why he’d led her on. She told him she’d never have let him put his hands on her if she’d known he was a bastard. She kicked him out of the house and told him never to come back. Needless to say, Moss was devastated. He really loved that girl.”

  “What did he do then? What about his money?”

  “He didn’t know what to do at first. He was heartbroken over Etta. Even to this day, when he speaks about it, it’s obvious it still hurts him. He’d worked so hard to make a better life for himself, to move up a little in life. He returned to Nevada to gather his thoughts, to try and get over Etta. But then when he got there, he was told he had no account with the bank. Moss Tucker was penniless. You can imagine the things that must have gone through his mind then. He’d lost Etta, and now he’d been swindled out of all that har
d-earned money. Years, it took. All those years of work and sweat and saving—only to have it all stolen from under his nose, with no way of proving what had happened. Someone had also stolen or destroyed all records of his account. Moss had nothing.”

  “Dear Lord, what did he do?” Amanda asked, totally lost now in Moss Tucker’s plight. She had forgotten the pain and soreness that still grasped at her, and she even forgot the past week and all its horror. Willie was glad to be able to take the girl’s mind off herself for a while.

  “Well, a man like Moss—he’s his own man, Amanda. Moss has a temper. And he’d just been swindled out of all that money. He felt helpless, and the frustration of it—combined with losing Etta—it just got to him. He’d never had a happy life, and after his long struggle to find a little happiness, it had all been thrown in his face. He grabbed the owner of the bank in Nevada and started beating on the man—told him he wanted the truth about what had happened to his money, and wanted a confession that James Graceland had planned it all. But the man wouldn’t confess to anything. Moss just went kind of crazy, and he pulled out a small handgun from his vest and shot the banker.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes. Luckily for Moss, the man didn’t die. That got Moss five years in prison instead of a noose around his neck. In prison, his bitterness only got worse. He had five years to sit and brood about James Graceland and the way he had not only cheated Moss out of his money, but also the woman he loved. Not that Etta Graceland would have made much of a wife in the long run. But Moss wasn’t thinking about that then. He still loved her. And in all that time he never heard one word from her. He was left alone, broke and without a friend. When he finally got out of prison, the first thing he did was try to find Etta. But she’d married an attorney and moved to Los Angeles, as had her father. So all of it was gone. All of it. And Moses Tucker didn’t give a damn about anything, if you’ll pardon my use of the word. He figured he was pretty worthless.”

  “It bothers him very much, doesn’t it?” Amanda asked. “His being a—a bastard and all, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. It bothers him. I think that’s part of the reason he’d like to take his little girl. I’m sure he’ll at least make sure she knows who he is. He’ll keep in touch, make sure she’ll always know who her father is—even though he was never married to her mother.”

  “Who’s the mother?” Amanda asked, feeling jealousy rising again.

  “I’ll get to that. Moss—he turned very bitter after going back to San Francisco. He just sort of gave up for a while. I guess he figured if people thought him worthless, well, maybe he was worthless. And he’d lost his incentive to work and make something of himself. So he went east—oh, not all the way, just to Wyoming—and took up with some men he’d met in prison.”

  “Rand Barker!” Amanda said in a near whisper.

  “Yes. Rand was one. They rode together. And Moss turned to cattle rustling for money. He figured if it couldn’t work doing it the right way, he just didn’t care any more. And his heart was still shattered over Etta Graceland. Losing the woman he loves can do all kinds of things to a man, Amanda. I’ve seen men cry, get themselves filthy drunk, even want to kill themselves over a woman. I’ve seen—”

  Willie stopped short and reddened slightly again. Then she quickly continued on talking about Moss.

  “At any rate, Moss turned to a life of rustling—even robbed a couple of banks in revenge for what a banker had done to him. And he got much better with his gun. It seemed to be a natural talent for him. His reputation grew, and men called him out. Moss has killed several men, Amanda.”

  Amanda ran a hand through her hair, trying to get it all straight in her mind. What a complicated man Moses Tucker was, and what a lonely man. She felt sorry for him; yet the fact remained he’d killed men. It confused her feelings.

  “They were all worthless and better off dead, Amanda,” Willie went on. “And they all called Moss out of their own free will. Moses Tucker does not go looking for fights. They come to him. And he’s quite respected among the men who live in this territory. Not one of them in his right mind will give Moses Tucker any trouble—not if he expects to live. That’s why Rand Barker is running scared now. He’s already gone against Moss once and lost. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  “What was it about?” Amanda asked.

  “Well, they picked up Duke Sage along the way.”

  Amanda made a face and grasped at her stomach.

  “He’s a horrible man,” she whispered.

  “I know. But at that time he wasn’t quite that bad. Then one night they raided a stockyard. There was a wagon train camped nearby. A woman came out to help her husband try to herd back some of the cattle they’d just sold to the stockyards and that were being stolen by Rand and Moss and the others. Duke Sage grabbed the woman.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “He rode off with her. Moss spotted three small children near the wagon. He knew by the way they were crying and carrying on that the woman must be their mother. He left the cattle behind and rode out after Sage. Rand Barker followed. Duke Sage wasted no time in getting the woman into the bushes, and he was preparing to—well, I don’t need to tell you.”

  Amanda’s eyes teared as she tried to keep her mind on Moss and off of her ugly memories.

  “Moss rode up and jumped on Duke Sage. He beat the man pretty bad. Rand considered himself the leader of that particular scheme to steal cattle, and consequently he also figured Moss had no business interfering with what the other men did. Rand said it was his place to decide what to do with the woman, and what to do about Duke Sage. Sage was in pretty bad shape by the time Rand got there. Moss went kind of crazy. I guess because of the way his mother had been, Moss—well, he has this very deep respect for a good woman: a woman who lives right, is loyal to one man and all. He just couldn’t stand the thought of Duke Sage taking what belonged to another man. At any rate he hollered back at Rand Barker that he had no intention of riding with men who would violate a good woman. Barker got his dander up and said a man had a right to do whatever he wanted. Well, you can imagine how it went after that—two stubborn men who were both good with a gun. Barker drew on Moss—but Moss, he’s fast. He’s faster than Barker will ever be.”

  “I—I can hardly believe someone could be faster than that.”

  “Well, Moss Tucker is. He shot Barker and left him there. Then he took the woman back to her family, and he rode west again. He just lit out and rode back to California. He decided he didn’t want to be a part of that kind of thing—not taking women. And he felt stronger inside again, the sores were healing. He decided he’d try once more to do something better with his life. So he got a job in Sacramento working for a blacksmith. He was thirty-four then. He figured with his past, no decent woman would ever marry him. So he took up with a prostitute, Betsy Malone. They lived together, and while they lived together Betsy remained true to Moss. Fact is, I guess she loved him, and Moss loved her. Oh, it probably wasn’t the kind of love between a man and wife, but they were good friends and they needed each other. Moss was good to her, and she was good to him. But both knew it wasn’t something permanent so they didn’t marry.”

  “I—I don’t understand a relationship like that. I mean, I wish I could. But I—I could never live like that.”

  “Of course not. A girl like you wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t be expected to understand.”

  “And Betsy—she’s the mother?”

  “Yes. But she’s dead now.”

  “Oh, how sad. Why was Moss in Chicago? Why wasn’t he out in California with Betsy and his little girl?”

  “Because he’d been sent back to prison.”

  “My goodness! What for?”

  “Well, some money came up missing at the blacksmith’s. Moss didn’t take it. But since he was fairly new in his job he was suspected. And when the owner found out about Moss’s past record—the fact that he’d been in prison before, and that Moss was suspected of partaking in one or
two bank robberies—well, Moss’s chances of claiming innocence were pretty poor. The money was never found, but they still accused Moss and they sent him to prison in San Francisco when he was thirty-five. It was only after he was sent to jail that Betsy visited him and told him she was pregnant. Moss said he would have married her for the child’s sake if not for being in prison. But he didn’t want to tie Betsy down in a marriage to a man who couldn’t even be with her and take care of her. So they made a pact to marry when he got out. But when Moss was released two years later, he was a changed and bitter man. Again life had dealt him a pretty hard blow. It seems every time he tries to straighten out his life, there’s something or someone waiting to bring him back down to hell again. Prison life does little to boost a man’s morale or make him turn to the good life. By the time he got out, he’d decided he’d make no decent father. By then Betsy had delivered a little girl. The child’s name is Rebecca.”

  “And Moss never went to see the child?”

  “It’s not that he didn’t want to, Amanda. He loves that little girl with his life’s blood—and it was because he loved her that he stayed away. He went to see Betsy, but asked not to see the child, because he knew if he once set eyes on her, he’d want to keep her. But he felt he was no good. Betsy understood. She agreed to care for the child, and Moss promised to send her money to help support little Becky. Betsy said she’d quit the prostitution and raise the little girl properly, and she meant to do that. Betsy was good at heart. So, Moss left. He didn’t know quite what to do with himself, so he went back to Chicago to look up the mother he hadn’t seen in years. It was only the other night, when he showed up here, that I learned the rest. The mother is dead. He worked in Chicago for a while, till he got a letter from a friend of Betsy’s telling him Betsy had died from some kind of fever and his little girl was orphaned. That was when he decided to go back out to California and make sure the child was placed in a proper home. And, well, you know the rest. You ended up on the same train with Moses Tucker. Doesn’t it make you wonder why, Amanda?”