by Brett Waring
Larry Holbrook was just a kid—sixteen, if that. He knew little of the world, but even he knew it was a bad idea to throw in with an owlhoot like Sundance Harmer. It was sure to end badly, and it did—with the cold-blooded murder of an innocent Wells Fargo worker. After that, there was no going back for Larry—he was trapped.
But maybe even now he could still do something to redeem himself, out-gunned as he was. And when Clay Nash bought into the fight, the odds got a little better.
Still, men were going to die – a lot of them – before justice was finally dealt to the guilty parties …
One – Alliance in Blood
Sundance heard the thunder of the shot echoing through the woods as he worked his slow-moving sorrel through a heavy stand of aspen, and reined down.
Instinctively, his hand swept back the ragged slicker and gripped the butt of the six-gun in the old, worn holster thonged down on his right thigh. Lifting his bearded face, he squinted through the slashing downpour that made the trees seem ghostly and indistinct. The rain drummed on the brim of his battered hat, flowed through his stubble and trickled down his neck inside the frayed shirt collar, bringing a low curse from his thin lips. Lank, straw-colored hair that hung thickly to his shoulders scraped across the slicker as he slowly moved his head. Narrow green eyes scanned the trees.
Then a second shot boomed and slapped through the woods. The sound came from his left. He turned his horse ... and saw the cabin.
It was a crude structure of felled trees and junk materials, that stood in a clearing lashed by the gusting rain. One window faced him and as he strained to see, he caught a glimpse of two struggling figures. Sundance rode closer, warily, lifting his Colt free of leather but holding it beneath the folds of the slicker to keep it dry. As he drew near, he heard the crash of wood and the shattering of glass or china.
Then came a man’s rasping, drunken voice bawling out a string of obscene curses.
Sundance stopped at the edge of the clearing, dismounted and crouched by a tree, eyes darting about the clearing and the immediate surrounds of the cabin.
There were rusted tools lying about, busted oil lanterns, broken wagon wheels, spades with splintered handles, a baby’s cradle with only one rocker, old crates, a weathered and torn buggy seat, and heaps of indescribable trash. Sundance knew he was at the home of a scavenger.
From inside came the screams of another person. They more than likely came from a youth. It made Sundance more curious than ever as he moved to the one sagging door that leaned crookedly on its leather hinges. He drove a boot against the latch and the flimsy planks ripped loose with a splintering sound as the door crashed inwards.
Sundance ran in, crouching, gun hammer cocked back. He moved to the left, kicked an overturned and broken stool aside, green eyes raking the cabin’s dim interior, seeing the tableau before him.
A bearded man in a wild mixture of discarded and patched clothing, held together by a massive safety pin and one suspender, with the added security of a piece of knotted rope tied around his waist, towered above a youth who lay prone between the man’s scuffed boots. The youth was bleeding from the nostrils and mouth and his ragged clothes had been all-but ripped from him. A blood-stained birch lay on the floor near him and the man had the butt of a shotgun raised, preparing to smash it down on the youth. He was wild-eyed, crazy and swaying, as he turned on the newcomer.
“Best drop it, feller,” Sundance said mildly, gesturing with his Colt barrel.
The bearded man stared at him a long spell, unmoving. The youth flicked his frightened eyes from Sundance to the bearded man, then, very slowly, began to ease himself out from between his attacker’s boots. His leg brushed the inside of the man’s ankle. The crazy eyes flicked down instantly and there came a guttural growl as the shotgun butt swung towards the youth’s head. He cowered and covered his head futilely with his folded, scrawny arms.
Sundance’s Colt blasted and the bullet shattered the butt of the shotgun, the momentum sending the bearded man staggering sideways. He turned his crazy gaze back to Sundance, crouched inside the doorway, his smoking Colt covering him.
“Stay outta this!” the bearded man growled. “It ain’t none of your business. He’s my kid! I c’n treat him anyway I want.”
“Not while I’m here,” Sundance countered. “Back off.”
“To hell with you!”
But the bearded man made no move to stop the youth as he slowly climbed to his feet, wiping the back of a bony hand across his nostrils smearing blood across his cheek. He sniffed and moved his apprehensive blue eyes from the bearded man to Sundance.
“That true he’s your pappy?” Sundance asked.
The youth nodded, turned to fumble for a piece of rag to hold against his split lips. Sundance swore.
The kid’s shirt was in tatters and the angry red weals of the birch stripes across his back showed starkly against the white, freckled flesh.
Sundance walked slowly forward, eyes drilling into the bearded man.
“You ornery sonofabitch! Where you get off treatin’ the kid like that?”
“He’s my kid,” rasped the man, swaying unsteadily and still clinging to his shotgun. “Smashed m’ likker still, fed m’best sour mash to the hogs. Ah’m gonna kill ’im!”
“Not while I’m around,” Sundance said mildly, shaking his head.
The bearded man stared into the intruder’s cold eyes and then dropped his gaze to the rock steady Colt still menacing him. He hesitated, then sighed, and let the broken shotgun fall to the floor with a clatter. Sundance’s gaze never wavered from his face.
“Guess you’re holdin’ the best cards,” the man said as he shook his head again and put a hand up to rub the back of his neck. The kid stiffened, his jaw dropping open. The bearded man’s bleak, reddened eyes shot him a warning and, frowning, Sundance shifted his gaze briefly to the youth.
“Watch out!” the kid yelled.
Sundance spun, the Colt blasting. The bearded man, caught in mid-lunge lifted to his toes, eyes starting out of his head from the internal, explosive, shockwaves of the bullet taking him in the chest. He gasped and coughed and spun around. A knife fell from a hidden sheath between his shoulders.
He crashed to the floor, crawled a couple of feet towards the shotgun, eyes already glazing, and then, abruptly went limp. Sundance walked across and kicked the knife through the open doorway. As he turned back to the pale-faced kid, he was already punching out the used cartridge cases. He thumbed fresh loads from his bullet belt and snapped the cylinder closed, still watching the kid who was standing very still, staring down at his dead father.
“Thanks, kid, you saved my neck.”
The youth slowly lifted his eyes. There were no tears.
“He was a mean cuss. He’s killed four men with that knife trick. I ain’t sorry he’s dead. He’d’ve murdered me for sure if you hadn’t come along.”
Sundance nodded. “Did you wreck his still? Feed the sour mash to the hogs?”
The youth nodded, gave a faint smile.
“Hogs got drunk, run off all over the woods to sleep it off. Never find ’em, I reckon.” He sobered. “I figured if he din’ have the likker to get at, I might be able to handle him better. Long as he had the booze to suck at, he stayed drunk an’ when he was drunk he beat the hell outta me. Only thing was, he come back before I’d properly finished. I aimed to slaughter a hog, spread the blood around and set it up like I’d been killed, then run off.”
“You won’t miss him, I reckon,” Sundance opined. He thumbed back his hat, listening to the rain driving against the leaky roof overhead. “My old man was just like that. When I busted in, it was like a scene from the past. You could’ve been me lyin’ on the floor, all beat-up, an’ he could’ve been my pa
ppy standin’ over me.”
The kid’s battered face softened some, “Wh—what happened to your—pa?”
“I killed the sonofabitch.”
The kid’s mouth was hanging open now. He was lanky, wiry, had a pleasant face and tangled long black hair. There mightn’t be much meat on those bones, Sundance figured, but he reckoned those small knotted muscles would be mighty powerful.
“You—killed your own father?” the kid stammered.
Sundance nodded. “Bastard took a bullwhip to me. It was too much. I picked up a pitchfork and skewered him. Burned down our shack with his body in it, then rode out and never been back to Wyomin’ since.” He seemed to shake the memory without effort. “What’s your name kid?”
“Larry. Larry Holbrook.”
“Mine’s Sundance Harmer. I’m on my way to meet some pards of mine. We got us some business to do in a place called Signal down in Colorado. You’re welcome to ride along if you want. Don’t aim to force you, but there’s grub and money and work waitin’ if you want to join us.”
“Wh—what kinda work?”
Larry’s eyes dropped to the Colt in Sundance’s hand and the man grinned.
“You wanna come or not? Don’t worry about the kind of work. You’ll be trained for your part.”
Larry Holbrook ran his tongue over his split lips.
“Well... I dunno, Mr. Harmer. I mean—it was always pa who was in trouble with the County. I never had no fuss with the law, ’ceptin’ when pa was doin’ a stretch in jail an’ they wanted to put me with some widder-woman in town till he got out. I used to run off an’ hide in the woods or go downriver. But I never stole nothin’ I didn’t need to eat or keep me warm.”
Sundance looked innocent. “Who said anythin’ about stealin’? Hell, c’mon, Larry. You got no future here. Come with me an’ you’ll be sittin’ pretty. That’s a promise.”
Larry’s teeth tugged at his bottom lip as he tried to make his decision. Sundance leaned back against the wall and began to roll a cigarette.
“Take your time,” he said. “I ain’t in no hurry at all.”
Sooner or later the trail had to end, Clay Nash thought as he dismounted on the far reaches of the Big Knife Ranch, Montana. He slid the rifle out of the saddle boot, levered a shell into the breech and lowered the hammer carefully.
He worked his way up a rise, belly-down, hat tossed carelessly back near where his horse stood. The sun was hot as it beat through the thin cloth of his shirt. The gravel underneath gouged at his tall, lean body.
Then the top of the rise was only a couple of feet above. He squirmed closer, body knotted into a loose ball now. He held the rifle ready, one-handed, thumb on the hammer spur so that he had only to jerk it back to full cock and the Winchester would be ready to fire.
Nash lifted his head and upper body slowly until his eyes cleared the crown and he could see what lay beyond. He cursed.
“More empty range!” he muttered, but he did not stand. He flicked his gray eyes around the country that lay beneath him. Dry-grass range, rolling across undulating pastures, lifting, after a couple of miles, into the sawtoothed hills beyond.
That’s where he figured he would find his quarry now. The man he had been trailing for these past five weeks, and whom he had finally run to earth posing as a cowboy on the Big Knife, must have already traversed those couple of miles of open land and headed deep into the sawtooths. Nash sat back on his heels, rubbing a hand through his long, tow hair.
He had been so close to nailing Skene at the Ranch, too. But Skene had the luck of the Devil. He had been getting ready for a stint at nighthawk when Nash had ridden in and talked with the owner on the light-washed porch of the main house. Skene had remained calm, according to the man who was readying his mount to ride nighthawk with him. In fact, he hadn’t shown any sign at all that Nash’s appearance perturbed him in any way.
But he simply hadn’t showed up for duty down by the dam. His relief had finally had enough and had ridden back to ranch headquarters, bitterly complaining that Skene hadn’t relieved him and was ready to smash his fist into the man’s face.
But Skene was long-gone by then and Nash had leapt up from his plate of beans in the kitchen, grabbed his battered hat and run out of the house.
“Where’d he be likely to go?” Nash had yelled at the startled rancher. “He know your spread tolerably well?”
“Been here nigh on two weeks,” the rancher had replied.
“He was showin’ a heap of interest in the sawtooths in the southwest corner,” the complaining nighthawk had added. “Wanted to know about canyons in there and passes and where they led.”
“Then that’s where I’m headed,” Nash replied, spinning his mount away from the hitch post, jamming in his heels and racing out into the night, the two cattlemen staring after him ...
He had camped on high ground for the night, miles to the southwest. Come sun-up, he had hoped to spot Skene or the dust of his passing, leastways. There had been nothing and Nash had swallowed a cold breakfast and ridden down through white-faced steers as he made his way across the range towards the distant line of the sawtooths.
Mid-morning, a wraith had passed between him and the sun. Not much of anything, really, just something that, momentarily, drifted by and seemed to filter the light briefly. An old hand at man-hunting, Nash had snapped his head up swiftly, crouched low in the saddle, moving his head this way and that, sideways, up and down.
He had managed to catch it before it completely dispersed: a film of gauzy gold drifting through the hot air, shredding now into ragged tendrils. Dust.
Because it was so thin and dissipated, he knew Skene had passed this way at least an hour earlier. There was little breeze, just the currents set up by the rising heat. That wraith of dust must have drifted down from the hogback rise to his right. He was too low down to see what lay beyond the rise, but he figured likely the sawtooths were closer, swinging around in a wide sweep across this section of Big Knife range.
Now, lying prone again just below the crest of the rise, he saw that he had been wrong.
There was that open ground between the hogback and the hills. He would stand out like a fly on a white tablecloth riding across there.
Likewise, Skene would have done the same when he had crossed. And that was what was puzzling him. Skene couldn’t have crossed the plains and reached the sawtooths yet. It just wasn’t possible.
But there was the dust... something made it swirl around. Yet the air was breathless and still. Maybe ... just maybe ...
Clay Nash decided to take another look over the rise. Skene could be hiding close against the outer slope and he was unable to see him from this position. The only way to find out was to peer over the crest and Nash squirmed up as close as he could without actually skylining himself. He looked over quickly, a ripple in the ridge line that wouldn’t have been noticed, unless someone was watching for it.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
Skene was waiting, expecting the maneuver, with his usual cunning. That was the thing that had made him so difficult to track down and kept him alive for so long. He had also never, not for one moment, under-estimated Clay Nash’s ability as a man hunter. He knew Nash was Wells Fargo’s top agent and he knew the man didn’t hold that position year after year through sloppy work.
Skene’s rifle whiplashed and the lead was close enough to fan Nash’s cheek with its air whip. Clay let his body roll back with its natural momentum and the fall of the slope. If he had tried to haul himself up as his instincts dictated, he would have stopped the next slug. He kept low, crawled back up to the top once more and again peered over. Then he spotted Skene. There was little cover on the outer slope of the hogback, just a few low rocks and some stunted brush dotting the hillside.
The outlaw had lain prone behind a low rock and his rifle fire was raking the area around Nash’s head.
Clay waited until the shooting had stopped, presuming Skene was busy reloading, quickly got to h
is knees bringing the rifle to the crook of his arm and triggered. The lever worked and a second cartridge was in the chamber even before he started to fall back.
The first shot whined off Skene’s rock and so startled the man that he jerked back, halfway up to his knees before he realized what he was about. Nash’s rifle spoke again and even as Skene started to throw himself sideways, the bullet took him, punching his body back and down, sending him spinning in a wild somersault, arms and legs flailing.
He slid and rolled and skidded down the slope, desperately hanging onto his rifle, the world spinning dizzily. For a moment, at the end of his slide, he just lay there, gasping and gagging for breath, blinking up into the hot sky. Then he heaved over onto his face, bringing up the rifle.
Nash was now on both feet with his rifle still at the ready. Both rifles whip cracked as one and Nash flung himself sideways.
Skene jerked and his prone body appeared to lift completely off the ground and fall back again. He didn’t move and the rifle slipped from his fingers but slid only a foot away.
Clay Nash was on his feet again, levering, stalking, coming down the slope warily, the Winchester’s muzzle covering the motionless Skene. The Wells Fargo man worked his way to the level where the outlaw lay and then came in cautiously until he stood almost above him. He placed the muzzle of his rifle against Skene’s head and kicked the man’s Winchester far down the slope, seeing the outlaw’s horse now, tethered in a small clump of trees below the hogback.
Keeping the rifle muzzle against the outlaw’s head, Nash knelt, freed Skene’s Colt and rammed it into his own belt. Then he heaved the man over onto his back.
Skene was still alive, his face contorted with pain, eyes wide and staring. His right hand clawed at his upper chest and blood trickled through his fingers. There was more blood lower down on his right side, a lot of it. His breathing was ragged and noisy. Nash passed a hand over the staring eyes and Skene blinked and rolled his gaze towards the Wells Fargo man.
“Trail’s end, Skene. Where’s that loot you took from the Rocky Mountain Stage run? Still got it?”
