In Danger's Shadow: Cassandra Wilde Western Adventure (Half Breed Haven Book 2)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  “Ow, damn!” She cursed as he disappeared over the ridge. She hurried after him though, getting up to the top of the hill only to meet a trail leading off into the bluffs; the kid was nowhere in sight.

  “No way can I find him in that maze of rocks and cliffs. Maybe the kid is as bad as they are all saying,” she told herself disgustedly as she still felt the sting from the rock and headed back to the house. She needed to find out more about the area if she was going to hunt him down. Cassandra was unable to shake the image of the bandage from his arm…had that been where she had shot him in the hotel room?

  She was in for a greater shock when she entered Pops’ room though. The once-agile man now lay still, a lifeless corpse.

  “Pops is dead Cassandra, and no wonder. I got a whiff of that snake oil. He was drinking arsenic. He had a seizure as soon as you left,” The doctor said in a surprisingly calm voice. He gestured with one hand while the other was in his pocket.

  “But, but Pops seemed fine when I went out!” she exclaimed, saddened by another death of someone she could have gotten to know better, and there was no escaping the deep fear she always experienced when an elder passed away. The knowledge haunted her that she would someday lose her own beloved father—the bedrock of the entire diverse Wilde family.

  “That’s what I thought, too. He insisted on taking another swallow of that snake oil to prove it was harmless. That last swig did it to him.” he explained.

  “That little killer. I don’t understand why Pops took him in if he was so bad,” she said.

  “Because Pops’ heart was as soft as it was weak. Pops killed Cruz’s father and uncle when the two tried to jump his claim. Pops felt conscious stricken about it and so he adopted him,” the doctor said.

  Cassandra shook her head. It all still seemed a bit strange. It was as if she was missing something.

  “So now this kid is getting his revenge? Now after all these years living with the Thorpe family?” she asked, trying to get everything straight in her mind.

  “That’s right! Nothing else explains the bullets in Chris’s back and the arsenic in the bottle. You’ve got to face facts; the boy is a fiend!” the doctor told her, eyeing her closely.

  “I guess it looks that way, Doc. I’m going out to bring him in!” she told the man, still not sure in her mind about the evidence. She so badly wanted to apprehend the bastard who murdered her beau, but her sense of justice demanded she get it right. There was enough circumstantial evidence to grab up the kid. It just didn’t feel right, she thought as she went out and untied her horse. As she rode past the Thorpe’s’ neighbor, she noticed a man who must be Mr. Ting that Cruz had mentioned was their cook and had apparently returned to town. The man was pouring something from a small bottle into a dish for a waiting cat. It sparked something in her mind and she had to ask.

  “Hello Mr. Ting. What is that you’re giving your cat?” Cassandra asked.

  “Snake oil medicine. Cruz, the funny kid, gave it to me the other day for my sick cat. Don’t know if it’s making him better, but it sure makes him feel fine!” The man said and laughed.

  “Wait Mr. Ting. That’s poison you’ve been giving your pet! There’s arsenic in the snake oil!” She shouted while her instincts told her this was the piece of the puzzle she was missing.

  “Arsenic? Good heavens, no! Snake oil medicine is liquor. I tried it before giving it to him. Good stuff too, rye whiskey. My cat drunk,” the man finished, and he laughed heartily.

  Cassandra wished she could find the amusement she once might have but instead remained somber as she began to formulate what had happened to Pops and possibly Chris as well. She decided to go back into the Thorpe’s’ place. She knew that was where the answers were.

  “You’re back? I thought you were going to find Cruz?” the doctor said, looking surprised that she was there.

  “I was, Doc. But I learned something. There couldn’t have been arsenic in the bottle. Cruz fed to the neighbor and his cat. The animal is only drunk, and Mr. Ting is fine also,” she told the man. Dr. Nels Fitzroy absorbed her statement and began to glance around the room nervously.

  “Well, somebody must have added arsenic to the snake oil. Pops is dead, isn’t he?” the doctor asked rhetorically.

  “He is dead. Sure enough. Yeah. The mystery is—who killed him?” Cassandra said, eyeing the physician suspiciously. He met her eyes and she could see the knowledge come to him that she was looking at him as a culprit. He turned to gaze out the window and his shoulders slumped.

  “Okay, fine, I will solve it. I killed him and his stupid son, Chris too! What’s more, Cassandra, I am not done killing. There is you and the boy to take care of next!” he told her as he spun around, a gun suddenly in his hand. She cursed herself for not considering him more of a threat. It seemed Chris’s death had rattled her far more than she could ever have imagined to make such a rookie mistake. She raised her hands slowly. Watching for a chance to turn the tables with the six-guns strapped to her waist.

  “I was beginning to think you were behind it, Doc. Why ever would you want to kill the Thorpes?” she asked, to get him talking and buy her some time.

  Keep him talking, she thought to herself. Moving sideways so he had to keep an eye on her. One of his arms was sagging and appeared to give him trouble.

  “I’m mentioned third in Pops ‘will after Chris and Cruz! After all I have done in keeping Pops alive for the past ten years, I don’t get better consideration than a Mexican stray. Now I want to reap my rewards. I am tired of practicing medicine for whining old folks who could do the world a favor by dying. I aim to retire and this house Pops built with part of his gold will be quite a nice place to do it in,” he finished with a maniacal gleam in his gray eyes.

  “But where did those rumors about Cruz come from? A lot of people in town had a story to tell about him,” Cassandra said. At this point, she wouldn’t put anything past the murdering polecat. She was not surprised by his answer.

  “I spread those rumors, you dumb woman! I had a plan. I was going to build up a monstrous case against the little stray. His sort don’t belong among decent folk anyhow. Now folks will believe he killed you too!” He finished with a triumphant note to his voice. They were interrupted as Mr. Ting came running into the room.

  “Quick, Missy, Cruz fell off cliff. Hurt himself bad, he no speak!” the little man cried seemingly in panic. A gun suddenly roared before Mr. Ting could finish and the sound was almost deafening in the closed room. The cook dropped like a dead bird a second later, without a sound.

  “Thanks for the information, Mr. Ting. That will fit in with my plans. People are going to think that after he killed everyone here, he ran off and fell to his death or jumped out of guilt. They will believe me when I tell them that. I am respected in town after all,” the evil doctor said, bragging.

  “You pill-pushing maniac! You shot Mr. Ting in cold blood!” Cassandra said feeling fury build within her. She felt no fear, she was too angry for that.

  “Don’t be envious, I am going to do the same to you. I’ve got a score to settle with you, Cassandra. You shot me in the arm at the hotel. It’s lucky I could staunch the bleeding myself. I barely got down the back stairs and to the street to supposedly help Chris before you went charging in there. A little painkiller is getting me through. No one will ever know,” he said triumphantly. She nodded, realizing now how he had favored his arm since the murder of Chris. Missing that before she once again chocked up to her grief. Suddenly the air crackled with a plaintive shout.

  “Get him, Miss Cassandra, he’s a murdering dog…” Cruz began as he jumped in through an open window. She saw him throw something that hit the doctor’s arm at the same time the doctor shot at him and he fell to the floor. The rock he had thrown rattled across the floor. Cassandra went for her guns, but froze when the doctor turned with his own, pointing again at her. He was fast, she had to give him that. He bent over the kid afterwards with a proud grin, his gun still pointed intently at h
er.

  “You, you whelp! It was you who sent the cook in with that lie! You wanted to save Cassandra but all you did was get him killed! Don’t draw, Wilde. One shot and the kid is finished here and now!” the doctor told her, waving the gun back and forth between his two targets.

  “You’re loco, Doc. You can’t get away with a murder rampage like this!” she told him. “You’ll be stretching rope before the week is out.”

  “You bet he won’t,” Cruz said, suddenly leaping up. “I was shamming. I only got a shoulder crease. Get him, Miss!” Cruz hollered, distracting the doctor just enough. Both of her guns came out like lightning before the mad doctor knew what had hit him.

  “Alright, Doc, surrender or die!” She told him triumphantly.

  “I didn’t come this far to give in to a whining female. Die, bitch!” he shouted, swiftly turning towards her once more, but it was too late. She fired twice and fast, hitting him both times. The man sagged to the floor and died almost instantly from the double chest wounds.

  “Sorry, Doc, I have come too far as well, and I am faster than you could ever have dreamed of being,” she told the dead man without any regret. The bastard had it coming, she thought, holstering her weapons. She went and helped Cruz up from the floor afterwards, admiring him for his braveness. He still had a bandage on his arm and she wondered why he had it.

  “Why the bandage, Cruz?” she asked.

  “I burned it yesterday making the turkey soup for Pops,” His voice trailed off as he looked about the room in sorrow where his adopted father and neighbor laid dead. Cassandra could see tears welling up in his eyes, but being a young man, he did not want to show it. Cassandra didn’t believe that all tears were a sign of weakness. She thought Cruz shouldn’t either. Before she could say anything though, he started sobbing and fled out of the room.

  “Cruz? Wait!” Cassandra called after him but received no reply.

  Cassandra looked around the room one last time. Three dead bodies. A senseless loss of life all over greed. The power of the almighty dollar. She sighed, knowing there was nothing she could do but stop by the county seat on her way back to Alamieda and explain it all to the sheriff so the law would know that Cruz was not to blame. Cassandra could do that much. She bent and blew out a lit oil lamp before shutting the door behind her, leaving the room in silence as she walked away.

  PART THREE

  * * *

  On the Run

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  Near Godspell

  Arizona Territory

  1873

  Supervised under the cold eyes of grim guards, convicts from Claymore prison labored away at man-killing tasks. Swinging their hammers and pickaxes into hard stone, each strike shuddered through their souls. They had worked for hours, yet nothing seemed to assure them of rest except for the sun in the distant sky that was gradually dropping to hide behind the seamless horizons. Eventually, when the brightness in the sky dimmed and the sun gave farewell rays of orange, one of the guards blew his whistle, urging every convict to drop his tool and get in line. Every man, briefly straining tired muscles and backs first, slowly formed a line, preparing to trudge up the trail along the bluff above the river, back to the prison.

  “Come on, men. Pick it up, it is almost chow time. Novack, close it up there! Don’t try any smart tricks,” one of the guards told the big criminal in line who was slowing down the pace. The strong black-haired man, Brent Novack, turned slightly to look at the guard, a mischievous smile creeping onto his face.

  “I don’t know any smart ones, this is probably a dumb one,” he said conversationally, right before he launched himself against the men between him and the guard. It started a domino effect and all of them fell back, allowing the prisoner to sprint forward and dive over the edge of the bluff towards the river below.

  “Get him!” The guard yelled to his fellow officer at the head of the line, sprinting to his feet and rushing to the edge. The other guard was firing his Winchester down into the water but no blood or body emerged. There was a ripple in the flowing water below where the convict went in, but nothing could be seen. The guards spun their attention back to the convicts lest they try anything while they were distracted.

  “Sound the alarm to the other work crews! We’ve got to assemble a posse down the river where he’d come out!” the guard shouted as he made sure the rest of the convicts were being herded back to the prison wagon before he joined the others preparing to hunt along the river.

  Time passed as the search went on until a cry ruptured the air. “I think I got something!” The guard heard from a man down the river from him. As he moved towards the man though, he saw the other man correct himself, shaking his head as if to convince himself that he had indeed been wrong.

  “Never mind, it ain’t him, just a damn log. He probably crawled out among those rocks downstream.”

  “Let’s go!” The other guard called with a hiss, as all of the hunting posse subsequently headed downstream.

  An escaped convict case wasn’t one to let loose for too long…

  ***

  Cassandra had to stop for the night on her journey home. It had been a rough few days and the murder of her beau had managed to devastate her. At least, she was glad for the chance to travel by herself and figure things out. Once she left the town behind her, she had spent a great deal of time thinking, staring absentmindedly at the various boulders along the route she took and finally finding a way to calm her nerves by thinking of all the happiness she felt when Chris was alive. This had made her unaware of the passing hour until it had grown late.

  Immediately she noticed the descending sun, she quickly searched for a camping spot, resolving to choose one close to the plied road and surrounded by various boulders, to stop for the night and start a fire.

  She was busy rousing the fire when she noticed that she wasn’t alone.

  Once she finished getting the camp set up to her satisfaction, she thought about what she should do about her new companion thinking that it was perhaps time to get acquainted. After a while though, she decided differently, noticing that he wasn’t her only her concern. It appeared other company was drawing near her camp from the road and her face-to-face meeting with him would have to wait. The approaching men were two riders on a horseback and they seemed to be cautiously riding towards her camp.

  “It looks like Sheriff Teal from Carlyle Springs and another gent,” she said out loud. She thought she heard a rustle in the bushes on the other side of the camp, but it stopped quickly as the two men drew up to her. She noticed both men were tense and that with the fire behind her, the evening’s shadows made who she was indiscernible from their vantage point.

  “Hi, Sheriff. Its Cassandra Wilde of Cedar Ledge,” she called, as they got close, raising a hand. Both men seemed to relax at the sound of her voice.

  “Oh, Miss Wilde, I am glad to see you.” the sheriff called as they halted their mounts in front of her.

  “Dismount and have a seat, gentlemen. I was about to cook up something for dinner,” she invited them graciously.

  “No time, Miss Wilde. This here is Warden Wade Carrington of Claymore Prison. One of his prisoners escaped this afternoon. A kinda nice young fella, name of Brent Novack. Since he started his sentence a year ago, I heard he’s been swearing to bust out some day to prove he had been framed for the crime,” the sheriff told her.

  “Bah, all outlaws say that. Novack was a thief and a killer. When I catch him, he’ll feel the lash for this!” the Warden said with a quick, disgusted snort.

  “Well, I reckon he won’t be getting past here without Cassandra Wilde seeing him. She got eyes like a hawk,” the sheriff said, complimenting Cassandra. The warden eyed her for a moment and then nodded.

  “Keep those eyes open, Wilde. I’ll pay $500.00 reward for Novack, dead or alive! Preferably dead!” the warden said as the two men began to ride off but the sheriff suddenly turned his horse and trotted back to her and leaned in on his s
addle.

  “News from Tucson is that some mystery woman sent that Daylight Dandy feller on his way to a pine box. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” his eyes betraying merriment.

  For the first time since Chris had been gunned down she felt the corners of her mouth turn upward. “Not a thing, Sheriff Teal. Not a thing.” The Sheriff and her father, Judge Wilde, were old friends and he knew all about Cassandra’s special work for the Arizona government. He said nothing more but left her with a wink as he rode to catch up with the warden. Her smile faded as she considered the warden as she turned back to towards the fire. Carrington, was a hard man, but a familiar type as well.

  “I’ve seen Carrington’s type before. He doesn’t speak without bluster, but I guess a prison needs a tough boss. What do you think?” Cassandra asked as she spun and drew her weapons, pointing both guns at the bushes she knew someone was hiding in. The bushes rustled slightly.

  “Come on out, Novack, and explain yourself! If you can, I’ll feed you some grub. Otherwise, I’m fixing to start shooting in your general direction,” she told the hidden man.

  For a while, nothing moved. Then the bushes rustled a final time in response and a strong looking, dark haired man stepped out of the bushes. He held his hands up, looking tired.

  “You sure you want to talk to me, ma’am? A person can get their neck stretched for harboring a wanted criminal,” Novack asked.

  “Call me the curious type. Word has it you’re innocent. I want to hear more about that. Now, since I have already harbored you, I won’t get my neck stretched any further if I feed you. How are you at cooking?” she asked and holstered her weapons, while picking up one of her saddlebags.

  “Fair to middlin,” Novack told her. Cassandra tossed him the saddlebag immediately, hoping she wasn’t being stupid.