by Neil Hunter
‘Come on,’ he said to Virginia.
She peered down at him. Weariness had caught up with her and she was practically asleep in the saddle. Brand reached up and pulled her off the horse. Her legs gave as she touched the ground and she lay against Brand, too tired to move.
‘Give me a minute,’ Brand said. He left her and moved to the horse. Freeing the bedroll from behind the saddle he opened it up. There were a couple of thick blankets and an oilskin slicker in a roll. Brand bent beneath the overhang and laid the slicker on the cold ground, then spread one of the blankets.
‘That looks marvelous,’ he heard Virginia say.
When he had her settled on the blanket Brand covered her with the second one. Leaving her he went to the horse and returned with food, water and cooking utensils. He foraged around for wood. Carefully shredding a few twigs he struck a match and held his breath until the wood caught. Patiently he added to the tiny flicker, letting it build slowly. He knew that what he was doing was wrong. A fire was one way of attracting attention but both he and Virginia needed hot food and drink inside them. It was a risk he was prepared to take. Once he had the fire burning brightly Brand sliced up the remaining bacon and dropped it into the pan. He prepared hot water and dropped in some crushed coffee beans. As the smell of frying bacon and hot coffee reached his nostrils his stomach began to growl. Even Virginia roused herself from the half-sleep that had swept over her. She lifted her head and watched Brand’s preparations.
‘I never thought food could smell so good,’ she said.
Brand poured scalding coffee into the tin mug. Before he handed it to her he added a measure of whisky from the bottle he’d found in Puma’s gear. Virginia took it and sniffed the mug.
‘What have you put in it?’ she inquired.
‘Just a drop of something to warm you up.’
Virginia took a swallow. Her face screwed up in mock agony for a moment. ‘My God, Jason, what are you trying to do? Get me drunk?’
‘Tough tycoon like you? I figure you can take it.’
Between them they cleared the fried bacon from the pan and emptied the pot of coffee. As soon as the meal was over Brand extinguished the fire and cleared away the remains. He took his rifle and sat with his back to the rear of the overhang.
‘Do you think they’ll find us in the dark?’
‘They’d be foolish to try until morning. Blundering around in the dark is liable to get them lost, or get them falling down a crevasse. Way Cole Shannuck works he’ll get them to stay put until dawn, then set off after us.’
‘Let’s hope he sees it like that then.’
‘Try and get some sleep,’ he told Virginia. ‘Soon as it’s light we’ll move out.’
Virginia propped herself up on her elbows. ‘Are you planning to sit there all night?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ Virginia sat up. ‘You could freeze. Now stop acting like I was a nun and come over here.’
Brand joined her beneath the blanket. He felt the pressure of her supple body against his as she settled herself. Virginia turned her face towards him, a soft blur in the near blackness.
‘British reserve isn’t all it’s made out to be,’ she said softly. ‘Goodnight, Jason.’
‘Miss Maitland,’ he replied with mock civility.
He felt the brush of her chilled lips against his before she turned on her side, pushing her body against his.
Brand lay for a long time, staring out beyond the overhang. Through the snowfall all he could see was pitch black. Almost too dark to believe there was anything beyond their own place. Yet he knew there was nothing unreal about their situation. It was still dangerous and would stay that way until they managed to reach Bannock. Maybe even then things might not change dramatically. Brand had long ago ceased to believe in happy endings. Matters had a way of working themselves out eventually - but never in a neat and tidy way. There were always complications. Beside him the sleeping woman stirred. Her closeness and her warmth lulled his senses. He felt sleep approaching. Virginia twisted on to her side, facing him, one arm sliding across Brand’s chest. She drew herself closer to him, seeking the security of his body, and he was made acutely aware of her unassuming sensuality. It would have been an easy thing to allow himself to he attracted by her. She was a beautiful young woman. Desirable. The need was there for his part and the temptation to succumb. Yet he hesitated. Had he allowed such things to happen before? And had he suffered for it? Maybe other people had been hurt.
He tensed suddenly, staring wildly out into the darkness as a powerful surge of strong memories came flooding back, unchecked. A tangled torrent of faces and names and of places and happenings that overwhelmed him. He was powerless to prevent them erupting into his conscious mind...
~*~
…New Mexico, 1870. He was two days short of his eighteenth birthday when the Kwahadi Comanche raiding party hit the Brand ranch. With the ruthless efficiency that came with their reputation, they swept in and when they left Brand’s parents were dead, his sister had been carried off and he had been left for dead, badly wounded. The overriding thing in his young mind had been the fact that the three range hands hired by his father had deserted the family, leaving them defenseless against the raiding Comanches. It was something he would not forget. Though wounded he had survived and after laying his slaughtered parents inside the house he had set it to the torch. On foot he had wandered away, part delirious and had wandered until he finally came across the spread belonging to their nearest neighbors, to find the family dead, more victims of the raiding Comanches. Brand had tended to his wounds but fate had decided he was not to be left alone. The Comanches returned and though he fought them, killing some, he was taken prisoner and endured a brutal ride to the Indian encampment in the Llano Estacado in Texas. There he was treated harshly but endured because he was hoping he might find his sister. A female captive called Lisa Hoyle befriended him and told him his sister, Liz, was in the camp. If Brand had been expecting a reunion, when it came it was far from happy. His sister was dead, brutally murdered by one of the Comanches, a warrior called Three Finger. Enraged, Brand had almost lost it, but he and Lisa had escaped and were pursued by Three Finger who had been humiliated by Brand. After a long chase Brand had killed the Comanche and he and Lisa had ridden to safety.
Lisa had family in El Paso and they made their way there. A brief relationship between them had brought them close, but Brand was now obsessed with a single thought.
He needed to find those three men who had deserted the Brand family at the time of the Comanche attacked.
Sam Hatch. Del Cooper. Joe Preedy.
Working for Brand’s father they had cut and run, leaving the family alone to face the raiding Indians. Now Brand wanted a reckoning. A chance to track down the three and settle with them. Lisa saw the growing violence in Brand and they argued about his need for vengeance. He refused to back away. She saw it as something that would tear them apart. Brand’s stubbornness worsened the situation.
‘You should have left it alone, Lisa,’ he had finally said. ‘Now it’s between us.’
In El Paso Lisa was greeted with joy by her Aunt and Uncle, who had believed her dead. Her Uncle had understood Brand’s need and had helped by outfitting Brand with clothes and gear, even weapons and a horse. There had even been a fifty dollar gold addition. Brand had taken his leave without even a goodbye from Lisa and rode into his future without a backward glance…
The trail to his showdown with the three men had been hard and violent, made even more bitter when Brand discovered that Hatch, Cooper and Preedy were instrumental in trafficking guns to the Comanche. A showdown had taken place in Mexico, in Sonora, beyond the Rio Magdalena. A small fishing village on the Golfo de California. There Brand had faced down his enemies. In a relentless confrontation Brand had shot it out with his betrayers on the deck of the schooner, the Cuban Lady, that had been transporting more contraband weapons. In the event the schooner and its cargo wa
s destroyed. Brand, wounded, had been reunited with the young Mexican girl who had been helping him and they had ridden away from the death and destruction, His quest had been ended, but even then Brand knew he would soon move on. Somewhere, somehow, he needed to find his way in life. He knew, too, that he was going to be associated with the way of the gun. As young as he was his destiny was already cast and he would never be able to leave it behind.
When he finally returned to his home ground all he knew was the cattle business so he signed on with drives heading for the railheads. It gave him experience, taught him hard lessons and by the time he was in his early twenties he had the respect of those he rode with. Part was down to his skill as a drover, but more respect came from his natural ability with the gun he carried on his hip. He had never once thought about it as anything but a tool, until the day he found himself in an argument with a loud-mouthed drover from a rival crew. The man had been pushing for trouble and Jason Brand became the butt of the man’s attack. Words turned ugly. The drover became dogged in his insistent tormenting of the younger man. The more Brand tried to talk the mood down, the worse the drover became. And when the town’s lawman tried to step in and calm the man the drover turned on him, laying a bottle across the man’s skull and putting him down. An instant later he pulled his gun and started firing at Brand. A bullet tear in his arm forced Brand to draw. He saw no reason to die simply to appease the raging bully pulling down on him. In the face of direct fire he drew his own gun and put a bullet into his tormentor, directly over the man’s heart. The drover was dead by the time he hit the floor. It did little to ease Brand’s conscience that he had fired out of pure self defense, that the lawman later testified so and Brand walked from court a free man, with a reputation he didn’t savor. The tale was well told and it followed him wherever he went. The down side was that it brought others out of the shadows. Men who figured they had to go up against him in order to bolster their own egos. He tried to turn his back on them. That failed to stop the challenges and his gun came out on a number of occasions in order to keep him alive.
Finally he broke away and lit out on his own, seeking the empty high country, where there were few if any who might step up to brace him. He started in catching wild horses, taming them down and selling them to the Army and traders. Still not twenty-five he was a Mustanger with a nice little business. He took up with a young woman he met down along the Wind River, the daughter of a rancher he did business with. It went fine for a year until a maniac with a knife had murdered his woman, leaving her dead and bloody for Brand to find. Even though the killer had been caught and hung, in the aftermath Brand had pushed aside the life he had made for himself and left the Wind River country.
For a time he drifted, moving back to the southwest country and it went well until someone recognized him and the would-be gunslingers started to show up, aware of his reputation. As before he tried to walk away. And as before it failed to work. He killed two men who refused to leave him be and moved on. His name followed him until a lawman in the Nations persuaded him to pin on a badge and use his gun skills to aid him in bringing in renegades and assorted bad men, and he did that for almost three years. It became his way in life. And it led to him being offered a position as a US Marshal. With the strength of the Marshal’s office behind him Brand built his reputation as a tough, relentless law officer. It had all moved along well until the incident in Santa Fe where Brand had been investigating a series of brutal rapes on young women. Brand had identified the perpetrators. They were the sons of prominent Santa Fe society and the leader the son of a US Senator. When confronted the young man had resisted, then pulled a knife. Brand had been forced to shoot and kill him in self defense, but later when the investigation had taken place the knife had disappeared and Brand was made the scapegoat. He knew that strings had been pulled, favors paid. Brand was dismissed the service, abandoned, aware he had been made a whipping boy by the faceless men who wanted to shackle the work of the US Marshal office.
He turned to working for a bounty. It left him to work on his own, within the law, but riding the edge. Being a lawman put others at risk when the glory seekers came to call and he refused to accept the responsibility. So he took to hunting men for the reward on their heads. At the back of his mind lay the thought that if he saved enough of his bounty money he might one day have enough to start his own place again. It was a dream, but at least it allowed him a goal to strive for, and it gave him a degree of contentment. For once he seemed to have found his way. The work was demanding, solitary, but he took to it and he might well have stayed with it if it hadn’t been for the incident that had brought him into conflict with the Ben Wyatt gang and a reluctant Brand more or less blackmailed into pinning on a badge again for the duration.
It had ended with the Wyatt gang finished for good, Brand resting up in Yuma before moving on.
And then the appearance of Frank McCord. The man who was destined to alter the course of Jason Brand’s life by offering him a position in McCord’s undercover law unit. Outside Washington McCord’s department was barely known to exist.
McCord’s badge, in the shape of a shield, emblazoned in blue and gold, bore the legend—Justice Department–Special Agent. Brand had been told he would be responsible to McCord alone, who in turn answered to the President of the United States.
‘No comebacks, Brand,’ McCord had said. ‘You’ll be covered no matter what happens. All I expect is loyalty and getting the job done. Hell, I’ll yell bloody murder of I think you’ve gone too far, but I’m sure that won’t bother you.’
It didn’t and Brand got his share of tough assignments. McCord held to his promise and backed him all the way. The results spoke for themselves. There were good times and bad. Wins and loses.
And then the assignment that took Brand from New Mexico, chasing stolen Confederate gold from the Civil War, all the way down to Yucatan and a Chinese Tong Master named Kwo Han. A hectic assignment that came to a bloody end on the beach and Brand shooting Kwo Han in the split second the man struck at him with a deadly Chinese hatchet.
The brutal blow caught Brand’s skull and he went down in a burst of pain that overwhelmed him … when he came around much later he was in a hospital bed, surrounded by face he did not recognize. Yet much worse was the fact he had no idea who he was…his life before he had woken was a complete blank to him…
~*~
…Brand opened his eyes to the steel-gray light of early dawn. He lay still watching the snow which still fell from the bleak sky. He gradually became aware of his surroundings. He felt the Virginia’s pleasant closeness. The enticing warmth from the melding of their bodies. Sometime during the night she had curved herself to fit tightly against him. Her head lay against his chest, one arm was drawn tightly round him and she had thrust one leg between his thighs. No doubt her actions had been brought about by a desire for warmth and security during the long night. It made little difference. The result was just as disturbing as it would have been if she had done it through passion. And right at that particular moment Brand found he was ready to accept whatever it brought. He drew comfort from her intimate closeness, the soft woman scent of her, the caress of her hair on his unshaven cheek. It had been a long time, he realized, since he had experienced such a sensation and it drew him back to a more familiar world.
He had already realized something else. After the tumult of the night before his memory had returned. There were no more blank spots, no dark sections lurking in the recesses of his mind. He remembered everything. Of who he was, of where he had been and what he had done. Beside him the sleeping woman murmured unintelligible words. Her warm breath touched his cheek. Her eyes opened and she stared at him for long seconds, her sleep-drugged mind slow to react. She lay still, letting the thoughts gather themselves and when she had, a gentle smile curved her soft lips.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked then.
Brand nodded. He was suddenly reluctant to move, to break the seductive warmth created
by their entwined bodies. He reached across and brushed a stray lock of dark hair from Virginia’s pale face. She smiled at him, almost shyly, but she made no attempt to disentangle herself from his body.
‘You slept well,’ he said.
‘Lord, I’ve never been so tired.’ She studied him intently for a while. ‘You need a shave.’ Her finger emerged from the blanket and traced a line along the taut line of his jaw.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Brand said, and a rebellious thought rose in his mind. He acted on it, as he always acted on his instincts, and kissed her. Virginia’s soft mouth parted, moistly warm. She rocked gently against him, gripping him tightly with her arms. Letting her supple body do her talking for her, silently enjoying the gentle exploration of his hands as they moved about her. It was a long time before their lips separated.
‘It’s surprising what a few hours sleep can do for a man,’ she said breathlessly.
Brand only smiled. He bent his head and kissed her again. He could feel the thrusting way her lithe body curved against his, the urgent pressure of her hips, the lift of her legs.
‘Jason ….’ Her tone was heated, needful.
That was when Brand heard the sharp crack of a snapping twig. It was unmistakable. A brittle sound in the early morning silence. It was hard to pinpoint from which direction, or just how far off.
What mattered was the fact that they were no longer alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Cole Shannuck stared at the broken twig beneath Jerome Cortland’s boot and his eyes shone with rising fury.
‘Why don’t you just yell out we’re coming?’ he snapped.
‘You don’t intend telling me he could hear that?’ Cortland retorted.
‘Sound like that carries a long way up here. Jesus, mister, this ain’t New York. Out here a man’s life can he thrown away because of something like that. Remember one thing. Brand’s no ordinary gunslinger. He’s hard and he’s good. Damned good. That’s why he’s still alive. You believe it, Cortland, because if you don’t he’ll take you down and you won’t even know it happened.’