by Len Levinson
JUST ASKING FOR TROUBLE
“There's nothin’ to fight over,” Duane replied. “What's wrong with you?”
It sounded like a new insult. Jones stiffened, and poised his hand above his Remington. “I'm ready when you are.”
Somebody laughed, and Jones thought a joke had been made at his expense. Warped anger billowed through his brain as he reached for his Remington. His finger touched the ivory grip at the same instant that Duane's Colt fired. A bullet pierced Jones's heart, and his lights went out instantly, but he was still on his feet, gun in hand, ready to fire. Everybody stared in morbid fascination as he collapsed onto the floor.
It was silent in the saloon, acrid gunsmoke filled the air, and everyone's ears rang with the shot. Duane aimed his gun at Mundy, then at Cassidy, and finally at McPeak.
“Any of you boys want a piece of me?” he asked.
Also by Len Levinson
The Rat Bastards:
Hit the Beach
Death Squad
River of Blood
Meat Grinder Hill
Down and Dirty
Green Hell
Too Mean to Die
Hot Lead and Cold Steel
Do or Die
Kill Crazy
Nightmare Alley
Go For Broke
Tough Guys Die Hard
Suicide River
Satan’s Cage
Go Down Fighting
The Pecos Kid:
Beginner’s Luck
The Reckoning
Apache Moon
Devil’s Creek Massacre
Bad to the Bone
The Apache Wars Saga:
Desert Hawks
War Eagles
Savage Frontier
White Apache
Devil Dance
Night of the Cougar
THE
PECOS KID
Book 4
OUTLAW HELL
LEN LEVINSON
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Len Levinson. All Rights Reserved.
Ebook © 2013 by AudioGO. All Rights Reserved.
Trade ISBN: 978-1-62064-861-2
Library ISBN: 978-1-62460-202-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
CHAPTER 1
THE HAUNCH OF ANTELOPE CRACKLED and spattered over the fire, as Duane Braddock turned the spit. He kneeled in a cave near the Texas-Mexican border, gazing at endless rolling desert wastes; a bald eagle circled high in the sky.
Unrelenting silence was unhinging his mind, and every day was the same as the last. He hunted, gathered roots, hauled water, and wished he were somewhere else, like in a nice little saloon, with a relaxing glass of whisky, a piano player, and maybe, if he was lucky, some dancing girls.
But Duane Braddock couldn't simply ride away from his little niche in the mountain. He was wanted for murder in the first degree, and a posse was on his trail, not to mention Apache scouts from the Fourth Cavalry. Duane was worth more dead than alive, because he'd shot a certain overly zealous federal marshal in a town farther north. The marshal had gone loco and tried to arrest Duane for murder, a crime Duane didn't commit. Duane resisted the warrant; he didn't trust judges and juries, his father having been hanged by a trumped-up court in the Pecos country. Then the marshal made the mistake of drawing on Duane, and Duane fought back in self-defense. The marshal died of lead poisoning, and now Duane was on the dodge, living like an Apache, constantly looking over his shoulder, ready for anything.
He returned to the fire, yanked his Bowie knife out of his right boot, and examined the roasting meat. It looked about done to his practiced eyes, so he impaled it on the knife, lowered it to the rock floor of the cave, and sliced off a chunk. Sitting cross-legged, he gnawed tender sweet venison and wondered how much longer he'd have to remain in hiding.
He was nearly six feet tall, wearing black jeans and a black shirt, with a short scraggly black beard. Eighteen years old, he looked lethal as a panther, but he'd been raised in a pious and holy Benedictine monastery high in the Guadalupe Mountains, and he'd dreamed of becoming a priest someday. Duane had never realized, as he'd sung Gregorian Chant in the chapel, that he'd end up an outlaw in Mexico. How strange is a man's life, he cogitated. One day you're living at the right hand of the Father, and six months later, you're on the dodge.
Duane had been brought to the monastery at the age of one year, after his parents had died. He'd spent most of his life high in the clouds, cramming his mind with theology, philosophy, and history, with an occasional dip into the classics, and special attention to the mightiest tome of all, the Bible.
All had been going well until one day Duane lost his temper and nearly killed another acolyte, who'd made insulting remarks concerning Duane's parentage. According to monastery records, Duane's father had been an outlaw, while his mother had been employed as a prostitute. They'd never bothered to get married, and Duane was extremely sensitive about his sordid beginnings. Inarticulate with pain and rage, he'd attacked with the first thing he could lay his hands on, a cast-iron frying pan.
It frightened him to know that he could perform incredibly violent acts beyond his control. But he couldn't tolerate painful insults, and didn't like to be pushed around. A furnace of rebellion and resentment burned in his heart, and didn't require much to stoke it up. He could elucidate Saint Irenaeus's arguments against the heresies, but didn't comprehend his own personal behavior.
Since leaving the monastery, every time he'd turned around he'd fallen into a deeper pile of shit. Sometimes he believed that he carried the mark of Cain. On other occasions he thought himself capable of great achievements. He was full of energy and optimism mixed with doubts and fears. Since leaving the monastery, he'd developed a new ambition: to become a cowboy and own his own ranch someday. Now the Fourth Cavalry was after him, not to mention the posse. If only that goddamned marshal had left him alone, he thought ruefully. I try to be polite, I'm kind to old ladies, but before I know it, somebody's aiming a gun at me.
He munched pinyon nuts as he watched the molten sun sink toward red mountainous calligraphy in the distance. The glory of the universe pulsated through him, and he felt saturated with the power of the Holy Ghost. But something was missing, as if he was trying to climb onto a horse, but the saddle kept slipping.
He knew that he could live indefinitely in the desert, for once he'd spent a month with a tribe of hit-and-run Apaches. They'd taught him to track, move silently, see clearly, and hear everything, but most of all how to locate food and water on a supposedly barren land. An old di-yin medicine man named Cucharo had said that Duane's grandfather was a famous Apache warrior. Duane had drunk sacred tiswin with the Apaches, and experienced incredible visions of his grandfather that he was still trying to decipher.
Duane would've lived with Apaches forever, but couldn't abide some of their customs. For instance, if a squaw had twins, the father was obliged to kill one, because Apaches believed that twins resulted from evil sorcery. Duane knew that he could never slit his own son's throat, regardless of circumstances, and decided that the Apache way was a bit too barbaric and superstitious for what remained of his Roman Catholic tastes. So he'd left the Apaches and returned to the white man's world, where he'd shot the federal marshal.
He had stared at bare stone walls, and hadn't talked with anyone except his horse, Steve, for nearly a month. His tobacco was gone, he had nothing t
o read, and he was tired of cooking over an open fire. The desert was beautiful in all its multivaried splendor, but unending loneliness was rattling him.
He wished he could stop thinking about tobacco, but the desire became worse with every passing hour. Major events were occurring in the world, and he didn't know what they were. America could be in another war with Mexico, and he was on the wrong side of the Rio Grande.
Darkness fell on the desert, and he spotted a border town's faint twinkling lights to the north. Duane gazed at those beckoning beacons every night, and imagined churches, saloons full of colorful strangers, and homes where people sat with family and friends at dinner tables, while he chewed charred meat in a cave.
He knew that the posse would tire of the chase after a few weeks of nothing, and the Fourth Cavalry had more important assignments than to chase one lone outlaw forever. “Maybe it's time I returned to civilization,” Duane said aloud, for he often talked to himself in the cave. “I'll use a new name, and if folks act suspicious, I'll climb onto my horse and gallop out of town pronto. They say half the people in Texas are on the dodge, and maybe somebody in that town can tell me about my father.”
Duane had heard conflicting testimony concerning his outlaw father. Some claimed Joe Braddock was an innocent small rancher who went up against the big boys. Others said he was a cold-blooded killer, rustler, and horse thief. The only man Duane met who'd actually known his father had kept mum about the details, because he didn't want Duane to ride the vengeance trail. “Best you don't know,” he'd said, before dying of a gunshot wound.
His name was Clyde Butterfield, and he'd taught Duane the classic fast draw. Duane had been blessed or cursed with unusually fast reflexes, and had occasion to use his newly acquired skills several times since meeting Butterfield. Then, thanks to a whisky-soaked newspaper reporter with an overactive imagination, Duane Braddock became known as the Pecos Kid. The ex-acolyte was struggling to assimilate the dramatic changes in his life since he'd left the monastery, and often wondered who he was beneath his black wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
He gazed longingly at the town calling across the desert, but then, suddenly, was on his feet, reaching for his Colt .44. He spun around, yanked iron, thumbed back the hammer, and aimed at his spare shirt hanging from a peg in the cracked stone wall. He didn't pull the trigger, because he didn't want to attract Apaches, the posse, the Fourth Cavalry, or anyone else looking to claim the reward on his head, but the Apaches had taught him to stay alert, with his muscles primed for action at all times.
The town on the edge of night was called Escondido, and its most prominent institution was the Last Chance Saloon. As Duane fretted in his isolated cave, customers played cards, drank, and made nefarious plans in the main room, while a man in a striped shirt played the piano off-key.
Painted women in short dresses brought the customers whisky, the blue-plate special, and romance at fifty cents a throw, the latter a specialty of the house. It was the basic border town whoop and holler, frequented by Mexican banditos, American outlaws, unemployed cowboys, vaqueros, gamblers, drunkards, whores, and heavily armed swaggering fools.
Forty-two-year-old Maggie O'Day owned the Last Chance Saloon, and her office was at the rear of the rambling structure. It was furnished with a crude wooden desk, some chairs, a few books, and a double-barreled shotgun on the wall, opposite a painted portrait of General Robert E. Lee.
Maggie was a heavyset raw-boned woman who looked like she could lay a man out with one punch. But she wore a frilly dress, a fancy becurled hairdo, a gold necklace, and an emerald brooch, as she peered through gold-rimmed spectacles at the bottorn line.
The Last Chance was raking in cabbage every night, thanks to her shrewd management. She had considerable experience in her specialized field, which she'd first learned at her mother's knee—dear old momma had been a soiled dove herself. Maggie joined the profession at the age of twelve, learned the ropes quickly, saved her money, invested wisely, married when it suited her, and now had the supreme luxury of sleeping alone every night and not worrying where her next crust of bread was coming from.
She'd never met her father, and for all she knew, he could be the poor wretch she'd seen languishing in the alley earlier that night, filthy and ragged, sucking a bottle of cheap mescal. But she had more to worry about than her unknown father. The saloon was amassing more money than she could handle easily, and she didn't trust banks, sheriffs, and certainly not the townspeople of Escondido, most of whom were outlaws.
Her wealth resided in an iron safe bolted to the wall, the window barred like a jail cell, and the door double-thick, with three of the best locks money could buy. If anybody wanted her earnings, he'd have to bring dynamite, and hopefully her bodyguards would catch them in the act. One of these days, the lid'll blow off this town, she conjectured. I hope I'm out of here by then. Her ultimate dream was move to San Francisco, buy a legitimate hotel, and be a real lady instead of queen of Escondido's whores.
A shot sounded on the street, and her hand moved involuntarily toward the Smith & Wesson lying on her desk. She always kept it handy, because anything could happen in Escondido. Then someone knocked.
Burly Bradley Metzger, her chief bodyguard, entered her office, wearing a black frock coat with a frilly white shirt and black string tie. “A gal to see you. Wants a job, I think. Should I tell her to come back tomorrow?”
“What's she look like?”
“Got a scar on her face, but not too bad. She's young.”
“Send her in.”
Maggie returned dreary ledgers to their drawer, as a petite woman with lustrous black hair, pale skin, and tattered clothing entered the office. Looks thirty, but probably seventeen, Maggie evaluated. “Have a seat. What's yer name?”
The girl had doe eyes and a thin horizontal scar on her right cheek. “Alice Markham. I was a-wonderin’ if you needed a waitress.”
“Ever been a waitress before?”
“'Bout two years now. I'm a real hard worker, and I l'arn fast. I even knows how to read and write a bit.”
Maggie selected a panatella from a mahogany humidor, lit it with a match, and blew smoke out the side of her mouth. “I can always use a hard-workin’ gal, but I don't tolerate horseshit. I expect you to be on time and lookin’ good every night yer scheduled to work. If you fight with the customers ; or the other gals, I'll throw yer ass onto the street so i fast you won't know what hit you. Get my drift?”
“You won't have no trouble from me, Miss O'Day. I'm here to make money and that's all.”
“Then we'll git along fine.” Maggie puffed her panatella thoughtfully, for she'd been young and on the loose once too. “Let me give you a little friendly advice, ‘cause you look like you might need some ‘bout now. I'm probably wastin’ my time, ‘cause nobody ever listens to old Maggie O'Day, but you save yer money, stay away from drink, and don't give everythin’ away to no smooth-talkin’ cowboy— you can build up a nice little nest egg here. You got any good clothes?”
The girl averted her eyes. “They're pretty worn out, I'm afraid.”
“I'll advance you some, and take it out'n yer pay. My cut is half of ev'rythin’ you earn, but I provide room and board, and keep a clean place. Are you with me so far?”
The girl replied: “You won't have any trouble with me, Miss O'Day. I don't drink, don't smoke, don't gamble, and I ain't a-givin’ my money to no smooth-talkin’ cowboy.”
“'At's what they all say. Well, you can do as you damn well please, long as it don't interfere with my bizness. But let me tell you somethin’ missy—fer yer own good. You look out fer my interests, I'll look out fer yers, and we'll git along right fine. But you ever cross me,”—Maggie raised the Smith & Wesson and aimed it at Alice Markham's head— “I'll put one right between yer eyes.”
CHAPTER 2
FATHER DIEGO GONZALEZ WAS HAVING problems with his breakfast campfire. “If only I had some paper,” he muttered in mounting frustration. Back at Santa Veronica Iglesia in Du
rango, the nuns cooked his food and laundered his clothing, but now he was a lone traveler on the Coahuilan desert, and had to care for himself.
He'd been transferred to the new church in San Antonio, but the Franciscans weren't rich enough to provide an armed escort. It was a long arduous journey, but he felt confident that no one, not even a Protestant, would interfere with a priest doing the Lord's work.
Father Gonzalez's sweat-soaked brown robe billowed around his ample girth, and a straw sombrero was perched atop his head. He'd get weak if he didn't eat something soon, but the wood wasn't cooperating.
“Don't move,” said a voice behind him.
Father Gonzalez spun around, and his eyes widened at a young cowboy in black clothes, with a red bandanna around his neck and a silver concho hatband on his black cowboy hat.
“Keep your hands in the air,” the cowboy said.
“But I'm a Catholic priest!” protested Father Diego.
“We'll see about that.”
The cowboy patted Father Diego down, searching for a weapon. “You don't look like you missed too many meals.” He searched Father Diego's saddle-bags, while aiming his gun at the rotund priest. Inside the saddlebags were a rosary, breviary, Bible, and vestments. The young man smiled sheepishly, as he holstered his gun. “Guess you really are a priest. Can I help you with that fire?”
Father Diego lowered his hands, as the strange cowboy disappeared into mesquite and juniper as, silently as he'd arrived. The priest wondered how he'd gotten so close without his hearing him.
The cowboy returned after a brief interval with handfuls of foliage and wood. He arranged the material in the firepit that the priest had dug, and set it afire. Flames flickered and expanded immediately.
“There you go,” the cowboy said.
