The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1)

by Peter Brandvold

  While the one wounded deputy was on his knees, cursing and stuffing his neckerchief into his coat, trying to pad the shoulder wound, the marshal and the other deputy ran toward Yakima's side of the street, heading for the harness shop and an open field of fire.

  Yakima rose to his knees, slammed a fresh round into the Winchester's chamber, and fired first at the marshal, then at the deputy.

  He'd fired too quickly for accuracy, and the first shot thudded into the ground off the marshal's left boot. The second sailed over the deputy's head and punched into a support post on the other side of the street half a block west.

  The first shot caused the marshal to change direction and bolt, cursing, toward the street's other side, diving for a woodpile. The second might have clipped the deputy, who flinched as he disappeared around the other side of the harness shop, slinging his right arm out like an injured wing.

  On the other hand, maybe it hadn't.

  As an ejected casing smoked over Yakima's right shoulder, the deputy jerked his head and rifle around the far front corner of the harness shop. His Henry stabbed smoke and flames, the slug slicing like a hot knife along the right side of Yakima's neck.

  As the marshal fired from behind the woodpile across the street, Yakima hammered off two quick rounds at the deputy, the slugs spraying slivers of the harness shop's log wall into the man's eyes.

  Grimacing and screaming, the man jerked back behind the building.

  Yakima waited for the marshal to drill another round his way, then lifted his head, spied the man's face and rifle barrel low on the woodpile's left side, and fired three shots— boom, snick-boom, snick-boom, snick!

  As the third casing rattled onto the boardwalk behind him, Yakima ducked down behind the stock trough again, having raked his gaze up and down the street, noting the shotgunner lying on his side, holding his guts in his hands while shouting curses skyward.

  He and his partner were out of the game, but the deputy Yakima had shoulder-wounded had hauled himself out of sight. Since Yakima had only winged him, he still had all three lawmen to worry about.

  As the marshal drilled two more shots and the shotgunner continued bellowing like a wounded grizzly, Yakima looked at the far front corner of the harness shop. No sign of the deputy who'd taken cover there.

  Shit.

  Keeping his head down and his gaze riveted on the harness shop, Yakima thumbed shells into the Yellowboy's loading gate. The marshal was holding his fire, maybe waiting for the deputies to surround Yakima. The only sounds were a distant barking dog, the ticking snow, the breeze funneling between buildings, and the wounded shotgunner's anguished bellows.

  Yakima jerked his rifle up suddenly, fired twice at the marshal. As the marshal returned two shots, Yakima leapt to his feet, two sets of rounds now kicking up dust and wood as he ran around the side of the harness shop and pressed his back to the wall, sweeping his gaze from left to right.

  He listened for footsteps. The deputy he thought he'd winged was no doubt trying to flank him, creeping around the shop's rear.

  Keeping his ears pricked, the gunfire dying behind him, Yakima made his way to the rear of the harness shop, edged a look around the corner toward the other side. The deputy had had the same idea. He jerked back behind the opposite side of the building half a second before Yakima did,

  Yakima pressed his back to the wall, pricking his ears, listening for footsteps, waiting, squeezing the Yellowboy in his gloved hands.

  After a minute, snow crunched under a boot. Yakima threw himself straight out from the end of the building.

  A Winchester roared, the slug plunking into the building's corner. Yakima hit the ground on his back five feet from the end of the building and snapped his rifle up, aiming quickly at the big deputy crouched at the middle of the harness shop's rear wall.

  Boom!

  The deputy groaned, dropped his rifle, and grabbed his throat.

  The Yellowboy spoke again.

  A round, dark circle appeared in the man's forehead, throwing him straight back against the wall. His hat tumbled off his head as he bounced off the wall, twisted around, and fell on his side, boots crossed, quivering.

  Chapter Thirty

  Marshal Charlie Ward, hunkered down behind the woodpile on the other side of the street from where Yakima had been shooting, worried his thumb over the grooves of his carbine's cocked hammer and stared at the gap between the harness shop and the women's clothing store.

  It had to be well below freezing in spite of the lightening eastern sky, but sweat streaked his forehead and rosy cheeks. His heart pounded and his feet felt like putty.

  He'd had enough of this shit. That goddamn half-breed was hell with a shooting iron, and he didn't seem to have any fear!

  It had been about two minutes since Ward had last heard shots rise from behind the harness shop. If his deputy, Kenny Slocum, had killed the half-breed with those shots, Slocum would have called out or shown himself by now. Since he'd done neither, he was most likely dead.

  And that damn wolverine of a kill-crazy half-breed son of a bitch was probably hunkered down between buildings or holed up in a woodpile or stable or stock pen, waiting for Ward to try rooting him out.

  "For the love of Christ—son of a bitch gut-shot me!" the wounded miner, Homer Landusky, yelled for the umpteenth time, curled up in the street. "Someone fetch me a goddamn medico."

  As Ward was thinking about silencing that goddamn caterwauling with his carbine, boots pounded the boardwalk behind him, spurs ringing raucously. The marshal's heart turned somersaults and he swung his rifle around so quickly that a log brushed his hat off his head.

  "Hold on, Charlie, goddamnit—it's me!" hissed his other deputy, Dennis Gamble, dropping to one knee on the boardwalk in front of Langella's Dentistry and Tonsorial Parlor.

  Gamble had lost his own hat, and his long face with its spade beard and single brown eyebrow was flushed with pain. The left shoulder of his buckskin coat was bloodstained and lumpy from the neckerchief the deputy had stuffed into the wound.

  Gamble winced and raked his eyes across the street. "Any sign of that bastard?"

  "He's that way." Ward blocked out the miner's persistent cries and surveyed the other side of the street, spying no movement, hearing no sounds but the breeze and a dog that had started barking back in the pines when the shooting began.

  Ward turned to Gamble, tried to hide his terror. "Go on up the street, circle back through the alley. We'll surround the son of a bitch."

  Gamble's eyes and lips were pinched with fury. He nodded. "You got it, Charlie. Can't wait to drill some hot lead through that son of a bitch's heathen heart!"

  He lurched forward and ran, crouching and jerking cautious looks across the street, heading eastward up Main. When he was fifty feet away, Ward again stretched a glance across the street.

  "For godsakes," the miner bellowed, again causing Ward to grind his molars, "I'm losing my goddamned innards!" He started bawling.

  Ward jerked his carbine toward the miner, planted a bead on the man's forehead obscured by his breeze-whipped pewter hair, and fired. The bullet plunked through the man's right eyebrow, jerking his chin up. His back stiffened, and then he sagged to the street, like an exhausted man lying down for a long-awaited nap.

  The miner's hands slid away from his bloody belly and flattened out beside him, and his entire body was still and quiet at last.

  "I swear," Ward muttered, ejecting the spent shell from his carbine, seating a fresh shell, then off-cocking the hammer.

  He donned his hat, rose, looked around, and, with sweat dribbling down his cheeks and neck and into his coat, chilling him deep, he turned and stalked westward along the boardwalks, holding the carbine down around his thigh. He strode heavy-footed, shoulders slumped, head down, snow dusting his battered hat brim.

  He was halfway up the porch steps of Crazy Kate's brothel when three shots flatted out at the other end of town. A hoarse cry sounded. Ward turned, saw nothing but the lightening
eastern sky and the snow, coming down harder now that the temperature was climbing.

  The silence following Gamble's cry was funereal.

  Ward winced, imagining the end the deputy must have come to, then continued up the steps. He crossed the porch and pushed through the door.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing, Marshal?”

  Ward stopped just inside the door, one hand on the knob. He glanced to his left, where a small group was spread out before the window—Crazy Kate, Sebastian Kirk, three whores in rumpled nightgowns and robes, the bartender, and two gamblers who'd been hanging around for the past few days, getting fleeced at every game they tried.

  Dressed in a silk wrapper as black as her hair, Kate glared at Ward savagely.

  Ward curled his upper lip, slammed the door, and sauntered toward the bar on the right side of the room. "What's it look like?" He lifted the hinged bar top, let it slam onto the mahogany, then took a brandy bottle from a shelf. "I'm havin' a drink."

  He plopped the bottle and a shot glass onto the mahogany and plucked the cork from the bottle. "Anyone join me?"

  Kate turned toward him, obsidian eyes large as horseshoes. "Is that savage dead? Is the girl?”

  "Who knows?" Ward splashed brandy into his glass. "All I know is I'm still kickin', and your whores ain't purty enough, and my room ain't posh enough, and your whiskey ain't good enough, to push the issue with that creature out there."

  Ward lifted his glass, glanced around it at Kate. "I'm goin' back to rustlin' and robbin' stagecoaches. Live longer. Cheers." He threw back the brandy.

  His head was still tipped back on his shoulders, eyes closed, savoring the burn of the liquor at the back of his throat, when Kate jerked her head around wildly. Spying what she was looking for, she raked the Colt Navy from the holster on Alvin Pauk's right hip and aimed the heavy gun with both hands at Ward.

  The whores gasped, grabbing each other's arms and that of the bartender, shuffling back to the far wall.

  Still groggy from sleep, Sebastian Kirk gaped and said, "Kate..."

  Alvin Pauk and Leo Salon, who'd been up all night playing faro, and Red Dog merely glanced at each other warily and blinked.

  The marshal opened his eyes and dropped his chin. Seeing the gun in Kate's hands, watching her thumb the hammer back, he opened his mouth and screamed at the same time the Colt barked.

  It sounded like a cannon blast in the close quarters, acrid powder smoke wafting around Kate's head.

  The bullet ripped through Ward's right ear and cracked the mirror behind him. "Ahhch!" He staggered against the backbar, cursing and clutching his ear, blood oozing between his fingers.

  One of the whores shrieked as the bartender sucked air through his teeth.

  "Jesus Christ!" exclaimed Leo Salon.

  Sebastian Kirk was instantly awake. "Kate!"

  Coughing and wincing against the powder smoke, Kate stepped forward, keeping the gun extended in both hands, again thumbing back the revolver's trigger.

  "No, wait!" cried Ward.

  His voice was drowned by Kate's second shot, which took the short lawman through his upper chest, smashing a pyramid of shot glasses on the bar behind him and spraying the shards with blood.

  One of the whores loosed a quivering screech. Ward twisted around, fell against the backbar, knocking glasses and bottles to the floor with a roar of shattering glass. He staggered sideways and fell with one last curse and a thump that shook the entire room.

  Kate wheeled with the gun in her hands. The barman, Sebastian, and the two gamblers leapt straight back, eyes snapping wide. "You men get out there and kill that savage!"

  Alvin Pauk's voice trembled. "Now, look, ma'am ..."

  "Kate," said the bartender, walking stiffly toward the bar behind which Charlie Ward had fallen, "you're ... outta your mind."

  The man wheeled toward her suddenly, as if realizing his mistake and raising his hand to shield his face. "No!"

  Kate drilled a round through his chest, sent him spinning, then tumbling down against the base of the bar.

  Kate spun toward the three remaining men in the room as the whores, clumped together as though glued, shuffled sideways toward the staircase at the room's rear. "Now, I've got a thousand dollars for the man or men who'll bring me that savage's head and the head of the girl. For any nancy-boys in the room, I have a bullet!”

  A female voice rose behind her. "I've got one for you if you don't drop that gun, Kate." There was the metallic snarl of a rifle being cocked, and Kate's back tightened as she turned her head to one side.

  "Don't turn around," Faith said, walking out from behind the far end of the bar, holding the Winchester carbine in both hands.

  She'd heard the shooting and slipped through the brothel's back door. Knowing that Kate would be orchestrating the assault from the brothel, she intended to help Yakima by putting the madame out of commission once and for all.

  She wore her trail gear—denims, flannel shirt, and blanket coat. She wasn't wearing a hat, and her hair, still mussed from sleep, tumbled about her shoulders. Her blue eyes were hard, jaw taut.

  Sebastian, the two horse thieves, and the whores stared at her skeptically.

  Kate held the gun against her right thigh. It shook faintly.

  Faith lowered the Winchester's barrel and squeezed the trigger. The rifle boomed, rattling the remaining bottles and glasses on the backbar and blowing a chunk of wood from the puncheons a foot to the right of Kate's left slipper.

  Everyone in the room jumped as the concussion rocked the house.

  Kate gasped and, without turning toward Faith, flung the pistol onto the table three feet to her right.

  Faith glanced at the whores gathered on the right side of the room, between the piano and the big potbellied stove. She jerked the carbine's barrel toward the stairs. Holding their robes closed, fear etched on their faces, the girls ran to the back of the room and up the stairs, their terrified breaths echoing faintly.

  Faith stepped forward, sliding the rifle's barrel back and forth between Kate and the three men gathered about ten feet from the front window, in the middle of the room.

  There was a table between the men and Kate. Kate's gun was on the table. Faith approached the table and stopped, aiming the rifle barrel at the middle of Kate's back as she extended her left hand toward the revolver.

  She nearly had her fingers curled around the worn walnut grip, when Kate wheeled toward her, screeching like ten dying cats. The madame nudged the rifle barrel aside and grabbed the forestock in both hands.

  She swung Faith in a circle, thrusting a foot out to trip her. As Faith's back and head hit the floor, her jaws snapping together, Kate wrenched the rifle out of her hands with such force that Faith felt as though her arms had been pulled from their sockets

  Shrieking even louder—a high, keening cry—Kate aimed the carbine at Faith, holding Faith down by planting one slippered foot on her chest.

  As the bore yawned in Faith's face, Kate shrieking and glaring wildly, looking like a witch loosed from the boiling bowels of hell, Faith squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself for the shot.

  Pop!

  Kate stopped screaming. Faith opened her eyes.

  Kate stared down at her, the madame's head canted sharply left, lower jaw hanging. A nickel-sized hole shone in her right temple. As blood dribbled to the edge of the wound, it caught the gray light from the front windows and streaked down Kate's forehead toward her brow, like a heavy bead of quicksilver.

  Faith turned to where Sebastian Kirk stood nearby, a smoking pistol in his hand, still aimed at Kate.

  Kate exhaled heavily. The carbine dropped from her hands to land with a clattering thud. She sagged to the side and was dead before she hit the floor in a heap.

  Yakima heard the thud half a second before he bounded through the brothel's front door, quartering around to his left, extending his cocked Yellowboy straight out from his right hip.

  The two gamblers shuffled back, snapping thei
r nervous gazes to him and jerking their hands shoulder high, palms out.

  The tall, pale gent wearing only a plaid robe and black socks was aiming a single-barreled, silver-plated, pearl-gripped derringer somewhere off to Yakima's right, toward the bar. Smoke curled from the barrel. It was the peashooter's report Yakima had just heard.

  Yakima followed the man's dark gaze.

  Beside a table and an overturned chair, Faith and Crazy Kate lay side by side on the floor. Faith was on her back. For a second Yakima thought she was dead. His pulse hammered in his temples. Then he saw her chest rising and falling heavily.

  He looked at Kate. Blood pooled on the floor beneath her head.

  When Faith sat up, Yakima turned to the three men before him. The tall, bald gent looked stricken, his fringe of hair sticking out like wires around the lumpy, pale crown of his head. He set the derringer on the table, shuffled toward Kate, and knelt down beside her.

  Yakima returned his gaze to the two men who'd stolen Wolf, aiming the Winchester at the heart of the shorter, blond-haired gent in the shabby bowler. He tightened his jaw and set his mouth to speak but stopped when he heard a dribbling sound.

  He lowered his gaze. Urine dribbled down from the inside of the blond's right trouser leg to pool on the floor beside his undershot stockman's boot.

  Yakima looked at the man's bleached face, lips bunched, eyes twitching. He seemed ready to cry.

  Yakima turned to the taller, dark-haired gent in the wine-colored vest. He wasn't pissing his pants, but he looked nearly as scared as the blond, eyes bugging, hands shaking.

  "You boys go on back to cow country. Stay there."

  The blond loosed a held breath. He stuttered, "Y-you ain't gonna kill us?"

  "Give me time; I might change my mind."

  Keeping their hands raised, the pair shuffled out the door and were off and running.

  As the tall, bald gent knelt beside Kate, Faith climbed to her feet and ran to Yakima, buried her head in his coat. He lowered the rifle, raked a hand through her hair, pressing her head against him.