by Paul Bagdon
© 2003 by Paul Bagdon
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revell.com
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3951-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
This novel is dedicated to a grand group of people who are not only accomplished writers, but treasured friends:
Bonnie Frankenberger Carole Young
Willow Kirchner Louise Whitney
Art Maurer Sid O’Connor
Linda Pepe Margaret Swann
Emily Altmann Roz Pullara
Linda Terra Loren Adams
Joe Callan Ginny Miller
* * *
CONTENTS
* * *
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
* * *
1
* * *
Lee Morgan leaned forward in her saddle, asking for yet more speed from the coal black stallion she was riding at a full gallop. Tears streamed from her eyes—both from fear and from slashing through the oppressive prairie air at the speed of Slick’s fastest gait—and were whipped from her face before they reached halfway down her cheeks.
There was another report, this one closer. And then another. The next shot she heard was much louder. Through her tears and the waves of heat rising from the prairie floor, she saw a colored banner. It seemed impossibly far ahead.
She whispered to Slick, the finest horse she had owned in her forty-two years. He was, in fact, the foundation stud horse at her horse-breeding and training operation, the Busted Thumb. Now she feared she was asking Slick for more than he could give.
Her voice transmitted her fear, and in response, the stallion stretched his impossibly long stride even farther. His hooves seemed barely to touch the prairie floor as he coursed over it, his body extended, his head lowered so that it was barely higher than his massive chest. He ran like a greyhound pursuing its prey.
Slick swung sharply to his left without slowing, sliding his body to the side rather than turning it, to avoid a series of prairie dog holes Lee couldn’t see in her tear-obscured vision. She barely noticed Slick’s maneuver—she merely moved with the animal as if she were a part of him.
Slick’s body was covered with sweat, glistening like a polished black diamond. Lee could feel his lungs expand as he drew in great draughts of air, and the rhythm, she realized, was too rapid—she was pushing Slick too hard, for too long.
She applied leg pressure, begging the animal for more speed.
The sight she had seen a half hour ago—the blood, the pallor of the man’s face, the tiny throb of pulse like that of a wounded bird—flashed before her. Then the rolling boom of a heavy-gauge rifle reached her ears over the pounding of Slick’s hooves. “A little more,” she gasped to her horse. “Just a little more, Slick!”
But Slick’s gait was less steady. He weaved slightly as he threw himself, sucking air. She felt his pain and cried out to him, thanking him for what he was doing, for his courage, his stamina.
“Just a bit longer, Slick. . . . Just a little bit farther!”
She fervently wished she wasn’t wearing the confining, long-hemmed dress she had donned for the celebration. The stiff petticoats under her gave little of the leg contact she was so accustomed to as she rode, and the fabric around her flapped crazily in the wind. What I wouldn’t give for my culottes and a man’s work shirt!
She leaned forward the slightest bit more. “Please, Slick . . .”
* * *
2
* * *
Marshall Ben Flood held his Sharp’s rifle at his right side, the barrel pointing at the ground, the polished cherry-wood stock glinting in the bright July sunlight. He stood casually, but his posture was straight, almost military, and he felt the tension in his body as he squinted at the wooden slab with a black circle painted in its center, 350 yards away.
The noisy music of the festival behind him and the man who stood six feet to his right had faded from his consciousness, as had the acrid stink of burned gunpowder in the hot air. In his peripheral vision, he caught the smooth motion of his opponent raising his rifle, but he didn’t move his eyes from the black circle. He could feel the pulsing of a blood vessel at his right temple. He didn’t like to lose at anything, and he was a bull’s-eye down in the shooting match, with a round yet to be fired.
Monte Krupp, his opponent, was a buffalo hunter—one of the best remaining in the West. He was a small man in a field dominated by giants, a dapper man in a world of crude hunters who shunned bathing and clean clothing. At a lean, wiry 5'4" he was a full eight inches under Ben’s height, and he was clean shaven with his hair worn short and well combed, while Ben wore his hair long, the sheen of its blackness threaded with gray. He and Monte had served together in the War Between the States, and the bond between them remained strong.
The group of fifty or so watchers standing twenty feet behind the contestants was as quiet as the inside of an abandoned mine shaft. Coins and folded bills had changed hands surreptitiously before the match had started, and now most of the wagering cowhands and shopkeepers were focused on the target. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw one cowboy poke a friend with an unlabelled pint bottle. The second wrangler accepted, checked around to make sure he was unobserved, and took a quick pull of corn liquor. Being caught drinking at a festival put on to raise money to build a church wouldn’t do a man’s reputation much good with the ladies.
Ben heard a soft, sibilant intake of a breath from Monte, and then the concussion of the rifle report struck him like a hot blast of wind. The strident crash of the discharge softened to thunder as it echoed through the plains on which the town of Burnt Rock rested.
At the target, the town banker, Sam Turner, raised a red flag—meaning a bull’s-eye—and dabbed the black ring with white paint where the bullet had struck, then stepped back.
“Nice,” Ben commented.
“Not bad,” Monte allowed. “Could have been tighter to the middle. Seems like I mighta caught a little breeze on the way.”
Ben nodded and crouched, tugging a few strands of grass free from the soil at his feet. He tossed the blades into the air and watched as they drifted cleanly to the earth. Then he raised his rifle. Drawing in a breath, he fixed his sights on the black circle. He began a gentle pressure against the trigger and then felt the slightest bit of coolness on the left side of his face, where a bead of sweat had left a damp trail down his cheek. He eased the barrel of his Sharp’s the tiniest bit to the left and fired. The banker raised the red flag and dabbed red paint on the hole in the center of the bull’s-eye.
Monte brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired quickly this time, playing the same breeze Ben had counted on. It was a gamble—and a gamble that Monte lost. The breeze had died.
Sam Turner raised the white flag
. The score was tied. “All right, fellas,” he said. “Let’s look at whose bullets struck closest to the center of the bull’s-eye.”
The men went over to look at the target. “You got it, Ben,” Monte said. “That last shot of yours was dead center.” He held out his hand. “Nice shooting.”
“I got lucky. Air touched me as I was squeezin’ off that round. You did some great shooting, Monte.”
The buffalo hunter turned to the crowd and pointed toward Ben. Applause broke out, along with some cheering and some groans. No one needed the banker to haul the target back for official measurement—the eyes of the two shooters were all anyone needed for verification as to who won the contest.
“I’ll tell you what,” Monte said with a grin. “If you buy me a glass of lemonade and a piece of Missy Joplin’s carrot cake, I won’t hold a grudge about today’s match.”
Ben returned the smile. “You got a deal, Monte. Let’s—”
Three quick shots stopped his sentence. Ten seconds passed, and then three more shots sounded. Ben was already in motion, running to where he’d tied his horse, Snorty, in the shade of a few trees near the bandstand.
A black horse, stretched and running hard, pounded toward the festival site, a finger of brown dust trailing behind. The rider was sliding a carbine back into the saddle scabbard.
“Ain’t that Miss Lee?” a cowhand shouted. “She’s really burnin’ up the ground with ol’ Slick—it must be somethin’ powerful important!”
Lee was leaning forward in her saddle. Ben threw Snorty into a gallop toward her, the muscular legs of the tall horse taking large bites out of the distance between them. Almost as if they’d choreographed it, their horses slid to a stop, placing Lee and Ben side by side.
“Where’s Doc?” Lee shouted, her voice cracking with emotion. “Rev Tucker is hurt bad—shot several times. He’s bleeding terribly! He . . .” A rush of tears choked her voice.
Ben put his hand on her arm. “Where is he?”
She swallowed hard and drew a breath. “About halfway to the Thumb. I couldn’t lift him onto Slick, and I was afraid to move him, anyway. He’s gutshot, Ben, and he’s bleeding real bad!”
Ben looked back at the festival. “There’s Doc’s surrey, so he’s here. Find him and send him out. I’ll go on ahead and see what I can do for Rev.”
“I . . . I couldn’t lift him, Ben. He’s such a big man. His horse was gone, and I . . .”
“You did the right thing. Now go, Lee—find Doc!”
Ben wheeled Snorty around, pointed him in the direction from which Lee had come, and banged his spurless heels against the animal’s sides. Snorty wasn’t the type of horse that needed spurring; he was in a full gallop within ten yards.
Lee dragged a sleeve across her face and cued her horse toward the crowd. Dripping sweat and drawing air in huge, raspy gulps, Slick didn’t question her command.
“Doc!” Lee hollered as she approached the crowd. “Doc!”
The blistering sun beat on Ben and his horse like a club, drawing sweat from every pore. He reined back from the gallop, knowing that even Snorty couldn’t take that killing pace on the open prairie.
Far ahead, he saw dark spots scribing circles high in the air. In spite of the heat, he shivered. When two of the spots separated from the others and swept downward, he lengthened his mount’s stride.
The two buzzards on the ground hadn’t yet desecrated the body of the circuit-riding pastor. The birds lumbered away as Ben approached, their six-foot-long wings struggling to pull their hunched, misshapen bodies into the air.
Ben crouched next to Reverend Tucker. The man’s body, a half dozen inches over six feet tall and weighing over three hundred pounds, seemed to have shrunk in death, as if the departure of his life and spirit had diminished his physical stature. Ben touched the pastor’s neck artery to check for a pulse, but he did it as a matter of course. He’d seen enough bodies to recognize the presence of death. Gently, he closed his friend’s eyes and knelt in the sand beside him. Snorty, ground tied a few feet away, pushed his muzzle at a patch of desiccated buffalo grass as Ben prayed.
Not many words passed between Lee and Doc as they jolted and jerked over the prairie in the battered surrey. Doc wasn’t much of a talker, and Lee was alone in her mind. Images of the wounded pastor swirled in her head, and she clenched her hands on the fabric of her dress.
It had been a while since she’d wondered if she’d done the right thing—the prudent thing—in leaving Virginia and moving her horse operation to Texas. Raised by Noah Morgan, the great-grandson of Justin Morgan, she knew horses as well as any man. Uncle Noah had devoted his life to improving the Morgan horse breed, and Lee had worked at his side.
She’d loved Uncle Noah and his family dearly. Still, the inevitable clashes about the direction of his ranch had hurt them both. Lee’s dream to breed strong, intelligent horses for ranch work and Uncle Noah’s devotion to the Morgan breed had led to differences that couldn’t be reconciled. But that didn’t diminish the love and respect between them or the gratitude Lee felt toward her uncle for taking her in after her parents were killed.
Lee had known that she’d have to move West to pursue her dream. And she’d known that the West was untamed. She’d read about the range wars, the gunfighters, the bands of bloodthirsty people who preyed on settlers. She’d spent hours talking with Uncle Noah’s friends who’d spent time in Texas. She’d prayed for guidance.
And when she’d made her decision, there was a finality to it that was intimidating—almost frightening—but it also reinforced her own feelings about herself and her life. Her gender hadn’t held her back in her work with Uncle Noah, and she wouldn’t allow it to do so anywhere else.
Still, the violence she’d seen since moving to Texas appalled her. The guns that rode on the hips of many of the people she encountered, the quick, mindless confrontations that often ended with a man bleeding into the prairie or the streets of Burnt Rock, were things she could not get used to.
Why Reverend Tucker? Why would anyone kill a man of God? Were there simply too many guns, too many men who had no more respect for life than a rattlesnake? Was the ground so stained with blood that—
“Lee? Is that the butte you were talking about?”
Doc’s voice sounded far away. Pain shot up her arms as she released her clenched fists. “Just beyond it,” she said.
When they rolled to a stop near Reverend Tucker’s body, Ben was fifty yards away, checking hoofprints and picking up spent shell casings. He looked down at the brass in his palm and then threw the shells out into the prairie.
Lee ran to meet him and stepped into his embrace. She burst into tears. “I don’t understand this!” she sobbed. “He was such a good man.”
Ben didn’t say a word. He just held her close until her sobs subsided. Then he led her over to Doc.
Doc stood over Reverend Tucker’s corpse, his eyes squinting against the sun as Lee and Ben approached. “Rev’s been dead a couple of hours,” he said. “Lee, could you give me a minute with Ben?”
“He was almost gone when I found him,” Lee said. “I hoped that if I got you out here, Doc, maybe there’d be a chance . . .” She sniffled the last of her tears and wiped her face with her sleeve. “I’m not a fading flower,” she said in answer to his question. “Please say what you need to say.”
Doc held her steady gaze for a moment, then nodded. “There are three broken arrows in Rev, but the majority of the damage was done to him by bullets.” He shifted his eyes to Ben. “Does that tell you anything?”
“Yeah. It does. There are lots of tracks out here, and about half of them were made by unshod horses, probably Indian ponies. I found some shell casings too. They were mostly 30.30 Confederate army issue.”
“Rebs? How can you tell?” Doc asked.
Ben took a cartridge case from the pocket of his vest and tossed it to Doc. It glinted in the sun in its short arc between the two men. “Toward the end of the war the Rebs were runn
in’ real short on metals and were producin’ shells that were almost all brass ’cause they couldn’t get the base metals they needed. That’s why these are so shiny.”
“But the war’s been over a dozen years,” Lee said.
“That’s my point. Just before Appomattox, hundreds of Rebs just walked away from the army, and they took guns and ammo with them. Most went home and tried to put their lives together. Some didn’t—they stashed what they’d stolen and gathered into groups like the Night Riders and just kept right on killin’.”
“You figure that’s who did this?” Doc asked.
“I’m sure of it. The army shells and the arrows bear it out too. Some renegade Indians joined up with some night riders.”
Lee felt her fingers clenching her dress again. “Is the town in danger?”
“I doubt it,” Ben answered. “If this band was gonna raid Burnt Rock, they wouldn’t have announced themselves by killing Rev.”
“Then why did they kill him?”
Ben shook his head. “’Cause he was there, I guess. Ridin’ that big ol’ gelding of his and probably singin’ a hymn at the top of his lungs like he always did . . .” He turned away for a moment, gazing out into the distance. When he faced Doc and Lee again, his face was hard. “Let’s get Rev on the wagon an’ get back to town. I want to put a few men out on guard just to make sure this bunch ain’t gonna surprise us tonight.”
“Are you going after them then?” Lee asked.
“First light tomorrow. I figure there were maybe six or eight of them, and their tracks show they were ridin’ hard away from here. I’ll hang tight tonight and see what I can find tomorrow. I need to wire to the jurisdictions around us and the army too, to let them know we’ve been hit here.”
It hadn’t taken the citizens of Burnt Rock long to clean up the festival site. When Ben rode past it an hour and a half later on his way into town, the banner reading “Church Fund Festival” looked forlorn in spite of its cheerful colors. The tables that had held the pies, cakes, and pastries were gone, quickly loaded onto farm wagons and taken into town, leaving behind only the indentations of their legs in the sand. A burlap sack nestled at the base of one of the poles holding the banner, apparently missed by the cleanup crew. Bits of straw skittered about in the slight breeze. The fun and laughter and excitement that had been there only a few hours ago had died along with Rev Tucker.