One Notch to Death

by Matt Chisholm

  Issuing new and classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!

  Mart Storm rode into the shadow of death, braced by two gunmen, caught in their crossfire. The order had gone out – “Kill the Storms. Cut then down one by one. Start with Mart. He’s the most dangerous one of them all.”

  Mart was through will killing. He wanted no more gunplay. But fate and a beautiful woman decided otherwise. He fled into the kills, covered his tracks, twisted and turned, but death stalked close at his heels.

  The Storm family cleaned their guns and stepped into the saddle to bring peace to the hills, riding shoulder to shoulder against the men who manipulated the law and cut a swathe of blood through the cattle country.

  ONE NOTCH TO DEATH

  STORM 4

  By Matt Chisholm

  Copyright © 1972 by P. C. Watts

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: October 2013

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover image © 2013 by Westworld Designs

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Other titles in the STORM FAMILY series by

  MATT CHISHOLM

  STAMPEDE

  HARD TEXAS TRAIL

  RIDERS WEST

  All available from Piccadilly Publishing

  Chapter One

  Mart Storm stayed still in the darkness, listening for the movement inside the building, gun in hand, ready for the quick shot that might be the only thing between life and death for him.

  The situation was not a new one for him and in that moment of danger he accepted it without thought. A man who had lived as he had lived grew to be like that. The remorse and the worry would come later.

  When the door didn’t open and the men did not appear, when no shot winged from out of the darkness, his hand felt for his horse’s line around the hitching rail and unfastened it. The animal was a one-man horse and it knew that something was afoot. As soon as Mart vaulted into the saddle, it turned, got its legs under it and ran with scarcely a touch from the spur.

  Mart got his feet into the stirrup irons and turned in the saddle. He saw the splash of light as the door was flung open, saw the light almost blotted out as the men spilled out into the open. Faintly, he heard the useless popping of the guns.

  He let Darky run on for a mile and halted to hear if there was any pursuit. He heard nothing. He did not expect to. Those men back there knew him and they would not risk his gun in the dark.

  He put the gelding in motion again, going at an easier pace now, for, though he knew the trail, he had been travelling at a risky pace in the dark and his first thought was always for a horse.

  Instinctively, he had taken the Denver trail, instinctively now that trouble had come to him, he had gone away from home, in the opposite direction to the family. The last thing he wanted was for them to be involved in this. But, as the brown horse paced north on the Denver trail, he knew that they were involved. They were Storms and he was a Storm, right down to his sox.

  He had killed a man and the man’s friends had been present. They were out for blood and it was likely that they’d go to the Storm place for it. His blood.

  He left the trail and turned east in the direction of the Broken Spur country, letting the brown pick its way through the rough country that dipped away from the main trail. He was still undecided what he would do next. He knew he’d run. He owed that to his brother Will and the family, but he was without supplies and Darky wouldn’t last too long if it came to headlong flight.

  But there was something more that drew him home to the Storm place—he couldn’t run out without a word to Will and Martha. He owed them too much. Will had set his heart on his younger brother leaving the wild life of the owl-hoot trail. Mart hated to think that Will might decide that he had gone to the bad again. Will was the kind of man you acted straight with.

  What else could he have done that night? he asked himself. His instincts prevented him from crawling to another man. He was not considering other men’s regard for him as much as his own regard for himself.

  One trivial decision and a man’s whole life could change.

  The whole bunch had a hard day. He, Will, George, Will’s youngest boy, and Pete Hasso, the hired man had ridden home tired to the bone. Clay, the eldest boy, and his brother Jody they had left White Water where Clay lived with his wife on a homestead claim, but which the Storms used really as a line camp. This way they were in a fair way to sitting on the main water sources of the Three Creeks valley.

  They reached headquarters and Martha had food ready for them as she always did. And it was good as it always was. They ate in the house, the eastern half where Will lived with Martha and the two girls, Kate and Melissa. Kate the beauty, the one no man living could pass without staring at, nineteen years old and, as Martha said, if the girl wasn’t married off pretty soon, men would start shooting each other over her. Melissa, fifteen, pug-nosed; no beauty like her sister, but a child of strong character, willful, spoiled by everybody in the camp.

  There had not been much talk at supper, the men were too tired for talk. Pete Hasso who had joined the crew to bring up the herd from Texas the year before sat and stared at Kate all through the meal. He did that every meal he ate at that table. Kate made out she didn’t notice. Mart watched the show in wonder. In every other way, Pete seemed a levelheaded rational man. He was so gone on the girl that when he was around her he was like a drunk short on wits. Mart felt a mite sorry for him—Will had declared that no thirty and found cowhand was going to spark his daughter.

  After the meal, Will and George played checkers. Kate and Martha started sewing—there was always some to make or mend in a cow outfit. Melissa played some obscure game with a paper and pencil. Pete Hasso mooned around staring at Kate.

  Mart thought: To hell with it for some reason that was obscure to him at the time, told everybody goodnight and walked out. He turned right outside, crossed the dogtrot between the two buildings that made up the Texas-style house and entered the Western half where he batched with George and Pete. He lit the lamp and sat at the table reading a book for a short while. But he didn’t concentrate. He decided that either he’d turn in or go raise a little hell.

  There was only one place to raise hell in between Three Creeks and Denver and that was at Spring Creek. So he turned out the lamp, went outside, saddled up old Darky and headed north along the Denver trail. It was the old restlessness that did it. The restlessness that was the difference between him and his elder brother. Will was back there playing checkers in the midst of his family, content. Mart was on the road to Spring Creek where Andy Grebb sold bad liquor and worse women.

  Andy called it a ranch. It was a way station on the Denver trail, it was a store that supplied a wide area of the country, it was a saloon and a horse corral, it was a brothel. If there was any need to be supplied in that wild country, Grebb supplied it. You could buy guns, ammunition and on some days a man to do your killing for you. If anything existed that Grebb didn’t have, he’d obtain it. If there was a profit in it. He’d sell his own mother for profit, men said.

  There were a dozen horses outside when Mart rode
up. Maybe more in the corral on the far side of the long sprawling string of buildings. The corral that was the constant temptation of wandering Indians and white horse-thieves. Grebb liked horseflesh as much as he liked the flesh of women and he kept some really fancy stock.

  Sensible men kept clear of Grebb. Not because he himself constituted a physical danger, but that anybody who crossed him was liable to find himself leaving the country, broke or dead. At least that’s what men said. And men are liars as we all know.

  There was a lot of noise going on in the part of the ranch that Grebb used as a saloon. The lights were bright, there was a roar of talk, the tuneless tinkling of a piano, the voices of several men bawling discordantly in drunken song.

  Mart almost turned back. Only almost. He opened the door and went in.

  The place was thick with smoke and liquor fumes. The atmosphere was stifling after the clean freshness of the hill air. Mart coughed on it.

  There were maybe a couple of dozen men there, a good-sized bunch for a country in which men were scarce and women scarcer. It was a rough place, belonging to the kind of country it had grown in. No finesse here. Grebb had been here long enough to build up a powerful business, but not long enough to build a fancy place. And it suited the men as it was. Bare green wood everywhere; the bar no more than a few planks of curling wood across barrels; the one table, crude and home-made, most of the chairs were packing-cases. The whiskey was in a barrel and nobody dared guess in what manner it had been concocted. Men with imagination or squeamish stomachs did not drink it. Beer was as yet non-existent. The custom was to drink fast and get drunk fast. You approached the bar, demanded drink without frills and offered a drink to the men standing nearest you. The man who drank alone was a pariah. Not to offer a drink was a deadly insult. Men had died for it. But not inside. Grebb didn’t allow trouble inside. The use of knife, boot or gun was strictly for out front so that there was no material loss to Grebb.

  The man Grebb didn’t enforce the law physically himself. One word from him was usually enough to quell the hardiest spirit, but if that failed, Charlie Stott’s services were called upon.

  Charlie was a bald-headed man with the face of an aggrieved wolf, the habits of a habitual predator, the morals of a coyote and a never satisfied taste for violence. He stood two inches under six feet, showed little sign of muscle, had the palest blue eyes and never smiled. He thought that Andy Grebb was something akin to God.

  Mart took in the scene before him. Habit had made him acutely observant. The years of evasion and seeking had given him inbuilt instincts for danger. He noted that there were only two of Grebb’s women present, which meant that two of them were upstairs with customers. Charlie Stott was at the bar, listening to Grebb laying down the law. Grebb liked the sound of his own voice. It was a soft and persuasive one, belying the size of the man, the great spread of shoulders, the powerful hands and the heavy gut that swelled out over his low-slung belt. Grebb was. Mart thought, nothing short of a pig. He dressed like a bum and he smelled like a man who loves whiskey and hates water.

  At the bar were three men.

  Mart knew them all. All Broken Spur riders from the valley north of the Storm country. Men the Storms had clashed with and defeated bloodily the previous year. An uneasy peace existed between the two outfits. No trouble there. No cowhand in his right mind would start anything with Mart Storm. They had seen his gun at work.

  There was a man standing in the far right-hand corner of the large room, his back to the wall. He carried a short repeating carbine in the crook of his arm, a fact that marked him at once. It was the sign of a man who lived in a certain way. It made the man conspicuous. But his conspicuity didn’t worry him; his safety was his concern. He was a man who lived by the gun and the carbine was his weapon.

  Mart should have known the man at once. Maybe he was tired. His reactions were slow. The rifle should have given the man a name.

  Mart nodded to the men who knew him, reached the bar and said: ‘Evenin’,’ to the three Broken Spur men.

  Grebb stopped talking to Stott. He beamed his fleshy false smile at Mart and greeted him. Mart nodded.

  ‘Drink, boys,’ he said to the Broken Spur men.

  They hesitated, not sure how far a truce went. Did it allow drinks between the participants? Then they reckoned when a man like Mart offered, it did. They accepted his offer. The cow-licked barkeep offered the bottle and a glass. The cowhands poured. Mart poured. They pledged each other, they drank. The Broken Spur men seemed relieved that the truce was sealed with a drink. They were safe for the evening if they kept to safe topics. Mart started talking cows, the weather, grass, everything that interested a cattleman. They responded. The talk was as easy as it could be between them. They drank again. Mart became a little bored. This didn’t constitute a gay evening for him. He looked around at the women and decided ‘no’, he wasn’t in such a bad way he wanted that kind.

  Grebb came along the bar, hailing Mart as a welcome equal, a little unctuous just the same. Mart reckoned he could live without the man’s company and wished him to hell.

  He was rescued by a man calling Grebb from the other side of the room. Mart poured and drank again. He was starting to feel good. Even the Broken Spur men were starting to look like nice friendly fellows.

  Somebody pulled at his sleeve. He turned to find a small mousy man at his side. Clem Atbrough. An apology for manhood. Nobody knew what he did for a living. Certainly he had never been known to buy a drink for himself or anybody else. He looked and smelled as if he hadn’t changed his clothes since he put them on. Which was most likely the truth.

  He whispered—

  ‘Mr. Storm, don’t look around. Don’t even look like I’m talkin’ to you.’ There was a frightened urgency in his voice. He had information for Mart. It might or might not be of any value, but the price would be a drink. Maybe two.

  Mart signed to the barman for another glass. It came. Mart pushed it with a finger in Atbrough’s direction. Clem looked at it and up at Mart.

  ‘You want it filled?’ Mart said.

  ‘I sure do, Mr. Storm.’

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘The man in the corner, Mr. Storm. With the rifle.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He was askin’ for you.’

  Mart thought about that. He slid his mind over riflemen. His memory halted on one name. Pat Shaw. A man never seen without his rifle. He had never seen the man, but he had heard men talk about him. Most of it was lies, of course. It always was. But the kernel of truth was there hidden among the dross of legend.

  The outstanding fact about the man was his cold violence. None of the tales told about him had ever described him as showing anger. Softly spoken, gentle-mannered. Deadly. Yet, strange as it might seem, never on the wrong side of the law. At least not so far as the law was aware. Certainly not a man to tangle with. On more than one occasion, he had served as a peace officer; several times he had earned money as a bounty hunter. The worst tale told of him was of the killing of Apache men and women below the Border for the Mexican bounty on them. He was, Mart surmised, a man who liked to kill. The country and the times allowed him to do so legally.

  Mart poured Clem a drink. The little man put the glass to his lips and the whiskey disappeared. He sighed a little.

  ‘Did he say why he wanted me?’

  ‘No, Mr. Storm.’

  ‘Did he come in alone?’

  ‘Three other fellers, Mr. Storm.’

  ‘They here now?’

  ‘No, sir. I don’t see ’em.’

  It could mean anything, but just the same Mart didn’t like it. He had a past and this could be a little piece of that past catching up with him.

  He wondered Whether he should take another drink and decided against it. It might be that he would want his head clear.

  He toyed with the idea of approaching Shaw, but dismissed it. If there were three other men around, he wanted them where he could see them.

  Clem
plucked at his sleeve again.

  ‘There’s one of ’em now, Mr. Storm,’ he whispered.

  Mart looked around and saw a man standing in the doorway to the right of the bar. Plainly he had come downstairs from the rooms where the women lived and entertained. He was a big man with ginger hair and Mart knew him. He had last seen him in El Paso and the time had been something to remember. The man’s name was Stu Aintree and he had a little more courage than sense. He kept bad company and when he ran short of spending money he was never too particular where he obtained more. He was in his middle twenties and he was vain. Mart was surprised that he kept company with a man like Shaw. Somehow the two didn’t seem to fit together.

  Mart remembered Aintree because in El Paso, Mart had shot him.

  The whole thing had been stupid and Mart remembered the incident without pride. Aintree, the erstwhile badman, had simply braced Mart Storm whom other men dare not challenge. Which proved that he had more courage than sense.

  At the time, Mart had been younger and less experienced. Since then he had learned that a man should be reluctant to draw his gun, but, once it was drawn, it had to kill. If it didn’t, you might as well not carry a gun. Mart was what might be called a reluctant gunman. Now. He had grown tired of violence. The last year spent with his brother Will and his family had most likely done that for him. Not that Will didn’t have sand, or that he would back down from any man. But Will regarded violence in a different light. To him it was an evil necessity in a harsh land.

  After years on the owl-hoot trail, after years of living with his hand never far from the butt of his gun, Mart wanted out. He had first used his gun to stay free. Years of running had taught him that there was no freedom in being a fugitive; it was only another form of captivity. He knew that now his aim was to find a good woman, raise some kids and mind his own business.

  Just the same, his old instincts were still alive and he knew trouble when he saw it.