by John Hansen
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
A Bad Place To Be
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2016 John Hansen
v2.0
Cover Photo © 2016 thinkstockphotos.com. All rights reserved - used with permission.
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter One
August 5, 1870
The image of the rider off in the distance shimmered in the midday heat. But, this was of no consequence to the shooter as he had picked a comfortable spot and could wait until the rider got closer. Unknowingly, the man on the horse moved steadily towards his fate. Other than the incessant horseflies that he swatted at, he didn’t appear to have a care in the world. In fact, life was good; he had been one of the lucky ones to locate a producing gold claim in the Idaho Territory. Unfortunately, he was not alone in this knowledge. And on he went, marking time with the rhythmic creaking of his saddle and each step that his horse took. He was getting much closer now to the spot that the shooter had selected for him to die. It was time; the shooter had long ago secured a dead rest for his rifle and even chambered a round. He settled his cheek onto the rifle’s stock. It was smooth and comfortable and his eyes aligned perfectly with the buckhorn sights. At this range, with this rifle, it would be a difficult but not impossible shot. He thumbed back the hammer. And then, for reasons known only to the rider, he stopped. “What luck,” whispered the shooter as he placed the front bead on the rider’s head. His heart was pounding so fast that he couldn’t distinguish the individual beats. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, but it did not achieve the calm that he had hoped for. The rider had presented him with a golden opportunity; he had to act now. The bead was fully in the notch of the rear sight as he began to squeeze the trigger. He was in that neutral state of neither exhaling nor inhaling, but that was just seconds away from changing when the rifle roared and bucked upward. The shooter lost sight of his victim. Black smoke hung in the air. Frantic, he rose from behind the big rock and looked for the rider; his horse was there, prancing nervously in a half circle, its saddle empty. The shooter’s legs and hands were shaking and he felt as if he might be sick to his stomach. He’d killed a man before but not like this. He was reluctant to leave his hiding spot for fear that he’d only wounded the rider and he would get shot walking up on him; so he waited for the man to hopefully bleed out.
The big slug had hit the rider in the stomach, just below his heart. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. Death was imminent and he knew it, but so would it be for the coward who had shot him, if only he would show himself. He struggled to pull his pistol from its holster and cock it; finally he succeeded. And then he waited, with his left hand clutching his wound and his right the grip of his pistol, but it was a losing proposition. Blood steadily seeped from beneath the palm of his hand and down his side onto the dirt where it was beginning to puddle. The pain, which had been intense, seemed to be easing off now. Just above his head, at the edge of the road, he could see the grass gently sway in the breeze and above that, white, puffy clouds. He was feeling really tired and wanted to close his eyes but he fought it until suddenly, like the last of the grains of sand in an hourglass, he was through.
Chapter Two
August 20, 1870
Josh Morrow gently nudged his horse onward. The clouds overhead were a charcoal color, almost black and piled high. It didn’t take a genius to know that a real frog strangler was in the making. Josh had been caught in these types of storms before and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. But the task at hand precluded him from even considering looking for shelter. On either side of the wagon road, the wind swayed the yellow grass amongst the short gray sagebrush that covered the rolling hills. It was monotonous terrain. Not much cover here for bushwhackin’ a guy, thought Josh. Sheriff Hollis in Bear Creek told him that his friend had been found dead about ten miles south of town on the road to the Salmon River country. “Looked like he got shot right outta his saddle. Probably never knew what hit him.”
If this was the sheriff’s attempt at consoling Josh over the loss of his friend he had failed miserably, not just in his choice of words but the look of indifference in his eyes. There wasn’t a hint of compassion. Not the slightest bit of “I’m sorry about your friend.” Instead, Hollis was quick to point out that money was owed to the undertaker. “You need to go see Willie Magee over at the barbershop. He does the undertakin’ around here and he done your friend up. Wasn’t nothing fancy ‘cause he didn’t even know who it was he was burying or if he was gonna get paid or not.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that straight away.” No sooner had these words left Josh’s mouth than he regretted having addressed the sheriff as “sir.” He had just met Hollis but his first impression of him wasn’t good. He was well dressed, handsome by some accounts with a neatly cared-for mustache and goatee. To Josh, Hollis looked like a dandy, but his parents had schooled him to respect his elders and people in positions of authority—and Hollis fit both of these categories. Even more, it had become second nature for Josh to address people of authority as “sir” during his five years in the army, which had ended only six months ago. He, and his now dead friend Seth Jacobs, had served in the 2nd Calvary down south in Texas and Oklahoma fighting Comanches and Mexican bandits. Josh had joined the army, in spite of his parents’ objections, at the age of twenty-one. He’d had a comfortable life prior to that, having grown up in Galveston the son of a storekeeper. But for Josh, that was part of the of the problem. There was an Indian war going on and people were dying while for him life was good, maybe too good, too soft. The papers were full of stories about Comanche raids on ranches to the north and the atrocities committed. From time to time, some of those surviving settlers would end up in Galveston looking for a safer way to make a living. All of this caused Josh to take stock of himself as a man and where he was going in life. Being a storekeeper was an honorable line of work, and it probably would have made his father proud had he chosen to stay on and take over the family business. But deep down, right or wrong, Josh simply felt like being a storekeeper wasn’t the manly thing to do, not when folks weren’t safe on t
he frontier. Of course, he could never tell his father this, which only made it all the more difficult to explain why he wanted to join the army and leave home. His mother cried and his dad, exasperated, told him, “Just be sure this is what you want to do. Five years is a long time. Plenty long enough to get yourself killed by the Indians.” Nothing was certain in Josh’s mind, only that he wasn’t content with what he was doing with his life at the present time and what would be coming his way in the foreseeable future if he didn’t make a change. It was only a few months after joining the army that the prophecy of his father’s words became more apparent.
There was a small coulee up ahead, maybe a half mile, that had a few ponderosa pine trees with snowberry bushes growing beneath them. Josh spurred his horse into a gallop, figuring that it made more sense to go to where the terrain lent itself to an ambush than waste what little time he had before the storm set in looking for the spot where his friend had been killed. Sheriff Hollis could’ve obviously been more helpful, but his attitude was Seth was just another dumb miner looking to get rich but got himself killed for probably what few personal items he had with him. There were a lot of out-of-luck miners, reasoned Hollis, that would kill to get another grubstake—anything that would enable them to stay on in the Bear Creek goldfields. The rain had just started to fall when Josh spotted the bloodstain in the road. It had been a little over two weeks ago that Seth’s body had been discovered lying at the edge of the road in a pool of blood. His horse, weapons, and anything of value had been taken. His murder and robbery came as no surprise to anybody in the area, as Bear Creek and the new gold strike near there had fostered a lawless environment. Josh stepped down from his big paint horse and dropped the reins, knowing that it would stay in that place until he either whistled or came for it. He knelt beside the bloodstained earth. He could see Seth’s face and hear him laugh and go on about the cattle ranch they were going to start. Seth had been a true friend, even having saved Josh’s life. A Comanche warrior had knocked Josh from his saddle. The blow from the Comanche’s war club had left Josh semi-conscious on the ground, with his assailant standing over him with his knife drawn. The image of the Indian poised above him was like one of those bad dreams where you sense overwhelming danger, but you’re paralyzed and your body just won’t respond. Then, at the last second, you wake up and realize that it was just a dream—except in this case, as Josh’s senses started to return, the Comanche warrior had put a knee on his chest and was grasping for his hair. Josh could do no more than flail at the Comanche’s hands, when suddenly, a blow from Seth’s rifle barrel pitched the Indian violently to the side. He was stunned, desperately trying to regain his senses but it was too late; Seth’s .52-caliber Spencer roared. The 385-grain bullet slammed the warrior back to the ground. It was at this point, finally, that Josh had his wits about him.
There stood Seth, rifle in hand with a nervous, adrenaline grin on his face. “Damn. Thought you was a gonner.” Josh looked up at Seth’s outstretched hand and took hold of it. “Yeah, me too.” At the time, that was all he could think of to say. Maybe it was the gash in his head, or the realization that he had been only seconds away from a hideous death, but words just wouldn’t come to him. Days later, over a beer, he had tried to offer a sincere “thank you” but Seth jokingly laughed it off with: “Buy me a beer. Maybe you can return the favor someday. Enough said.” And now three short years later when his friend needed him most, Josh had not been there. He’d received a letter from Seth saying that he had succumbed to the temptations of the goldfield and that he had what he thought was a promising claim. He was confident that if Josh would help him for just one year that they could make enough to buy a ranch on the Salmon River. Although he already had a job on a ranch in the Salmon River valley, Josh couldn’t bring himself to turn his friend down. He owed the man his life, but even more, Seth had been a true friend, which as Josh had discovered in life, was hard to come by.
The rain was steady now. It mixed with the dark bloody soil, at first just making it damp, but then it created little puddles and finally the puddles gave way to tiny rivulets flowing down the gentle incline. It wouldn’t be long and any evidence of exactly where Seth had been killed would be obliterated. From the bloodstains at the mouth of the shallow coulee it was, Josh reckoned, about 300 yards to a small stand of ponderosa pine trees that had taken root, probably due to the moisture that accumulated in the coulee. Most of the rest of the nearby country was sagebrush and grass. The stand of trees wasn’t real big, but big enough to conceal a horse and its rider. There had been too much horse-and-wagon traffic on the road since Seth had been killed for there to be any clues that might be of value. Josh looked at the stand of trees and whispered aloud. “It’d be a pretty fair shot at that distance, but if I was going to ambush someone on this stretch of road that’s where I’d be.”
Josh gathered the reins of his horse, Thunder, which on this day was more than appropriately named, and began slowly walking up the coulee looking for anything that might give him a clue as to who the shooter was. The sagebrush in the coulee was taller than on the flat ground to either side of it. This caused Josh to meander through the brush. He went slowly, in spite of the rain, peering down at the ground searching for something that he wasn’t even sure what it would be. Thunder provided Josh with a good vantage point. He was sixteen hands and moved slowly as if he knew the task before them required it. Josh was nearing the trees and hadn’t seen much of any consequence other than some old horse tracks which could’ve been the bushwhacker’s horse, but there was nothing about these tracks that would distinguish them from any other.
Josh stepped down from Thunder. There were about a dozen big ponderosa pines and maybe twice that many small ones in the thicket at the head of the coulee. It was a different feel in the trees. It made the hair on the back of Josh’s neck stand up. The sky had darkened such that with the falling rain and being within the trees it was difficult to see. For a moment Josh rested his right hand on the butt of his pistol. It gave him comfort, not that he was any pistolero but his knowledge of the world, men, and death and dying had come a long ways since he’d left home five years ago. Josh surveyed his surroundings. The rain had abated slightly, but his view was punctuated by rhythmic drops of water from the brim of his hat. He was soaked and beginning to shiver. Josh moved further into the trees. Good, clear tracks of any kind were hard to come by due to the heavy needle cast and fall of pine cones from the trees. Droppings from mule deer and elk, although not numerous, were evident but little else. And then he saw it: a pile of horse droppings on the back side of the thicket. The ground near the droppings had been churned up by numerous horse hoofprints like the horse had been tied off there and made to wait for a good while. From the droppings Josh looked back into the trees. The road was not visible from here. He began to walk back through the trees looking for the place that he would set up if he were going to ambush somebody on the road below. He hadn’t taken more than a few steps when he spotted it. It was on the east edge of the trees, about halfway up the north side of the coulee: there were a couple of good-sized rocks. Josh worked his way over to the rocks; either of them would make a good rest to shoot from. He dropped to one knee. The view from the rocks to the road was unobstructed, yet someone crouched behind them would be very difficult to see. For one thing, it was a long ways to be able to see no more than the top of a man’s head and a rifle barrel. Suddenly, something on the ground slightly off to his right caught Josh’s attention. It had been pushed into the forest duff, possibly by the killer’s boot heel, but there was no mistaking a fairly new copper shell casing. Josh brushed the decomposing pine needles aside and picked up the empty cartridge. He recognized it as a .44 Henry even before he looked at the stamp on the end of the case. Josh smirked and shook his head as he eyed the empty shell casing. If this was what Seth’s killer had used, it said a couple of things about him. One, he wasn’t very smart when it came to the capabilities of guns. Josh hadn’t been either prior to serv
ing in the army, but he soon found that knowing the limitations of various rifles and pistols could mean the difference between life and death. The .44 Henry Rimfire was not a good rifle for shooting long range; it was at best a 200-yard weapon. This fact led Josh to surmise that maybe the killer wasn’t stupid as much as he was a coward. Josh had killed men, both from a distance and on one occasion in hand-to-hand fighting. Killing someone at a hundred yards was far less emotional than looking into someone’s eyes and pulling the trigger—or worse, having them in your grasp, as Josh had done once, and plunging a knife into their heart. Seeing the stunned look on their face and the light, the gleam in their eyes, retreat gradually until suddenly you realize it is gone and you are responsible. It wasn’t the long-range killing that haunted Josh’s dreams so much; it was the other, mono on mono. This required a brave man or a desperate man with no other options. Josh reckoned that the killer was desperate but not willing to confront a man like Seth face to face. Based on what he’d heard about Bear Creek before coming there, that description could fit quite a few people. The area had a reputation for being lawless despite having a sheriff.
Josh and Thunder hunkered down as best they could in the trees at the head of the coulee and waited for the storm to die down. Being near the tall trees with the lightning popping all around might not have been the smartest thing to do, but the wind had picked up considerably and the rain was now coming almost horizontally. Riding back to Bear Creek under those conditions just didn’t appeal to Josh.
The storm raged for close to an hour before finally subsiding. Water dripped from all of the vegetation, and mud puddles dotted the ground wherever there was a depression. The wind, the thunder, the lightning; they were all gone. The land had been rejuvenated, so to speak, and the commotion of the storm had been replaced by silence save for the melodic call of a western meadowlark.
