Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
Teaser chapter
Final Draw
“You boys don’t want to do this,” Clint said.
“Oh? Why not?” one asked.
“Because I didn’t come here to kill anybody.”
“In case you ain’t noticed,” one said, “we’re two against you.”
“Your guns look well used, but you fellas don’t look like fast guns to me. And I don’t even know how accurate you are. Looks to me like you’re overmatched.”
Suddenly, the two men were not so sure of themselves.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” one finally asked.
“My name is Clint Adams, so making me draw my gun isn’t really a good idea.”
The two men stared at him.
“Adams?” one asked.
“The Gunsmith?” the other said.
“That’s right,” Clint said. “Now my best advice to you is to leave your guns where they are, in their holsters, and ride out. Now.”
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UNBOUND BY LAW
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
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Jove edition / April 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Randisi.
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ONE
The first tip-off was the buzzards.
“Easy, boy,” Clint said, reining Eclipse in.
Ahead of them the sky was dotted with buzzards, circling. Not a lot, but enough to tell him that something bad had happened recently.
“Come on,” he said, gigging the big Darley Arabian. “Somebody’s in trouble and we’re elected to help.”
The sun was at its zenith in the New Mexico sky. The heat was not only coming down, but it was rising up from the baked ground.
Judging from the location of the flying scavengers, whatever had happened had taken place a couple of miles ahead. That the buzzards had not already closed in to feast could mean one of two things. First, ground scavengers had gotten there first. The birds were waiting for the coyotes to eat. Or, the people simply had not been dead long enough.
Or, second, there were survivors, and the buzzards were waiting for them to die.
Clint pushed Eclipse into a gallop, in case someone’s survival depended on time.
The pair topped a rise and the carnage came into view. He reined in, looked down at the wagons. There were three of them, all upright, none burning. Around the wagons were bodies. Men, women, children, looked like about a dozen of them, apparently the remains of what had been three families.
He looked around, didn’t see anyone else, then started down the hill slowly, carefully. When he reached the bottom, he approached the camp.
Okay, yeah, he could see a campfire, so the victims had been camped here. He dismounted, dropped Eclipse’s reins to the ground, and approached the bodies on foot. Some were facedown, others faceup. Eleven bodies lying faceup had no apparent damage. They hadn’t been stabbed, or shot. The other bodies he bent over, rolled them over just enough to see that they also had suffered no trauma. There were five children—three boys, two girls, between ages three to ten, he guessed.
The adults, what
appeared to be three husbands and three wives. He matched them up as best he could, figuring the men and women lying close together would be couples. Two couples were in their late twenties, the other in their thirties, probably the parents of the oldest child, a girl.
Clint had a cold spot in the pit of his stomach as he studied the children.
The three wagons were covered. The contents seemed to be each family’s belongings—suitcases, tools, furniture.
He walked to the campfire, knelt by it, held his hand over the remains. Cold. There were plates and utensils in the dirt, the remnants of some meals that didn’t look like breakfast. Apparently, whatever had happened to them had taken place after supper. Then, during the night, the fire had gone out. They hadn’t even had time to get to their bedrolls.
He looked more closely at the ground. From the tracks there, he discerned coyotes had come into camp, maybe eaten some of the leftover food, but they hadn’t been at the bodies yet.
Under normal circumstances, Clint would have buried the dead. But he felt that somebody had to examine these bodies, find out what had killed them. He decided to go to the nearest town and notify the law, maybe get a doctor out here to take a look at them.
There were a couple of towns, both due east. Carrizozo was the largest, Hondo the closest. If Hondo had a doctor, lawman, and telegraph, it made sense to go there. On the other hand, Carrizozo would certainly have all three.
He decided to go to the closest and hope he’d find all the help he needed there.
He took one last look around the camp, but couldn’t find anything helpful. He looked up at the buzzards, wished he could bury the bodies to save them from being scavenged. In the end, he collected blankets from the bedrolls and wagons, covered each of the bodies, hoping that would do it. As he covered the body of a three-year-old girl his stomach flipped, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose his breakfast.
“Come on, big boy,” he said, mounting Eclipse. “Let’s go get some help.”
A few miles away, he suddenly came upon the carcasses of a small band of coyotes. The bodies had already been visited upon by buzzards. He rode up to them, stared down. They had been worked over pretty good.
He dismounted, wrapped the smallest coyote up in his spare shirt, and tied it to his saddle—just in case by the time he returned, the carcasses were all gone.
He remounted and headed to Hondo.
TWO
He saw the telegraph lines before he reached town, so he was sure of that much.
Hondo was big enough to have what he wanted. He rode down the main street, saw the saloon, hotel, mercantile, finally the sheriff’s office. No doctor’s shingle, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe there was a doctor off the main street. At least there was an undertaker, right across from the sheriff.
He dismounted, looped Eclipse’s reins over a post, and entered the sheriff’s office.
It was small, dusty, but had all the trappings—potbellied stove, gun rack, cell block in the back. In one corner was a broom, but it didn’t look as if it had been used very much.
The door to the office opened again and a man stepped in, wearing a badge and a scowl.
“Somebody said they saw somebody ride in,” he said. “Sheriff Carl Scott.”
“Clint Adams.”
“The Gunsmith?” Scott asked. “What brings you to Hondo?”
“About fifteen miles from here, I came across three wagons. Looked like three families traveling together.”
“So?”
“They’re all dead.”
“Dead?”
“Six adults, five kids.”
“Indians? Comancheros?”
“They weren’t attacked,” Clint said. “There’s not a mark on them.”
“Then what killed them?”
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “It’s going take a doctor to find that out.”
The sheriff paused a moment, then asked, “Disease?”
“What disease kills with no marks? Open sores, something.”
“I don’t know.”
“Like I said,” Clint said. “It’ll take a doctor. This town got one?”
“We do.”
“We better go and talk to him, then, don’t you think?”
“Sure, sure,” Scott said. “I’ll take you over there.”
As they left the office, Clint noticed the sheriff’s scowl had deepened.
The doctor’s name was Doctor Eric Evans, according to his shingle. They entered the doctor’s office, found the man setting a young boy’s arm. The boy’s mother stood alongside, wringing her hands.
“I’ll be with you gents in a minute,” Evans said in an accent Clint identified as German. He was a handsome man in his early forties.
They waited while he finished with the boy, who then walked out with his mother holding his good hand. “Maybe that’s the last time you’ll go climbing a tree,” she scolded him.
As the door closed behind them, the doctor smiled at his visitors and said, “I doubt that will be the last time. He’s broken that same arm three times. Now, what can I do for you gents?”
“Doc, this is Clint Adams. He found some dead bodies outside of town.”
“Dead? How?” Evans asked Clint.
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “That’s the problem.”
“What do you mean? Seems to me a man with your reputation would be able to tell how some people were killed.”
“Not these,” Clint said. “Three families, five kids. All dead and not a mark on them.”
“Curious.”
“I also found some coyotes a few miles away from them, dead.”
“Coyotes?”
“I brought one of them in with me.”
“A dead coyote?” the sheriff asked. “What the hell for?”
“So somebody can figure out why it died,” Clint said.
“Maybe the coyotes are carryin’ some kind of disease that the families got?” the sheriff asked.
Clint looked at the doctor. “Wouldn’t they have had to be bitten?” he asked. “I didn’t see any bites on any of them. And it’d have to be pretty odd for all of them to have been bitten, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so,” Evans said. “I shall have to ride out there to have a look. Will you show me?”
“Of course.” Clint looked at the sheriff. “I think we should bring the undertaker, too.”
“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “I’ll get ’im on our way out of town.”
“I will saddle a horse,” Evans said. “And bring my bag.”
“What about the coyote I’ve got with me?” Clint asked.
“Bring it in,” the doctor said. “I’ll put it in the back and have a look at it when we get return. I think it’s important to bring those people in.”
“If there’s anything left of them,” the sheriff said.
“The buzzards were closing in,” Clint admitted. “I covered the bodies with blankets.”
“You should go and get yourself something to eat,” the doctor said to Clint.
“And maybe a drink,” Clint said. “One of those kids was only about three. A little girl.”
“I’ll meet you out front,” the doctor said.
Clint left the office with the sheriff.
“Saloon’s over there,” Scott said. “Should be able to get a beer and some hardboiled eggs.”
“That’ll be enough for now,” Clint said. “Say, Sheriff?”
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t have three wagons of people here in town recently, did you?”
Scott scowled at Clint and said, “Don’t you think I woulda told you that by now if we had?”
THREE
Out in front of the doctor’s office a half an hour later, Clint was introduced to the undertaker, a man named E. B. Duff. He looked more like a banker than an undertaker: under six feet, wearing a brown suit and matching vest. He was seated aboard a buckboard when Clint got there. The doctor made the introduction.
<
br /> “How many bodies you say we got out there?” he asked.
“Eleven,” Clint said. “Six adults.”
Duff looked back at his buckboard.
“I guess I can fit ’em. Jesus, what a damned shame. Children?”
“That’s right,” Clint said.
They turned as the sheriff came riding up.
“We ready to go?”
“Ready,” Doctor Evans said.
“I’m ready, too,” Clint said. He’d had a cold beer and a couple of hardboiled eggs, but he just felt thirstier and hungrier. He’d have to wait until they got back to have a full meal.
He mounted up.
“Lead the way, Mr. Adams,” the sheriff said.
When they reached the campground, the four of them just sat where they were and surveyed the scene.
“My God,” Duff said.
It looked to Clint like the bodies were still covered, the way he’d left them.
“We better get started loading the bodies onto E. B.’s buckboard.”
“Go ahead,” the doctor said, “but I want to examine a couple of them right away.”
The doctor walked to one of the largest bodies, and then one of the smallest.
“Take these two last,” he said.
“Like you say,” the lawman agreed.
He and Duff walked to one of the blanket-covered bodies, looked down at it, then over to the doctor.
“Doc?” the sheriff called.
“Yes?” Evans had just uncovered the body of a man, and looked up at Sheriff Scott.
“You sure it’s okay?”
The doctor knelt down next to the uncovered man, stared at him for a few moments. He turned the man’s face one way, then the other, checked his hands and arms.
“I don’t think this man died of any disease,” he said. “Go ahead and load them, but keep them covered.”
Unbound by Law Page 1