Nest of Vipers (9781101613283)

by Sherman, Jory

  Brad fixed the man with a searing look.

  “Who wants to buy horses?” Abel asked.

  “I’m looking for some good horses,” Brad said.

  “And who might you be?” Abel asked. He walked behind the three men and stood close to Brad. He looked Brad up and down with a look that was a mixture of scorn and curiosity.

  “What’s my name got to do with it, stranger?” Brad said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a long wallet. He opened it and flashed a stack of greenbacks. The bill on top was for one hundred dollars. Beneath the bills was a torn scrap of blue cloth.

  “You said you was a range detective,” Abel said. “For all I know you might be wantin’ to buy horses what was stole. If you do, we can’t help you none. But we’re traders and it looks like you got the cash.”

  “What’ve you got?” Brad asked. “And how much are you asking?”

  “Why, we got all kinds of horses, mister. You name it. And, we only want what’s a fair price, dependin’ on the breed and age of the horse.”

  Julio and Joe turned on their stools to look at Abel. Brad looked past him at the two other men still sitting at the table. They were all ears.

  “How long would it take for you to bring me a half dozen head to look at?” Brad said. “I’m lookin’ for some good cutting horses.”

  “Why, it wouldn’t take more’n a half day,” Abel said. “I got cuttin’ horses, you bet.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Brad said. “No use you ridin’ both ways.”

  A look of suspicion crept onto Abel’s face.

  “Ain’t no trouble. We sold some horses we brought up today. We’ll bring ’em to you.” He looked at the open wallet again. “’Course you might want to give us a little earnest money.”

  “Oh, I don’t think old Earnest would like that,” Brad said. “He’s tighter than a widder’s purse.”

  “That ain’t funny,” Abel said.

  “You want something funny,” Brad said as he slipped the torn swatch of blue flannel cloth out from under the bills. “Take a look at this. It’s still got a little blood on it.”

  Brad thrust the cloth at Abel. Abel jumped backward a half foot, his hands up as if to ward off something evil or untouchable. His eyes bulged like those of a besotted bullfrog as he stared at the piece of blue cloth.

  “What in hell’s that?” Abel barked.

  “You might recognize it. It’s a piece of my wife’s nightgown. She was wearing it when three men cut it off her, then raped her and slit her throat.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about that,” Abel said.

  “About what?” Brad asked, shaking the cloth at Abel.

  “’Bout no woman gettin’ jumped and kilt.”

  “You’re a lying sonofabitch,” Brad said in a soft, even tone of voice.

  “Them’s fightin’ words where I come from,” Abel said as he backed away another foot or two.

  Brad slipped the cloth into his shirt and pulled on the leather thong around his neck until the rattles were just out of sight inside his shirt.

  Abel spread his legs in a gunfighter’s stance and held his arms out like a pair of parentheses, ready to draw.

  “Snake,” Brad shouted and looked down at Abel’s feet.

  He shook the rattles, and Abel jumped three inches off the floor. His face drained of blood as he looked around. The two men at the table scraped their chairs and lifted their boots off the floor. They, too, were looking for a rattlesnake crawling around somewhere.

  Abel’s right hand streaked for his gun.

  Before he could clear leather, Brad snatched his pistol from its holster. He thumbed back the hammer on the rise as he brought the barrel up to bear on Abel’s gut.

  Brad held his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  The .45 Colt bucked in his hands as its blue-black snout spewed lead, orange sparks, and white smoke.

  The bullet smashed through Abel’s belt buckle just as the barrel of his pistol was still an inch from being fully drawn. He doubled over as the bullet cracked into his spine and blew a hole the size of a small grapefruit in his back. His blood spattered the two men at the table, Curly and Nels. They scooted away from the table and jumped to their feet.

  Abel crumpled up as his knees gave way and he slumped to the floor, wild red blood gushing from the hole in his stomach. The stench from his ruptured intestines filled the air.

  Curly and Nels ran for the bat-wing doors.

  “Hold on,” Brad shouted.

  Julio and Joe both drew their pistols.

  Brad swung his pistol in a small arc as he hammered back for another shot.

  But the two men were out the doors and climbing into their saddles.

  They both drew their pistols and fired through the doors. The bullets splintered wood and plowed furrows in the wooden floor.

  Brad ducked, then squatted, staring at the swinging doors.

  He could not see the two men, so he did not shoot.

  Julio fired a shot from his pistol that cleared the tops of the doors and whined off into the air as it caromed off a post outside.

  Abel croaked as blood spewed up into his mouth and gushed onto the floor. He was paralyzed and losing blood so fast it streaked across the floor and made dark little pools. He didn’t even twitch because he could not move his legs. He gasped and struggled to draw air into a mouth filled with blood and whiskey.

  Brad heard a sound and turned toward the bar.

  Macklin stood there behind the bar with a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun in his hands. He had a thumb on one of the hammers.

  Brad swung his pistol to take aim on Macklin.

  “You cock that Greener,” Brad said, “and you’ll draw your last breath.”

  Macklin dropped the shotgun onto the bar as if it were red-hot. He threw both hands up in the air in a sign of surrender.

  “D-don’t sh-shoot,” he stammered.

  “Step away from that shotgun,” Brad said. “Julio, grab it.”

  Julio holstered his pistol and picked up the shotgun.

  Brad walked over to the bar. Macklin was pressed against the wall, his hands held high, bare palms showing. He was shaking like an aspen tree in the wind.

  “You saw it all, Macklin,” Brad said. “That man went for his gun first. It was a fair fight.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I did. I saw it all. Abel went for his gun first. I never saw nobody draw as fast as you.”

  “If you have law in this town, you tell it like it happened.”

  “Ain’t no law here in the Gulch,” Macklin said.

  They all heard men running out in the street. The footfalls sounded closer.

  “Whoever that is out there, you tell ’em it’s all over,” Brad said.

  Joe holstered his pistol and picked up his glass. His eyes were fixed in a blank stare.

  “Mister,” Macklin said, “I think I know who you are.”

  “Who am I?” Brad said as he holstered his pistol and walked to his bar stool.

  “You’re the one they call the Sidewinder, ain’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?” Brad asked as he picked up his glass and took a swallow.

  “I heard of you. Down on the flat. I heard the rattlesnake, only it was you makin’ the noise.”

  Brad smiled as men beat through the bat-wings and came to a halt when they saw the body of Abel on the floor. Abel wheezed and his eyes turned glassy for just a moment as he expelled his last breath and could not draw in another.

  “What the hell happened in here?” growled a large man at the head of the small pack behind him.

  Todd Sperling was covered in dust. His face bore the ravages of wind and weather. His white hair flowed to his shoulders, and they were wide, brawny shoulders under a checkered shirt. Suspenders held up his heavy-duty duc
k pants and he smelled of dynamite and crushed limestone, the very earth that covered his work boots.

  “Mr. Sperling,” Macklin said, “this here’s the man they call the Sidewinder and he just put Abel Avery’s lamp out. It was a fair fight.”

  Macklin pointed to Brad.

  Brad smiled at Sperling.

  “Nice little town you have here, Mr. Sperling,” Brad said. “Nice, once you sweep out the trash.”

  Brad nodded toward the dead man.

  Sperling looked at Brad, the faint curl of a smile on his liverish lips.

  Flies zizzed around Abel’s face and speckled the wound in his belly. For several seconds, that was the only sound.

  The sunlight pouring through the windows and the empty places above and below the bat-wing doors was a pale yellow, swirling with dust and striking small sparks off the whirring wings of the sniffing flies.

  It was quiet and solemn for several seconds as the men behind Sperling craned their necks to look at the body and at the man known as the Sidewinder.

  FIFTEEN

  Julio cracked open the shotgun and removed the two shot shells. He put those in his jacket pocket and laid the gun on the bar top behind him.

  “Buy you a drink, Sperling,” Brad offered.

  “No, by gum, I’ll buy you a drink, Sidewinder.”

  Sperling strolled to the bar. Joe got off his stool and offered it to Sperling.

  “Thanks,” Sperling said.

  The men standing in front of the bat-wing doors dispersed and sat down at tables around the body of Avery.

  “Looks like we’re going to have a busy day. What’s your pleasure, Mr. Sperling?” Chet Macklin asked. “The usual?”

  “No, I’m working, Chet,” he said. “I’ll have a beer to wash down the dust.”

  One of the men at the table got up and walked to the bar after hearing what the others wanted to drink.

  “We’ll all have beers,” the man said. “I’ll wait and carry ’em over to the tables.”

  Joe poured a beer for Sperling, flicked off the excess foam and brought it to him.

  “I’ll pay for the boys at the tables, too,” Sperling said. He laid a pair of twenty-dollar bills on the bar.

  Sperling picked up his glass and raised it in a toasting gesture. “I don’t know why you killed that jasper, Sidewinder, but I didn’t like the cut of his jib.”

  “It’s Brad Storm. You sound like you might have been a sailor once.”

  “Ah, yes. I sailed the seven seas when I was just a pup. Then, in Rangoon, I saw real gold, and I came back to Coloraddy to dig it out of the ground.”

  “You bought horses from that dead man and two others?”

  “Yeah. They kept me supplied. We wear out horses pretty quick with all the haulin’ and road buildin’. They sold ’em to me cheap.”

  “They’re horse thieves,” Brad said.

  “Well, you know the old sayin’, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’ I didn’t look too hard at the brands, and they had papers on ’em. Gave me bills of sale and all.”

  “If you look real close at some of those brands, you can see they’ve been altered, Mr. Sperling.”

  “Oh, call me Todd, Brad. Everyone else does. Well, some of the brands did look funny, but when I mentioned it to Curly and Nels, they just said they got ’em off’n a ranch in Laramie.”

  “Were they the men who first offered you horses at a cheap price?” Joe asked.

  “Matter of fact, no,” Sperling said. “Feller came down here from Cheyenne, name of Jordan Killdeer. He rode a fine horse and told a good story. Said he was overstocked on his ranch up there and was willing to provide us with horses for as long as we were workin’ our mines and pannin’ the streams. Free delivery and all. I took him up on his offer and next thing I knew, we had horses, good horses, to do the haulin’ and draggin’.”

  “Was that the last time you saw Killdeer?” Brad asked.

  “Yep. He never come back. ’Stead, he sent them three: Curly, Abel, and Nels.”

  “I think those three men raped and murdered my wife, Todd,” Brad said. “And stole a dozen head of horses while I was down in Leadville with my ranch foreman, Julio there.”

  He nodded toward Julio.

  Sperling looked at him and Joe, then swung back around to drink his beer and address Brad.

  Macklin was busy filling beer glasses while the man at the bar carried them to the tables two at a time.

  “That’s tough,” Sperling said. “But them three fellers struck me as hard cases right from the start.”

  “Well, they’re gunslingers, all right, and cowards,” Brad said. “One of ’em cut my wife’s throat with a knife.”

  Sperling stiffened and squinched his eyes shut as if he had been stabbed himself.

  Joe tapped Sperling on the shoulder to get his attention. Todd swung around to face Joe.

  “Mr. Sperling, my name’s Joe Blaine, and I’m a range detective. Would you be willing to testify in court about your dealings with Jordan Killdeer and those three men?”

  “Range detective, eh?” Sperling said. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t have much truck with the law and courts and such.”

  “These men are criminals, Mr. Sperling,” Joe said. “They deserve to be hanged for their crimes.”

  “If you served me with a judge’s subpoena, I’d show up, of course. Just don’t like leavin’ the diggin’ for too long at a stretch.”

  “It may not come to that, Todd,” Brad said. “Joe is a detective who goes by the book. If I had my way, I’d just catch the thieves and hang them from the nearest cottonwood.”

  “Hell, that’s my kind of justice, too,” Sperling said. “Far as I know, horse thievin’ is still a hangin’ offense, and if you catch one of ’em, you don’t need no trial. Just a good rope and a hangin’ tree.”

  “We’re trying to do it right,” Joe said, lamely.

  “What about the stolen horses?” Sperling asked.

  “You’d lose them,” Joe said. “Not only are they evidence, but they must be returned to their rightful owners.”

  “So, no matter what happens with those hard cases and Killdeer, we lose our horses,” Sperling said.

  “Yep,” Brad said. “The horses have to be taken back to their rightful owners.”

  “Kind of makes us all into criminals, don’t it?”

  “You wouldn’t be prosecuted, Mr. Sperling,” Joe said. “Only the outlaws would hang.”

  “Well, I guess we’re between a rock and a hard place, looks like to me. But I reckon you got to do what you got to do.” He looked at Brad, a questioning look on his face.

  “You ain’t a detective, are you?”

  “Yes, I am,” Brad said. “Julio and I work for the Denver Detective Agency. And right now, so does Joe.”

  “Hmm, so are you goin’ to take our horses away and leave us horseless?”

  Joe started to say something, but Brad raised a hand to silence him.

  “No, Todd. You can keep the horses you bought in good faith until we wrap up our case against Killdeer and his hirelings. But it’s likely you will lose them somewhere down the road.”

  “Looks to me like we don’t have no protection whatsoever,” Sperling said.

  Brad finished his beer and stood up. “From now on, Todd, you might want to look that gift horse in the mouth and check out the men you deal with in the future.”

  “You bet I will,” Todd said.

  “Let’s go, boys,” Brad said. “I want to track the two men who got away.”

  “I hope you catch ’em,” Sperling said.

  Macklin picked up the twenty-dollar bills and left some change in front of Sperling. Sperling looked at it, scooped it up, and stuck it in his pocket without counting it.

  “Good luck in finding the gold,” Brad
said.

  “Oh, it’s in there. In that big rock out there and glitterin’ in the creek.” Sperling stuck out a hand and Brad shook it.

  “So long,” Brad said.

  He walked out, followed by Joe and Julio.

  “Now there goes a man you’d ride the river with,” Sperling said to Macklin.

  “I never saw nobody draw a hogleg as fast as he did,” Macklin said.

  Moments later, Brad, Joe, and Julio were riding out of town.

  “We could have wrapped up the case right there, Brad,” Joe said. “We had plenty of witnesses and lots of stolen horses as evidence.”

  “Then who would go after Killdeer and his men? The Denver police?”

  “Well, we would, I reckon.”

  “We have a case on paper, Joe. A few horses with switched brands. We don’t have the men to send to the gallows. Just drop it, okay?”

  “You ain’t much of a detective, Brad. Not in my book.”

  “You’re right, Joe. I’m a cattle rancher and playacting as a real detective. But I’ve got a stake in this case, too. I lost something I’ll never get back, even if a hundred men hang from the gallows tree.”

  Joe sighed deeply and hung his head.

  The tracks of Curly and Nels were easy to follow for some distance. Then they disappeared in the waters of a creek.

  “We could split up and see where they come out,” Joe said.

  “We could,” Joe said. “But we’d waste a lot of time. We’re heading for Wild Horse Valley. If my hunch is right, we’ll find where the thieves keep the stock they stole.”

  “What good would that do?” Joe said.

  “If we find stolen horses there, we’ll have what I’m looking for.”

  “What’s that, Brad?”

  “An ace in the hole, Joe.”

  They rode off to the southwest through thick stands of timber. There was no trail. There was only the silence of the high country, the tall peaks with snow on their lofty reaches, and jaybirds squawking whenever crows flew through the trees.

  Brad touched the swatch of cloth in his pocket and tears welled up in his eyes.

  He felt the presence of Felicity once again as he gazed at the skyline and breathed deeply of the scented thin air.