Long Road to LaRosa (West Texas Sunrise Book #2)

by Paul Bagdon

  © 2003 by Paul Bagdon

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3950-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  This novel is dedicated, with thanks and love, to Peter Drago, Debbie DiPasquale, Mike Marini, Micheala Marini, Jackie Root, Cynthia Marini, and Paul LeBron. All of these people are the best friends a man could possibly have, and their importance to me is beyond the scope or power of mere words.

  * * *

  Contents

  * * *

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  It was a magnificent day—a perfect day.

  The dew on the scrubland and the patches of buffalo grass that spread endlessly around the path Lee Morgan rode made the earth sparkle and glitter in the early sun, turning it into a crystal fairyland. The air was still cool and so clean that it seemed as if the slightest clink of a stone against a steel horseshoe could carry clear and undistorted, bell-like, all the way across Texas and into Mexico.

  Slick, Lee’s prize stallion, seemed to be enjoying his day as well. His tongue toyed with the bit in his mouth, and he snapped up each hoof as soon as it struck the earth, dancing a bit sideways, snorting impatiently, wanting very much to run.

  The fingers of Lee’s left hand played the reins with the unconscious skill of a person who spends more hours in a saddle than out of it. She usually rode a stock saddle rather than the more demure and accepted sidesaddle, and she frequently wore culottes, which were similar to a man’s trousers. Today was different, though. She wore a long dark skirt, high-buttoned shoes that pinched her feet, and a white blouse with feminine ruffles and a tightly buttoned collar. Her dark hair with its tones of auburn was twisted into a businesslike bun atop her head, rather than tumbling free past her shoulders as it usually did.

  It was a day for formality, and Lee had acquiesced on her clothing. She needed the money, and she was quite sure Sam Turner, the founder and president of the Burnt Rock Land and Trust Company, was going to loan it to her. All she needed to do was sign the papers, and the money would be transferred to the operating account of her ranch, the Busted Thumb Horse Farm. She didn’t like to borrow money, but a quarter horse breeder in Laramie was retiring, and she wanted to purchase four stallions and two broodmares for her string.

  She took a long, deep breath and smiled as she exhaled. She was forty-one and had never been married, yet she’d devoted her life to raising the best, strongest, most intelligent ranch horses anywhere. Now with the almostperfect Slick as a foundation stallion and the horses she’d receive from Laramie in a month, things couldn’t be better.

  The War Between the States had been over for a decade, and there had been rain—good, drenching rain—for the past three years. Her pastures were lush with knee-high grass. This year there’d been a crop of foals that were now fat and happy and playing in a fenced four-acre pasture just outside her back door.

  Lee stood in the stirrups and looked at the prairie surrounding her, the scent of the fertile earth and the sweeter aroma of dewy grass and wildflowers touching her like a mother’s caress. Yes, things couldn’t be better.

  Slick snorted wetly and shook his head, trying to get under the bit. Lee’s hand went to her hair. She’d spent almost a half hour getting the bun to take shape and stay in place. Letting Slick run would make a mess of it. She centered her horse on the trail and rode at a sedate walk, feeling the tension in the muscles and sinews of the twelve-hundred-pound stallion. She touched her hair again and then sighed. Leaning forward a bit in the saddle, she let a foot of rein slide through her fingers and tapped her heels lightly against the gleaming ebony of Slick’s side.

  The horse exploded under her, all four hooves flinging clumps of dirt as he launched himself forward, digging for traction. His front legs reached far ahead of his body, dragging long yards of trail beneath him. He did what he did best—ran faster than any horse Lee had ever owned, ridden, or even seen in all her years. His gallop had the brutal power of an out-of-control steam locomotive, and she thrilled at his speed, as she did every time she let him run.

  When she checked him and reined down to a lope, his chest and sides were wet with healthy sweat—and she imagined her hair looked like a haystack hit by a tornado. She stood in the stirrups, leaned forward, and kissed the horse between his ears.

  What could go wrong on such a perfect day?

  The first slug from the 44.40-caliber Sharp’s buffalo rifle destroyed Sam Turner’s right shoulder. The second round struck him lower, flaying off a strap of flesh and muscle four inches wide from the outer side of his right thigh. The almost-simultaneous impacts hurled him backward against the door of the safe behind his desk like a rag doll thrown by a cranky child. For a moment the silence in the Burnt Rock Land and Trust Company seemed like that of a sepulchre, as if the thunderous report of the rifle had assaulted all those in the bank, slamming them senseless and snatching away their ability to hear, to speak, to even understand what had just happened.

  Then the moment was past. The two female clerks in their cages behind the counter screamed as senior teller Hiram Ruppert, in the cage between them, pawed for the Colt pistol Sam insisted he keep on a shelf next to his cash drawer. The handful of customers who’d been waiting in the tellers’ lines dropped to the floor, covering their heads with their arms and bringing their knees to their chests.

  Lee, who’d been walking toward Sam’s desk with the signed loan agreement in her hand, moved before the others did. She took two quick steps toward Sam’s sprawled, bloodied form, the paper floating from her hand to the floor. An outlaw moved into her path, grabbed her, and spun her around.

  “You jist take it easy, sweet thing,” he said, shoving her shoulder. She continued through the spin the man had started, with her left knee rising and her weight balanced on her right foot.

  The outlaw’s face collapsed as her knee slammed into his groin. He clutched himself with both hands and bent over. As his eyes rolled back, he dropped to the floor with his pistol under his inert body.

  The man who appeared to be the leader blew a wellchewed plug of tobacco across the room as surprised laughter erupted from his mouth. He shook his head happily, looking Lee over. “I ain’t leavin’ this town without you, ma’am, an’ that’s for true,” he promised, swinging the barrel of the Sharp’s toward the male teller. “You want to die over some money that ain’t even yours? Drop it!”

  Hiram Ruppert met the outlaw’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. The Colt struck the wooden floor with a thud. Two outlaws fanned out behind their leader, one covering the platform upon which Sam’s desk and safe rested, the other covering the tellers’ cages from his position at the entrance. Then the leader strode across the polished floor to Hiram’s cage, the butt of the Sharp’s still at his shoulde
r.

  “Open the safe,” he said.

  “I don’t know—”

  “Tell me you don’ know the combination and I’ll blow your fool head off. Open the safe or die—it’s nothin’ to me to pull the trigger.” The man’s voice was conversational, as if he were simply asking a question about his account. His eyes, however, burned with intensity.

  Hiram swallowed deeply. “I . . . I’ll open it,” he croaked.

  The outlaw chuckled. “’Course you’ll open it, you idjit. Don’ make no sense to die for somethin’ that ain’t yours to begin with.” He turned his head to wink at Lee. “You hold on there for a bit, honey. I’ll be right with you.”

  Lee looked away and continued making her way to Sam’s side. She knelt beside him and began peeling away his coat from his shoulder. She gasped when she uncovered the wound and saw the scraps of bone piercing his flesh. Blood gushed from the fist-sized opening in thick, glistening bubbles that broke and flowed to the floor.

  The outlaw motioned Hiram toward the break in the counter. “Move,” he said. His voice was no longer light.

  Hiram’s shoe struck the Colt on the floor as he moved from his position and eased past the sobbing tellers toward Sam’s platform.

  “Open it!” the outlaw snarled.

  A short, muscular man poked his head through the entrance. “Zeb!” he called. “They’re comin’! That lawman an’ his deputy!”

  “Good,” the leader said with a grin, prodding Hiram with the barrel of his Sharp’s. “The boys on the roof’ll be right pleased about that.”

  Marshall Ben Flood’s boots beat a dull rhythm on the wooden sidewalk as he ran from his office toward the bank, jacking a round into the chamber of his 30.30. He stumbled as a bullet from the bank roof splintered the dried wood directly in front of him. He caught his balance, snapped a shot toward the bank, levered his rifle again, and dove through the open door of Scott’s Mercantile. Another round from the outlaws tore a palmsized chunk of wood from the mercantile’s door frame, inches over Ben’s head. In a heartbeat, Nick Blake, his twenty-three-year-old deputy, hurled himself into the doorway, skidding across the floor on his stomach with his shotgun tucked lengthwise in his arms. The plate glass window exploded, launching splinters and shards of razorlike missiles into the front of the store.

  “Everybody get behind something and keep down!” Ben shouted as he squirmed to the doorway and fired four rapid shots. The Sharp’s roared again in response, its thunderous voice making the other weapons sound like cheap Fourth of July firecrackers. A dress form in the wreckage of the plate glass window spun into the store, a ragged hole the size of a skillet gaping in its chest.

  Nick edged up next to Ben. “Lousy position,” he grunted as he squeezed off a shot.

  “For us, anyway. They’re sittin’ pretty. How many you think are on the roof?”

  Nick fired again and a hoarse bellow of pain rose and ceased within the same instant. “One less than there was, but looks to be maybe eight or ten up there.”

  Ben sighted and squeezed off a round from his prone position on the floor. A tall, heavyset outlaw fell backward, and the barrel of his rifle caught the sun and glinted as it dropped from the rooftop to the ground. Ben looked out at the street toward the bank. On the opposite side of the road, a beer wagon loaded with fifty-five-gallon wooden barrels was parked in front of the Drovers’ Inn, its weary team of six stout draft horses apparently undisturbed by the shooting. A series of heads and faces showed above the batwing doors of the saloon—daytime boozers and off-duty cowhands gawking at the action. Ben put a bullet in the whitewashed false front of the structure, inches above the batwings, to move the men out of the line of fire.

  “I’m going to hustle over to the beer wagon,” he said. “That way we’ll have them more or less between us.”

  “Ain’t fair,” Nick said with a grin. “You’ll have a better shot, but I’ll be stuck here alone, listenin’ to them women carryin’ on in the back.” A flurry of slugs peppered the doorway and the display area, shattering the glass remaining in the frame of the front window, punching holes in sacks of seed, and flinging ruptured and spewing canned goods from the shelves.

  “Might as well get to it,” Ben said as he pushed himself to his feet. Nick moved up next to him, drawing his bone-gripped Colt and placing it on the floor just inside the door. He jacked open his shotgun, thumbed a pair of shells into the breach, and snapped the weapon shut.

  “Ready when you are, Ben. Watch yourself.”

  Ben reloaded his rifle. “Yeah,” he said. “I will.” He felt his muscles tense for a moment, and then he balanced on the balls of his feet like a runner awaiting a starter’s gun. He nodded to Nick. No more words were needed.

  Nick fired a round from his shotgun and then another, so that the two blasts sounded almost as one. Before the smoking long gun struck the floor, Nick was firing his Colt, not seeking targets but putting as much lead in the air as he could as Ben raced and weaved across Main Street.

  Ben fired rapidly, working the lever of the rifle smoothly and quickly as he ran, dancing away from the hail of death seeking him, until the hammer clicked sharply on the empty chamber. He threw the rifle the few remaining yards to the beer wagon, and, too fast for an eye to follow, his twin Smith & Wesson .45s were in his hands, spewing lead at the riflemen on the bank roof. Spouts of dust tagged after him on the street, and a slug buzzed past his ear. To his side and across the street behind him, the chatter of Nick’s pistol fire halted and was replaced, once again, by the booming roar of his shotgun. Ben smiled. Sure wish I could keep him in Burnt Rock. The kid might make a lawman yet—he’s loadin’ his shotgun with one hand and firing his Colt with the other.

  He dove to safety—for the second time that day—and tucked his head as he rolled to his feet. The beer wagon was a broad-beamed and stalwart freighter, loaded two-high with barrels of beer in lines of three. Ben holstered his handguns, snatched up the 30.30, and vaulted onto the bed of the wagon, then slid cartridges into the breach of his rifle. The aroma of beer filled the air around him; on the bank’s side of the wagon, perhaps thirty foaming streams of the liquid arced out from bullet holes in the barrels.

  Ben aimed, drew a breath, and eased pressure onto his trigger. The suddenly lifeless hands of an outlaw on the roof unclenched and dropped a Winchester to the street.

  A moment later a voice sounded from within the bank. “Marshall! I’m comin’ out with a woman in front of me! You or your deputy fire, and I’ll kill her!” The front door of the bank swung open, and a man walked out, his arm around a woman’s neck and the muzzle of his pistol jammed under her jaw.

  Lee’s appearance in the doorway struck Ben like a punch to the stomach. The danger to her changed everything.

  “Here’s what’s gonna happen,” the outlaw called out. “My boys’ll bring our horses ’round, and we’ll mount up. This little lady,” he said as he forced his pistol barrel more deeply under Lee’s chin, eliciting a quick yelp of pain, “is ridin’ in front of me, on my horse. You do anything I don’ want you to, an’ she dies, no questions asked. We’ll let her go when we don’ need her no more, an’ not before. Another thing, Marshall: You got a bank president bleedin’ out on the floor in there. Looks like he could use a doc.”

  “Let her go now, and we won’t follow for an hour,” Ben shouted from behind his cover. “You got my word on that. Let—”

  “I ain’t offerin’ to deal with you, lawman! You do it my way or the woman dies. An’ then we’ll wear you an’ your deputy down an’ kill you like sick dogs an’ go through this stinkin’ town an’ gun everythin’ that moves!”

  Ben chewed on his lower lip and thought for a moment. Burnt Rock was a West Texas settlement that existed only to serve the cattle trade, and the cavalry had been the primary source of law before he had been hired by the town. Now the army was dealing with hostile Indians, so the sad truth was that the outlaw was right—the sheer firepower of the gang would present a siege that he,
Nick, and the few men in town brave enough to handle a gun couldn’t possibly withstand—or survive. And the outlaw would make good on his threat to destroy the town and murder its citizens. He’d done it before, in other places. Ben knew the man. He knew more about Zebulon Stone than he cared to.

  “Ben,” Nick called from the mercantile. “Don’t let him—”

  “You hush, boy!” Ben snapped. Louder, he called out to the outlaw, “I got no choice, and that’s what you’re playin’ on.”

  “Stand up where I can see you, with your hands empty—your deputy too.”

  Ben complied and climbed down from the wagon. As he moved out into the street, he held his palms at chest level in front of him. In a moment, Nick stepped through the pocked and splintered door frame of the mercantile and joined him.

  Stone said something over his shoulder that Ben couldn’t hear, and two men led a string of saddled horses out of the alley next to the bank. The gunhands on the roof clambered down ladders leaning on either side of the building and mounted, bringing their horses in front of Stone as he hefted Lee into the saddle of a tall chestnut and swung up behind her. Stone held his pistol more loosely now, with the muzzle lightly touching the side of her neck. After one of his men handed him the chestnut’s reins, he turned the horse out a few steps into the street and pointed him at Ben.

  “You remember me, lawman?”

  “I remember.”

  “Then this ain’t over, now is it?”

  “Not nearly, Stone. It’s not nearly over.”

  Ben’s eyes met Lee’s. He saw fear in them, but he also saw the strength he’d seen many times before. The endless depth of the chestnut brown and the minute flecks of gold even now reminded him of a calm pool that violence and hatred could never touch. Her lips, pale and bloodless lines, moved slowly and soundlessly. “Take him, Ben!” they urged. He had to look away from her face. A move against Stone would guarantee her death—and probably Nick’s and his own as well. He looked back at Stone.