Arizona Wild-Cat (Larry & Stretch Western. Book 2)

by Marshall Grover

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  One – The Hanging Deputy

  Two – Meet a Wild-Cat

  Three – No Way Out

  Four – Revelations

  Five – The Hecklers

  Six – New Strategy

  Seven – Welcome Home

  Eight – Man At Large

  Nine – The Wild-Cat Cuts Loose

  The Series

  Copyright

  About Piccadilly Publishing

  About the Author

  The outlaws were begging for trouble when they challenged the Texas Hell-raisers!

  Larry and Stretch couldn’t stand by and see the honest citizens of Widow’s Peak swindled by the unscrupulous Jay Endean. The boss-thief was selling worthless railroad stock, and courting Tess Hapgood—the girl they called Arizona Wild-Cat.

  With fast guns, hard fists and Lone Star luck, the Texans declared war, exposing the plotters for what they really were, and in so doing the stage was set for a violent showdown. They were two against many, but Larry and Stretch had no quit in them. They were in this fight to win, or die trying!

  One – The Hanging Deputy

  “Thunder,” opined Larry Valentine.

  “Couldn’t be,” contradicted his partner. “Sky’s too blame clear for thunder. Ain’t gonna be no storm, runt.”

  “I’m tellin’ you,” repeated Valentine, patiently, “I just now heard thunder.”

  They were too tired for strenuous argument. The chill atmosphere of the mountains was giving way to mid-morning heat, now that they had left the high country. They were slowly walking their mounts down the winding trail from the towering pyramid-shaped mountain in this remote corner of Arizona known as Widow’s Peak.

  They were Texans, aimlessly wandering the frontier to east and west of the Lone Star State, never remaining long in one place.

  The chill of the mountains was something they’d soon leave behind now. They would be shucking out of their leather jackets for, below them, the vast expanse of prairie shimmered with heat-haze. It promised to be a hot day.

  Larry Valentine was a hefty six-foot-two, dark-haired and good-humored. His heavy-jawed countenance was tanned and there were tiny crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. It was, in some ways, a handsome countenance; but somewhat weather-beaten. But the weather was not the only force that had shaped the face of Larry Valentine. Fists and boots, of varying sizes, had aided in its molding. For it could be said of Larry Valentine that the only thing he liked better than a fight was another fight.

  Stretch Emerson was cast from a different mould but, in essential matters, such as when and who to start hitting, he was a fitting cohort for the man he called “runt”. Stretch, a long, sandy-haired hombre with deceptively innocent blue eyes, had earned his nickname from his formidable height and stringy frame. He stood six feet five and a half inches in his scuffed riding boots, and wore two walnut-handled Colts in tied-down holsters, claiming that if, like Valentine, he toted only one gun, his balance would be adversely affected.

  From above, and far to their rear, another dull rumble filled the morning air. Stretch frowned and glanced sideways at Larry, Larry also frowned. “Thunder on a clear day?”

  “What the hell—?” began Stretch.

  “Quiet!” Valentine held up a hand. “You hear somebody hollerin’?”

  They reined in, listening. The voice rose up to them from the plain below in a shrill, warning yell.

  “Git off a that trail—quick!”

  The Texans squinted downward. As near as they could judge, the voice was issuing from a cottonwood clump, away to the west of the bottom of the mountain.

  “Git off a there!” The voice pleaded again. “Avalanche!'”

  “Avalanche!” yelped Stretch. “Holy Hannah!”

  Just before swinging into violent action, Valentine glimpsed the start of the slide—five or six immense boulders crashing onto the trail and rolling downward. The ground trembled, and Stretch’s mount uttered a shrill whinny of alarm.

  “Let’s move!” panted Stretch. “We gotta beat it!”

  “Not a chance!” snapped Valentine. “Them rocks’d be on top of us. Foller me—over the side!”

  Stretch gaped at his partner, but Larry suited the action to the words, urging his mount to the edge of the mountain trail. For a tense moment the animal balked, then began the dangerous descent, forelegs slithering in the sand and shale of the cliff-face. Stretch edged off the trail and followed his friend. They were halfway down when the bouncing, pounding boulders boomed past above them. Sand and rock rubble showered them, but the huge boulders stayed on the trail, rolling towards the base of the mountain. The Texans, overawed by the noise and fury of it, continued their hazardous descent. They were no strangers to danger. They had been close to death many times, but never closer than this.

  They were thirty feet from the bottom of the slope when Valentine’s horse slipped and threw him. Instinctively, Stretch reached out a hand, as though to aid his partner. Then his own horse went down, its right fore and hind legs sinking in a sand patch, its weight shifting suddenly sideways. Stretch pitched from his saddle and rolled. The horses slid after him.

  Valentine’s heavy body came to a halt, held fast in a patch of mesquite. Stretch landed atop of him in a wild scramble of long, threshing limbs. They righted themselves, struggled to their feet, and lurched over to the spot where their mounts lay. Both animals were unscathed, but it took minutes to calm the frightened animals and get mounted again. While they were doing that, Larry Valentine stared up at the trail.

  “We’re ridin’!” he told Emerson. “And fast! Some of that stuff’s gonna clear the edge and come down the way we came!”

  They turned towards the cottonwoods and rode hard, eager to put distance between themselves and the base of the cliff. But it was over. They realized that after the first fifty yards of their hectic ride. The rumbling had ceased, and they were alive, and they owed their escape to the unknown owner of the shrill voice.

  As they drew nearer the trees they heard that voice again, directing them, urging them to veer right of the copse. They turned right, then drew rein, gaping incredulously.

  “I’ll be a long-tailed son of a prairie-dog!” breathed Larry.

  High in the air a man hung from a branch of a tall cottonwood, suspended by a lariat knotted behind his back and slung beneath his armpits. Gently, he swayed back and forth, like a grotesque pendulum. The hanging man was short of build, round of race and woebegone of expression. He also noted, with a startled gasp, the polished metal badge of office on the short man’s vest. Stretch noticed another surprising feature.

  “He’s still gun-hung!” commented the taller Texan.

  “That he is!” breathed Valentine. “That he is.”

  A pearl-handled .45 protruded from the holster slung to the deputy’s fat thigh, shining brightly in the sun, as though to draw attention to the fact that its owner had not been given time to draw it.

  “This here,” decided Stretch, “is somethin’ I just cain’t figure!”

  “You and me both,” growled Larry.

  “Hey, fellers,” bleated the mournful voice from above, “are you gonna git me down outa here?”

  It was neither a command nor a request—just a sad, plaintive question.

  “How in tarnation did you get up there?” demanded Larry.

  “Git me down,” suggested the fat man, “and I’ll tell you.”

  Valentine edged his mount back a few yards and examined the situation. The hapless lawman was strung high, an
d both Texans were, at this time, very weary men; too weary to clamber up to the topmost branches of this tree. Larry Valentine dismounted, drew his Colt, took quick aim and fired. The gun boomed and the rope parted a few inches above the trussed man’s head. He dropped rump first on a lower branch, plummeted off and landed on the still-mounted Stretch Emerson. Borne down by the extra weight, Stretch toppled from his saddle and sprawled on the ground, with the fat man on his shoulders.

  Freed of his bonds and standing on his feet two minutes later, the deputy looked the sorriest-looking lawman either Texan had ever seen. They judged his age to be in the mid twenties. He stood a shade over five feet four and was built like a barrel. In no way did he resemble other lawmen they had known. Even his shy, crestfallen expression seemed out of character. A clatter of hooves from the other end of the copse caused the Texans to reach for guns; but the riderless pinto, a well-fed animal with a black patch on its chest, was the deputy’s own horse. It nuzzled his ear. He patted it absentmindedly.

  “Sure obliged to you gents,” he muttered, studying his boot-toes.

  “You’re welcome,” shrugged Larry. “Come to think of it, we have to thank you—for hollerin’ a warnin’ at us.”

  “From where I was hangin’,” nodded the fat man, “I saw the start of that landslide—saw it ’fore I saw you two. Least a body could do was holler out.”

  “We’re obliged,” Larry acknowledged. “Now—uh—are you gonna tell us how you—uh …”

  His voice trailed off. He jerked a thumb at the tree and raised his eyebrows in mute query. The little deputy heaved a sigh, blew his nose, and said, “I’m Sammy Foy—deputy-sheriff of Widow’s Peak County. I dunno who it was strung me up there—on account of they had bandannas over their faces.”

  “How’d you come to tangle with ’em?”

  “Well—uh—I saw ’em holdin’ up the stage ...”

  “There’s been a stage hold-up?” blinked Stretch.

  “’Bout three hours ago,” nodded Deputy Foy. “I was up on Turkey Butte and I saw these four jaspers ride out on the Burrowsville trail and stop the stage. I got down there, real fast, and—uh—tried to help. But it wasn’t no use ...”

  “What happened?” prodded Larry.

  “Nothin’,” shrugged Sammy. “They threw a rope around me and made me set quiet. Then they sent the coach on its way, counted what they took from the passengers, and brought me back here. Then they strung me up.”

  The question had been trembling on Stretch’s lips, from the moment he first saw the deputy’s star. He couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  “How in blue blazes,” he breathed, “did a sawed-off little jasper like you ever get to be a lawman?”

  Sammy Foy’s fat shoulders moved up and down in a sad shrug. “It’s a long story,” he muttered.

  “We got plenty time,” Larry assured him. “We’re headin’ for your town—Widow’s Peak. If you’re ready to go home, we’ll tag along with you, ’case some other owlhoot gets a mind to string you up again.”

  The cruel barb was not wasted on Sammy Foy. He sighed, clambered into his saddle, and led them to the town trail. They fell in on either side of him, told him their names, and listened to his sorry history.

  To his fellow-citizens, he was known as Sad Sammy, because of his perpetual lugubrious expression. His mother, Hildy Foy, was a widow, and the apple of Sheriff Buck Trumble’s eye. The elder lawman had used his influence to have Sammy appointed his deputy, thereby hoping to win the gratitude and affection of Mrs. Foy. So far, it hadn’t worked. Hildy Foy had become resigned to her widowhood, and would hear no talk of a second venture into matrimony. But Buck Trumble was still living in hopes.

  “Okay,” nodded Larry, after careful consideration. “So far you make sense.”

  “Sure,” conceded Stretch. “We understand how you got the job—but we cain’t figure why they let you keep it! Not when you let four owlhoots rob a stage right under your nose. Hell!”

  “I know, I know.” Foy nodded, morosely, and stared at the winding trail ahead. “Nobody figures I’m much good at any damn thing—and they’re right. I’m just a blamed failure—always have been. No sand—that’s what’s wrong with me. No sand.”

  “It ain’t manly to talk thataway,” growled Larry.

  “I can’t help that,” sighed the deputy. “Shucks—only reason I took the job was to impress Tess.”

  “Who’s Tess?” demanded Larry. “Was she impressed?”

  “She runs the Square Deal Livery, with her Uncle Dewey. And she wasn’t impressed. She don’t like nothin’ about me—and that’s a shame.”

  “Why?”

  Sammy rolled his eyes, gave a shy grin, and said, “I’m real stuck on her. She’s the purtiest gal in all Widow’s Peak County.”

  “But she ain’t stuck on you, huh?”

  “That’s it,” nodded Sammy. “She says as how she don’t like cowards—and that’s just what I am. You can’t blame her.”

  “I met all kinds of galoots in my day,” commented Stretch, “but I never met an hombre that was so blamed set on tellin’ folks he’s yaller.”

  The deputy did not take offence. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Why try to fool folks? They all know it’s true.”

  “Holy Hannah!” gasped Stretch. “I give up. There’s no help for this feller, Larry.”

  “He couldn’t get much lower,” agreed Valentine. “And the worst thing of all is—he keeps talkin’ like a Texan.”

  “Yeah!” growled Stretch, turning in his saddle and glaring at Sammy Foy. “You oughta quit that, deputy! Talkin’ like a Texan, when you ain’t nothin’ but a ...”

  “I always talk thataway,” frowned the deputy. “You gents ain’t the only ones in Widow’s Peak that comes from Texas.”

  “You’re from Texas?” wailed Stretch.

  “Why sure! Born and bred in Cedar Springs.”

  “You’re lyin’—damn your ornery fat hide!” said Stretch.

  “It’s the truth!” muttered Sammy. “So help me.”

  Larry drew rein. So did Stretch. Sammy, being in no mood to be left alone, had no option but to rein in also. The three sat their mounts, in the center of the trail, gaping at each other, Larry and Stretch distraught, Sammy Foy wondering what had come over them.

  “A Texan!” howled Valentine. “Lettin’ himself get hamstrung ...!”

  “I—I was—uh—outnumbered!” protested Sammy. “Texans don’t get outnumbered,” wailed Stretch. “There was only four of ’em!”

  “Hangin’ from a tree!” cursed Larry, “with your shootin’ iron still in your blamed holster! Ain’t you got no shame?”

  “Sure!” Sammy nodded, eagerly. “I’m always ashamed.”

  Larry made a choking sound and buried his face in his hands. Stretch, to soothe his shattered nerves, began rolling a cigarette. The fact that he used two hands to roll it showed his state of mind, as he faced a Texan who admitted cowardice. Sammy Foy little realized the full extent of the shock he had given Larry and Stretch. Larry’s distress could only have been equaled by Bonaparte, at Waterloo, had Marshal Ney suddenly expressed the intention of joining Wellington’s army. It was too much. It wasn’t logical, or even decent, for a son of the Lone Star State to behave in this way.

  “We gotta change our plans,” Larry told Stretch. “We cain’t just buy rations in this here town, and ride on, like we said. We gotta stick around a while.”

  “Damn right,” agreed Stretch, vehemently jerking a thumb at the puzzled deputy. “We can’t just ride out and leave this afeared little cottontail all on his lonesome. He’ll be givin’ Texas ...” he touched the brim of his Stetson as he named the State of his birth ...”a bad name!”

  In the sad eyes of the fat little deputy gleamed a sudden spark of interest.

  “You fellers gonna stay in town a while?” he asked.

  “We’ll have to!” scowled Larry.

  “Good!” chuckled Sammy Foy. “Then you’ll git a chance to pay m
e off.”

  “Pay you off? What the hell’re you talkin’ about?”

  “For savin’ your lives!” retorted Sammy. “Don’t forget. If I hadn’t spotted you comin’ down that mountain trail—if I hadn’t hollered a warnin’—you two would’ve been planted under tons of rock, by now!”

  “Damned if he ain’t right!” breathed Stretch.

  “Yeah. He’s right all right,” conceded Larry. “We owe this scared little jackrabbit our hides.”

  “That means you’re beholden to me!” announced Foy, gleefully. “Ain’t that right?”

  “I guess so,” nodded Larry. “So what now?”

  “Let’s ride on,” grinned Sammy, “and I’ll tell you what I just now thought of.”

  What Sammy Foy had “just now thought of” was as astute and cunning a scheme as Larry and Stretch had ever heard. Its primary virtue was its simplicity, yet it could, if performed successfully, assure the two Texans of three days’ free board. The fact that this free board would be granted them by the County, in Sheriff Trumble’s jail, was a minor consideration. Larry and Stretch had filled many a jail-cell during the years they had wandered the West together.

  Sammy Foy would benefit, in no small measure, if the plan was carried out well. He would emerge as something of a hero. To Larry and Stretch it seemed only fitting that all Texans, even the sawn-off ones, should be regarded as heroes.

  “Nothin’ to it,” Foy repeated, for the fifth time, as the outskirts of town came into view. “All you two have to do is git into a ruckus. You know—what us lawmen call disturbin’ the peace ...”

  “And we let you arrest us,” nodded Larry, gravely, “and you do it big—and we act like we’re plumb scared of you.”

  “That’s the idea,” grinned Sammy. “Only we gotta make sure Tess sees it. That’s the real important part. When she sees me proddin’ you two up to the jail, with my gun at your backs, she’ll damn soon change her mind about me.”

  Larry thought it over for a moment longer, then conferred with his partner. Stretch was in complete agreement.