The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2)

by Peter Brandvold

  “Goddamnit!” Redfield cursed again under his breath, ogling the lovely sway of the woman’s retreating ass.

  Haskell splashed tequila into his glass and threw back half. It cut his tonsils like a rusty knife, but it smoothed out the travel kinks. “Snakebit, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Redfield had resumed eating. “Someone squirreled that snake into my sleeping quarters. No way it got in there by accident. Around here, you make sure there ain’t no holes a snake can slither through. Nests all over the place.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. My last man besides myself disappeared last week. Shot out on the range, I’m bettin’. Rodriquez rode out to investigate two more killin’s. Two more small-time, ten-cow ranchers killed. Shot in the back from long range by a big-caliber rifle. I can’t ride out there myself for obvious reasons. That snake bit me a day after I sent Rodriguez out to investigate. How fuckin’ coincidental!” Redfield chuckled darkly at that.

  “You think Jack Hyde’s the culprit?”

  “Many of the killin’s around here have the Jackal’s stamp all over ’em. Mainly, shot from long range by a big-caliber rifle. Everybody knows Hyde carries a—”

  “Sharps hybrid with a fancy scope thing.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Henry gave me a file on what’s been compiled on the Jackal. He’s been at play out here in the fields of the devil for a good long time, but nobody seems to know much about him except that he carries a Sharps and he’s devilish good with it. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement on just what he looks like, exactly.”

  “It’s damn odd!”

  “One person will say he’s a little tow-headed guy, around five-four, and the next person will say he’s dark and my height.”

  Redfield spooned the last of his beans into his mouth, raked a grimy sleeve across his lips, and shook his head. “I been in this business fer a long time and I’ve never run across such a slippery critter as the Jackal.”

  “Is the main reason you think Hyde is down here killin’ folks because of his trademark killin’ style?”

  “That and rumors. And because whoever is doin’ the killin’ is so damned hard to catch. He’s sneaky, coyote-like! He’ll stray off course from time to time and do somethin’ odd like throw a snake into my sleepin’ quarters. That’s just like the Jackal! He likes to terrorize and beguile folks before shootin’ ’em in the back from long range.

  “Some of the boys out to the Box 6, a little ranch down the road a piece, said that someone was messin’ around in their bunkhouse for several days, rearranging their gear, messin’ with huntin’ trophies on the walls, an’ leaving dead mice under pillows an’ such before two of them ended up belly down out on the range, with bullets in their backs.”

  Redfield gave another dark snort and reached for his tequila bottle. As he did, both the old-timers who’d been playing poker heaved themselves up from their chairs.

  That startled Redfield, who dropped his bottle back down and reached for both his sawed-off shotguns, filling his hands with both big poppers simultaneously and training the barrels on the old Mexicans.

  Both jerked with startled grunts. One fell back into his chair.

  The Ranger barked, “Goddamnit, why in the hell are you two bean-eaters movin’ so damn fast for?”

  They looked at each other before turning their wary gauzes back to the four stout barrels aimed at them.

  Haskell cleared his throat. “I think they were just gettin’ up to leave, Captain.” He looked at the two startled oldsters, both of whom were holding their hands up to their shoulders. “Why don’t you sheath them cannons before somebody gets hurt?”

  Redfield wagged the guns at the old Mexicans. They hustled out away from their table to the door, glancing cautiously over their shoulders.

  The Ranger looked around, as though suspecting more trouble from any quarter, then slowly sheathed the shotguns. “I can’t be too careful. Laid up the way I am, I’m a sittin’ duck. I’m an old wolf with a bum leg.” Redfield glanced at Haskell then jerked his chin to indicate the street outside the cantina. “You see them young wolves up the street, over to the Cantina San Gabriel?”

  “I saw ’em.”

  “If the Jackal don’t get me first, they’re gonna kill me. Sure as I’m sittin’ here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because they want the run of the town. I’m an old wolf with one good leg. They’re young. They got both their legs. That’s the way things work out here!”

  Redfield turned to Haskell, who was spooning beans into his mouth and sipping his tequila while watching the Ranger. Bear was wondering if there was anything to what the man was saying or if the snake venom was rotting out his brain. It did that to some men. He looked at the man’s toes again. They sure looked black. Maybe his brain was the same color ...

  The Ranger turned to Haskell, one brow cocked malevolently. “I said I was the last lawman standin’. Not no more.” He gave a wolfish grin. “There’s you now, too.” He dipped his chin to punctuate the warning.

  Holding his filled spoon to his mouth, Bear glanced out the cantina’s front windows. He couldn’t see the brightly dressed vaqueros outside of the Cantina San Gabriel anymore, but several horses were still tied to the hitch rack fronting the place.

  “You think those fellers over there ride for one of the two warring factions in these parts?” he asked the Ranger, who sat back in his chair now, one hand wrapped around his freshly filled tequila glass.

  Redfield nodded dully, as though deep in thought. “That’s right.”

  “Have you asked them who they ride for?”

  Redfield turned to Haskell, frowning, as though he’d suddenly realized he’d been sitting here chinning with a crazy man. “Around here, you don’t ask questions like that. Maybe up in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska Territory. Maybe as far up as the Canadian line.” He shook his head slowly. “Down here, this close to the border, you don’t ask questions like that. Not if you don’t want your throat cut, a bullet in your back, or ... ” He glanced down at his near-black toes. “A snake tossed into your sleepin’ quarters.”

  He gave a shudder as though at the remembered image of the snake, maybe at the remembered burning pain of the two sharp fangs sinking into his flesh and pumping his leg full of poison. He threw back his entire shot of tequila, slammed the glass back onto the table, and clumsily refilled it.

  Haskell turned to stare out the window at Cantina San Gabriel again. He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking it through.

  “Well,” he said at last. “Someone’s gotta do the askin’. Might as well be me.”

  “Here’s to ya,” Redfield said, lifting his glass in salute. He gave the federal lawman a mocking wink and threw back another entire shot.

  “Is that good for the poison?” Haskell asked him skeptically as he gained his feet and scooped the Henry up off the table.

  “It may not be good for the poison,” said Redfield, “but it sure is good for me. He snickered as he splashed more tequila into his glass.

  Chapter Nine

  Bear set his rifle on his shoulder and walked up to the bar. Rosa was washing pots and pans in a tub of warm water on the range. “What do I owe you?” he asked her.

  She’d turned to watch him tramp up to the bar, a vague expression of female interest in her gaze. “How much of the bottle did you drink?”

  “Charge me for the whole thing.” Haskell winked at her. “I’ll be back.”

  “You think so?” Rosa said with a vaguely malevolent twist of her lips. “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What do you think it means?” she said, turning to scrub a cast-iron skillet. “This isn’t healthy country for lawmen. The captain told you that.”

  Haskell tossed several coins onto the bar. “Say, Rosa, you appear to be a woman who keeps an ear to the wind. You got any idea who Jack Hyde rides for?”

  She looked at him again over
her shoulder, her expression flat. “Who is Jack Hyde?”

  Haskell studied her. He couldn’t tell if she knew the answer to his question or not. He supposed it was unfair asking her so out in the open like this. He gave a wry snort, pinched his hat brim to her, and strode on out through the batwings and into the street.

  He stopped and looked around. The street was still nearly vacant, the sun blinding, the breeze churning dust. A mongrel dog crossed the street to Haskell’s left, head and tail drooping, tongue hanging over its lower jaw.

  Beyond the dog, Orozco La Paz was making his way back toward the railroad depot, pushing his cart along ahead of him, sandals slapping against his heels.

  Haskell turned to Cantina San Gabriel just as the same three vaqueros he’d seen before stepped back out through the batwings. They each leaned up against an adobe column, arms crossed on their chests, sombrero-clad heads canted to one side in gestures of silent threat.

  Haskell grinned and waved. They just stared at him.

  Haskell strode toward them. As he did, their expressions changed from surly boredom to vague interest to faint wariness. When Bear was ten feet away from the cantina’s ramada, the man who’d been leaning against the center column slowly straightened, dropped his arms to his sides, turned away, and pushed through the batwings.

  “He’s coming this way!” Haskell heard the man say inside the cantina, in a thick Spanish accent.

  “Well, let him come, then,” said another man in fluent English.

  Haskell kept his face impassive as he stepped between the other two vaqueros holding up columns, and pushed through the batwings and stopped just inside. Two men stood at the bar at the back of the room. They were both Anglos—one a brown-eyed blond with a boyish face. The other was brown-haired, and he sported a patchy beard and pockmarks and cobalt eyes. The two other men in the room—besides the rotund Mexican bartender, that was—were Mexicans. The one who’d come in ahead of Haskell was just now easing into a chair near the other one, at a table against the wall to Haskell’s right.

  All eyes were on the lawman. The blue-eyed blond, who wore a fringed buckskin tunic and sand-colored Stetson with a concho-studded band, as well as two ivory-gripped Colts strapped to his thighs, was grinning mockingly. A half-filled beer mug and an empty shot glass stood on the bar before him.

  He chuckled and said, “Oh, I’m sorry—you bein’ a stranger here an’ all probably wouldn’t know that this here is a members-only club.” He held up his hand and waved his fingers at the door. “You’re gonna have to turn around and dance right back out through them doors there, big feller.”

  “And don’t let them hit you in the ass!” said the other Anglo, standing beside the blond.

  The two Mexicans laughed.

  The Anglos chuckled.

  “Well, shit,” Haskell said in mock apology. “I didn’t realize that. I didn’t see no sign or nothin’.”

  Behind him, the batwings rasped. There was the click of a pistol being cocked. The lawman whirled, stabbing for his Schofield. The revolver roared and bucked, flames lapping from the barrel.

  The Mexican who’d been coming into the saloon behind Haskell fired his own pistol into the floor as he crouched over the bloody hole in his belly. His head snapped up and to one side when his own bullet ricocheted off the stone floor and clipped his left temple.

  He sat down hard, howling, arms folded across his belly.

  The lawman whirled again, cocking the Schofield again. The other two Mexicans had been lurching out of their chairs, but now they froze, faces twisted in rage. The brown-eyed blond and the cobalt-eyed, pockmarked gent had dropped their hands to their pistols. Like the Mexicans, they froze, hands on their gun handles, their backs stiff, anger glinting in their eyes.

  The Mexican bartender had disappeared.

  “That seems like a mighty hefty sentence,” Bear said to the brown-eyed blond, who seemed the leader of the pack. “Shooting a man in the back—a lawman in the back, no less—just for walking into a club he don’t belong to.”

  The pockmarked man pointed angrily at the man grunting between the batwings. “There’s gonna be a reckonin’ for that!”

  Haskell took two steps back and holstered his Schofield. He dropped his hands to his sides and shuttled a hard, challenging look across the two Mexicans then over to the two men standing stiffly at the bar.

  “Let’s get that reckonin’ out of the way, then, so we can get down to business.”

  They looked at him uncertainly. The two men at the bar glanced at each other. The two Mexicans glanced at each other and then at the two at the bar.

  The Mexicans smiled as they turned again to the big lawman, their brown hands hanging down over their holstered six-shooters.

  The pockmarked gent flared a nostril and twitched an eye.

  The brown-eyed blond looked at his cohorts nervously, frowning. “Hold on, now. Just hold on!”

  “What’s the matter, Jordan?” The pockmarked man glanced at the brown-eyed blond. “No stomach for it?”

  Jordan looked troubled. “You mean, in here? Right now?”

  “You know of a better time?” Haskell asked him, keeping his voice pitched with menace. “Or a better place?” He curled his upper lip. “I don’t think your friends do.”

  One of the Mexicans chuckled through his teeth. The other Mexican was grinning confidently, but a single bead of sweat was rolling down his face.

  Haskell swept his gaze across them once more. He knew he was taking a chance, but something told him that the four men before him were more talk than resolute action.

  It was doubtful that any of them were faster with a shooting iron than he was. Besides, speed in such a situation wasn’t always that important. Experience and calm often carried the day. A man could be fast, but if his nerves caused his hand to shake, or caused him to hesitate however briefly, or made him one bit squeamish about engaging in such a savage, close-quarter dustup, he would likely die.

  This wasn’t Haskell’s first rodeo.

  While he couldn’t get answers to his questions from dead men, the news of what happened here would likely spread like a wildfire. It would call in the jackals, maybe even the Jackal himself. There was no way that any of the five men in this current pack was Jack Hyde. They were lapdogs to Hyde’s stalking wolf.

  The four men stared at Haskell. He stared back, flicking his gaze across them, trying to figure which one would pull first. Certainly not Jordan. The brown-eyed blond might have been the pack leader, but he obviously had no stomach for what was happening.

  He held up his hands, palms out, and said tightly, voice quavering, “Hold on, now. Hold on, hold on!”

  “Hold this, rich boy!” The pockmarked gent reached for the .45 thonged on his right thigh.

  Haskell’s own revolver was in his hand a half-second before the pockmarked man got his own pistol aimed. The Schofield roared. The pockmarked man gave a yowl and jerked violently back against the bar. In the corner of his right eye, Haskell saw both Mexicans snap up their own hoglegs.

  Bear pivoted and fired, sending one Mexican flying backward before, dodging the second Mex’s bullet, the lawman threw himself to his left, diving over a table. He hit the floor as the Mexican’s second bullet plunked into a chair fronting Bear on his right.

  Haskell rolled up onto his left knee, jerked up the Schofield, and fired two shots into the Mexican, who fired another round while bellowing Spanish epithets. As the lawman’s bullets ripped through his chest, shredding his heart and lungs, he flew backward against the wall, dislodging a painting of a naked, brown-skinned young woman sprawled on a white divan with a come-hither expression on her heart-shaped face.

  The Mexican piled up at the base of the floor, screaming.

  Haskell turned toward the bar. Jordan had both of his own fancy Colts in his hands. Crouching forward, pressing his butt against the bar behind him, he screamed as he fired. He flinched with every shot, sending the bullets squealing over and around Bear to hamm
er the front wall and plunk through the batwing doors.

  Crouching, Haskell returned fire.

  He’d vaguely decided during the shooting to try to leave at least one of these jackals alive, to get some information out of him. He aimed at Jordan’s left shoulder but because the kid was moving so wildly, jerking his arms with each shot, Bear’s bullet raked along the left side of Jordan’s head instead.

  The blond’s left ear turned red.

  He screamed, dropped both his guns to the floor, and twisted around to face the bar, placing his elbows on the bar top, leaning forward and clutching his head in his hands.

  “Oh—owww!” Jordan cried, stomping his feet and clutching his head.

  Blood oozed out between the fingers of his left hand.

  “Goddamnit!” he bellowed.

  The barman lifted his head above the bar, looking owly. He looked at Bear who was still holding his smoking Schofield on the kid. The barman swept his dark-eyed gaze around the room, taking in the two dead Mexicans and then leaning forward to see the pockmarked man slumped at the base of the bar as though he’d sat down on the floor to take a nap.

  The barman scowled, reached under the bar for a rag, and tossed it to the howling blond. “Here you go, Jordan. Don’t get blood all over the bar!”

  Haskell walked forward and kicked Jordan’s two guns over to where the dead Mexicans lay in thickening blood pools. He looked at the bartender, who was pouring himself a shot.

  “Who are they?” the lawman asked, canting his head toward the Mexicans and then glancing at Jordan.

  The barman opened his mouth to speak but it was another man—behind Haskell—who spoke. Roared, rather: “Leave it to a polecat like Henry Dade to send a catamount like you to blow up my bailiwick!”

  Haskell turned to see Homer Redfield sitting in his wheelchair just inside the batwings. Rosa stood behind him, hands on the chair handles. She was calmly inspecting the carnage.