Brothers in Blood

by Lee Lejeune

  Brothers in Blood

  As young Stubbs ‘Sunshine’ Shining is riding West he hears shooting, and sees four gunmen firing at a homestead. He fires a couple of shots to scare them off, and discovers that the person defending the property is a middle-aged woman named Bethany Bartok. She invites Sunshine in and gives him food and drink. He learns that her husband has died, her son Bart has gone off in search of his fortune, and her daughter Elspeth has travelled East to be educated. Sunshine decides to stay on at the farm for a short spell. But soon things get complicated. Bart has been kidnapped and the local Cutaway brothers are determined to get their hands on the property for some reason. Then Sunshine becomes even more deeply involved in the fate of the Bartok homestead when Bethany’s daughter Elspeth returns.

  Sunshine soon gets a reputation as a gunfighter, but that’s only the beginning. Why do the Cutaway brothers want the farm? Who is holding young Bart captive? And where is he being held? Sunshine starts to untangle the thread that leads him into very dangerous territory.

  By the same author

  Shoot Out at Big King M

  Man of Blood

  Riders From Hell

  Time to Kill

  Blood on the Sand

  A Town Called Perdition

  Incident at River Bend

  The Proving of Matt Stowe

  Nolan’s Law

  Blood Will Have Blood

  Writing as James Dell Marr

  Badland’s Bounty

  Horse Soldier’s Return

  Brothers in Blood

  Lee Lejeune

  ROBERT HALE

  © Lee Lejeune 2017

  First published in Great Britain 2017

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2237-7

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Lee Lejeune to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  CHAPTER ONE

  His name was Stubbs – Stubbs Shining. Back home they had called him ‘Sunshine’ because he had a smile for everyone, including the town bullies. But now there were no bullies and nobody in particular to bother him . . . or so he thought. He was just a young hombre riding West in search of . . . well, in search of what? He had no idea what he was looking for, and he had nobody to talk things over with except his horse Chingalong, who wasn’t much of a conversationalist either. Chingalong was just a plain chestnut with a white blaze on his nose, his main virtue being that he didn’t argue a man’s head off.

  ‘Now lookee here, Chingalong,’ Sunshine said to the horse, ‘I’m real disappointed in you. I thought we were travelling West in search of our fortune, or at least something to interest a man, and what do we get? Cold nights and days to roast your balls off. This really isn’t good enough, you know. You’ve got to use your horse sense to get us into those good green pastures you promised me. You hear me, hoss?’

  Chingalong just tossed his head and plodded on through the wild undulating country towards the distant blue hills.

  ‘You know what?’ Sunshine continued. ‘A man could go plumb crazy out here, riding to nowhere in particular.’

  Chingalong pricked up his ears but still said nothing.

  ‘What’s that you hear?’ Shining asked him, but the next second he heard it for himself, the crack-crack-crack of gunfire somewhere over to the right.

  ‘Sounds like someone’s shooting deer or prairie chickens,’ Shining said to himself. He reined in and listened more intently. ‘That doesn’t sound too much like deer-hunting, though,’ he added. ‘Sounds more like people – shooting to me. Maybe we should keep clear. What do you think, hoss?’

  Chingalong raised his head and twitched his ears.

  ‘Well, you’re probably right at that,’ Sunshine agreed. ‘On the other hand, maybe we should look into this matter a little more closely. After all, you don’t know what you’ll find unless you look, do you?’ He jigged Chingalong round to the right and headed towards the bluff, beyond which there was some kind of gully. As he drew towards the edge of the gully the sound of the gunfire got sharper; he could hear shouting too and it didn’t sound too friendly either. He dismounted and drew his Winchester carbine out of its saddle holster.

  ‘You stay right here,’ he said to Chingalong. ‘Just chew on that patch of grass over there while I take a looksee.’

  He walked to the brow of the hill and looked over it into the valley below. What he saw surprised him: a farmstead and a corral. Nothing unusual about that. But there were four horsemen and they weren’t shooting deer; they were firing their weapons at the windows of the homestead and someone inside was firing back.

  ‘This is a bad situation,’ Sunshine said to himself. ‘You don’t want to get yourself in too deep here. It could be like sticking your head in a noose.’ He had always thought discretion to be the better part of valour. At least that was what his ma had always said and she was about the wisest woman he had known so far. Just then one of the riders started hurling abuse at the homesteader inside the main cabin.

  ‘You gonna come right out and face the music, you yellow-bellied skunks?’

  It wasn’t what was said but the snarling way the man threw it at the cabin that made the hairs at the back of Sunshine’s neck stand on end.

  Then someone shouted back from inside the cabin; it was a woman’s voice. Sunshine couldn’t hear the exact words but he judged by the tone that she said something like:

  ‘Leave good folk alone to go about their business, you cowardly vinegarroons!’

  What in heck’s a vinegarroon? Sunshine wondered. That woman might not know how to shoot straight, but she sure knows how to fire off with her tongue; though her voice was rough and somewhat jagged at the edges she sounded as brave as an eagle sheltering her chicks.

  The gunmen laughed and opened fire again. For Sunshine it was that heartless laugh that settled matters. So he got down on his belly, pushed the Winchester ahead of him and levered a shell into place.

  Should I shoot at them or above them? he wondered. He had never fired a shot in anger but his old man had taught him to shoot straight at tin cans perched on the fence back home.

  ‘You’ve got a good eye, my son,’ Jed Shining had said. ‘You might not be the heaviest sonofagun but you can box and shoot. So you can always defend yourself in any scrape you find yourself in.’ That was how Jed Shining measured a man.

  The gunmen were just about within range and, taking account of the trajectory, Sunshine might have brought one of them down. But he decided to aim just above the head of the one who had snarled at the woman. So, without thinking further on the matter, he aimed just to the right of the hombre and fired. Then he shifted his aim and fired above the head of another of the gunmen.

  ‘That’ll give those mean hombres something to think about,’ he said to himself.

  The effect was instantaneous. The gunman wheeled round to face in Sunshine’s direction.

  ‘We’ve got company, boys,’ he croaked in surprise.

  ‘What in hell’s name. . . !’ one of the other gunmen shouted.

  Then there came another blast from inside the cabin and the woman shouted:

  ‘Get out of here, you whey-bellies, before I come right out and fix up you good and proper.’

  ‘OK, boys,’ the leader said. ‘We’ve done enough for now.’ He wheeled his horse round and made for the surrounding scrub. The others followed, peering up at the ridge where Sunshine lay concealed.

  ‘Don’t be foole
d,’ Sunshine said to himself. ‘Those mean bastards could ride round and try to bushwhack me.’ He drew back from the ridge and made towards Chingalong.

  Chingalong was still chewing contentedly on the patch of grass.

  ‘Hold still while I mount up,’ Sunshine advised him.

  He rode out through the cut-leaf birches and peered in the direction the four riders had taken. He could see them riding away to the west.

  ‘OK,’ he said to Chingalong. ‘Now we go down and and hold a little powwow with that good woman.’

  He rode over the ridge and down towards the homestead. As he drew closer a woman threw open the door and stepped out under the overhang. She was holding a buffalo gun. She had grey hair and steely grey eyes and she didn’t look any too pleased to see him.

  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she said menacingly. ‘I’m just about sick of your tricks. I’m staying right here and you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.’

  Sunshine noticed that, in fact, she did have a small stub of pipe clamped between her teeth.

  He drew rein and raised his hands.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Just as long as you stop pointing that gun at me, I have no quarrel with anything you say.’

  The woman, who must have been aged about fifty, squinted at him down the barrel of her buffalo gun.

  ‘What do you want here?’ she asked.

  Sunshine nodded and gave her one of his most disarming smiles.

  ‘I was just passing through, ma’am. I have no quarrel with any man – or woman for that matter. I just heard shooting and I stopped to take a looksee. Then I fired a couple of shots to put the frighteners on those gun-toting scaramouches.’

  She squinted at him for a moment longer and decided he was probably harmless. Then she lowered the buffalo gun a little.

  ‘You a stranger in these parts?’ she asked.

  ‘Just riding through,’ he said. ‘Didn’t like the sound of those scaramouches shooting off their mouths and their guns in your direction. So I handed out a spoonful of their own medicine. By the way, what does whey-face mean?’

  The woman stared at him for a moment, then grinned.

  ‘I don’t rightly know what a whey-face is. It’s just an expression I use from time to time, ’specially when I see that Brad Bassington around here.’

  ‘I guess he must be the one who was shovelling all that shit in your direction, if you’ll pardon the language.’

  ‘That’s the one. Pity you missed him with that peashooter of yours.’

  Sunshine shrugged. ‘Didn’t aim to hit him. Never shot a man in my life. Just wanted to scare those scaramouches off before they did any real damage apart from breaking windows.’

  She grinned again. ‘Well, you’d better come inside if you can spare the time. That hoss of yourn looks like he can do with a rest.’

  ‘That’s mighty civilized of you, ma’am. Chingalong will be grateful for that. He’s the best hoss I know. The only friend I’ve got, right now.’

  He took Chingalong into the barn and then walked into the cabin.

  Inside it was surprisingly neat and tidy. Everything seemed to have a place and every place had a something.

  The woman put her buffalo gun on a rack, where it obviously belonged with several other weapons, and folded her arms. She was old by Sunshine’s standards but she had an eagle-like gleam in her eye.

  ‘Take a good look round,’ she said in that croaky voice of hers, ‘because you won’t be staying long.’

  Sunshine nodded and smiled.

  ‘That’s all right by me because I don’t aim to stick around either.’

  The woman held her head on one side and took the stubby pipe out from between her teeth.

  ‘Where you headed, son?’ she asked.

  ‘Like I said, nowhere in particular. I’m just riding through the territory. But I’m not sure where exactly I’m headed. It depends on the circumstances and what I find.’

  The woman nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Guess I ought to thank you for taking a shot at those sidewinding critters.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, ma’am. I’d do the same thing again if I had to.’

  ‘With that kind of attitude, you’re likely either to get a bellyful of lead or a reputation as a shootist, ’cause it’s shoot or get shot out here. You ought to know that before someone shoots your head off your shoulders.’

  ‘Well, I don’t aim to be a shootist or get my head shot off my shoulders,’ he said. ‘So I guess that’s why I’m moving on.’

  She gave him a long shrewd look. ‘How old are you, son?’

  ‘Just a little bit younger than my back teeth and about as old as my toes,’ he said.

  She gave a grunt of appreciation. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Name’s Stubbs Shining but most folks call me Sunshine.’

  She screwed up her lips. ‘Sounds sort of girlish.’

  ‘Well, ma’am, every man has his feminine side. It’s what makes us human, you know.’

  She grinned at him through those keen grey eyes.

  ‘You educated, Sunshine?’

  He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I’ve been to school, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t set much store by it, but I learned how to read and do my calculations. So I get by.’

  She nodded several times, each time more affirmatively.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘why don’t you set yourself down at the table so I can feed you up some. Least I can do considering you saw off those gunslinging desperadoes.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ He took off his wide-brimmed hat and hung it on a hook provided for the purpose. His hair was long and fair and came almost down to his shoulders.

  ‘Looks like you can do with a haircut,’ she said with a tinge of mockery.

  ‘Been thinking about dropping in on a barber if I could find one,’ he replied.

  ‘There’s a barber in town. Calls himself Close Shave. He’s also the funeral director. So I wouldn’t recommend him too highly.’ She drew off a pint of what she called home brew and set in front of him. ‘Drink that down and you can forget about all your troubles.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Sunshine sipped at the home brew. It was bitter and had a kick, if not exactly like a mule at least like a small pony. The woman grinned at him.

  ‘I see you like it. Wait till you taste the stew.’ She cackled like a witch and went to a primitive stove where a large black pot was bubbling away. She dished out a generous helping and placed it before him.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I might change my mind and stay awhile after all.’

  She drew back a chair and sat across from him.

  ‘Before you ask,’ she said, ‘I’m Bethany Bartok and I’m old enough to be your ma. Does that answer your questions?’

  ‘Well, since I didn’t ask any questions, it’ll have to do,’ he answered between mouthfuls. ‘By the way, the stew’s even better than you promised.’ He looked up and saw that she was staring at him with curiosity. ‘You want to tell me what you’re doing living out here alone with no neighbours for miles around? And why those men were gunning down on you like that?’ he asked.

  Then she told him her story. Several years earlier she had moved into the locality with her husband Bart and their two children, Elspeth and Bart Junior. They had liked the small town of Logan and had decided to put down roots in a place close by. Then a man called Timberlane had offered them the property at a fair price and they had taken it in all innocence.

  ‘I say “in all innocence”,’ Bethany explained, ‘because at that time we had no idea that the Cutaways practically owned the town and the range all around it.’

  ‘Who would the Cutaways be?’ Sunshine asked.

  Bethany considered for a moment, choosing the right words.

  ‘The Cutaway brothers are two of the most ornery critters you can expect to meet in the territory. They’re cattle ranchers and they’re as rich as that Greek guy in ancient times whose
touch turned everything to gold.’

  ‘So what’s with these brothers, apart from they’re as rich as Croesus?’

  ‘What’s with them is they want this property, that’s what’s with them. They offered me money but this is my home, so I turned it down. Now they’re using those danged gunslingers to scare me off. Except I don’t scare that easy.’

  Sunshine had finished his stew and his pint of home brew; now he just wanted to sit back and relax for the rest of the day. It was like the woman had cast some kind of spell on him and he expected her to turn into a fair maiden any time soon.

  ‘So why do those Cutaways want to get their hands on the property?’ he asked in a slightly sleepy tone. Bethany Bartok creased her brow in thought.

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that, Sunshine. Could be they think there’s gold or a seam of silver on the property. I did hear rumours but I’ve never seen any sign. On the other hand it might just be that they think of the whole range as theirs. So they want me out. Does that make sense?’

  Sunshine nodded. ‘It could do. You never can know what folks think even if they tell you, can you? But there must be something that interests them if they send men to gun down on you like that. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  She gave a slow nod. ‘You could be right. You sure got a head on your shoulders, sonny.’

  ‘It ain’t much,’ he said modestly, ‘but I try to use it best I can.’ He looked around him. ‘You got everything neat and tidy here, ma’am. You mentioned your husband and two children. How come you’re here on your own?’

  She picked up her stubby pipe and stared at it as though it held the answer to all known questions.

  ‘I’m here on my own because they’ve all lit out for the hills, so to speak.’

  ‘What? All three of them?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. My girl Elspeth went back East with some folks she knew, to study, and my boy Bart Junior decided he didn’t like life on the farm, so he went off some place to make his fortune.’