Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Teaser chapter
CAUGHT BETWEEN A STRIPTEASE—AND A SHOOT-OUT
“Ki ... Ki ...” Daphne cried, while her naked flesh began to tingle with renewed excitement.
Then she suddenly screamed, freezing rigid. Ki twisted his head sideways to see what had shocked her into mental terror.
“I thought I heard that squawk of yours,” Volpes snarled.
“I—I’m sorry,” she whined. “I’ll never do—”
“You’re right, you won‘t!” Volpes loomed menacingly over them. He pivoted, and drew his pistol as Ki flew into action...
LONE STAR
The Exciting New Western Series
from the Creators of Longarm!
Also in the LONE STAR series from Jove
LONGARM AND THE LONE STAR LEGEND
LONE STAR AND THE OPIUM RUSTLERS
LONE STAR AND THE BORDER BANDITS
LONE STAR ON THE TREACHERY TRAIL
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with
the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Jove edition / September 1982
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by Jove Publications, Inc.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Jove Publications, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016.
eISBN : 978-1-101-16885-1
Jove books are published by Jove Publications, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016. The words
“A JOVE BOOK” and the “J” with sunburst are trademarks
belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.
http://us.penguingroup.com
Chapter 1
The sudden spring storm broke with a thunderclap across southeastern Wyoming. Descending out of Canada and through Montana like a last savage howl of winter, the gale swept in on ugly, bloated clouds and torrential rains, darkening the sky until only a flashing lacework of lightning revealed the looming peaks of the Laramie Range and its wind-whipped foothills, thick with saltbush, cottonwood, and mountain mahogany.
The North Laramie River was a twisting, whorling tide, swelling from the abrupt and unexpected runoff. Paralleling and occasionally crossing the river was a rutted, muddy trail that connected Uva and Garrett and the few smaller cow towns in between, and slowly churning westward along it was a Special Pontiac closed wagon, pulled by two Jenny Lind-bridled Morgans. Obliquely slashing rain beat against the wagon’s seasoned wood sides and heavy duck roof, and savagely gusting wind tore at its rubberized curtains that were rolled down and fastened front and rear. And despite its wide stance—seven feet long by three feet wide, with a five-foot track—and its easy-rolling, forty-two-inch high Sarven’s Patent wheels, its team constantly had to shift and thrust to keep the wagon on course through the gumbo.
The body of the wagon was painted a ruby-wine color with vermillion striping, making it resemble the sort of rig a snake-oil drummer might use to ply his elixirs. The two who were riding on the buffed leather-upholstered front seat, however, were anything but traveling medicine men.
Concentrating with the reins in both hands was a lean man in his early thirties, his blue-gray suit swathed in an oilskin slicker, his Stetson tugged low against the weather. Shadowed by the hatbrim, his features bore that handsome quality which appeals to women who like their men tempered by experience and bronzed by sun. There was a seriousness about him, too, the glint of chilled steel in his almond eyes and a terseness to his thin lips—all of which would have indicated to a close and knowledgeable observer that one of this man’s parents had been Oriental; and that the mating of East and West had produced a proud, rugged, quiet yet determined individual who blended the best of both worlds. He fit well the name he’d adopted when he’d arrived in America: Ki, the Japanese word for the vital energy that suffuses all living things, and the mastery of which is the true warrior’s life-work.
His passenger was a tall, lissome woman in her twenties; her father had hired Ki to be her companion and guardian some years before. Like Ki, Jessica Starbuck was wearing a rain slicker, its yellowish color almost matching her long coppery-blonde hair, which she’d tucked up under the crown of her brown Stetson. And although the slicker was buttoned at the neck and completely covered her green tweed jacket and skirt, it did little to conceal her firm, jutting breasts and sensuously rounded thighs and buttocks. Her mother, Sarah, had been a redheaded beauty who’d passed to her daughter a long-limbed, lushly molded figure covered in flesh as creamy and flawless as ivory, and a cameo face with a pert nose and more than a hint of feline audacity to her wide-set green eyes. Yet Jessie’s father, Alex Starbuck, had given a steadfastness to her dimpled chin and a shrewd if sometimes humorous twist to her lips. Even though both parents were dead—murdered and subsequently avenged—in a very real sense they lived on, embodied in the spirit and actions of their only offspring.
And whatever might be claimed about Jessie Starbuck’s spirit and actions, hawking patent snake oil out of a wagon couldn’t be included. She’d had the wagon custom-built and fancied up to her specifications; she had to take the blame or credit if its purpose was mistaken. But other than a few personal belongings, which barely filled the small leather trunk wedged behind the seat, there was nothing in the wagon that she felt was hers—except that generally, everything bought in the name of Starbuck was hers.
Nonetheless, Jessie had wanted the wagon along, and had freighted it with them when she and Ki had taken the Union Pacific to Cheyenne four days ago. After spending the first night in the bustling territorial capital, they had hired the harness team and begun a grueling upcountry trek, stopping the second night at Underwood and the third night at Wheatland, before reaching Uva and turning west. They’d traveled well over a hundred miles, and estimated they still had another ten or so to go before arriving at their destination, the small valley cow town of Eucher Butte.
It would be there, at Eucher Butte, that the wagon would come in handy, if it didn’t prove to be downright lifesaving. Because, for all practical purposes, the wagon belonged to Ki, and it was where, in racks and cabinets, he stored some of his considerable collection of lethal weapons.
Sired in Japan by an American “barbarian” who’d taken for his wife a Japanese woman of nobility, Ki had been orphaned at an early age. A half-breed outcast, shamed yet stubborn, he had apprenticed himself to one of the last samurai, Hirata, who for a decade drilled Ki in unarmed combat, and trained him in the use of kyujutsu, kenjutsu, bojutsu, jojutsu, and shuriken-jutsu—the martial arts of bow and arrow, sword, staff, stick, and throwing knife—as well as in even more exotic techniques and devices.
Such were the weapons, in their numerous variations, that Ki stowed in the otherwise innocuous-appearing wagon. Others he kept on his person, like the shuriken, steel disks in the shape of razor-sharp stars, attached in spring-loaded releases to his wrists. Still others, such as his katana, the sword left to him by Hirata, Ki preferred to leave behind in the safety of the huge Starbuck ranch in Texas.
Packed with death as the wagon was, its purpose was not to start wars, but to end them as swi
ftly and victoriously as possible. Neither Ki nor Jessica relished violence. Yet, as Hirata had taught Ki, and Ki in turn had taught Jessica: “To fight with another is wrong, but to lose a fight with another over principles you deem honorable is worse.” They had no intention of losing any fight forced upon them.
Ki snapped the traces smartly, goading the Morgans into lunging against their hames and collars. The wagon swayed, lurching on its elliptical springs, its oil lamps shining blurred and dim through the sheets of driven rain. Forked shards of lightning did more to illuminate the trail ahead, and Ki was able to glimpse in their intermittent flashes where the ribbon of mud crested a ridge overlooking the river, and avoided a bouldered cliff by crossing over to the other side on a narrow plank bridge. The North Laramie, deep in its cutbanks, roared in an angry torrent, chunks of trees and uprooted bushes sweeping past, bucking and weaving, careening and jamming against the bridge supports before plummeting on down through the white-water channel.
Jessie, seeing the bridge shuddering from the impact of the water and debris, called over the fury of the storm: “You think it’s safe enough to cross?”
Ki shrugged. “No way to tell, unless we stop and inspect it,” he answered, as the team headed into the curve. “Do you want to?”
“Let’s chance it. The bridge isn’t very long, maybe fifty feet or so, and we’re relatively light.” She started to smile and then laughed out loud. “Remember this morning, when I wondered if it might rain before we reached Eucher Butte?”
“I remember. You hoped it would.”
“Well, don’t hold it against me. I was in the mood for a little breezy sprinkle, not a downpour. Now I hope it’ll just go away.”
“It should. It’s moving south pretty fast and—”
“Look out!”
But Ki was already aware of the danger, having spotted it a split second before Jessica’s shouted warning. The wagon was slewing and skidding around the sharp turn leading to the bridge; the roadbed was poorly banked and wickedly slippery from rain. Ki rode the footbrake and snugged the reins, the treacherous, storm-masked angle requiring all his attention and dexterity.
And the two men emerging onto the trail in front of them undoubtedly knew it. Garbed in nondescript slickers and sodden hats, they raised repeating carbines to their shoulders and began firing a head-on fusillade at the onrushing wagon. In the same instant, two other men rose from the boulders flanking the curve, and started shooting from each side as fast as they could trigger and lever.
“Duck!” Ki yelled, kicking off the brake and lashing the reins, hunching as low as he could while salvoes of lead punctured the curtain behind them and riddled the wooden body with splintering holes. The ambushers had chosen well, he realized fleetingly; they’d planned on the rocks here to give them shelter while hemming in the trail, and had counted on his having his hands literally full just keeping the wagon from toppling over—too full to be able to fight back.
But the bridge ahead was clear. If a tree or some boulders had been thrown across the roadbed, the trap would have been perfect, forcing the wagon to halt or crash. Perhaps there hadn’t been time, or there weren’t any trees nearby and the rocks were too large to shift, or the gunmen hadn’t wanted to risk a forewarning, and figured their ambush was good enough as it was—whatever their reason, they’d neglected to barricade the trail beyond their gantlet.
All this Ki deduced in the blink of an eye.
“We’re going to try driving through them,” he shouted, urging the team on faster. “Be ready to jump and run if we start to roll over. At the rate we’re going, we’re liable to, but it’s our only hope.” And a pretty dismal one at that, he thought, grimacing as he battled the wheel-twisting, hub-squealing, erratically tipping wagon. He glanced at Jessica, who was sitting upright on the seat. “For God’s sake, Jessie, get down!”
“I was down,” she replied with a mirthless smile, cocking her two-shot .38 derringer. She had been down crouching behind the curved metal dashboard even as Ki had been first yelling for her to duck—but only long enough to reach up underneath her slicker and skirt to where she wore the derringer gartered to her thigh. Her other pistol, a custom .38 double-action Colt on a .44 frame, was packed in her trunk, it being too bulky and uncomfortable to wear on a long trip. It had been a logical decision at the time she’d packed it, but now it made her curse with frustration.
The wagon continued bearing down on the gunmen in front, leaning to the point of falling, swaying and lurching, throwing off their aim. Bracing herself against the seat, trying to keep her precarious balance, Jessica held her fire, not about to waste her bullets on bobbing targets out of the meager range of her hideout gun.
The man flanking her side of the trail came sprinting diagonally toward them, apparently figuring to intercept the wagon before it could go any farther. He rushed forward, clawing for a handhold, so close that Jessica could see his stubbled, thick-lipped face, and his lidded eyes gleaming with certain victory over a defenseless woman.
She brought the derringer up, caught her right wrist with her left hand, and took a bead on his chest. Her finger squeezed the trigger. The sound of her shot was hardly more than the snap of a finger, lost in the raging storm around them. The man screamed hoarsely and fell back to lie in the mud, inert and unfeeling as the rear wheel of the wagon jounced over him.
The bullet-spooked Morgans surged into their collars, dragging the wildly tottering wagon in frantic jerks. The two men in front and the man on Ki’s side were still lined up and firing away. At such close range, both Ki and Jessica should have been riddled like sieves, but the swaying and lurching of the wagon made accurate firing impossible. The wagon was an inferno of flying lead, wood spraying in tiny slivers, the metal dashboard denting from ricocheting bullets. A slug burned along Ki’s left arm, raising an ugly welt. But he kept on leashing the frightened team toward the bridge, and the two men in front suddenly realized he wasn’t about to stop and let them shoot him, and if they stayed where they were, they’d likely get run over.
The men sprang aside, still firing up at the wagon. The one nearest to Ki dove for the on-side Morgan as it galloped past, in what was evidently a crazy maneuver to stop the team. He caught hold of the side strap and began running clumsily alongside in an effort to get a better grip and swing the horse off stride. The horse shied, sending the wagon into a sideways skid, and for a moment it seemed that the man would succeed. But he had misjudged the speed of the team and the nearness of the bridge. The Morgans lunged onto the planks, the horse with its clinging man grazing the bridge railing. His body was flattened, his single cry of shock and pain cut off as his chest was crushed. The horse dragged him another few feet, his fingers trapped in the strap, then smeared him once again against the railing. His body catapulted into the air, tumbling up over the railing and down into the river.
The wagon careened against the same railing, almost tearing off a wheel, then straightened and lurched, clattering, onto the bridge.
“We made it,” Jessie said, smiling broadly.
Ki shook his head. “There’s a man in back.”
How Ki could sense such a thing over all the commotion and howling storm completely baffled Jessica, but she didn’t question it. From long experience she’d learned to trust Ki’s uncommon abilities, and she took it on faith that one of the two remaining gunmen had managed to grab the tailgate and climb aboard, and was now lurking in the closed bed of the wagon. She turned on the seat, derringer ready.
And the man launched his attack through the tattered curtain, firing his sixgun directly at her. But already Jessica was pivoting farther to one side so she could see behind her; her action was so swift he had not reacted to it, so he fired at where she had been.
Simultaneously, Ki killed him. His eyes were focused straight ahead at the trembling plank bridgeway, but suddenly, before either Jessica or the man could trigger again, the reins were in his left hand, and his right was slashing back. It was a hand hardened by yea
rs of training, and now it sliced unerringly like the edge of an executioner’s axe, chopping against the man’s throat, crushing his larnyx and cracking his spine.
The man crouched there with his pistol in his hand, staring at Jessica in sheer disbelief, paralyzed in death. Without a sound he rolled sideways as his left leg buckled under him, and toppled back out of sight behind the curtain.
Shaken, Jessie asked, “Any more?”
“Yes,” Ki answered, eyes still on the bridge. “But not with us.”
“Only one, though.”
“Here, perhaps. But these four were hired, Jessie, they weren’t the brains. Likely the last man is already going for the horses they hid, and’ll be riding to report their failure.”
“Eucher Butte. He’ll be heading there.”
“Assuming he does, he’ll be on this trail behind us, faster than us. Or if he’s stupid, he might simply try to pursue us and cut us down before we reach Eucher Butte.”
“Which do you think?”
“Stupid,” Ki said flatly, recalling the lack of a barricade.
“Either way, if we do get to Eucher Butte alive, we’ll be prime targets for plenty more treachery.”
Ki gave Jessie a flinty grin. “Did we expect anything else?”
“No, but I didn’t expect it this soon. How did they know—”
Her troubled question was interrupted by a harsh, shuddering rumble in the bridge beneath them. Almost tumbling out of the side of the wagon, Jessie clutched desperately for the dashboard handhold as the bridge trembled violently again, creaking and groaning.
Alarmed, Ki stood up and peered out over the railing. They were virtually midway across the span, and the North Laramie was a dark, boiling cauldren flowing far below. A phosphorescent stroke of lightning lit the black sky for an instant, and by its white glare, he could see that an old thick spruce had been swept downriver, and had lodged lengthwise against the bridge pilings. Its gnarled branches and roots were gathering other debris—pine and yucca and scrub brush—adding to the weight pressing against the weak, spindly supports.
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