by Jory Sherman
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
The Sound of Death
Toad was puffing on a cheroot. Freddie was spitting tobacco juice. Neither man was looking in Brad’s direction when he drew his pistol and stepped in front of them. He pulled his rattles out with his left hand and shook them.
Both men stopped in their tracks.
“What the hell . . .” Toad said.
Then he heard the click of the Colt in Brad’s hand as he cocked the trigger.
“Who in hell are you?” Toad demanded, jerking the cheroot from his mouth.
“They call me Sidewinder,” Brad said and shook the rattles again.
He watched both men as the color drained from their faces . . .
Berkley titles by Jory Sherman
THE VIGILANTE
THE VIGILANTE: SIX-GUN LAW
THE VIGILANTE: SANTA FE SHOWDOWN
THE DARK LAND
SUNSET RIDER
TEXAS DUST
BLOOD RIVER
THE SAVAGE GUN
THE SUNDOWN MAN
THE SAVAGE TRAIL
THE SAVAGE CURSE
SIDEWINDER
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
SIDEWINDER
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
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Berkley edition / December 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Jory Sherman.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-15178-5
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For Grahame Hopkins,
the artist who awakened
the sleeping painter in me.
ONE
The cattle were scattered amid the burned ruins of a cabin, with its stone chimney stark against the sky, its upper bricks crumbled into dust, and rubble at its base. The corrals were all jumbled wreckage, scrambled pine poles ripped from their moorings and scorched like the logs of the cabin.
Brad Storm, a tall, rugged man with flaxen hair, blue eyes as hard as sapphires, a square jaw, a soft crease dimpling the center of his chin, and the strong, supple hands of a wood-carver or a violinist, reined up his horse, a strawberry roan gelding with a splotchy white blaze on its forehead. The rider with him, his helper, Julio Aragon, halted his horse, a six-year-old pinto he called Chato. Julio had the high cheekbones of an Indian ancestor, the faint vermilion of his bloodlines coloring his cheeks, a bent nose that had once been straight. Coal black eyes glittered like polished agates in their sockets, and his black curly hair streamed down his neck and flared over his shoulders like downy oil.
“What is this place, Julio?” Brad asked.
A shadow passed across Julio’s face, but it was not from any cloud or leafy tree branch. It was the shade of remembrance, and there was a wince in his features as the memory blossomed into life just beyond the flat bronze plate of his forehead.
“This was where Alberto Seguin once lived,” Julio said, and there was a tinge of sadness in his voice. “Before you came here. He raised cattle. Big herd. Many head.”
“What happened?” Brad asked.
Julio hung his head and shook it slowly from side to side. His hand on his saddle horn tightened until the veins stood out like worms under beige sand.
“The rustlers. Bad men from Oro City, I think. They stole all his cattle. Alberto fought them. They killed him, his wife, and two sons. They burned down his house and the corrals. The barn you can no longer see. It was only ashes, and they blew away in the wind.”
“Damn. A shame. Anyone ever catch the rustlers?”
A steely look came into Julio’s eyes and his jaw tightened until Brad could see the pulse in his left jawbone.
“The rustlers still ride. They still steal.”
“Here? Where?”
“All over. No one catches them. No one ever catches them. They been stealing since before they called the territory Colorado and made it a state.”
“Why?” Brad knew that Colorado had become a state only two years before, in 1876.
“There are many graves of those who tried to catch them, Brad.”
“Maybe I better start guarding my cattle.”
“You do not have enough yet to interest them. They look for the big herds. Five hundred to one thousand head, maybe.”
Brad was just starting out as a cattle rancher. He had only two hundred head, plus a few yearlings. He had a breeding bull and a few brood cows. He planned on having many more. Beef was at a premium in the mining camps scattered throughout the Rockies.
A fresh breeze whiffled through the burned timbers of the house and set up a soft keening as if voices rose whispering from the
dead. He felt a spider crawl up his spine and shook off the feeling.
“When your cows are already fat,” Julio said, “and your herd is big, so the rustlers will come. They will come in the night and you will not see them.”
“I’ll be damned if they will, Julio. Everything I own is in those cows I have.”
“That is of no import to the thieves.”
“No, but hot lead will be.”
“Ah, you are one man. They are many.”
“I have you. At least I think I do.”
“Two men against many.” Julio crossed himself, and Brad heard him murmur, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” under his breath in Spanish.
“We’ll see,” Brad said. He looked over at the scattered cows. He began to count.
“We’re one short,” he said.
“Yes, the brindle cow. She is carrying a calf.”
“You have a good eye.”
“She was one of those that wandered off with these.”
“She’s probably in the timber.”
“Maybe,” Julio said, and there was the leaden weight of doubt in his voice. Cattle were herd animals, Brad knew, and it was unlikely the brindle cow had wandered out of sight and smell of the others.
Brad knew the cow was not in the timber, would not venture into that dark region alone. She should be with the other cattle, battling with them over the best graze. He knew her nature. He had studied her for nigh on to a year. She was big boned, wide hipped, with sturdy legs and plenty of muscle on her bones, the kind of cow that would produce sound calves that would grow into valuable beef cattle.
So, where was she?
“Gather ’em up, Julio, and run ’em back home. I’m going to look for the brindle.”
“You no want me to help?”
“No, you go on. I’ll track her down.”
“Yes, boss,” Julio said.
Brad frowned. He’d told Julio a hundred times not to call him “boss.” He didn’t want a title for himself, and the term implied a difference in social stations he didn’t like. He thought of Julio as an equal, not as a man subservient to him. He waved a hand at Julio and turned his horse, craning his neck to the left in order to study the tracks on the ground.
It did not take Brad long to find the place where the brindle separated herself from the other cattle. She had wandered, nipping grass with her teeth, heading away from the other cows at an angle. It was when the tracks led him to a lush patch of grass near the edge of the timber that he saw the other tracks, and the sight of them sent an ice water shiver up his spine.
There was no mistaking the tracks of the brindle cow. She was bigger than the other yearlings that had strayed, and heavier. Her hooves had sunk deep into the moist earth around the grass. But, it was the other tracks that sent spiders crawling up his back.
A wolf track, still fresh, crisscrossed the cow tracks, and from its stride, Brad figured it was a timber wolf and would measure nine feet from tail tip to snout.
He turned to yell out his find to Julio, but he saw only the crown of the man’s hat as he and the strays disappeared off the tabletop. Brad drew in a breath and listened to the soft sough of the wind in the pines and spruce and junipers. He was alone, and one of his cows was in trouble.
Big trouble.
He loosened his rifle in its boot and slapped the butt of his Colt .45. The Winchester was on half cock, with a shell in the chamber.
He let out his breath and began following the tracks. They led downward on an angle, away from the small mesa, and the ground was so uneven, rocky, and bramble-strewn that he could not see very far ahead. He leaned back against the cantle of his saddle as his horse descended down the steep slope, picking its way carefully over rough terrain.
The sky to the west was strewn with lavender clouds, their underbellies the soft pink of salmon. The sun was setting, and there was not much time if he was going to rescue that cantankerous cow and drive her back to his ranch. There was moisture in the wolf’s tracks, but the cow’s hoof marks were already turning dry.
In the distance, a red-tailed hawk sailed over the pine tops, its head turning from side to side as it hunted prey.
The loaves of clouds to the west began turning to ash, while the skyline glowed like a blacksmith’s forge. When the sun set, he knew, the air would turn freezing cold and the green mountains would turn into huge lumps of lampblack.
TWO
Brad awoke the following morning, determined to find the missing cow. By noon he hadn’t had any luck. Above him, jays flitted through the trees like scraps of blue sky fluttering through the green branches of the pines. They were almost silent, but Brad was aware of them, his senses honed to a fine edge. A man alone in the wild had to be a part of it, or its wildness could devour him. There were cougars and bears in that part of the country, not to mention rattlesnakes and humans less attuned to nature than he was, nim rod hunters who shot at sounds without seeing the animal itself.
He gave his horse its head as it picked its way down-slope, Brad’s gaze on the cow and wolf tracks, reining only when necessary to stay on track. The stillness rose up around him, that stillness that comes when a man is totally alone in the wild, the stillness of ancient mountains and desolate regions where few men venture.
He rode onto a wide shelf of grassy land that was still moist from the runoff of a recent rain. The tracks were well-defined, and he read them as if they were headlines in a newspaper. The cow’s hoofprints had drained of most of the moisture, while the wolf’s were still wet, glistening in the light as if painted in quicksilver. The wolf had not started to run yet, and it was obvious that the cow had been snatching tufts of grass along the way, as if it had some predetermined destination in mind.
The shelf gradually sloped down to a swale thick with tall waving grasses and a tangle of berry bushes. He heard the cow before he saw her. She was bawling from somewhere down below, and he heard the snarl of the wolf, saw its movement through the high grass.
Brad yelled out and headed his horse toward the sound of the bawling cow. It was tough going, and the cow’s cries grew louder. He rode up and felt his horse stumble. He heard the splash of water and the faint trickle of a stream. He saw the dam then, a beaver dam across a small stream. The cow was wallowing in deep water just below it, and the wolf was at her neck. Brad hauled in on the reins and dropped to the ground. He drew his pistol so fast, it was a dark blur. He took two steps and the wolf’s head rose up for just a second. He saw the slavering jaws, the bloodlust in the wolf’s feral eyes. He thumbed back the hammer on his single-action Colt .45 and the pistol roared, spitting sparks and flame. The wolf’s head jerked with the impact of the lead ball, and the animal tumbled into the stream, turning the water crimson.
Brad slid the pistol back in its holster and took another step. The ground slid out from beneath him, and he heard the ominous sound of a rattlesnake, so loud he thought the sound was coming from inside his own head.
He slid into a deep hidden hole five yards from where the brindle cow was floundering to get out, and that’s when he saw the coiled rattler atop a flat rock right next to the sinkhole. As he kept sliding toward the cow, the rattler struck, a scaled lightning bolt with its jaws open, fangs catching the sunlight, gleaming like surgical needles.
Brad lashed out a hand at the snake as it struck for his throat. The snake’s mouth closed on his hand, burying its fangs in the soft flesh of the heel. Brad rolled over, grasping at the snake’s head with his left hand, pinning its body beneath his leg. He pulled the head and fangs away from his hand, dug a thumb into its neck, a spot just behind its head, dug his fingernail into the scaly flesh, pushing, pushing inward with all of his strength, severing the hard crust of its skin until he dug into its flesh. He sawed back and forth with his thumbnail as the snake writhed beneath him, its tail, with its rattles, banging against his boot.
The brindle cow lurched from its wet sinkhole and lumbered off, with mud up over its hocks, bawling in terror as the sound of the sn
ake’s clattering rattles shattered the silence of the afternoon. Sunlight played in the tops of the trees, the pines dancing with hand shadows as Brad bore down with his thumb, burrowing deep into the snake’s gullet, severing veins and gristle, choking off the serpent’s airway, his hand soaked with fluid. He felt no pain from the bite. The snake struggled to break Brad’s grip, turning its head so that Brad could see into its slitted yellow eyes, feel the forked tongue flicking against his fingers like something that crawled out of the night into a man’s dreams, causing him to shiver with its malevolent electricity.
Brad slid his index finger from his left hand into the snake’s mouth, pried its head back as he continued to crush its neck and drive his fingernail deeper into its rippling flesh. The snake thrashed and struggled, but the fangs lifted from the twin holes in the back of Brad’s hand. The puslike venom continued to shoot out from its hollow fangs, a milky flow with a yellowish cast.
He pinched the snake’s jaws together, held the head clamped between thumb and forefinger, then drew his knife from its scabbard. He severed the head from the body with one swipe, let the head fall to the ground between his legs. He took the knife and sliced a furrow between the two holes left by the snake’s fangs, sheathed his knife and began to bunch up the skin around the new wound. Venom oozed from his hand. He shook it, squeezed it, then sucked out the small gouts he could still see around the twin holes.
He felt movement beneath him. The snake’s body was still whipping and writhing, but the ground was also slipping down in a slow slide. He looked up behind him and saw the boulders beginning to move as well. One was teetering on a precarious perch. The ground was eroded, and there were rivulets of earth where once water had coursed. He slid even farther, and dropped the still wriggling snake and tried to turn over, claw his way out of the brush and loose shale.
