Wild to the Bone

by Peter Brandvold

  Raven said, “There’s far more to the story here, Bear. None of it excuses these two or their friends in town, but all the same, there’s more.”

  Bear rolled the Cleopatra around between his lips, took a puff, removed the stogie, and blew the smoke out on the cool morning breeze. “Pray tell.”

  “He’s a lecher,” said Dulcy behind Bear. “A lecherous bastard. He lied to us both.” She raised her voice even more, leaning forward in her saddle, the goose egg on her temple turning crimson. “He fucked us both and told us it was so much more than that. He lied to us!”

  “He used us!” Ana screamed.

  Bear glanced at each woman in turn and then said, “Shirley’s a married man, ain’t he?”

  “A little thing like being married and being a father to two small boys didn’t stop Duke Shirley,” Raven said coolly, facing straight ahead. “He’s a cad. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. He lies, cheats, steals from women, telling them anything they want to hear, and when he’s tired of them, he puts them out with the morning trash.”

  Bear glanced at Dulcy. “That right?”

  The blonde’s green eyes were hard as she said, “His wife was out of town last year. He delivered some supplies to my ranch, ended up stayin’ the night. Told me he and Mrs. Shirley were divorcing, and she was taking their babies to live with her mother. He came out several nights after that, told me he’d help me sell the ranch, move me to town, marry me. Then I didn’t hear from him for several weeks. I went to town, saw that his wife was back. He pretended not to know me.”

  Dulcy wrinkled her nose, shook her head. “Yeah, I was a fool to listen to him. That’s what bein’ lonely’ll do for a girl. Being lonely an’ poor. He knew just what to say, the black-hearted bastard!”

  Bear looked at Ana. “What’d he promise you?”

  “What do you think?” Ana said defiantly. “He told me the same thing he told Dulcy, that he and his wife were divorcing and that he was in love with me. He didn’t care that I was a whore. He loved me and wanted to marry me and give me a better life.—Sí, right! A better life!” She sniffed and shook her hair back behind her shoulders. “Bastardo!”

  She looked at Dulcy. “We should have killed him—but oh, no, she wanted to ruin him slow and take his money! You should have listened to me, Dulcy!”

  Bear frowned at both girls. “Who’s this ‘she’?”

  Ana and Dulcy shared a conspiratorial look. Dulcy glanced at Bear, glanced away. “Never mind.”

  He looked at Raven. “I don’t want to say anything yet,” she said. “Not until I’m sure.”

  Bear stared at her, befuddled. He glanced behind at the other two women. They all, including Raven, rode with similarly grave, somber expressions.

  Bear drew on his stogie once more. “Well, can I at least ask who in the hell them boys back there were? The ones we dragged off for the bobcats to sup on tonight?”

  “Griggs’s bunch,” Dulcy said. “They all grew up out here, turned outlaw when most of the ranches went belly-up. Got my brother to throw in with ’em.” She sighed. “Now they’re all dead, and I reckon me and Ana’ll hang, huh?” She gave Bear a faintly beseeching look.

  Despite her not deserving it, Haskell had to admit he felt sorry for the girl. He didn’t feel quite so sympathetic when he reflected on the killings. “Who killed the lawmen out at the Devil’s Creek station?”

  Dulcy and Ana shared another look. When Ana only shrugged, Dulcy said, “Griggs and the fellas intercepted a telegraph from Sheriff Price to Roscoe Peete, announcing when Peete and them two marshals was headed to Spotted Horse. The boys decided to ride out and intercept them.”

  “I guess they did, all right,” Ana said.

  “Griggs got to thinkin’ later they should have dragged off the bodies, in case more lawmen came lookin’ for ’em. So he sent Danny out to do it later . . . and he ran into you.”

  “You two didn’t have no part in killing the lawmen?” Haskell asked them skeptically.

  Dulcy glared at him. “We didn’t want no part in the killin’s. We only wanted to ruin Shirley and steal the gold. We ain’t killers!”

  “No, but you rode with killers,” Raven said.

  “I reckon you threw in with the wrong bunch,” Haskell said with a fateful sigh. “The law’s got a term for what the judge is gonna call you two.”

  “Accessories to murder,” Raven said. She looked back at their two prisoners. “That reminds me—do either of you know who might have killed Vera Walking Thunder?”

  Again, the two young women shared a conspiratorial look.

  “All I can tell you,” Ana said snootily, “is it was neither one of us.”

  That appeared to be just the answer Haskell’s partner had expected. Raven turned her mouth corners down and turned her head forward to stare gravely ahead at the powdery trail meandering through the buttes.

  Haskell said, “Who kill who?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Suffice it for me to say, in the words of Loretta Waddell, there have been sinister forces at work in Spotted Horse.”

  Haskell reflected that during his ride out to the Stoveville ranch, he’d missed out on a hell of a lot.

  But he found himself wishing he’d missed out on this whole damn case.

  32

  A half hour later, after the Pinkertons and their prisoners had turned south on the stage trail, the stage from Recluse overtook them. While Haskell and Raven led their prisoners off the trail, the stagecoach passed in a cloud of roiling dust.

  The shotgun rider watched them carefully from behind his red bandana pulled up over his nose and mouth, cradling his sawed-off, double-barreled Richards coach gun defensively in both hands.

  Haskell grinned and waved, though neither the jehu, busy with the ribbons of his six-horse hitch, nor the owly shotgun messenger, who was no doubt expecting a holdup at every turn in the trail, returned the gesture. They roared on down the trail toward Spotted Horse, dust dripping off the stage’s iron-shod wheels.

  The sun was high, but another bank of dark storm clouds was rolling in from the west when they rode into the ragged outskirts of Spotted Horse. A block east of the Spotted Horse Watering Trough, they swung off the main trail and onto the side trail that traced a semicircle around the settlement’s north side, to Shirley’s stage depot. Haskell and Raven, leading their prisoners’ mounts, trotted their horses into the depot yard, dust still swirling behind the stage, as the stage itself pulled up to the depot house’s long front porch.

  Duke Shirley was standing on the stoop in shirtsleeves, vest, and bowler hat, gold watch chain dangling from a vest pocket, fists on his hips. “Any trouble, Edward?” he yelled up to the jehu, who was just then setting the brake and locking the wooden blocks snug against the Concord’s off front wheel.

  “Nope—no, sir,” the driver said, wagging his gray-bearded head, chalky dust sifting off his green canvas hat. “We slipped through them buttes between Recluse and here like a hot knife through butter!”

  The depot building’s front door opened behind Shirley, and the blonde Raven had seen fornicating with Shirley in the woodshed the previous day, before her interlude with Ana and the other gang members, stepped out behind him, smiling. She wore a cream-colored, form-fitting dress drawn taut against her breasts; her hair hung in two braids down her chest, wrapped in pink ribbons.

  As though he couldn’t believe his good fortune, Shirley said, “The gold’s safe?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Shirley,” said the jehu. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Got it sealed up safe and sound in the strongbox up yonder. Me an’ Luther seen to that. Ain’t been touched!”

  The town marshal, Roscoe Peete, was also on the porch, sitting on its near side in his wheelchair, cradling a double-barreled shotgun in his beefy arms. He laughed joyously at the good news that the stage had not been held up on its trek down from Recluse
. As Haskell and Raven approached the porch behind the stage, the crippled lawman turned and said, “Hey, well, what do you know? It’s them Pinkertons. And who in the hell you got with you, Haskell? Say, ain’t that . . .” The old marshal scowled, puzzled. “Why, that’s Miss Ana and . . . and . . .”

  “Dulcy?” Shirley said, turning toward the newcomers with much the same expression as Peete. He glanced at Haskell and Raven and the brown-haired Ana before returning his gaze to the blonde. “I don’t understand. What in the hell?”

  “The gang’s done been taken down,” Haskell said, stopping his horse at the hitch rack. “Four men and”—he glanced at his prisoners—“two girls.”

  Shirley’s face was brick-red as he continued staring at Dulcy, who stared back at him, one nostril flared. “I don’t understand. You mean to say that . . . that . . .”

  Peete said, “Them two are the ones been leadin’ up the gang?”

  “Maybe not leading it,” Raven said. “But they’re the ones who got Griggs’s bunch to start preying on your line, Mr. Shirley. Perhaps you might have some idea about their motive.”

  Shirley laughed too loudly, uneasily, flopping his arms with exasperation. “Well, greed, of course!”

  The coach’s two male passengers—they appeared to be drummers, clad as they were in cheap suits and carrying worn traveling grips—stepped gingerly out of the stage, frowning bewilderedly at the small crowd on the depot’s front porch. Both salesmen stepped between the jehu and the shotgun messenger now standing on the porch steps, brushed past the girl Shirley had been fucking earlier—Verlaine Couchigan—and headed into the depot building.

  The breeze had picked up and cooled. Thunder rumbled in the sooty-dark clouds now sliding quickly over Spotted Horse from the west.

  Raven said, “They tell another story.” She glanced at the pigtailed girl standing next to the stage line owner. “And from what I saw in your woodshed yesterday, I’m inclined to believe them.”

  Haskell said, “What’d you see?”

  Raven kept her hard, angry gaze on Shirley. “Him taking advantage of another young woman half his age.” She smiled knowingly. “But maybe you’d already gotten a leg up on him, eh?”

  “What?” Shirley said in exasperation, swinging his gaze to the station girl.

  Verlaine flushed, her eyes growing glassy with desperation.

  “Bastardo!” Ana spit out, leaning forward in her saddle, straining at her tied wrists.

  “Yes, he is a bastard.”

  The strange, low voice had seemed to rise out of nowhere. And then Haskell saw a pretty young woman with light blond hair step out from the front of the stage. She wore a knitted gray shawl over her shoulders, her hair in a loose chignon behind her head.

  “Penny!” Haskell said. “What in the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be . . .”

  The man let his voice trail off. There was something in the woman’s eyes—a graveness and depth that were startling. Her face was pale, all the lines smoothed out, giving her a masklike appearance.

  “I see you have your gold,” she said without emotion. “Good for you.” She glanced at Dulcy and Ana. “I’m sorry for getting you girls involved in this. We should have done it your way, Ana. Simply killed the man.”

  “Good Christ!” Haskell heard himself mutter, raking a thick hand down his face. This mess was obviously a whole lot messier than he’d even begun to fathom.

  To his left, Raven said, “Mrs. Shirley, did you kill Vera Walking Thunder?”

  Stiffly, Penny Shirley turned her head toward Raven. “Of course. But that was before I realized that the true fault lay with none other than my husband himself. That’s when I decided not to kill him but to take away the things he loved the most: his wealth and his status. And then I was going to take my share of the gold and leave this hideous place.” She wrinkled her nose. “For good.”

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” said Roscoe Peete, staring flabbergasted at Mrs. Shirley, standing just off the porch’s front step, glaring at her husband.

  “My God, Penny,” Duke said, shaking his head slowly, holding his arms out in supplication. “You don’t really think these girls ever meant anything to me, do you?”

  “No.” Penny pulled her hand out from behind her shawl. In her clenched fist, she held a small, black, pearl-gripped revolver. “I don’t think anyone or anything means more to you than your business. I can’t ruin you, Duke, but I can kill you.”

  Haskell had only just started to leap out of his saddle when the pistol in Mrs. Shirley’s hand popped twice. He hit the ground and, lunging forward, tripped over a corner of the front step as the gun spoke again, two more times.

  The stage team whickered and sidestepped nervously.

  “No!” the pigtailed girl cried as she stared down at Duke Shirley lying bleeding at her feet. “I loved him!”

  She screamed, raising her hands to her face, and then lunged toward the shotgun messenger. She grabbed the Colt out of the man’s holster, clicked the hammer back, and fired the weapon once before the shotgun rider wrapped his arms around her and picked her up off her feet.

  The girl screamed, “Duke!” The gun tumbled to the porch floor.

  Haskell had just reached Mrs. Shirley as she started to crumple. He eased her to the ground, watched her eyelids flutter as blood pumped out of the hole in her chest. She shivered, and then she was gone.

  Haskell’s mind swam as he stared from the dead Mrs. Shirley to her husband, who lay on his back on the porch, blood pooling thickly beneath his head. The shotgun messenger held the pigtailed girl in his brawny arms. Everyone else stared in silent shock at the dead Duke Shirley and his dead wife lying slack in Bear Haskell’s arms.

  Raven came over to gaze down at Penny. Wind from the approaching storm blew her hair. Above and behind her, Haskell saw the heavy, dark clouds sliding over her, stitched with lightning.

  “Oh, Bear,” Raven said, shaking her head. Her cobalt eyes glistened. She stared at him as though pleading for him to make some sense of all this.

  An invisible knife twisted in Haskell’s guts. He looked down at the dead woman in his arms once more. All he could find to say was, “Well, you told it right, partner. Sinister forces at work here in Spotted Horse.”

  Lightning flashed.

  Thunder pealed, shaking the heavens and the earth.

  About the Author

  Peter Brandvold has penned more than 70 fast-action westerns under his own name and his penname, Frank Leslie. He is the author of the ever-popular Sheriff Ben Stillman novels and the .45-Caliber books featuring Cuno Massey, as well as the Lou Prophet and Yakima Henry novels. Head honcho at Mean Pete Publishing, publisher of lightning-fast western ebooks, he lives in Colorado with his dog. Visit his website at www.peterbrandvold.com. Follow his blog at: www.peterbrandvold.blogspot.com.

  The Bush Rider Series by

  Peter Brandvold

  High and Wild

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Star Books eBook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Peter Brandvold />
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  First Pocket Star Books ebook edition May 2014

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  Interior design by Leydiana Rodríguez-Ovalles

  Cover art by Getty Images

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3012-7