The Running Gun

by Jory Sherman

  The Running Gun

  by

  Jory Sherman

  Smashwords Edition

  The Running Gun

  Presented by Western Trail Blazer

  ISBN: 978-1-4581-3028-0

  Copyright © 2011 by Jory Sherman

  Cover Art Copyright © by Laura Shinn

  Produced by Rebecca J. Vickery

  Design Consultation by Laura Shinn

  "The Rider" Cover Art Painting

  2010 1st Prize Winner, Art & Photography Category,

  Ozarks Writers League,

  Courtesy of Artist Jory Sherman

  Smashwords License Notes

  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 ebook with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this ebook without purchasing it and 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.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Though the names of actual towns, cities, and locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author. Similarities of characters or names used within to any person, past, present, or future, are coincidental.

  Stolen cattle...

  A flash of gunfire...

  The love of money...

  Dan Cord awakens to realize his life has changed in a matter of moments. Three lawmen and his brother lay dead around him. The money they worked so hard to earn is gone. The gun in his hand will hang him for sure.

  The Owlhoot Trail is a hard life, but one Dan is forced to take if he wants to find his brother's killer and clear his name. The question is—will he live long enough to track down the real outlaw?

  Prologue

  The buyer, Reed Dawson, studied the tally and nodded. He opened his moneybelt and pulled out a wad of greenbacks.

  “Let’s see, Cord, that’s three hundred horses at thirty dollars a head.”

  Dan Cord looked at his younger brother, Jason, a smile flickering on his lips.

  “That’s right, Mr. Dawson. We started out with a mite more head, but that’s the count.”

  “Here you go, then, son. And, thanks.”

  Dan took the money and began counting it.

  “I’ll take that,” said a voice from the other end of the barn in the Abilene stockyard. “Those horses are stolen, Mr. Dawson. You’re being cheated.”

  Sheriff Ruben Hollis and two deputies, Edgar Samples and Norman Stewart, walked up, their badges plainly visible. They did not have their guns drawn, but they looked like they meant business.

  “What?” Dan gaped at them.

  “Brands were changed, but those are stolen horses all right, Cord. You and your brother are under arrest. I’ll take that money.”

  “Those are our own road brands,” Jason Cord protested. “We got a bill of sale for those horses. They got good brands.”

  “Yeah, stolen,” Hollis said. “Those are your road brands all right, but the horses are stolen,” Hollis said, reached out and took the money.

  Then, to Dan’s surprise, the man who had hired them to drive the horses to Abilene, Jake Krebs, drew his pistol.

  Reed Dawson’s eyes widened. He turned and ran out of the building. Krebs did not shoot at him as Dawson fled. Instead, he shot Sheriff Hollis, square between the eyes. Then, as the deputies were drawing their pistols, he shot them both in the chest, smashing two beating hearts to pulp.

  Dan drew his pistol, tried for a clear shot as he dashed toward Krebs. Krebs ducked, then raised his gun and brought it down hard on top of Dan’s skull. Dan went down like a sack full of sash weights. Jason Cord turned toward Krebs in wide-eyed wonder, his mouth agape, a look of shocked surprise on his face.

  “What the hell…” he started to say, just as Krebs shot him in the neck. Blood gushed from Jason’s throat and he sagged to his knees struggling for breath.

  Jake Krebs reached down and picked up the money. As Jason struggled to breathe, his eyes clouded over and he fell to the ground as he lost consciousness. Krebs removed the pistol from Dan’s holster, stuffed it in his own. He then put his gun in Dan’s right hand. He placed the money inside his shirt and walked out into the darkness where his saddled horse stood waiting. He climbed aboard and rode to the jail.

  Dawson had not actually seen Krebs shoot the sheriff and his deputies. He would not be able to verify that Jake Krebs had murdered the sheriff and his deputies.

  Dan Cord was as good as hanged for the murders of three lawmen.

  Jake Krebs’s hands were clean and he was nine thousand dollars richer.

  Chapter One

  Dan Cord didn’t have to mark off the miles in his head as he rode south out of Abilene, Kansas. He knew where the creek was and he knew where he was going to start looking for something he never wanted to find.

  He rode slowly because he didn’t have a remuda, so that he could change mounts on the ride back to Waco, Texas. A man on the run couldn’t have such luxury. On the owlhoot trail, a man had only himself, his horse and his wits to get him from one town to the next. And Dan was a man on the run, riding the owlhoot trail until the day he could clear his name. If he ever could, he thought.

  Because of Jake Krebs, Dan had lost his freedom, his brother, and the chance to live as a free, innocent man. The bastard. Krebs was the reason he was riding back to Waco, not because that was his home and where his widowed mother lived.

  The creek was only about eight miles south of red-roofed Abilene, and when Cord saw the line of trees marking both banks, he knew he had a place to stay the night. The tracks of the cattle he and his brother Jason had driven up from the Rio Grande Valley were still etched in the ground, although they were no longer sharp-edged, but appeared as faded hieroglyphics marking the trail. Dogwoods lined the banks of the creek and he wondered if he could find the place where they had made camp, if the traces were still there after all this time.

  Dan stepped out of the saddle and ground-tied the gelding to a bush near the stream so the horse could drink and graze while he looked around. It took him several moments to get his bearings. Rain and wind had washed and blown away most of the traces of where he, his brother Jason, Krebs and Juan Martinez had made camp. They had built a fire, made coffee, and Jake had taken the first watch. After Juan finished hobbling the remuda, he came back to camp and poured a cup of coffee. Dan and Jason knew he did not drink coffee, so they asked him about it. He said the coffee was for Jake. Juan had gone off to take the coffee to Krebs.

  That was the last any of them had seen Juan Martinez alive.

  Krebs said he didn’t know anything about it. But in light of what happened in Abilene, Dan knew now that had been a bald-faced lie.

  He found the place where he thought they might have camped that night. Rain had washed away most of the sign, but there were bare spots that were slightly lower than the rest of the ground. The trail they had driven the cattle over was also depressed, lower than the surrounding flat ground. Dan prided himself on his ability to read sign and he felt he had read these correctly.

  He scanned the surrounding area, remembering the night where he and Jason had set out their bedrolls. Then he recalled where Juan had hobbled the horses in the remuda and the direction Juan had come from when he was sent by Krebs to fetch him a cup of coffee. Dan looked in that direction from whence Juan had come. There was a bare-branched tree that had been dead for some time and it was still there. Ominously, the limbs were now perched on by five or six buzzards. They stood there in sacerdotal array, stately and silent as dru
ids at prayer. Dan felt a cold shiver run up his spine.

  He walked toward the place where the remuda had been kept, and glanced toward the bedding grounds for the herd of three hundred longhorns they had driven up from the Rio Grande Valley.

  He felt odd, walking over that ground, all alone. There was something bleak and desolate about the place that made his throat constrict and brought a faint shiver rippling up his spine. It was as if he had walked into a place of death, a cemetery with a single unmarked grave. It was just a feeling, but it seemed very real to Dan. It was as if he had been drawn here by unknown forces, by whispers inside the wind in a language he did not understand. The Kansas wind, he thought. It was faint just then, but building, growing in strength. And the whispers were becoming louder.

  Dan remembered back to that sad day when he had found Juan’s lifeless body, his throat slashed. Dan hadn’t taken the time to bury Juan because he suspected that Krebs had murdered the poor boy and Dan didn’t want Krebs to know that he had discovered the body.

  His boots made crunching noises as he topped a small rise. On the other side, he saw three buzzards gathered around something he could not see. When the birds saw him, they flapped their wings and hopped a few feet, then took to the air. Dan walked toward the spot that he remembered, a feeling of dread rising up in him like some strangling mist. His stomach sank like a sash-weight cut from its mooring when he saw the scattered bones, the strips of ragged cloth, the ribs, and the skull.

  Leg and arm bones were cracked and crushed, lying in scattered disarray. There was still some hair on the skull that Dan recognized, and the clothing, though ripped and torn, had belonged to Juan. Some of his shirt still clung to the ribcage and under the pelvis; the pieces of denim were still recognizable.

  There was something grotesque about the skull. It was still attached to the spinal column, but just barely. When Dan had first discovered Juan’s body some months ago, he hadn’t taken much time to examine the remains. Jake Krebs had been angry that Dan had ridden off the trail and Dan knew he had to get back to Krebs. He never told Krebs about his discovery.

  Dan squatted down and looked at the backbone, where it was still attached to the grisly skull. There, in the bone, was the unmistakable crease of a knife blade. It was not too deep, but Dan knew that if a blade had made that mark, it had to have been sawed through the neck in a savage attack.

  No wonder Juan had made no sound. His throat had been viciously cut. Dan remembered that there had been a lot of blood, and indeed, on some of the scraps of his shirt, there were still deep brown stains. Dan stood up, suddenly sick to his stomach.

  He turned away from the remains and gulped in deep breaths until the swirl of bile in his stomach subsided and his head cleared.

  Images of Juan rushed through Dan’s mind. They had picked him up in Waco, and learned that he was an orphan, living in poverty on the Brazos River. And even though Juan was only sixteen years old, he was a superb wrangler; he knew horses as well as any man alive. He never complained, never asked for more than he was given.

  Dan saw him now and the flooding memories erupted into tears of sadness and deep sorrow. Poor little Juan, who never harmed even a flea, murdered so brutally, and without reason.

  At that moment, Dan’s hatred for Jake Krebs boiled up in him and he clenched his fists in frustration. He wished Krebs was here now, within striking range of his fists. He wanted to pound the man to a bloody pulp and watch him die slow, in agony.

  But Dan was alone, and the tears only added to his frustration, his feeling of helplessness.

  He sucked in deep breaths and regained his composure. It was time to say goodbye to Juan, pay his respects and get away from the terrible grief that had overcome him.

  He started to gather the scattered bones and placed them with the skull, ribcage, and shattered spine. He found part of a hand and carried it over to the pile. When he had found all the bones he could, Dan began to dig in the dirt with his knife and cover what he could. Then he began to gather rocks and pile those up over the dirt until, finally, he had a small mound that resembled a grave. The buzzards had landed fifty yards away and watched him with hooded eyes. Those in the tree took to the sky and wove circular patterns overhead.

  Dan looked up at them and at those on the ground and shook his fist at them. “You’ll feed no more on this poor boy’s carcass,” he muttered.

  He walked back to his horse and untied him. He would not stay here this night. It held too many bad memories and he could almost feel the ghost of Juan Martinez prowling around, seeking justice.

  There was another reason he had to keep moving. He had almost forgotten about his last night in the Abilene jail, just after deputies had brought him back to Abilene from Junction City. Deputy Marshal Frank Gaston came to Dan’s cell just before his shift ended. He had yelled at Dan, waking him up.

  “I just want you to know, you son-of-a-bitch,” Gaston said, “that even if you don’t hang for some reason or another, I ain’t goin’ to forget that you killed my partner and my friend, Lou Connery, down in Junction City. You killed him in cold blood. If you escape and you run, I’ll hunt you down to my dying day and make you pay for killin’ Lou.”

  Dan wanted to tell Gaston right then that he hadn’t killed Connery, that he only took blame for it to protect the man who actually shot the marshal, a man who had befriended him, Paul Chapman. Paul had probably saved Dan’s life by shooting Connery and Dan wasn’t about to betray a friend.

  Dan had kept his mouth shut and he didn’t regret it. Connery was looking for six-gun vengeance, his Colt was in his hand aimed at Dan, acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

  But it was not just the ghost of Juan that Dan felt. He felt his brother, Jason’s presence, as well. Two innocent men, murdered by a heartless, evil man—Jake Krebs. The very thought of Krebs getting away with not only those murders, but probably many others, was enough to send Dan into a blind rage.

  As he climbed into the saddle, he knew Krebs would be a hard man to bring down. He was canny and so far, had lived a charmed life. He surrounded himself with disposable hard-cases, men Krebs didn’t care about any more than he did a bug he might squash under his boot. The man was a killer, and he would sacrifice anyone to further his own ends.

  Someday soon, Dan knew, he would have to face Krebs again. In order to do that he had to think like an outlaw, like the killer Krebs was. He could not let his emotions get in his way when it came to the final showdown.

  Dan touched Blue’s flanks with his spurs and crossed a little creek, heading south for Waco. He didn’t look back but rode into the long shadows of afternoon and into dusk, when the land softened and turned into deeper shadows. Shadows that were like the thoughts in Dan’s mind, dark and shifting, full of secrets and the black hearts of men like Jake Krebs, who rode the owlhoot trail with other lawless men.

  He rode on until the night sky was black, peppered with faint winking stars and the moon rising like a bright glowing eye, casting shadows of its own.

  He was a wanted man. And he rode the owlhoot trail like some hunted animal in flight.

  He rode alone, with thoughts as dark as the night itself.

  Chapter Two

  Dan Cord wondered if he was ever going to get out of Kansas. He avoided towns, and used the night sky as a map, guiding his journey by the Pole Star in the Big Dipper. He felt like a sneak, but he knew there were men who read wanted posters and needed money. He didn’t intend to enrich them by surrendering at the point of a gun.

  He rode at night when the sky was clear, and by day when he thought it was safe to do so. The sun was his guide when he rode in daylight, but it was an inaccurate compass and he used dead reckoning when he could. He never saw a landmark he recognized even though he found cow trails every so often. But none struck him as the one he had taken when he rode up with Juan, Jason, and Jake Krebs. He made only cold camps, for he had no coffee or cooking meat, only moldy hardtack that was soon gone, and jerky that was as tough as boo
t leather, the sole part. He had no rifle and little ammunition for his pistol, but when he saw jackrabbits and quail, his mouth watered and he knew he had to get to a town and buy foodstuffs and maybe an airtight he could use to boil coffee once he’d drained it of fruit. He began to think of food constantly. His beard grew, thick and tough, while his beltline shrank. His face thinned and he laughed and said aloud, “At least I don’t look like my poster picture,” and he knew the laugh was as insane as was the talking to himself.

  Cord drifted into a little settlement called Potwin, which consisted of little more than a few sod houses with straw roofs, a granary, and a windmill straddling a crossroad that led in the four directions. But they had a little store and they knew what greenbacks were.

  The store didn’t have much, but it sold staples and Arbuckle’s coffee and had a few tins of peaches, apricots, and persimmons trucked in from Kansas City. They had shoes and boots, farm implements and salt pork. The woman said she made fried pies every Saturday and chicken and dumpling soup on Sundays when the farmers came to town to worship in a little soddy with a wooden cross on top of it. During the week, the kids attended school there. They also had a pot-bellied stove and a circle of chairs where people could sit and talk next to a cracker barrel.

  The woman’s name was Betty, she told Cord, and she had a son who helped her keep the stock up at night when he got in from the fields. Her husband had been killed up in Lawrence, during the war.

  “Not many folks pass by here,” she said. “And them what does, does it deliberate.”

  “Meaning?” he asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  But Cord knew better, even as he looked over the few goods on the shelves, the grain sacks, paint cans, brushes, nail kegs, and ladders along one wall, the coal oil and plowshares and scythes, hoes, rakes, hatchets and axes along another.