Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels

by Stephen Mertz

  He and Kate sat up and said as one, "What the hell?"

  Covered in blood, Abigail Hurst stood shaking in front of the altar.

  From outside came the thunder of hooves as the masked gang made its getaway. With Jesse Smith.

  Chapter 2

  J.D. helped Kate to her feet. She immediately ran to Abigail and held the shaking girl tight. J.D. stepped over a podium that had been knocked down in the commotion and knelt beside the parson. Thomas had taken the first bullet fired by the masked gang. The small hole in the middle of his forehead turned into a large hole at the back of his head where the slug had exited. J.D. took a cloth that had been draped over the podium and laid it gently over the man's face. Spots of blood immediately soaked through the cloth, but this small gesture had to do until the undertaker worked his cosmetic magic to make the parson look at peace in repose when he was buried.

  J.D. saw that several men had been shot. All had come to the wedding armed. The masked men had singled them out to quash any opposition to the kidnapping. The low roar in the church came from moans of pain and cries of women demanding someone go fetch the town doctor. J.D. went to where Custis Hurst held his wife, gently rocking her, stroking her hair and telling her everything would be all right.

  The parson's corpse and Jesse Smith's kidnapping put that to the lie.

  Kate steered Abigail into the circle of her parents' arms, then said to J.D., "Why are we standing around?"

  They rushed out of the church. A dozen horses had been tethered here. They were gone, stolen by the gang. The few buggies were still hitched, but J.D. knew a horse broken to pull a buggy seldom made a good riding horse. Without the weight of his Colt at his hip, there wasn't much he could do even if he overtook the kidnappers.

  "What's going on?" He didn't realize he spoke aloud. Kate gripped his arm and put her head against his shoulder.

  "They surely did have it in for the parson," she said.

  "Why'd they take Jesse? If they wanted a ransom, they'd take the bride."

  "Everyone in town would pony up a few dollars to get Abbie back. The Hursts are well enough liked, but you're right about Jesse. He couldn't even rustle up a best man."

  "What do you mean?"

  Abigail sighed. "Abigail told me he paid that cowboy two dollars to stand up with him."

  Doing nothing galled him. J.D. considered his chances of unhitching a horse and riding down the gang to rescue Smith. The odds were against him since he needed a six-shooter. His Winchester would be even better since he knew the outlaws were armed with rifles. The dead parson proved that much.

  "Where'd the best man get off to? I want to talk to him."

  "The side door was open. All the gang came in through the front." As she talked, Kate began circling the church.

  As she had said, the door swung open in the breeze. A quick scout of the area showed where the best man had lit out like a scalded dog. J.D. measured the distance between boot prints and judged how tall the cowboy was.

  "He's hauling ass. Flat out running." He looked out toward the Tetons. Finding the best man would take a fair amount of tracking from horseback.

  "Do you think he knew the outlaws were going to kidnap Jesse?"

  "I don't know," J.D. said. "This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. No matter how desperate for money he was, he wouldn't risk his life for two dollars."

  "Maybe he was part of the gang?"

  "Then why did he run on foot? Why wouldn't they bring a horse for him? He got scared because he didn't expect the church to get shot up."

  "So what are we going to do about it?" Kate stood with hands on her hips and a defiant flash in her brown eyes.

  "I told you I didn't want to go to any wedding."

  They closed the side door behind them as they reentered the church. In the few minutes they had been outside, the doctor had arrived and worked to patch up bullet holes in a couple of the wedding guests. The marshal wandered around, looking lost.

  Wilderness was a peaceable town, not even getting much in the way of rowdy drunk cowboys on Saturday nights. The marshal dealt more with removing dead horses from the street and serving process than trying to make sense of a massacre like this.

  "Who're you?" The marshal saw J.D. and Kate watching him and came over, jaw shoved out belligerently and his hand resting on an old black powder Remington that hadn't been fired in a month of Sundays. "I know most all the folks in town."

  "When you're done looking over my wife, you can give us some information." J.D. disliked the openly lascivious gaze resting on Kate's bosom. Most men appreciated her beauty, but this was not the time nor the place.

  "You two don't look like bounty hunters, but you sound like 'em. Had one all dressed up in smelly buckskins come through town a year back. He wanted to track down a Blackfoot who'd slipped off the reservation and was on a killing spree." The marshal looked around for a spittoon, remembered he was in church and made a face as he swallowed. "Never saw hide nor hair of him again. Never heard Black Wing got himself sent back to the reservation neither, so I reckon the bounty hunter got hisself kilt."

  "Who killed the parson and shot others in the wedding party?"

  "Now, ma'am, that's exactly the kind of question I'd expect from a bounty hunter. You're a real purty lookin' one, if that's what you are. Never seen a female bounty hunter, though I heard of one back in Kansas. She—"

  "I was matron of honor."

  "Matron?" The marshal looked from her to a scowling J.D. and back. "Do tell."

  "She's my wife, Marshal."

  "Name's Nesbitt." He waited for the Blazes to supply theirs. When both remained silent, he wiped his lips on his sleeve. "Got to get back to figurin' out what happened. You two friends of the Hurst family?"

  "I met Abigail in Rock Springs and we struck up a conversation. That was a year back. She was with her pa to pick up supplies."

  "Now what kind of supplies does a barber need?"

  "Penhaglion's Opus shaving cream because the customers like it better than Trumpers cream. New razors. Other supplies George over at the general store doesn't carry." Custis Hurst pressed into the tight circle with his back to the Blazes so he faced Marshal Nesbitt. "More 'n that, Abigail wanted to see the sights. There's not much of that for a young girl in Wilderness."

  "Now, Custis, what more can a body want than everything's that already here?"

  "Who were they, Marshal Nesbitt? The men who shot up the wedding?" J.D. had reached the end of his patience. Discussing the relative merits of a coal mining town like Rock Springs and the ranching town of Wilderness hardly mattered when a man of the cloth had died and another man had been kidnapped.

  "I'm talkin' to Custis here. You wait 'til I get around to you, Mister Bounty Hunter."

  This caused Hurst to open his mouth in surprise. He closed it again, took a breath and finally got out his words.

  "Abigail never mentioned you were a bounty hunter, J.D."

  "We're not bounty hunters." J.D. saw no reason to go into what they were. A husband and wife team of gunfighters only muddied the water. "We might be of help getting Jesse back if we can get some idea what's going on in Wilderness."

  "Now, there, boy, don't you go castin' aspersions on my town." Nesbitt bristled and became truculent again. "We got a good town here, peaceable and filled with law-abiding citizens."

  "Who just witnessed their pastor getting his head blown off," Kate said. "Mr. Hurst, did you know the best man?"

  "Never saw him before today when I walked Abigail down the aisle. I think I heard him called Floyd. Jesse was always a secretive cuss. Never talked about his people, where he came from or even much about his working as a cowboy out on the C-Bar-C. I got the feeling him and Jake Lawrence didn't get on too well."

  "That's the ranch owner?" J.D. saw how difficult this was going to be with the marshal standing there. He had taken a dislike to them and wasn't inclined to offer the smallest detail.

  "I'll go comfort Abigail," Kate said. J.D. only nodded
. Sometimes, it was like she read his mind. More likely, she had come to the same conclusion about the course of any palaver with Nesbitt.

  He had to keep the lawman busy so Kate could find out what they needed to know to find Jesse.

  Marshal Nesbitt started to trail after Kate, but J.D. held him in place with another question.

  "Unless I miss my guess, you've been plagued by road agents for a spell. Who might that be?"

  "How'd you know about the Blackmun gang? You are a bounty hunter come for the reward on their heads!"

  "First time I've ever heard the name."

  "They blowed into the county a few weeks back. They held up a stagecoach and hurrahed Rock Springs. I got a wanted poster for Ben Blackmun. He's a piece of work."

  "What's he wanted for other than highway robbery?"

  Nesbitt looked dyspeptic at having to say a word more. He pulled a bit of chaw from his vest pocket, pulled back the foil and only bit off a half inch or so. After a couple good chews, he looked more tractable.

  "Murder over in Cheyenne. Ben Blackmun gunned down a deputy sheriff. There's a hundred-dollar reward on his head."

  "How many outlaws ride with him?"

  "Well, Mister Bounty Hunter, I'd say all of 'em are outlaws." Nesbitt chuckled at this little triumph. "You got any idea what caused them owlhoots to grab your little girl's intended, Custis?"

  J.D. found himself cut out of the conversation. Listening to what the marshal had to ask or Hurst's answers wouldn't shed any light on the killing and kidnapping. He stepped back, saw the marshal paid him no heed, then continued to fade away until neither Hurst nor Nesbitt noticed his absence. Kate spoke with Abigail and her mother across the now empty church.

  He joined them, keeping quiet as more information came forth.

  "I never saw him before. Jesse said his name was Floyd."

  "Just Floyd? That's not much to go on," said J.D.

  "How many cowboys with that name work for the C-Bar-C?" Kate pursed her lips as she considered this.

  "All you have to do is ride out there and Floyd would come running like a puppy dog. I saw how he ogled you when you walked up to the altar together."

  Kate grinned, then sobered quickly. She took her husband's arm and squeezed it to reassure him. It worked enough for J.D. to get his thoughts back on the right trail.

  "You two sound as if you're experienced in tracking men. Can you find my daughter's Jesse?" Maybelle Hurst hugged Abigail, who pushed away.

  "Ma, we can't ask them to help out. They almost got shot up because of me."

  "Because of Jesse," Kate corrected. "If I wanted to kidnap anyone at a wedding, it would be the bride. Especially at this wedding. You were gorgeous, Abigail."

  "We never got married. The parson was shot down before he got to that part." Abigail turned to Kate and asked the question J.D. had been dreading, yet expected. "Will you find him for me?"

  "Even if he was taken out and hung from a cottonwood?" J.D. doubted this had happened. If the outlaws had wanted Jesse dead, his body would be stretched out next to the parson.

  "Who'd do a thing like that?" Abigail steadied herself. "If it happened, I want to find out. I want to find out who did it and why. The marshal will never stir out of town."

  "Marshal Nesbitt is pushed to the ends of his skill staying in Wilderness to deal with small crimes," Maybelle Hurst said. "He's not a bad man. He's just not much of a lawman."

  "We can go into Rock Springs and let the sheriff know."

  Maybelle Hurst made a shooing motion, as if scaring away flies.

  "There's trouble a' plenty in that town. They don't hire any but them Chinee miners because they work cheaper than white miners. There's always a fight going on. The sheriff's not going to bother himself none coming up here when Rock Springs might explode like a case of dynamite at any second."

  "We'll find Jesse for you," Kate said.

  "We can pay you," Abigail said. "Whatever you think it's worth."

  J.D. let his wife gently tell her the Hurst family didn't have enough money to pay for their guns. They worked for causes they approved of—and charged top dollar for it. In this case, it had a more personal touch to it since they could have been killed as easily as the parson or shot up like those in the audience.

  "We can pay you a hundred dollars." Maybelle spoke with increasing ire.

  "What kind of devil's deal are you making, woman?" Custis hurried over. "The marshal can handle this. You don't need to hire gunfighters. That's what they are, isn't it? Gunfighters?"

  "I won't argue the point, Mr. Hurst." J.D. had already discounted the family and let his mind rove outward, trying to figure the best way of locating Jesse Smith.

  "Get him back for me, Kate, J.D." Abigail would have said more, but her pa herded her out the door. He gave the Blazes a look that could have frozen over the fires of hell.

  "The longer we take getting on the trail, the harder it will be to find what's necessary," J.D. said.

  "We need supplies. We need to get into more suitable clothes." Kate looked down at her fancy white dress. Spots of the parson's blood dotted it. "It's a good thing I know how to get bloodstains out."

  "If we charged them our usual price, you could afford a dozen more dresses like that."

  "Why bother? All I want is to get out of this one." Before her husband could reply, she rushed on. "I am perfectly capable of removing this and getting into my trail duds by myself, thank you. There'll be time for what's in your head later." She gave him a quick kiss.

  J.D. didn't bother telling her he wasn't thinking of ravishing her as she slowly wiggled out of the dress but instead on what trouble Jesse Smith must have gotten himself involved in if the Blackmun gang busted up his wedding.

  In an hour they had their supplies. In ninety minutes they were on the trail, heading out to the C-Bar-C in search of Floyd, their only lead.

  Chapter 3

  "The road is too well traveled to know if Floyd was astride any of the horses." J.D. stood and brushed the dirt off his hands. He had dropped to all fours to get the slanting afternoon sun shining across the hoofprints. From horseback the prints were a complete muddle, but on the ground he distinguished between one horse and another from a deep nick in one shoe. Another horse on this same road came close to throwing a shoe. The nails had popped free, by J.D.'s reckoning, only one nail held the horseshoe in place.

  But he had no idea if that was Floyd's, or it the one with the nick in the edge. Or neither. If he had seen the man's horse back at the church, he knew his tracking would have improved. As it was, he didn't even know what the horse looked like. Wherever Floyd had left it was far from the church or he wouldn't have run the way he had after the shooting.

  "It's C-Bar-C land," Kate said.

  "You see a sign to know for sure?"

  She laughed and said, "You know all my tricks. I'll have to think up some new ones to keep you interested."

  "There's nothing wrong with your old tricks. I'll always be interested, but new tricks can't be a bad thing," he said, tugging on his horse's reins as he walked along the double-rut road.

  "The ranch house is ahead."

  He looked up and saw a thin curl of smoke rising above a stand of trees. Taking a deep breath caused his belly to grumble. They had set out from Wilderness around two and had ridden steadily, not even taking time to eat. The smell of meat roasting was enough to make J.D. bolt off in a dead run like Floyd, only he would be running to the food, not away from blazing rifles.

  They rode for another fifteen minutes before a notch appeared in the trees. The rambling ranch house dominated the small grove. Trees had been cleared toward the rear, leading to a barn. By the barn two corrals were full of horses.

  "Prosperous spread," J.D. said. "From the horses, twenty wranglers ride herd from here."

  "We've been spotted," Kate said. She stood in the stirrups and waved. "No sense making it seem that we're unfriendly." Still, she waited until the man with the rifle resting in the crook of hi
s left arm motioned for them to ride closer.

  "Howdy, my name's J.D. Blaze and this is my wife Kate." He tipped his hat when a woman in her forties came out onto the porch before looking back at the rancher.

  The man wore fancy hand-tooled boots, the legs of his jeans tucked into them to display the full glory of snorting bulls and his ranch's brand. The rancher was a tad shorter than J.D., but not by much. He sported a beer belly dangling over his hand-tooled leather belt and moved real slow, as if he had hurt his right leg at some time in the past and it hadn't healed properly. A bright shirt and a sil-belly Stetson holding down a shock of hair gone gray bellowed expensive. Success and this man were no strangers.

  "Dunwoody, Horace Dunwoody and up on the porch is my missus."

  "Mighty fine place you have here," J.D. said.

  "Takes a mighty fine lot of work keeping it going. My boys are chowing down, and I was going to join them when I saw the pair of you riding up. If you can make it fast, my appetite will appreciate it."

  "You eat with your men often?"

  "Only on special occasions, today's my foreman's birthday. The missus did him up a cake."

  "Sounds like a good celebration. Your foreman's name isn't Floyd, by any chance?"

  Dunwoody looked at him for a moment in disbelief, then he laughed.

  "Are you part of one of them traveling shows, with jugglers and clowns?"

  "Can't say that I am. That's a curious question."

  "Got a hand named Floyd, and I'd name my pet goat foreman 'fore I'd even think of him to take a real job."

  "Oh, Horace, you do go on." Mrs. Dunwoody came down the steps slowly, moving carefully and hanging onto the handrail for balance. She stood beside her husband, looking up at the Blazes. "He doesn't have a pet goat. With a belly like his, he'd eat it." She patted her husband's stomach.

  "You do have a wrangler working here by the name of Floyd? We'd like to talk to him for a minute or two."

  "You got the look of a gunfighter about you, Mr. Blaze." He gripped the rifle a bit tighter, and his finger curled around the trigger. "Truth is, both of you look capable of using those six-guns at your hips."