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Time was when Crow hankered to see San Francisco again. He’d no cause to get involved in that shoot-out at Death Valley but when Richard Okie started trying to buy his way out of trouble, Crow decided he could use some of that money himself – all six hundred dollars. So he hired himself out as a bodyguard to the Okie family – husband, wife and two teenage sons – to help ‘em find their lost gold mine. But the job turned out to be big trouble from the start – for he hadn’t reckoned on them being so city-soft…or the ruthless greed of Okie’s wife, Amy. But she’d met her match in Crow…
BODYGUARD
CROW 5
By James W. Marvin
First published by Corgi Books in 1981
Copyright © 1981 by James W. Marvin
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: October 2013
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover image © 2013 by Westworld Designs
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Arrangement with Elizabeth James.
This is for a couple of Easterners with my thanks and my best wishes. Artie Pine and Richard are, like Crow, alchemists, only their great skill is turning words into gold. I’m pleased to have them as friends.
Chapter One
The old man walked along the sunny Abilene street, the liquor in him combining with his age to put a jaunty spring in his step, while at the same time making him stumble as he tried to jump the curb. The younger Easterner gave him a helping hand under the elbow.
‘Thanks, sonny. Guess that whisky gotten into my brain some. Or it might be the sun.’ Squinting up at the golden disc that hung seemingly motionless, in the Kansas sky. ‘Never rains out on the plain, do it? I done my time in line shacks when the sun was so damn-blasted hot it took all the skin off of your face. Like a peeled ham.’
There was a dog sniffing at the gatepost of the rooming house where the old-timer lived. Just as they walked towards it the animal lifted a back leg, cocking it ready.
‘Get the Hell out of it!’ yelled the old man, aiming an unsteady kick at the mongrel that whined at him and then slunk away down the street, its noon shadow almost invisible beneath its cowering belly.
‘What? Crow and dogs? You have to be joshin’, Mister! Crow and dogs! If that don’t beat all.’
They sat together, the Easterner perching himself on a rickety chair, the older man flopping down on a rocker with a great sigh of relief.
‘Crow loved animals.’ A cackling laugh. ‘Figured that’d make you sit up, jaw dropped. Yeah, Crow loved all animals—just so long as he could ride on ’em or eat ’em.’
The other man joined in the laughter. Over the months that he’d been coming out to Abilene to talk to the old-timer he’d grown to like him. To respect him. Now well into his seventies, this was a man who’d seen the country grow from a few scattered settlements west of the Mississippi to the bustling world power it had become. He’d scouted the high country and led wagon trains to the sea. He’d forgotten nine parts in ten of what he’d seen and done, but that tenth part was what interested the young writer and publisher, making him brave the long and uncomfortable journey to Kansas to talk to him.
Specially to talk to him about the man they used to call Crow. Nothing else. Just plain Crow.
And the old-timer had rewarded him for his visits. Telling him about how Crow had been a young officer in the Cavalry, until he’d run afoul of a superior. That was a feud that ended the day Autie Custer met his fate, grinning at death near the brim of a hill in Montana, overlooking the meandering coolness of the Little Big Horn River.
‘That dog … You want I should tell you about the one time that Crow gotten hisself a dog? You do, huh? Short tale it is. Can’t recollect if’n the dog had a short tail or not. Get it? Huh?’ He laughed so hard at his own joke that it provoked a coughing fit and he leaned forward in the rocking chair, heaving and straining to breathe, veins standing out purple across his temples, fists knotted against his chest. A thread of spittle ran down his unshaven chin as he fought for air. The Easterner had seen him have similar fits before and knew that the old man resented any attempt to help.
But he did wonder to himself just how much longer he’d be able to keep making these trips to talk a little and to listen a lot.
‘Holy shit! That was … Jesus! Say, Mister, you wouldn’t care to go in and ask that old hag who runs this dump for some iced lemon water would you? Slip her a quarter for it. No more than that, mind. I’ll sit here a spell and catch my breathing some.’
By the time that he returned with a frosted glass of the cool drink, the old man was recovered, grinning up at him through the gaps in his teeth. ‘Much obliged to you. All I need now is a draw on one of them stogies you carryin’… That’s them. Thank you kindly. Where was I?’
The Easterner reminded him of where he’d got to in his rememberings of Crow.
‘Sure. The dog. Way I recall it ... up in Oregon. Colder ‘n charity. So cold that the sap froze coming out of logs, even while they was on the fire. If’n you’d spit, it’d freeze solid in the air, with a kind of crackle. Crow got given this dog by a man. Half-breed Chinee. Name of Fred Lan No. He didn’t rightly give Crow the dog. It was just that Crow shot him down … fair fight …. and the dog kinda followed on after old Crow.’
He took a great draw on the cigar, blowing smoke rings into the heat of the Kansas afternoon. Watching a group of young negroes walking noisily down the street.
‘Never took to nigras, you know. I was born in the War. Pa died at Shiloh. Ma lost kin at Chancellorsville and at Manassas, First Bull Run, they calls it. I never much liked nigras and that’s the truth of it. Did I tell you about the time Crow gotten himself mixed up with a real nigra king? Zulu from the blackest heart of Africa? I did, huh?’
Sitting quietly, he prompted the old man to go on with his tale about the dog. It was interesting as he’d never come across any reference anywhere else to Crow having much to do with a dog, or with any other animal.
‘It was called “Fang”. Mean looking bastard animal by all accounts. Half wolf, half mongrel and mean all the way through. But it took to Crow. Moment its master was dead it started to follow him around. Creeping after him, keeping about ten paces behind. Crow didn’t take no notice of it at all. Ah, that’s better,’ draining the glass and putting it down on the porch.
‘That hits the spot and no mistake. Crow didn’t feed Fang . . . figured if the dog was any good it’d hunt for itself. Any man went near it, the dog’d growl, slow and deep in its throat, baring its great teeth. But when Crow looked at it, the brute’d whimper like he’d licked it with a switch. Kept it for three days.’
The old-timer waited for the question, enjoying making the other ask it. ‘I’ll tell you what happened next, Mister. Third night, camping out on the Klamath, and Crow was sleeping. Woke up and Fang was stealing meat from his saddlebags. Guess he was starving.’
There was a question but the man didn’t catch it, making the publisher repeat it. ‘Oh, did he discipline the dog?’ He laughed. ‘You sure said the truth there, Mister. Best discipline ever. He put one bullet clean through its skull and never had no more trouble
from it.’
They sat together for a while, the Easterner prompting reminiscences, but that afternoon the stream wasn’t flowing well. He realized that he’d given the old man too much whiskey and he was nearly falling asleep in the shade.
In the long silences he thought back over what he knew about Crow. There’d been some great and famous killers and bounty hunters in the old West. Jedediah Travis Herne — Herne the Hunter they called him — came first to mind. But folks hadn’t known much about Crow.
Maybe it was because he was a man without a past. Not even the old man had been able to tell him anything about where Crow had been born. Or when. Or what either of his parents were like. There’d been a whole mess of rumors about that. Centering on his name and on the fact that he always seemed to get on well with and understand the ways of the Indians. And there was that great waterfall of fine black hair, clean over his shoulders.
He’d been born around the middle of the 1840’s, somewhere up in the Dakotas. Or was it near El Paso? The stories varied. But there was never argument about what he looked like. Very tall, and skinny as a fence post. The old-timer had once joked that Crow needed to run around in a cloudburst to get himself wet. The lean build concealed muscles and sinew like whipcord.
Crow always dressed in black, apart from one touch of color. His old yellow Cavalry bandana knotted at his throat. His face was pale, with eyes set deep in hollows of wind-washed bone. Eyes that were so dark that they came close to being black. The old man had once told the Easterner that when Crow was angered his eyes would glow red, like a campfire seen at a distance at night.
His voice was soft and gentle, even when he was roused. Women loved him but Crow didn’t have a lot of time for them, apart from the occasional use when he felt the need. Women had always meant trouble. Like the wagon train of soldiers’ wives that bitter winter.
But he was a killer. Every time the old-time gun-fighter started his reminiscences of the man called Crow he came back again and again to his speed and total ruthlessness as a fighting machine. An alchemist who turned lead into gold with his guns, was what he said.
And they were odd guns.
In a deep holster on the right hip there was the scattergun. Twin-barreled Purdey, made in 1868, with a delicately carved walnut stock. The barrels filed down until they were a bare four inches in length, useless for anything more than about ten paces off, but devastating at short range. Crow always said that if you were facing a man in a close fight, the Purdey was a whole lot better than a pistol. No less accurate and the ultimate stopper. He’d seen a man walk through three forty-fives in the stomach and strangle the person trying to kill him. Sure he’d died a couple of hours later himself, but that hadn’t been much consolation to the other man they’d just finished burying up on Boot Hill.
Crow carried a pistol. A Peacemaker, tucked into the rear of the belt. But he rarely used it as anything more than a back-up weapon. And there was the Seventy-Three Winchester bucketed at the saddle of the big nameless black stallion that he rode.
Snoring from his elbow interrupted the thoughts of the tall Easterner, looking across and seeing that the old man had slipped easily into sleep, rocking gently in the chair, mouth sagging open, breath clicking in his throat.
Apart from the three guns, Crow also carried another weapon. When he had been kicked out of the Cavalry he’d taken his bandana and his saber, getting a farrier at Fort Buford to hone it down for him. Shortening the blade to around two and a half feet, giving it a needlepoint and an edge that could cut silk. The 1860 weapon still carried the golden braid on the brass hilt, the old-timer had said. Nobody knew whether Crow left it on from choice or just because he’d never bothered to take it off.
A church hall backed on to the rooming house and the quiet of the afternoon was broken by a children’s choir, practicing a variety of hymns. The old man jerked awake at the sound.
‘You’re a dead man if’n you … What the …? What the Hell’s that noise? Damned choirs, so a man can’t get no peace. There was another funeral the other day. Friend. Used to ride with Kid and Butch. I went along there. Just me and a lady in black, way off at the side. Couple from the mission who brought in the priest and we all sung “Amazing Grace.” Yeah. How sweet that sound. There aren’t many of us left, Mister. You know that?’
The other man nodded.
‘Did I tell you about the time Crow got tangled in with a kidnapping? I did? The one with that whore who got him all tied up and then crawled over to him and tried to …? I did, huh?’
‘So I got to come up with something new for you, have I? Let me think a while.’
He accepted another cigar and lit up, resting his gnarled hand on the smooth fingers of the publisher, inhaling deeply, his face wreathed in rich smoke.
‘I surely thank you. That’s better than the five-cent stogies they sell down at the store. Why, only last week the young pup who works there was so rude ... In the old days I’d have put lead through each knee to learn him some respect. Trouble with youngsters these days … plenty of gall and no sand. Them teenagers is the worst. That puts me in mind of a job that Crow once did.’
The publisher sat up straight, preparing himself to listen carefully. This could be what he was waiting for. Over the last couple of years since he’d been visiting the old gunfighter he’d come to recognize the gold among the pyrites, and this might be some.
‘It was the late part of … Guess it must have been around Seventy-Eight. No, year earlier. Seventy-Seven. Crow had been doing some scouting around in the foothills of the Sierras. Way I recall it he come across this merchant from Boston who’d gotten hisself a map of a lost gold mine. Lost mine!’ He cackled his laughter. ‘There’s dozens of real ones, and hundreds of phonies, Mister. Gunsight, Crazy Woman, Dutchman, Breyfogle, Jim Bowie’s, Padre, Lucky Dice, Dead Mule, and plenty more if’n I could recall them. But that was it. A rich merchant, his wife and two sons. The Sierras and a lost mine. Winter drawin’ on, in Seventy-Seven. That’s the way it was, Mister. That’s the way it was.’
Chapter Two
Even though it was early October the temperature on the western edges of Death Valley was still in the low hundreds. The heat shimmered and danced off the dazzling array of rainbow rocks, making the far-off mountains tremble in the haze. The only thing moving was a small lizard, darting from one tiny patch of shade to another, its eyes flickering around for a sight of any potential enemy.
The man called Crow moved away from the window of the only saloon in the settlement of just eleven houses, walking quietly to sit at a corner table where the shadows hung deepest. He put the glass of warm beer on the chipped table in front of him, leaning back and pulling his black hat lower over his deep-set eyes. If anyone had walked in the saloon they would hardly have noticed him, black on black, and if they had noticed him they’d have figured that he was either drunk or asleep.
Hobson’s Hole had been christened by an Englishman who had come to the Valley during one of its rare rainy days and found a pool of sandy water there. However, for all but three or four days of the year the hole dried up, yet it was still enough in that arid waste at the fringes of the Mohave Desert to attract travelers.
Crow was just passing through. Moving up towards the Sierras, hoping to pass across them before the deep snows of winter came and closed down all the trails for nearly a thousand miles. He had a fancy to get out to the West Coast, not having been near San Francisco for some years.
There had been food to go with the beer. Tacos and burritos, filled with spicy hunks of gristle that could have been anything, even rattlesnake. On second thoughts he decided that from his experience he had never eaten a rattler that was that tough.
There were three men locked in a penny game of poker, getting themselves steadily more drunk and more evil-tempered with each other, with the flies and with the heat. At the table nearest the door, as if they wanted to be ready to make a quick escape from the saloon, was a party of four people, looking as out of
place as a scorpion on an altar-cloth. Crow had observed them as they entered, with much panting and beating of their smart clothes, complaining endlessly to the stocky, taciturn Navaho who served them.
The man was in his mid-forties, carrying around fifty pounds more weight than was healthy for him, dressed in a suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place up on Beacon Hill in the expensive quarter of Boston. A city that he referred to at least once in every sentence, when comparing where they’d been to this stinking hovel in the middle of nowhere. Not that he put it quite as bluntly as that. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles that were constantly becoming fogged up, necessitating his removing them every few minutes to wipe them on a linen kerchief that had once been purest white and was now stained red with the desert’s dust.
His wife sat next to him, constantly rubbing at her red-rimmed eyes where the dust had made them sore. She was a good ten years younger than the man, barely into her middle thirties, with bleached yellow hair and pale blue eyes. Her dress was torn at the hem and her gloves were tattered at the finger ends; Crow guessed that it probably came from biting at them. She seemed very nervous and ill at ease, looking around the room and then back at her hands if she noticed anyone returning her gaze.
The couple had two children.
A fat, surly boy of about seventeen, with an upturned nose that gave him an even more hoggish look, and little currant eyes that almost disappeared in rolls of fat. He didn’t speak very much but when he did it was to whine and complain that he was too hot and he was hungry and he was thirsty.
His brother seemed a year younger. Thin where the other boy was fat, with a face like a disgruntled rodent. Narrow eyes perched above a questing beak of a nose, his mouth thin-lipped and disapproving. He talked the most, keeping up a monotonous series of questions, most of which his parents ignored.
‘When can we go, Pa?’
‘Pa. Can I have some water?’
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