Bloody Trail

by Ford Fargo

  Derrick drew a deep breath. “Yeah, Charley, but right now, we’re all just men. Tired and ready to go back to where we belong. Back to find our balance, as you say.”

  “Wolf Creek.” Charley said, in simple agreement.

  The rain began to fall as they mounted up. The cleansing drizzle covered them. It was the answer to an unspoken prayer for forgiveness, with a promise of peace for them all. The posse made their way back down through the winding path of the foothills. When they reached the open country below, three veered eastward, to Tamaha. The other four headed north, toward Kansas. The rain settled into a steady shower of heaven-sent hope. It washed away the bloody trail of vengeance, the rhythm of it singing in their veins.

  Home… Home.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

  JAMES J. GRIFFIN

  I've been in love with horses and fascinated by all things Western, in particular the Texas Rangers, since I was a kid, so when I started writing it was only natural I would write Texas Ranger novels. Luckily, I have my good friends, Texas Ranger Jim Huggins of Company A, and Karl Rehn and Penny Riggs of KR Training in Manheim, Texas, to help with my research. Jim provides advice on the Rangers, while Karl and Penny lend their expertise on weapons of the period. I also travel out West every chance I get for research and relaxation. My two main series are about Texas Rangers Jim Blawcyzk and Cody Havlicek. The books are all very traditional Westerns, and most are suitable for almost all ages.

  As a lifelong horseman, there's nothing I like better than climbing into the saddle and getting out into the hills and woods for the day, just me and my horse. While I love everything about the West, I love my native New England, particularly my adopted home state of New Hampshire, even more, and live for the day, not far off now, when I'll be able to move back up North for good. Right now I split my time between Branford, Connecticut, where I work, and Keene, New Hampshire. Two best friends are my horse, Yankee, and my Shih Tzu, Dogie. My website is www.jamesjgriffin.net.

  L. J. MARTIN

  I am the author of 25 western, historical, mystery, and thriller novels from Bantam, Pinnacle, Avon, and Wolfpack Publishing, and of five non-fiction works. I live in Montana with my wife, Kat, the New York Times bestselling author of over 55 romantic suspense and historical romance novels internationally published in a dozen languages and more than two dozen countries. When not writing, I spend a good deal of my time running a conservative political blog at http://fromthepeapatch.com, working with my horses, hunting, fishing, cooking, and wandering the back country with my cameras, both video and still. My photography has appeared on national magazine covers and in periodicals. Over one hundred of my videos can be seen on youtube.com at ljmartinwolfpack. Learn more about the Martins at www.ljmartin.com and www.katmartin.com.

  CLAY MORE

  My real name is Keith Souter and I was born in St Andrews in Scotland. I studied Medicine at Dundee University and then practiced as a family doctor in the city of Wakefield in England for thirty years. While I was at medical school I started to write children’s stories for a family magazine, but after qualifying as a doctor the exigencies of the job were such that the focus of my writing was on medicine. I have also been a health columnist for almost thirty years and have written about a dozen medical and health books. In addition I write non-fiction books including Schoolboy Science Remembered; The Pocket Guide to Dice and Dice Games; The Little Book of Genius; The Little Book of Golf; Medical Meddlers, Mediums and Magicians – the Victorian Age of Credulity and The Classic Guide to King Arthur. Using the pen-name of Clay More I write traditional westerns with the Black Horse Westerns imprint of Hale of London: Raw Deal at Pasco Springs; Nemesis for the Judge; Double-Dealing at Dirtville; A Rope for Scudder and Stampede at Rattlesnake Pass. I also write Scottish-based crime novels as Keith Moray for Hale: The Gathering Murders; Deathly Wind; Murder Solstice and Flotsam and Jestsam. In 2006 I won a Fish Prize for my short historical story A Villain’s Tale and writing as Keith Souter started a series of historical mysteries set around Sandal Castle, the ruined medieval castle that I live within arrowshot of: The Pardoner’s Crime and The Fool’s Folly. In the summer of 2012 the first in my series of Victorian children’s adventures begins with The Curse of the Body Snatchers by G-Press. My website is www.keithsouter.co.uk and my blog is http://west-uist-chronicle.blogspot.co.uk

  [I am a member of the Society of Authors, The Crime Writers’ Association, Medical Journalists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Western Writers of America and Western Fictioneers.]

  CHERYL PIERSON

  A native Oklahoman, I was born in Duncan, OK, and grew up in Seminole, OK. I graduated from the University of Oklahoma, and hold a B.A. in English. I’ve taught numerous writing classes and workshops over the past years throughout the OKC metro area. I live with my husband in Oklahoma City, OK, where we’ve been for the past 28 years. I have two grown children, ages 22 and 25.

  My short story, “The Kindness of Strangers,” is included in the Western Fictioneers anthology The Traditional West. Other western short stories you might be interested in are: “Homecoming,” “Scarlet Ribbons,” “Every Girl’s Dream,” “One Magic Night,” “Meant to Be” and “Jason’s Angel,” all available through Western Trail Blazer (WTB) publishing.

  My novella, Kane’s Redemption, the first of a series, is also available through WTB, as well as my time travel western novel, Time Plains Drifter.

  Also, look for my upcoming releases, Fire Eyes, a western novel, and Kane’s Promise, the second novella in the “Kane” series, through WTB. Also, be on the lookout for my holiday short story, “The Keepers of Camelot,” that will be included in the Western Fictioneers anthology, Six Guns and Slay Bells: A Creepy Cowboy Christmas.

  You can visit my website at http://www.cherylpierson.com

  You can e-mail me at fabkat_edit@yahoo.com (I love to hear from readers and other authors!)

  All books and short stories available at: https://www.amazon.com/author/cherylpierson

  JAMES REASONER

  I write novels and short stories for a living (although I'll occasionally write a short story for a non-paying market if it's something I really want to do) and book and movie reviews for fun on my blog, which can be found at http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com. I started out as a mystery writer nearly 35 years ago and still work in that genre and others, but I've done more Westerns than anything else. I've been married to best-selling, award-winning author, uncredited collaborator, editor, and plotter Livia J. Washburn for nearly 35 years. (Note the similarity between the length of my marriage and the length of my writing career. Coincidence? I don't think so.) We live in the same small town in Texas where we both grew up, although it's not so small anymore. (We have a Wal-Mart now!) After all these years, I still love to write and can't imagine doing anything else. My website is www.jamesreasoner.net.

  TROY D. SMITH

  I am from the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. My work has appeared in many anthologies, and in journals such as Louis L'Amour Western Magazine, Civil War Times, and Wild West. In addition, I’ve written novels in several genres—from mysteries like Cross Road Blues to the Civil War epic Good Rebel Soil. My other Civil War epic, Bound for the Promise-Land, won a Spur Award in 2001 and I was a finalist on two other occasions. Two of my short stories are finalists for this year's Peacemaker Award for western fiction. In a massive lapse of collective judgment, the membership of Western Fictioneers elected me president for 2012. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, and teach American Indian history at Tennessee Tech. My motto is: “I don’t write about things that happen to people, I write about people that things happen to.” My website is www.troyduanesmith.com , and my blog is http://tnwordsmith.blogspot.com .

  Sample

  Wolf Creek Book 2: Kiowa Vengeance

  CHAPTER ONE

  The six-man Kiowa scouting party came down on the Manning ranch like a wolf on the fold.

  Roy Manning and his yo
unger brother, Hal, had been about to go looking for a couple of strays. They’d just ridden out of the barn when Hal got an arrow through the throat. He made a gurgling sound and clutched his neck with both hands. Blood spurted between his fingers, and his horse broke into a run, throwing Hal’s body off about twenty yards away.

  A ball from an 1866 Henry Yellow Boy blew a hole in Roy’s heart, and he pitched from the saddle, dead before he hit the dirt.

  Two of the Kiowa warriors jumped from their horses and drew their knives. One cut away Roy’s scalp while the other was busy stripping Hal to remove his genitals.

  The other four warriors had already stormed into the house, where Sue Manning was trying to hide her son and two young daughters. A warrior knocked her to the floor with one blow, while the other three dealt with the screaming children. All the surviving Mannings were dragged outside.

  They killed the boy first, then held Sue while they raped her daughters. She’d fainted long before they got to her.

  When the warriors rode away from the ranch, no one was left alive. And in that, they were lucky. The scouting party, steeped in blood, headed northeast, toward the road where the stage from Wichita would be heading for Wolf Creek.

  ***

  The woman who called herself Cora Sloane wasn’t impressed with her fellow passengers on the Wolf Creek stage.

  Whenever the swaying coach hit a bump in the road, which was all too often, Lester Weatherby, a talkative whiskey drummer from St. Louis, would deliberately bounce against her and try to collide with her bosom. He was a small, unprepossessing man, and when he wasn’t bouncing around, he tried to ingratiate himself with Cora, which only irritated her. She found herself wishing that the stage door would flop open and Weatherby would fall out. So far it hadn’t happened.

  Cora wished she were sharing the seat with one of the other passengers—though, on second thought, not the one who sat across from her. John Hix said he was Wolf Creek’s barber. He looked as if a good puff of wind would blow him away, but something about his eyes bothered Cora. They were empty as the prairie sky, but there was a kind of feral heat in them that reminded her of a coyote she’d seen once as it tore into a couple of chickens. Hix had told Cora that he’d been out of town on business, though he hadn’t said where he’d been or why—the plain implication being that whatever business it was, it was certainly none of hers.

  Cora had never been to Wolf Creek. She’d seen an advertisement in a newspaper that said the town was looking for a school teacher, and she’d written a letter to apply for the job. To her surprise, she’d been accepted—she’d packed at once and left the hotel in Wichita where she was staying. She didn’t like to remain in one place for too long, but Wolf Creek was small and far enough away from her home to be safe. Or so she hoped.

  The most intriguing passenger was the man beside Hix. He appeared to be in his late forties, though his shaggy hair was still dark and untouched by gray. He’d introduced himself politely to Cora and the other passengers as Dave Benteen and explained that he was going to Wolf Creek to set up as the town’s gunsmith. An unnamed friend had helped him purchase a store where he’d be working. His weathered face showed the scars of past battles, and Cora wondered what they might have been. His haunted eyes gave him the look of someone with secrets.

  Cora had seen that look in her own eyes in the mirror, and she’d had to learn to smile with her eyes as well as her mouth in order to hide it.

  She reached into the reticule at her feet for the copy of Mister Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales that she’d put there before leaving, in the hope that she might read some of it along the way. The coach was rocking so much, however, that she hadn’t tried to read for fear that she might become sick. Now the road seemed a bit smoother, and she thought she might be able to pass some time by dipping into one of the tales. She wasn’t always sure that she grasped Hawthorne’s meaning, but the woman fleeing her terrible past in “The Hollow of the Three Hills” was someone Cora could sympathize with all too easily.

  “I see that you’re a reader, ma’am,” Dave Benteen said as she opened the book.

  “I am a teacher, sir, and teachers read. Do gunsmiths?”

  Benteen grinned. “I’ve been known to crack a book now and again, though my taste runs more to Mister Poe’s tales than to Hawthorne’s.”

  Cora gave him a demure look over the top of her glasses. “Mister Poe’s work is a bit too morbid and gruesome for me, and while Mister Hawthorne does indeed look on the dark side of things, he does so without excess.”

  She opened her book to end the conversation, but she found that she was still unable to read. Even on the smooth road the coach was swaying too much for that. She closed the book with a sigh and was about to replace it in the reticule when she heard a distant scream so harsh and piercing that it rivaled anything in the works of Mister Poe.

  She looked out the side window and saw six Indian warriors riding toward the coach. They seemed in no special hurry, as if they knew the stage couldn’t possibly outrun them. They rode as if they were one with their mounts. Cora had never seen anything like it.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Weatherby said. He seemed to shrink within himself at the sight, and his face turned pasty white as if he might be ill.

  The coach lurched forward, and Cora heard the driver slap the reins and yell encouragement to the horses.

  “They aren’t coming to welcome us to Wolf Creek,” Benteen said, as the coach picked up speed. He spoke as calmly as if he were taking tea in the family parlor. “You have a gun, Hix?”

  Hix was as imperturbable as Benteen. He shook his head and said, “I prefer other weapons.”

  Benteen didn’t ask what those might be. He said, “But you can shoot.”

  Hix hesitated for a moment, as if considering his answer. “Of course,” Hix replied. “If my life depends on it, I reckon I can.”

  “Good.”

  Like Cora, Benteen also had a bag at his feet. He bent down to it and came up with two revolvers, both Smith & Wesson Americans. He left a third inside.

  “It’s a good thing I brought along a few pistols to sell in my new shop.” Benteen handed one of the guns to Hix. “It’s fully loaded, and I have more cartridges.”

  Hix took the pistol and looked at Weatherby, who was now hiding in the floor of the coach.

  “I don’t think the drummer will be needing one of these,” Hix said, hefting the gun.

  “What about you, ma’am?” Benteen asked Cora.

  Cora rummaged through her bag and brought out an old cap-and-ball Navy Colt. It felt heavier and more awkward than she remembered, but she could hold it steady if she used both hands. The coach was bouncing so wildly now that she wondered if it would be possible for her to hit anything

  “I can shoot,” she said, and as she spoke, she recalled the smell of burned powder, the dying lawman, her brother’s capture, her own escape. She pushed those hard memories away—that had been another life, and she was starting a new one now. But only if she lived to do so.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said.

  She heard the crack of the guard’s rifle as he opened fire on the warriors. Their shouts and screams increased, but Cora doubted that any of them had been hit. She turned to the window and looked out over the muzzle of the Colt. She saw only four men, though she’d thought there were more.

  “Two on this side now,” Benteen said, as if reading her mind.

  Hix looked out his own window, saying nothing. Weatherby whimpered in the floor, out of sight of the windows.

  The driver exhorted the horses with shouts and curses. The stage guard fired again, and then the Indians fired as well. One of them had a rifle, and his first shot hit the guard. Cora saw him fall from the coach on Benteen’s side.

  An arrow thunked into the side just below Cora’s window, and she drew back. She leaned against the seat, took a deep breath, and told herself that she’d been in worse trouble when the lawmen came for her brother who’d stupi
dly helped to rob a bank. She’d gotten out of that; she’d get out of this. She let out her breath and turned back to the window.

  The stage lurched left and right, the horse running almost out of control. It was all Cora could do to hold herself in the seat, and she wondered how the driver could manage to stay aboard. Well, that wasn’t her worry. Those savages were. She tried to line one up with the gunsight. It was impossible. She pulled the trigger, anyway.

  The pistol kicked up and back. The noise of the explosion almost deafened her, and the black powder smoke filled her nose and eyes. She heard other dim explosions as Hix and Benteen began firing.

  Cora was never exactly sure just what happened next. She heard a crash and a terrible splintering noise. The coach seemed to leap into the air. It tilted far to the right, and Cora knew that it was going to tip over. She tried to grab hold of something, but there was nothing within reach. She, Hix, Benteen, and Weatherby were all thrown together in a heap, and the coach thudded to earth on its side.