Curse of Skull Canyon

by Peter Brandvold

  THE CURSE OF SKULL CANYON

  A LONNIE GENTRY WESTERN

  THE CURSE OF SKULL CANYON

  PETER BRANDVOLD

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2016 by Peter Brandvold

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Brandvold, Peter, author.

  Title: The curse of Skull Canyon : a Lonnie Gentry western / by Peter Brandvold.

  Description: First edition. | Waterville, Maine : Five Star, a part of Gale Cengage Learning, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016003811 (print) | LCCN 2016009180 (ebook) | ISBN 9781432831820 (hardcover) | ISBN 1432831828 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432831844 (ebook) | ISBN 1432831844 (ebook) ISBN 9781432833671 (ebook) | ISBN 1432833677 (ebook)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3182-0 eISBN-10: 1-43283367-7

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3552.R3236 C87 2016 (print) | LCC PS3552.R3236 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003811

  First Edition. First Printing: August 2016

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3182-0 ISBN-10: 1-43283367-7

  Find us on Facebook– https://www.facebook.com/FiveStarCengage

  Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/

  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at FiveStar@cengage.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 20 19 18 17 16

  For Bill and Amy Schmidt

  longtime friends from the old home country.

  For their daughter Olivia,

  who I hope enjoys this one, too.

  CHAPTER 1

  Fourteen-year-old Lonnie Gentry didn’t care if he never heard another gunshot again in his life.

  In fact, after his many recent near-death experiences at the hands of the outlaw, Shannon Dupree, who’d hunted him and Casey Stoveville like game through the Never Summer Mountains a year ago, he hoped he’d never hear the blast of another rifle.

  But now as he stopped his buckskin stallion, General Sherman, on a high-mountain trail not far from timberline, and cocked an ear, he was sure that the raking, echoing cough he’d just heard was gunfire indeed.

  What else could it be? Surely not thunder, for there wasn’t a cloud in sight against the high, dry arch of cerulean blue.

  Lonnie looked at his horse. General Sherman had turned his head to stare toward a granite-capped outcropping jutting several yards upslope and behind a ways. The General’s eyes were wide, and those dark copper orbs were twitching. The black nostrils worked as the stallion sniffed the breeze.

  “Ah, heck,” Lonnie said, his gut tightening with anxiety. “Let’s head on down the mountain, General. I think we’ve done found all the bogged cows we’re gonna find today.”

  With that, Lonnie clucked and touched spurs to the General’s flanks. The sleek buckskin seemed to want to hightail it as much as Lonnie did. The General gave an agreeable snort and broke into a trot, following the game trail they’d been on for the past several hours, on down the steep slope and into the cool shade of firs, pines, tamaracks, and a salting of white-stemmed, verdant-smelling aspens.

  This day and the day before, Lonnie and the General had been scouring this neck of their mountain range for any cows or calves that had gotten left behind last week, when Lonnie had moved his and his mother’s herd to another range in the southern reaches of the Never Summers. Now, he’d head on back to the line shack and call it a day, maybe return here for one more look early tomorrow.

  He had work to do on the corral flanking the shack, anyway, and, besides, he didn’t want to be anywhere around where there was shooting.

  Even if it was just someone shooting at elk or deer.

  No, he’d had enough of shooting, thank you very much.

  Lonnie gave the General his head, and they made good time descending the slope. They reached the bottom of a ravine through which a creek ran. As they were about to turn onto an intersecting game trail that would take them even lower, toward where the line shack sat at the base of Eagle Ridge, an eerie buzzing sounded just off Lonnie’s right ear.

  Then there was a loud thud! as what could only have been a bullet smashed into a fir bole just ahead and to Lonnie’s right.

  The rifle’s blasting, echoing report followed a half a second later.

  “Jesus!” Lonnie shouted, ducking instinctively and then glancing back over his left shoulder.

  A cold stone dropped in his belly.

  Four horseback riders were galloping toward him, spread out side by side and weaving amongst the columnar pines. One was just now aiming the carbine in his hands, pumping a fresh cartridge into the rifle’s breech. The carbine’s dark maw blossomed smoke and fire.

  The bullet screeched toward Lonnie before searing a hot path of torn cloth over his right shoulder. His right arm went instantly numb. The bullet continued on past Lonnie and over the General’s head to bark loudly into a granite boulder.

  As the rifle’s report reached Lonnie’s ears, the General whinnied shrilly and pitched sharply up off his front hooves. Lonnie had grabbed at his right shoulder, dropping the rein he’d been holding in that hand, and hadn’t been prepared for the horse’s sudden, violent buck.

  “Ah, hell!” Lonnie cried as, kicking free of his stirrups, he felt himself being hurled back over the General’s left hip.

  The sloping ground came up to slap him hard about the head and shoulders. Lonnie heard his breath slammed out of him in a loud “Ghahhh!” of expelled breath. As the General galloped on down the mountain, stepping on his trailing bridle reins, Lonnie rolled, losing his hat and cursing.

  Unfortunately, he’d been through his before. So, when he’d stopped rolling and found himself still alive and able to use his limbs, he heaved himself to his feet. With one quick look behind him to see the four galloping riders closing on him fast—one shouting, “Get him!”—Lonnie took off running as fast and as hard as he could, trying to ignore the aching burn in his right arm.

  He’d been through this before, all right, but he didn’t have time to reflect on the bad turn of his luck. He could now feel the reverberations of the galloping horses through his boots as he sprinted for an outcropping of black granite rising ahead of him.

  He hadn’t planned to head for the rock. But, then again, he hadn’t planned on getting bushwhacked again in these mountains, either—nearly exactly a year since the first time!

  As Lonnie ran, he could hear the horses growing near—hear the squawk of tack and bridle chains, the raking of the air in and out of the horses’ straining lungs. Guns popped. The bullets tore into trees around Lonnie and chewed up the turf around his hammering boots.

  Lonnie glanced back once more. The riders were fifty yards away now and closing fast
.

  Another bullet burned across the nub of Lonnie’s right cheek.

  The boy sucked a sharp, pained breath and turned his head forward. He gained the escarpment and fairly hurled himself up into the first nook he saw—leaping and throwing his hands up to grab for hidden holds. He found the holds he was looking for, and hoisted himself up into a natural flue in the side of the outcropping. Breathing hard, in a frozen-blooded panic, the boy continued climbing—scrambling, really—following the natural route that opened before him.

  “There he is!” one of the men now below him shouted.

  Two more rifles blasted. The bullets slammed into the rock around Lonnie, peppering him with stone shards. Another rifle belched. The slug slammed into the heel of Lonnie’s boot as the boy pulled himself over the top of the outcropping and hurled himself across the rock and out of sight from below.

  Lonnie lifted his right foot to look at his boot heel. The bullet was poking its evil head out of it. Lonnie swiped at it, trying to dislodge the malicious thing, but it was in there solid. He didn’t have time to worry about bullets that weren’t in his hide, anyway. He fell back against the escarpment, catching his breath.

  Air sawed in and out of him loudly. His heart thudded in his ears.

  He was shaking.

  He could have lay there a long time, the sky swirling over him, but a horse whinnied below the scarp. A man said, his voice pinched with fury, “Get after him, Jeb!”

  “Why me?” Jeb asked.

  “I got twenty years on you, you son of a buck! Get after him and kill him!”

  A man cussed. Boots scraped against rock. Someone was climbing up the scarp.

  Lonnie heaved himself to his feet, and looked around. The scarp was nearly solid rock with only a few tufts of grass and wiry brush cropping up occasionally A few irregular stone formations jutted from its surface, speckled white and gray with what Lonnie figured were bones of some kind. Ancient bones of animals or maybe men. He’d seen them before throughout the Never Summers.

  But the only bones he was concerned about now, however, were his own.

  He ran across the uneven surface of the escarpment. It shelved downward after several yards, and several stone corridors opened around him. Lonnie considered taking cover in one of these, but if the man after him found him, he’d be trapped.

  He glanced over his right shoulder.

  The man was behind him, all right. He was behind him and just now aiming a rifle at Lonnie, cheek snugged up to the rifle’s rear stock.

  Lonnie lurched forward. The rifle thundered. Lonnie tripped over a thump of stone rising from the escarpment floor, and stumbled wildly forward before falling and rolling.

  Lonnie gained his feet in mid roll and continued running. Behind him, the rifle thundered again. The slug spanged shrilly off a rock to Lonnie’s left.

  He ran hard. The escarpment floor dropped more and more. He ran down a steep decline through a narrow corridor.

  When he came out on the other side, he saw a narrow gap in a rise of black stone to his left. Instinctively, knowing he didn’t have much time, he threw himself into the gap, vaguely hoping it was more than a nook or a cranny without another exit but had a back door to somewhere . . .

  To anywhere but where he was now, with a man out to kill him hot on his heels.

  Lonnie had hoped in vain.

  The gap, only about three feet wide, was only about five feet deep.

  Lonnie found himself staring at a cold stone wall of solid rock streaked with bird droppings.

  Boots thudded behind Lonnie. The boy winced as the raking breaths of his approaching pursuer grew louder and louder.

  CHAPTER 2

  Lonnie whipped around to face the mouth of the gap.

  The boot thuds grew louder. Spurs trilled softly.

  Lonnie slid slowly down the rear wall of the gap until he was sitting on his butt, making himself as small as possible. He brushed his fist across the bullet burn on his cheek, wrapped his arms around his knees, and sat staring out of the gap.

  His heart tattooed a desperate rhythm against his breastbone.

  His stalker moved slowly into view from Lonnie’s right. Lonnie tightened his jaws. He hugged his knees tighter, vaguely wishing the stone floor would open and swallow him.

  The man was tall and lean and unshaven. He wore a long, black duster and a low-crowned hat with a thong dangling beneath his chin which was sharply spade-shaped and carpeted in lusterless brown whiskers. That angry chin gave a mean, belligerent cast to his face—at least to his profile, which was all that Lonnie could see from his angle.

  He held a Winchester carbine up high across his chest as he continued moving from Lonnie’s right to his left. As he did, he limped on one foot, as though he’d injured himself on his run across the irregular floor of the escarpment.

  He turned his head as he looked around the stone knob. All he had to do at this moment, now that he was directly out in front of Lonnie, was turn his head a little more to the left. Then he’d see Lonnie cowering in the shadowy gap.

  The man lurched to a standstill.

  Here it comes, Lonnie thought. Now he’ll see me and after two or three quick blasts of his carbine, that will be the end. Ma will never know what happened to me, because once this fella drills me, he’ll leave me here in this gap and I won’t be found till someone finds a reason to scout around up here, which, given the remoteness and ruggedness of the place, will likely be never.

  I’ll molder here alone . . .

  Ma will die wondering what happened to her fourteen-yearold son, Lonnie Gentry. She’ll likely leave the ranch and move to town because if there was one true thing about Ma it was that she hated being alone. She’ll likely find a man in town and . . .

  Lonnie let the fast train of his half-conscious thoughts trail off. The man before him wheeled away from Lonnie and went limping back the way he’d come, cursing and lowering his rifle to his side.

  Lonnie blinked in shock. He couldn’t believe the man was giving up on him. All he’d needed to do was turn a little more to the left, and bam-bam!

  Lonnie listened to the man’s spur-trilling footsteps fade to silence.

  Lonnie couldn’t believe his luck. Was it too good to be true? The man might be setting a trap for him. Did he want Lonnie to believe he’d given up and gone back to his kill-crazy partners? Then, when Lonnie showed himself, the lead would fly.

  Lonnie sat there a long time. It was as though he had turned to stone. His heart slowed, the hammering in his ears grew less and less violent. An hour must have passed, for the shadows in the gap grew thicker and thicker and Lonnie detected a cooling in the air that sharpened the smell of forest duff and pine resin.

  From somewhere that Lonnie couldn’t see, a hawk gave its ratcheting cry. The ratcheting came and faded several times as the bird glided across the skies, hunting the forest floor for mice or squirrels.

  Lonnie heaved himself to his feet. His boots feeling like lead, he stepped up to the mouth of the gap and slid a cautious gaze around the wall on his right. He stared in the direction his pursuer had gone, half believing that the man would be squatting there only a few yards away, carbine ready.

  Nothing.

  The only sounds were the hawk’s cry and the breeze playing in the forest canopy surrounding the escarpment.

  Lonnie moved out of the gap and looked around. Should he go back the way he’d come? No. The three shooters might be waiting for him at the base of the scarp. Of course, they might have fanned out and were waiting for him at various points around the scarp, but returning the way he’d come seemed the least desirable of his options.

  His instincts told him to try to find another way off the knob.

  Crouching, keeping his head low so that he wouldn’t be seen from the forest floor, he moved off along the scarp, following what was now a gradual drop toward the ground. The scarp continued to drop until Lonnie found himself at the edge of it, crouching, sweeping his gaze across the forest floor on
ly ten or so feet beneath him now. The pines were spread six or seven feet apart, affording little cover for anyone waiting for Lonnie to show himself.

  Deciding—or at least hoping—that his pursuers had given up on him—Lonnie dropped to his butt, turned to face the scarp, and crabbed his way down the wall, using small cracks and fissures for hand- and footholds. When he reached the ground, he dropped to his butt once more and pressed his back to the wall he’d just descended and held very still as he again surveyed the forest around him.

  After a couple of minutes of seeing no more movement beyond that of squirrels, chickadees, and nuthatches flicking amongst the branches, Lonnie rose and began moving down the slope toward the east. He had no intention of moving back directly toward where he hoped to find General Sherman, because his pursuers might be looking for him there, possibly even using the buckskin stallion as bait.

  Instead, he decided to move in a roundabout way in that general direction, watching, listening, and sniffing the breeze. Lonnie had a good sniffer on him, and he could smell horse or man sweat from fifty yards away. He wasn’t sure how his senses had become so keen. Probably because his youth made him vulnerable, and he spent a lot of time alone in these rugged, remote mountains, moving cows around and hunting calf-killing coyotes and wolves—and even the occasional grizzly—while his mother tended the ranch headquarters and her newborn baby, little Jeremiah, several miles away and at least a thousand feet below.

  Lonnie Gentry had developed an unusual sharpness to his senses out of necessity.

  Without it, he might very well be dead by now.

  He made his way around the base of a stone ridge, the wall towering a couple of hundred feet above. Eventually, the wall opened on his left, forming a forty-or fifty-foot gateway into a canyon. As Lonnie stepped into this gateway, which was the mouth of the canyon, he heard something that ran a chill up his spine and caused chicken flesh to rise between his shoulder blades.