McClain

by Will Keen

  McClain

  Deputy Marshal McClain is found in his home, kneeling over his dead wife’s body, holding the bloody knife that had killed her. Accused of her murder, he escapes from jail and stumbles across evidence pointing to her killers. So begins a long manhunt that takes him from Arizona to the Texas Gulf Coast and a town on the shores of Laguna Madre. There tangling with the Skeltons, a family of bootleggers, brings to McClain more startling information that sees him heading back to Arizona. Tormented by guilt, he meets his wife’s killer at last, and deals with him in a way he would never have expected.

  By the same author

  The Outlaws of Salty’s Notch

  Writing as Paxton Johns

  The Killing of Jericho Slade

  The Bloody Trail to Redemption

  Writing as Jim Lawless

  The Gamblers of Wasteland

  Writing as Matt Laidlaw

  Mohawk Showdown

  McClain

  Will Keen

  ROBERT HALE

  © Will Keen 2018

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2598-9

  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 Will Keen 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.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  The horse was a mound of dead flesh, the dry white lather of recent sweat like a crust on the sleek, glistening chestnut coat. Flies were a humming black cloud. High above, vultures circled against white skies. Their presence had alerted McClain. He had been expecting much worse than a dead animal, so there was some relief. Nevertheless, always a cautious man with innate curiosity, he forced his skittish roan closer, looked down at the white bone of the broken foreleg and at the bullet hole in the head that had put the crippled horse out of its misery.

  But what of the rider? Had he been thrown clear? Come out of the fall uninjured? Maybe so, because of him there was no sign. The rig had been left cinched on the body, but the saddle-bags taken. Whoever had been left afoot had walked off the high ground carrying a heavy load. Not a good idea, but what else could he have done? McClain, face glistening with sweat, estimated the temperature to be over 100 degrees; some considerable way over, and that was in the shade. But this was Arizona, open mountain country. There was no shade.

  McClain had left Macedo’s Flat before dawn, skirting the town of Tombstone, taking the Mule Pass way into Sulphur Spring Valley, then cutting into the foothills and making for the higher ground. Out of one kind of heat into heat of a less humid, more tolerable kind. Later, towards dusk, he would come down from the hills and look for a place to spend the night. If there was no small town with the glow of oil lamps welcoming him to its streets, the intoxicating sounds of laughter and clink of glass coming from its saloon, then he had water and food in his saddlebags and would spend the night under a blanket of stars. Close to a creek, if he could find one that was not just a dry, rocky bed. The musical, liquid tinkle of water on stone would lull him into what would certainly be an uneasy sleep. For he was, he had acknowledged from the moment he left Macedo’s Flat, riding without any direction in mind. His only aim was to put as many miles as possible between himself and the Flat. The Flat, and his home. Out of sight, he thought wryly, but not out of mind: not now, not ever.

  With a last look around the immediate area, McClain left the dead horse to the flies and the vultures, and rode through a notch worn by time and erosion in the steep ridge that ran all the way up to a high rocky summit lost against the limitless skies. In front of him, as he emerged on the northern side of the ridge, the land fell away steeply, an expanse of coarse grass and rock where man and horse could slip with nothing but stunted scrub to claw at for unlikely salvation. The valley below was lost in a heat haze where mirages shimmered. Distant mountain ranges to the east – the Chiricahuas, barring the way to New Mexico – were purple smudges on a far horizon.

  McClain carefully walked his horse a little way into the descent, letting the roan pick its sure-footed way. It was then that he spotted the smoke. Against the monotonous light-dun colours of the Arizona landscape the thin grey thread rising from a campfire some 500 feet below was a scratch on the land’s surface, almost invisible.

  It was still early afternoon, the heat even at that purified altitude like a suffocating weighted blanket dropped down on a somnolent world from pure white skies. In such conditions the fire would have been lit, not for warmth, but to cook a meal and brew coffee. McClain had not eaten since the tough, tasteless scraps of beef in thin gravy given to him by the silent, tight-lipped deputy Frank Norris in the Macedo’s Flat jail cell. Night and the unknown resting place were some time and distance ahead. Taste buds ached as McClain’s mouth began to water at the thought of food.

  He pulled his mount to a halt, man and beast leaning back against the pull of gravity on that treacherous incline where only age-old hard rock basked in security. Narrowing his eyes against the painful glare, he shifted his gaze to take in the area around the fire. Some feet away from it he could make out the shape of a horse standing in the deep shadow of a rock overhang, dozing out of the sun. A thoughtful man, then: the motionless figure McClain could see close to the campfire took care of his animals. Or maybe he had his own well-being in mind. Wise to the ways of the mountains and the desert, he’d be acutely aware that without a horse he could die before reaching the nearest waterhole.

  As McClain watched, the man far below shifted his position. Stood up, turned, did something or other . . . hell, at that distance McClain couldn’t tell.

  And then he could.

  Two pinpoints of bright light, made one by distance, flashed and were gone. The man must have field glasses, was using them to search the high ground and had got careless. The sun, for that fraction of a second, had reflected from the lenses. Apparatus designed to bring distance close had turned heliograph and sent an unwanted signal. The man had seen McClain, but in doing so had inadvertently alerted him to the danger.

  But why, McClain wondered, was he considering danger, when surely there could be none?

  He had been on the run from the law since the cold light of dawn. News of his tense walk out of a cell deliberately left unlocked would cause telegraph wires to sing, the message to reach the few towns with reception – specifically, those on the railroad. That would take no time at all. Later today, wanted dodgers would begin streaming off hot printing presses, but they would need a stagecoach to take them outside Macedo’s Flat. That would take days. Or maybe he was overestimating his importance. Maybe it would take forever, or never happen.

  The watcher below was a man alone in mountains where Geronimo and his Apache warriors had ambushed military patrols and sent troopers back to their forts with body parts missing. But those times had gone. A campfire lit out in the open might suggest carelessness, but sunlight reflected in field glasses told a different story. Without ground cover – of which there was none – nobody could get within a half-mile of the m
an without being seen. But, sensibly, he remained alert.

  He’s being careful, but I’m not in any danger, McClain told himself. The unusual, impossible situation I find myself in is making me jumpy.

  He leaned back in the saddle, took a canteen from his saddle-bag and sipped the lukewarm, brackish water while he mused. And it occurred to him that if he was this wary, this nervous, when gazing down on an unidentified man alone on a barren mountainside, it didn’t say much for his chances. In a town he’d be jumping at shadows. A lawman with sharp eyes and a nose for trouble would read much from McClain’s suspicious behaviour. If he didn’t lighten up, loosen nerves that were as tight as bowstrings, he would be going back to jail, and from there to a dawn scaffold.

  With a harsh exclamation of irritation McClain stowed the canteen, lightly flicked the reins and got his patient horse moving downhill. The roan slipped once, snorting through flared nostrils as a hoof turned on an unseen rock. Dust puffed, floated on the still air, and as McClain clamped his knees to stay in the saddle he thought of the man with the field glasses.

  Anticipation was almost always more stressful than the reality. It was time to look into the eyes that had been watching him ever since he emerged from the notch and came down from the ridge.

  The man by the fire had set up the temporary camp on a section where the hillside flattened to form a small plateau tilting to the north before again falling away dizzily. He remained standing, watchful, as McClain rode in, but he was a veiled shape. Seen from close up, the smoke from the fire was more substantial. For a while it screened the man so that McClain saw him as if through a window encrusted with dirt or festooned with sunlit cobwebs.

  He dismounted some yards away. Stayed by his horse. Acrid smoke bit into the soft membranes of his nose. Eyes watering, he glanced towards the rock overhang he had seen from above. The drowsy horse was standing with head hanging. Its coat was a rich sheen of sweat. In the deep shadows the metal rings on its rig glinted like diamonds threaded on a loose cord.

  The man by the fire coughed. More of a gasp. It sounded as if he had trouble breathing. He had walked around through the thin smoke, carelessly kicking smouldering embers, and was standing with hands on hips. Smaller than McClain had expected. Shabby leather boots creased and turned over at the heel. A black hat with its too-tall crown badly dented, the rest of his clothing rough enough to have been stolen from a nester’s scarecrow.

  And McClain had been wrong about the field glasses. Sunlight had reflected from misshapen wire-framed spectacles. Thick lenses made the dark eyes peering through them as round as an owl’s, but a close look told McClain that bird’s fabled wisdom was missing. This man was no genius, and the gasping laugh had been a humourless tic.

  Nevertheless. . . .

  McClain was at once at a disadvantage, because the little man was armed. The six-gun he wore on his hip was as old as the hills – Paterson Belt pistol? Dragoon Colt? Whichever, it was a heavy weapon that could be a danger to the shooter and his target, which did nobody any favours.

  ‘An empty mountainside, a thousand square miles of wasteland and two men meet.’ The man, now with his back to the fire, poked a forefinger to settle his spectacles. ‘What’s the odds on that happening? You on my trail?’

  ‘Open land; there is no trail, but the question suggests you’ve got a troubled conscience.’ McClain spread his arms wide, letting the man see that his pants where held up by a belt, but the belt that would have carried a gun was missing. ‘Unarmed. If I wanted to hurt you I’d have to kick you to death.’

  ‘If you could get close enough.’ He looked past McClain. ‘There’s a rifle in your saddle boot.’

  ‘And a folding knife in my pants pocket.’

  ‘Take the rifle out by the butt, drop it and step away.’

  McClain could hear the two horses breathing, hating the heat, and the small, strange man’s breathing, like the rasp of sandpaper on hard wood. Insects were humming. The gentle bubbling of the coffee in the blackened pot suspended over the fire made the skin dream of that distant creek, of cooling water. Background noises. Overall, it was so quiet on that mountainside that deep inside his head McClain could hear the hiss of his own pulse. It was too fast. Had scarcely slowed in Lord knew how many hours.

  ‘I’ve had enough of being pushed around,’ he said at last. ‘If you can’t see your way to giving a thirsty stranger a cup of your coffee, I’ll ride on. But the rifle stays where it is. The only way you could change that situation is by using that big pistol that’s dragging your body askew, but I doubt if you’ve got the strength.’

  The little man appeared unfazed by the tough talk, and McClain couldn’t understand his confidence. As if reading McClain’s thoughts he grinned, showing a gap where someone had knocked out his two upper front teeth and left the rest to yellow decay. Spittle glistened on his lips, and McClain thought of a slavering, rabid mad dog and knew that, yes, here there was danger.

  ‘Strength is something you’re going to need a lot of,’ the little man said enigmatically. ‘Go get your coffee.’

  Walking past him it was impossible to avoid his stink. The man never washed or, like that mad dog that had come to McClain’s mind, enjoyed rolling in filth. Now acutely aware of the danger of leaving the man behind him, McClain turned a little to keep him at the edge of his vision. Then he crouched and reached out for the coffee pot, held it in a gloved hand and slopped scalding black liquid into a cup he’d picked from the edge of the fire’s glowing embers. It hissed, puffing steam like a Yellowstone geyser. When McClain put the cup to his lips the hot tin seared tender skin and he swore softly, rocking back on his haunches.

  It was when he put his free hand back on the hard ground for balance that McClain heard the snap of a six-gun being cocked. Not behind him: the grotesque little man’s ancient weapon was still pouched. But . . . was McClain letting control of a puzzling situation slip away from him, and beginning to make mistakes?

  The answer to that was yes. But the metallic click of a pistol’s hammer being pulled back told him his big mistake had been in accepting the horse in the shaded lee of the rock overhang as belonging to the little man, and looking no closer. He did so now, peering into the shadows, immediately linking what he saw to the dead, putrefying animal on the high ground.

  There was a second man there. He was sitting back against the rock with his knees up. The brim of his Stetson was pulled low, hiding his eyes. In the deep shade of that rock overhang, the six-gun he must have used earlier to put his or his partner’s injured horse out of its misery reflected the dazzling light of the sun, the metal glittering with menace. He was holding it casually in two hands, his hands resting on his knees. But casual didn’t mean careless. From where McClain hunkered, off-balance, the muzzle of that cocked pistol was a yawning black hole seeking something to swallow.

  ‘Well now, if it isn’t Deputy McClain of Macedo’s Flat,’ the man said, his tone scornful. ‘Murdered his own sweet wife, stuck a big knife in her breast and left her to bleed out. What the hell are you doing on the loose, McClain? Couldn’t Dexter hold you in his jail?’

  ‘Marshal Dexter’s no fool. He knows when he’s made a mistake.’

  ‘There was no mistake. The whole town knows you killed her. For a crime like that a man should be strung up, his body twisting at the end of a rope.’

  ‘When I catch the man who killed my wife,’ McClain said, ‘I’ll make damn sure I follow your advice.’

  ‘You still professing innocence and swearing vengeance?’ The gunman chuckled. ‘Well, it don’t matter none. Stuck out here in the hot high country, you’ll have enough trouble catching your breath.’

  ‘Which notion must have scared the hell out of one of you when a horse snapped a leg. You and the mad dog here, riding double? Hell, that’s not a pretty thought.’

  ‘Idea never crossed my mind. Got an outlook on life tells me something always turns up. Seems I was right again, ’cause out of the blue I’ve got me a fresh horse
.’

  He stood up quickly, pistol hanging loose, stepped out into the heat with the grace of a cat. His eyes, visible now, were a clear, cold blue. He was tall, whipcord thin, dressed in worn range clothing that was as clean as his partner’s was filthy. His gunbelt and holster, revealed in full when he got to his feet, were of old supple leather that had seen a lot of care. The cartridges in their loops were of brass bright enough to have been polished but, shiny or dull, just one of them would be enough to stop a man in his tracks and McClain had nowhere to run.

  The gunman grinned as he lifted the pistol and centred it on McClain’s chest. McClain saw a knuckle whiten on the trigger. Still off-balance, still down on one knee by the campfire, he was a thirty-year-old man knowing what was left of his life could be measured in fractions of a second. Instinctively, without thought, he acted to lengthen that miserable span. Using the muscles in his thighs, he kicked hard and drove his body sideways. His eyes were fixed on the man with the gun. He saw his grin widen, the beginnings of a sad shake of the head as his finger eased on the six-gun’s trigger – and McClain knew he’d made another mistake, this one fatal.

  His desperate attempt to get out of the line of fire had taken him too close to the mad dog. Exactly what the gunman had intended. Realization dawned. McClain twisted, looked back and fell awkwardly in the little man’s shadow. He had that big pistol out of its holster and lifted high. It was a heavy hunk of steel, made weightier by a cylinder packed with shells. His yellow eyeteeth were bared like fangs as he brought the gun down in a vicious blow. The side of the barrel hit McClain’s head with a power that even the felt of his hat couldn’t soften. All the strength leaked from his muscles. He flopped like an empty grain sack.