by Max O'Hara
Smoke puffed up from a dry ravine cut into the prairie a hundred yards out front of the headquarters. The ravine ran in a gradual curve across Stockburn’s trail. More smoke puffed around the headquarters yard as the Stoleberg riders returned fire on the McCrae men hunkered down in the shallow ravine.
“Come on, Smoke—hurry!” Stockburn yelled, whipping the horse’s right hip with his rein ends.
He knew the horse was already running at full speed, but he couldn’t restrain himself. He wanted to reach the Tin Cup headquarters before the mid-morning skirmish exploded into a months’—or even years’—long range war spreading like a wildfire throughout the southern Wind Rivers.
When he was a couple hundred yards from the ravine in which the Triangle riders were forted up, shooting toward the house—at least, Stockburn assumed the Triangle riders were in the ravine; he wasn’t yet close enough to see them clearly—he checked Smoke down to a full stop.
He reached back into one of his saddlebag pouches and pulled out a white underwear top. It had been white at one time, that was. Now it was sort of off-white. Stockburn didn’t always shop for new clothes when he needed to.
Still, the washworn shirt, discolored by all the lye soap it had been washed with, would have to serve as a truce flag. Quickly, he tied the flag to the end of his Winchester’s barrel then booted Smoke into another ground-devouring gallop.
As he drew within a hundred yards of the ravine, he began waving the rifle and truce flag from side to side, hoping like hell all players in the skirmish playing out before him would respect his makeshift guidon.
“Hold your fire!” he bellowed into the wind, waving the flag broadly. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire! Hold your damn fire!”
As he approached the ravine, several Triangle men turned toward him, some of them swinging their rifles toward him, their faces anxious and skeptical beneath their hat brims.
“Hold your fire!” Wolf shouted again.
“Stockburn?”
The question had come from Lawton McCrae.
The eldest McCrae sibling was hunkered down behind a rock at the lip of the ravine. A dozen or more other McCrae hands, including the younger brother, Hyram McCrae, were lined out along the east bank of the shallow ravine bristling with sage and small cedars.
The men glowered back at the buckskin-coated rider just now slowing his horse behind them.
“What’re you doing out here, Stockburn?” Law McCrae said, face flushed with anger. “This is Triangle business!”
Fortunately, the Tin Cup hands and whoever had been shooting from the house, were respecting Stockburn’s flag, which he continued to wave, holding the rifle high above his head. “Hold your fire!” he yelled to the house, then rode on across the ravine, between the two McCrae brothers.
“Where the hell are you going, Stockburn?” Law bellowed.
Stockburn galloped into the Tin Cup yard, still waving his flag. “Put your guns down!” he shouted. “Put your guns down! This is a manufactured war.” He stopped Smoke roughly halfway between the ravine and the Stoleberg house and curveted the mount.
He turned back to the ravine and yelled, “The Stolebergs did not rustle your beef, McCrae. At least, not all of them. Only one of them arranged for it to happen!”
“What?” yelled both McCrae brothers at the same time.
“You heard me!”
Stockburn looked around the Stoleberg yard. Men had posted themselves behind the hitch-and-rail corral that ringed the yard. One had taken a bullet to his lower leg, Wolf saw. Other hands, hard-eyed with anger over the unprovoked attack, glared out over rifle barrels extended around the corners of outbuildings.
Three were hunkered down behind a ranch supply wagon they’d overturned in the middle of the yard, off the big, rambling house’s north end. Several more, including two of the three Stoleberg brothers, Carlton and Reed—had taken positions on the house’s broad front porch, down on their knees behind roof support posts.
Reed appeared to have taken a graze across his left cheek. Blood dribbled down from the cut toward his jawline.
“Daniel Stoleberg!” Stockburn yelled, looking around, not seeing the one-armed, thirty-year-old son of Rufus Stoleberg. “Daniel, are you here?”
They all looked around, glancing at each other in silent consultation, then cast their gazes around the yard.
“I haven’t seen him yet today,” said the big, raw-boned Carlton Stoleberg. “In fact, he wasn’t at supper last night.”
Behind him, the glass of a house window had been shot out. Carlton’s wife, Grace, stood behind the shot-out window, holding the little boy, Buster, rocking him gently, trying to comfort the frightened, crying child.
One of the men hunkered down behind the hitch-and-rail corral yelled, “He crawled into a bottle an’ slept in the barn last ni—”
“Here!” a voice called from behind the cabin.
Stockburn followed the call to a log barn near the long, L-shaped bunkhouse flanking the house and the windmill at the yard’s rear. The small barn door left of the large double stock doors opened and a lean, bent figured tripped out of the building.
Holding a bottle in his hand, down low by his side, Daniel Stoleberg shuffled toward the front yard. He looked like hell. He wore no hat, and his long, thick brown hair hung down over his eyes. His shirttails were untucked. Suspenders flopped down his sides.
He came forward, his heavy feet scuffed the ground, kicking dust up around his knees.
“Here!” he wailed. “The prodigal son spent the night in the barn!”
He came slowly around the house’s north end, stumbling toward Stockburn. His face was a mask of high emotion behind his flopping hair. He laughed, sobbed, laughed again.
He stopped six feet away from the rail detective, tossed his head to shake the hair back from his face, choked back a sob, took a drink from the bottle, and glared up at Stockburn. “What is the meaning of this, big man? How dare you interfere in the affairs of better men than you! This war has been brewing for years. Hell, for centuries! It’s time to blow up the whole damn range! Kill everybody, sift the ashes, and start anew—from scratch!”
“Daniel!” Carlton Stoleberg moved off the porch and into the yard, regarding his younger brother skeptically.
“The only problem is,” Daniel said, still gazing up at Stockburn, slurring his words, “I can’t regrow my arm. I can’t uncripple my legs. I can never be a whole man again . . . no . . . not anymore than I can go back in time and not fall into that nest of vipers!”
“Daniel!” a girl’s voice called from the west, muffled with distance. “Daniel!” came the cry again, louder this time as Lori McCrae galloped toward the ranch atop her buckskin.
“Lori!” Lawton McCrae said, rising from his position behind the rock and regarding his sister with red-faced exasperation.
Ignoring her brother, Lori galloped the buckskin across the ravine and entered the yard at a full run, drawing back on the reins when she was ten feet from Stockburn, her loose hair bouncing high off her shoulders.
She glanced at Wolf. Of course, she’d followed him out from town. He’d had a feeling she would.
She leaped down from the buckskin’s back and turned to face her lover, Daniel Stoleberg. He stood regarding her as though she were a ghost from the distant past. Maybe a lover he’d loved during a journey to another land a long, long time ago.
He’d never expected to see her again.
He held the whiskey bottle down low by his side. His face was that of a ruined, embittered man who’d lost everything, even his soul.
He sobbed now, scrunching up his face, hanging his head in shame. “I didn’t know he was going to kill those men.” He looked at Lori, then at Stockburn, tears dribbling down his pale cheeks. “I didn’t know he was going to commit murder. I thought he . . . we . . . were just going to sabotage the rails, the train . . .”
He swung clumsily around to face Carlton and Reed Stoleberg. Both brothers—taller, more rugged
than Daniel—had moved tentatively out from the house to stand fifteen feet away. “I betrayed you, Carlton. Reed, I betrayed you. I got no excuse. All I can say is I deeply regret it.”
He hung his head again, sobbing, his hair hiding his face.
Daniel dropped to his knees in the hard-packed yard, his chin to his chest, and cried. He dropped the bottle, sagged forward until he pressed his forehead to the earth, and cried.
Lori hurried over to him, dropped to a knee beside him. “Daniel!”
“I’m sorry, Lori.” He shook his head. “I thought you were gone.”
“Well, I wasn’t. And I’m not.”
Lori lowered her head nearly to the ground, beside Daniel’s. She stretched her arm around his back. Holding her mouth very close to his right ear, she said, “I’ll never leave you again, Daniel. I promise.”
Daniel straightened. He turned to Lori, his face swollen with tears. “You won’t?”
“Never. I’ll never leave you and Buster again.”
She turned to where her two brothers Lawton and Hyram had walked up out of the ravine to stand nearby. Each held his rifle low in his right hand, looking perplexed, deeply befuddled. A couple of their men had walked up, as well, and flanked the two McCrae brothers.
Lori stared at Lawton McCrae as though awaiting an answer to an unspoken question. Lawton turned to Hyram. Hyram smiled. Lawton did not smile, but he turned back to Lori, and nodded, averting his gaze.
“What’s this?” yet another voice said. “What’s this all about?”
Stockburn lifted his gaze to see Rufus Stoleberg walk out from the base of the porch steps, heading toward Stockburn and the other men and the young woman with them.
Atop the porch steps, Grace held little Buster, rocking him gently. The boy had settled down now in the aftermath of the shooting and was looking around in wide-eyed fascination, pointing his wet finger.
“What’s this?” Stoleberg said again, glancing at Stockburn and then at the McCrae men. Unexpectedly, a broad smile creased his craggy features. “Everybody here already? It’s early yet. But since it’s Sandy’s birthday, let’s get the hoe-down started early!”
The McCrae riders glanced at each other dubiously.
Stoleberg walked in his old horseman’s bandy-legged fashion up to his youngest son, and crouched over him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Come on inside, Sandy. Come on, son. Your mother’s gonna get you all gussied up for the dance. Don’t you remember, boy? It’s your birthday! Folks is coming from all around to sing and dance and eat cake and drink lemonade! We butchered a beef and everything!”
The addlepated oldster looked at the McCraes and beckoned broadly with his short, thick arm. “It’s a little early yet but come in anyways, neighbors! I’ll tell the cook to get the steer on the spit! The sooner the better and the more the merrier!”
He laughed, danced a little jig in a short, tight circle, waving both arms, then sauntered on back to the house, clapping his hands and hop-skipping like a schoolboy on the way to see his girl.
Lawton and Hyram McCrae gazed after him, jaws slack, eyes wide in shock at the old man’s condition. Apparently, they’d had no idea about Rufus Stoleberg’s mental deterioration.
Lori pulled away from Daniel. “You heard your father,” she said quietly, gently. “Let’s go inside. Let’s go inside and see our son and make plans for raising him up proper—you and me.”
She turned to look up at Stockburn. “It’s all right, isn’t it?”
Stockburn thought it over, quickly deciding not to put Daniel Stoleberg in any of his reports to the Wells Fargo office in Kansas City. It was true that Daniel had collaborated with Hennessey in the massacre of the rail-laying crew, but the young man, crippled and grief-stricken, pining for the woman he loved, hadn’t been in his right mind.
Wolf had believed him when he’d said he hadn’t known Hennessey would kill the rail crew. Daniel Stoleberg was not a murderer. He was just a very mixed-up young man, one with a dark side, and for good reason.
Stockburn himself knew a little about dark sides.
Maybe, just maybe, Daniel would make amends and redeem himself by marrying a good woman and raising his son to grow up fine, strong, and good.
Lori smiled. She helped Daniel to his feet, and they shuffled off to the house, arm in arm.
That left Stockburn, the two McCrae brothers and the two Stoleberg brothers regarding each other doubtfully, maybe a little sheepishly. Maybe the old man, even as addlepated as he was, had shone how friendly things could have been over all these long years had the two families been good neighbors instead of blood enemies.
“What do you fellas think?” Stockburn asked, glancing from one faction to the other. “Time to bury the hatchet forevermore?”
They all looked at each other.
Lawton McCrae glanced at his brother.
Hyram hiked a shoulder. “We got our beef back. No harm done, Law.”
Lawton thumbed his hat brim up off his forehead as he stepped up to Carlton Stoleberg, pulled off his glove, and extended his bare hand. “I reckon—since we’re gonna be kin an’ all.”
Stockburn smiled.
He reined Smoke around and booted him into a trot. He’d take his time, resting the stout but tired horse often, maybe arrive back in Wild Horse in time for a late lunch.
Don’t miss the first book in this blazing new series!
WOLF STOCKBURN, RAILROAD DETECTIVE MAX O’HARA
First in the New Western Series!
Introducing a rail-blazing new series set in the early days of the transcontinental railroad—when America headed west, outlaws climbed on board, and one man risked his life to stop them in their tracks . . .
WOLF STOCKBURN, RAILROAD DETECTIVE
The newspapers call them the Devil’s Horde. A well-oiled team of cutthroat bandits who terrorize the Northern Pacific Railway en route to the coast through Dakota Territory. They dynamite the tracks, blow open the express car door, murder the crewmen, rob the passengers, and empty the safe of gold and cash. If Wells Fargo & Company can’t find a way to stop the Devil’s Horde, there’ll be hell to pay . . .
Enter Wolf Stockburn. A tall rangy Scotsman who dresses like a gentleman but shoots like a cowboy, Stockburn learned his craft from a legendary gunfighter—and honed his skills as a Pony Express rider through hostile Indian country. Now the veteran Wells Fargo detective will ride the rails from coast to coast. Make sure the train and its passengers reach their destination safely. And take down the Devil’s Horde—one by one, bullet by bullet—the devil be damned . . .
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CHAPTER 1
If you were a bird flying overhead, your spirits would soar as in your keen raptor’s mind you anticipate the carnage that would soon paint the sage and buffalo grass, the blood and viscera upon which you would soon be feasting.
Beneath you, the long, dark caterpillar of a train trundles over the gently rolling, fawn-colored land from the east. The caterpillar’s stout head is the coal-black Baldwin locomotive trailing a plume of smoke from its diamond-shaped stack—a long, ragged guidon tearing and tattering as it thins out over the passenger, freight, and express cars abutted at the far end by the red caboose. The smoke that isn’t blown away on the wind snakes its way into the passenger car windows, open against the broiling air rife with the smell of sweat, tobacco, babies’ urine, and unwashed bodies.
You hear the constant, monotonous chugga-chugga-chugga of the straining engine with a hellish conflagration burning in its stout black belly, converting steam to motion as the large iron wheels grind and clatter over the seams of the quicksilver-bright iron rails. Occasionally, the whistle lifts its signature wail—mostly where farm and ranch trails cross the tracks but just as often when the engineer, bored and heady with his authority and the heft and power under his command, simply pulls the chain to hear himself roar.
A small dust plume appears on the prairie, maybe a mile away as yo
u fly straight south of the tracks. Slightly ahead of the plume, a horse and rider take shape. The man rides low in the saddle, leaning so far forward that his chin is nearly resting on his horse’s poll. The wind blows the flaps of his duster straight back behind him, whipping them violently; it bastes the front brim of his hat flat against his forehead.
The horse fairly flies across the prairie, its own head down, ears laid flat. The beast lunges forward with its front hooves, grabbing at the ground, hurling itself ahead with its back feet. Dust and gravel and small tufts of sod are torn out of the earth by the scissoring shod feet and flung behind with the dust.
Horse and rider are racing toward the train. Or, rather, toward the spot ahead of the train where the rider hopes to intersect it.
He’s not the only one.
As you dip and bank and turn your head, loosing your ratcheting cry, the blood quickening through your predatorial heart, you see another rider, then another, and another, and another—all racing toward the train. They are spaced between forty and sixty yards apart in nearly a complete circle around the train. All are racing toward the same spot on the tracks ahead of the chugging locomotive, twenty or more horse-and-rider spokes converging on the hub of a wagon wheel, which is the railroad line.
A great roar assaults the air. You feel the concussion of the blast against your own delicate, feathered body and begin to bank away from the threatening sound before your innate curiosity brings you back. You see the black-stitched crimson ball of flames rising from the tracks maybe fifty yards ahead of the train at the point toward which the riders are converging.
The blast rips the tracks and ties out of the ballasted rail bed and flings them upward in a great cloud of churning dust and gravel. Almost immediately, the engineer pulls the chain to set the brakes, which grind and scream as they assault the wheels. The car couplings thunder as the locomotive is thrust back against the tender car and the tender car is thrust back against the freight car and the freight car is thrust back against the first passenger car, and on and on until the locomotive and all the cars screech to a stop on the tracks only a few feet from where the blasted rails lay twisted and charred around the large crater gouged by the dynamite.