by Cole Shelton
Last Chance Saloon
Brett Cassidy, professional gunfighter, has hung up his guns for the peaceful life of a trapper, but one day he receives an urgent letter from a beautiful young widow. The settlers in Lonesome Valley need him. Cheyenne war smoke is rising, and a greedy saloon owner and his hired guns are making life hell for the widow and her friends. Strapping on his guns for one last time, Brett rides to help the homesteaders in their hour of need. But he’s alone and faces a stacked deck in the final showdown in the Last Chance Saloon.
Last Chance Saloon
Cole Shelton
ROBERT HALE
© Cole Shelton 2019
First published in Great Britain 2019
ISBN 978-0-7198-2913-0
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Cole Shelton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
CHAPTER ONE
Brett Cassidy reined in his big roan horse by the sprawling cemetery.
Remaining in the saddle, he looked for the two freshly-dug graves and found them, side by side, in the deepening shade cast by a lonely old spruce tree.
With an ancient buzzard watching from the spruce’s highest branch, he read the inscriptions on their new headstones. One belonged to Sheriff Ed Buscombe and, according to the poignant words carved under his name, the town lawman had worn his tin star with pride and served the town of Jericho Creek faithfully for twenty-three years. The other grave was the final resting place of Amos Ridley Sporn, part-time deputy and town barber. If he was still breathing, he would have celebrated eighty-six years next Thanksgiving Day.
According to the Jericho Creek Town Committee’s urgent letter, delivered in person by Mayor Matthew Whittaker’s hard-riding son to Brett’s lodgings in Arrowhead City, both lawmen had been murdered. They were shot in the back after dark as they left their office to walk home. The two well-liked law officers had left behind a pair of grieving widows and a struggling community overcome by fear.
The committee’s letter, along with a five hundred dollar payment-in-advance for his services, sat folded in Brett’s hip pocket. His professional fee was normally double, sometimes even triple this amount, but he’d made no argument because Sporn had once been a friend of his father’s, the two men and their families having come west together across the Great Plains on the same wagon train. At the time Brett had been a gangling teen but he still remembered the old barber who’d once cut his hair, nicking his left ear with blunt scissors. Now both Amos Sporn and his own father, Gabe Cassidy, were dead. Gabe and Linda Cassidy, Brett’s parents, had succumbed to a frontier fever almost twenty years ago and rested together in a cemetery one mile outside Arrowhead City.
Brett picked up his reins, took a last look at the graves and kept riding.
The town of Jericho Creek was just ahead, basking in the late afternoon sun. As Brett rode closer, he saw shadows stretching like long, dark fingers over Main Street. The slight northerly wind blowing from the distant mountains whispered down the alleys, raising little puffs of dust and ruffling the tepid water in the horse troughs. The town was silent, like the silence of the graveyard Brett Cassidy had left behind.
Brett eased his tall, rangy frame from the saddle.
He was a man in his early forties. You wouldn’t call him handsome, but he was a man most women would look at twice. Many searing suns and freezing winter winds had chiselled his face. He had high cheekbones, a prominent nose, thin lips and a jutting jaw that warned all and sundry that he wasn’t a man to be trifled with. There was a small scar to the right of his mouth.
Now at trail’s end, he secured his roan to the tie-rail fronting The Buffalo, the town’s one and only saloon, which stood alone like a beacon on the dusty hillock overlooking Main Street.
Taking his time, he let his gunfighter’s cold, dark-brown eyes rove over Jericho Creek. The vast forest that sprawled over the western ridge had provided the wood for the street’s clapboard-fronted business houses, log cabins and boardwalks – and also the pine boxes that lately had been lowered regularly into the clay soil. Usually, Main Street was bustling with life. Most late afternoons, women in frilly bonnets and long skirts were still shopping, children were playing hopscotch and men could be seen yarning with Blacksmith Blake by his forge, but today the street was deserted.
The townsfolk were mostly safely indoors.
They knew what was about to happen because Whittaker’s son had ridden back ahead of Brett. Unable to keep his mouth shut, a common failing of his, he blurted out impetuously that the town was about to be set free, courtesy of the territory’s fastest gunfighter.
Brett was in no hurry.
He just kept looking over the town stretched out below him. The Procter boys, Wolf and Dale, would be holed up down there. Despite killing two lawmen, they weren’t the kind to run. Not the Procters. Doubtless they’d heard the word Brett Cassidy was coming, so they’d be waiting for him, boasting to all and sundry they could take him when the time came.
He lifted his guns, twin dull blue Colt Peacemakers, checked them both and slid them back into their brown leather holsters. They had been hired before, ten times in fact, and each time they had killed. The first time had been in Grizzly Pass when he’d gunned down a hardcase named Logan; the last in a high country camp where he’d caught up with Mossman, on the run after raping and murdering a rancher’s new wife. Although Brett Cassidy was a hired gunfighter, he’d never been a man to carve notches in his guns, but he remembered each killing, each man to fall, each life ended by his deadly Colts. And soon his tally would become twelve, maybe more, he couldn’t be sure right now.
‘Mr Cassidy . . . Mr Cassidy,’ he was summoned from the other side of the batwings. ‘It’s Mayor Whittaker.’
The voice was high-pitched, excited, plunging the saloon into silence.
Brett parted the batwings and stepped inside The Buffalo. Mayor Whittaker, dressed like an undertaker in a black derby hat and matching suit and tie, stood hands clasped alongside half a dozen of the Town Committee. Their faces all beamed their gratitude. Wolf and Dale Procter had the town in their grip. No one was safe. Shop owners had to pay them ten per cent ‘protection’ money. They prodded and bullied the town citizens. Someone had suggested they raise a town posse to rid their community of these vermin. It was generally accepted it was a great idea, but no one put up his hand to join.
‘Would you like a drink, on the house?’
‘Thank God you came, Mr Cassidy.’
‘You were highly recommended.’
‘We heard you cleaned up Hellhole.’
Brett ignored the questions and compliments. He’d heard most of them before in other towns. He wanted to get down to the business in hand and then ride on, because he meant this to be the last time he hired out his guns. He’d survived many gunfights, killed many hellions who deserved to die, and he was still around to tell the tale. The way Brett Cassidy saw it, there com
es a time when a man who’s lived by the gun needs to put it away and change his ways, maybe even settle down.
That time had come.
This was his last mission.
‘Where are they?’ Brett demanded.
‘When they’re not raising hell, they’re usually drinking whiskey in an old woodsman’s cabin by Turner’s Mill,’ Reilly the local newspaperman said. He was the newest member of the Jericho Creek Town Committee, elected on his thirtieth birthday last year. One day, folks said, he would aspire to be Mayor Reilly. For now he was owner-editor of the Jericho Creek Herald. Addressing Brett, he said, ‘I saw both Wolf and Dale lounging outside the cabin an hour ago. Wolf looks exactly like his name, lean and hungry, always dresses in black. Dale’s not like his brother. He’s a real dandy, fancies himself as a ladies’ man, but don’t be fooled, Mr Cassidy, he’s the fastest of the two.’
Brett turned and looked over the batwings. ‘Where’s Turner’s Mill?’
‘Down Main Street just past the emigrant wagons,’ Mayor Whittaker supplied helpfully. ‘Ebenezer Turner, being a good neighbourly Mennonite, allows his couple of town acres there to be used as a jumping off place for homesteaders heading west across the Plains. Reckon there are half a dozen prairie schooners and some livestock waiting there for the word to roll the wagons, which should be tomorrow morning.’
Brett looked down on Main Street, his eyes slowly scanning its length until they found the white canvas of emigrant wagons. West of the wagons, just down the street, was Turner’s Mill, a plain wooden building standing on the banks of a swiftly running creek. The mill’s big wheel was slowly churning water into white foam. Right beside the mill was an old log cabin with a single, curtained window.
‘Do the Procters have any sidekicks I need to watch out for?’ Brett asked.
‘Well, there’s Miller,’ the newspaperman said. ‘He plays poker with Wolf.’
‘Miller’s of no account, gutless,’ Whittaker dismissed the slick tinhorn. ‘He’ll be hiding under a poker table once the shooting starts.’
‘What about Dunn?’ the bartender put in.
‘Abe Dunn, town bully,’ Reilly informed Brett. ‘He’s been swaggering up and down Main Street like a prize turkey ever since the Procters arrived. He might as well be one of them. In fact, some say he has joined them.’
‘You can’t miss Dunn,’ the bartender said, sliding a bottle of rye whiskey to a red-eyed cowpoke who looked like he’d had more than enough, even at this relatively early hour. ‘Bald as a hen’s egg, never wears a hat. Gun slung low on his left side.’
Brett waited but no one else spoke.
He turned and said simply, ‘Time to earn my keep.’
He parted the batwings and stepped outside.
Dark clouds edged across the face of the dying sun as he walked down the slight slope, headed by two empty cattle yards as he reached Main Street. He passed a couple of old timers asleep on their boardwalk rockers and heard the rasp of keys locking doors. Two nervous women hurried home. A mongrel dog yapped incessantly as Brett strode by the town’s general store. The storekeeper grabbed his dog and hauled it inside. Brett kept to the western boardwalk and crossed the alley between the stone-walled Mennonite church and the sombre, black-fronted undertaker’s parlour that had two coffins displayed out front. Just past the mortician’s shop, Rosie McPhee hastily closed and locked her tea room door. Still walking, Brett reached the wagons standing haphazardly on Turner’s acres. With his eyes fixed on the cabin beside the mill, Brett only afforded the homesteaders a quick glance. Mostly they were tending their animals, although three of the women stood around a cooking fire. He smelled buffalo steaks heating in the embers. One tall raven-haired man and his attractive wife stood close to the street watching as he strode past them.
Brett was just one hundred paces away from the mill.
On the left side of the street, the bespectacled little telegraph office operator pulled down his window shades. There was a man lingering in his office doorway. He didn’t have a hair on his scarred scalp and his single, pearl-handled gun was slung low against his left thigh.
‘Dunn?’ Brett demanded, halting.
‘What’s it to you?’ came the insolent response.
‘Walk ahead of me.’
Dunn smirked. ‘Like hell!’
Brett’s next words cut like a knife. ‘You have a choice, Dunn. Do like I say or I’ll put a slug in both of your legs and you’ll be walking on crutches for a long time.’
The town bully hesitated. Blood pulsed in bulging blue rivers along his temple. He didn’t like being pushed around, especially as he knew some of the townsfolk were watching, but there was something about this tall man with the cold eyes and twin Colts that unnerved him. Pin pricks of sweat sprang to his bald head.
Dunn shrugged. ‘OK, Mister, have it your way. Let’s walk.’
The bully took twenty steps before Brett said, ‘That’s far enough.’ Dunn stayed where he was, boots planted in the dust as the gunfighter gave his next order, ‘Call your friends from their snake hole.’
Dunn hesitated, sweat now trickling over his baldness.
‘Now!’
Despite his fears, Dunn still tried to put on a brave face in front of any towners who were watching or listening. He quipped, ‘If you say so, boss.’
‘Quit the smart talk. Just do it.’
Shrugging, Dunn cupped his mouth with his hands and bellowed, ‘Wolf! Dale! You have a visitor.’
The cabin door creaked slowly open. At first Brett saw a mere shadow, then Wolf Procter stood framed there. He was just as Reilly had described. Lean, all skin and bone, cadaverous-looking, dressed in grimy black shirt, pants and shiny polished boots. Predatory eyes became twin slits as Wolf Procter appraised the man he knew had been summoned to kill him.
When Wolf spoke, his words were deceptively soft.
‘Heard about you, Cassidy.’
Brett looked past him, but he could see no one else in the room. Of course, Dale could be concealed there.
‘Where’s your dandy brother?’
‘Mindin’ his own flamin’ business like you should be – that’s if you know what’s good for you, which I doubt,’ Wolf said, still quietly.
‘Call him,’ Brett demanded.
Wolf Procter merely stared at him, smirking confidently. He had a shiny silver sawn-off shotgun resting in his right holster. If he managed to aim it and pull the trigger, it would unleash a lethal storm of flying lead.
‘Go to hell,’ Wolf challenged.
Suddenly a hoarse warning rang out from the wagon camp.
‘Behind you! Tea house roof!’
Instinctively, Brett Cassidy threw himself sideways, clearing leather as he crunched against the side of the boardwalk. Two rifle bullets blasted into the dust, right where he’d been standing a split second earlier. Wedged against the boardwalk, Brett looked up at the tea house roof. He fired a single shot from his right side gun and Dale Procter, staked out alongside the tin chimney on the iron roof, stopped the bullet square in his chest. The rifle slid from the dandy’s grasp, bounced down over the roof and spun into the side alley. Rosie McPhee screamed at her window as the dandy crashed headlong past her and sprawled over the tea house’s boardwalk.
Crouching, Brett saw Wolf lift his double-barrelled shotgun from its leather holster, but the killer didn’t even get to aim his weapon because the gunfighter’s twin Colts thundered in deadly unison. Two bullets blasted Wolf Procter clean off his feet and blew him back through the cabin door. He crashed against a cupboard and dropped lifelessly to the earth floor.
Brett reared to his feet as Dunn backed to the wooden front of Turner’s Mill. He hadn’t come for Dunn but he figured he might as well rid Jericho Creek of this bully too – or at least render him harmless. Deciding on the latter, he levelled both guns at him. With both Procters dead, Dunn was friendless. Ashen-faced, whimpering like a whipped dog, Dunn pleaded for his life but when Brett ordered him to drop his gun, he s
till kept clutching the weapon. Not wanting to take any chances, Brett shot a bullet into each of his legs and he crumbled into the dust. Brett booted the gun from Dunn’s grasp.
‘Reckon your bully-boy days are over, hombre,’ Brett told the squirming man. ‘I’ll leave you for the doc’s knife, then the carpenter’s crutches.’
He sheathed his guns.
Twelve killings, an even dozen and another liberated town.
But, as he’d told himself when he rode in, it was time to pack away those guns. There was just one thing he needed to do before he rode out.
He walked back up the street to where the wagons waited for their trek west across the Plains. The homesteaders were making ready now. Tomorrow they would set out from Jericho Creek, on the last part of their great adventure. The tall, dark-haired man and his slim young wife had mugs of coffee in their hands as they stood by a cooking fire.
‘Figured it was you who shouted the warning,’ Brett said.
‘Yes, it was my husband,’ the woman said proudly.
‘Tom McBeath,’ the settler introduced himself. ‘And from what we heard in the town this past week, you’re Mr Cassidy.’
‘That’s me,’ Brett confirmed to the two homesteaders.
‘Nice shooting,’ McBeath complimented him.
Brett made no comment.
‘We’re on our way west, Mr Cassidy,’ Tom McBeath said. Willowy, he was in his thirties, clean-shaven, deep brown eyes and a prominent nose. He wore no guns, but there was a knife sheathed at his belt. ‘Heading for Lonesome Valley to stake our claim for those hundred and sixty acres the Government says we can farm. Praise the Lord for the Homesteader Act.’
These were good people, Brett thought, the very salt of the earth. They were the new breed of folks who would settle the Western frontier, the future backbone of the nation. He wished them well. Although he couldn’t change his past or what he had become, in this moment he envied them for their lives.