The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2)

by Peter Brandvold

  “Goddamnit!” Arliss regaled Haskell.

  “Don’t pay attention to him,” Bear said, setting her bare foot in his lap and trying not to get excited at the feel of her bare flesh against his thigh. Hell, only a few nights ago he’d had a look at, and feel of, more than her foot!

  Still, Tifflin was right. It was a damn pretty foot.

  Haskell inspected it closely. It was a little swollen just behind her toes, in the middle of her upper foot. The second toe was a little ashen up to the first knuckle. He pressed his thumb gently against the swelling.

  “Ow, you behemoth!”

  Again, Tifflin laughed.

  Haskell gave Arliss a look that reminded her she hadn’t at all protested against his manipulations the night before last. She must have got the message. Her cheeks darkened and she looked down quickly.

  “Take it easy there—it’s sore.”

  “He’s nothin’ but a big clumsy idiot,” Tifflin said, staring at the girl’s bare foot. “Maybe I’d better take over. You got any other injuries, do you? How ’bout your titties? They sore at all?”

  He laughed.

  Arliss grabbed her Winchester from where it leaned against her saddle, cocked it, and took aim at the younker. He screamed as he dropped his jerky and raised his hands to his face as though to shield himself from a bullet.

  Tifflin cried, “Christ—put that long gun down, girl!”

  Haskell looked at Arliss. She stared down the barrel at young Tifflin. Her right index finger was drawn back taut against the Winchester’s trigger.

  Was she really going to shoot him?

  “Uh ... ” Bear said.

  “Take it away from her,” Tifflin cried, glancing around his raised hands at the lawman. “Take the rifle away from her! Take it away! She’s crazy!”

  “I may be crazy ... ” Arliss depressed the carbine’s hammer, and raised the barrel. Her eyes flashed fire at Haskell. “But no man—even one your size—takes my carbine away from me, Marshal. At least, not if there’s a breath remaining inside me.”

  “Right poetic,” Haskell said.

  “Jesus!” Tifflin said, lowering his head. “As crazy as she is purty!”

  Arliss smiled across the fire at him. “Thank you.”

  Haskell set her foot on the ground, pulled an old shirt out of his saddlebags, and used his bowie knife to tear it into two wide strips. Wrapping one strip around her foot, he said, “What’s your interest in him? Your real interest?”

  She looked at Tiffin, who had resumed munching his jerky and was eyeing her now as though she’d turned into a moon-crazed she-cat ready to spring on him at any second. “Like I said—nothing. Nothing at all. It’s his father I want to talk to. About the Jackal.”

  “Well, then we got that in common,” Haskell said, wrapping the second cloth strip around her ankle and foot. “I reckon we’ll be riding together to the Santa Rafael tomorrow.”

  “Isn’t that sweet?” she said with a phony sweet smile. Turning to Jordan, she said, “Why is he cuffed?”

  “He’s been a bad boy. Got four of his pards pushin’ up daisies. I could charge him but I decided to turn him over to his old man, instead.”

  “As leverage to ride out to the San Rafael and ask Ambrose Tifflin about the Jackal,” she said, arching a knowing brow.

  “There you have it.”

  “You’re smarter than you appear, Marshal Haskell.”

  Tifflin gave a wry snort. “Ain’t she a caution?”

  Haskell only smiled at the pretty, sharp-tongued young Pinkerton, and shrugged a self-deprecating shoulder.

  He tied the second strip around her foot and ankle then wrapped his hand around her foot, very gently. Despite the sourness of her personality, he liked the way her foot felt in his hand. He couldn’t help taking a moment to enjoy the feeling. There’d been so much of her to concentrate on the other night that he hadn’t paid any attention to her feet, but they were as sexy as the rest of her.

  At least, the right one was.

  Holding her foot in his hand, he stared into her eyes. She wasn’t telling him everything she knew about the case they’d both found themselves on.

  What was it?

  What wasn’t she telling him?

  She was as cunning as she was pretty. No wonder Pinkerton had hired her ...

  Arliss looked down at his hand then up into his eyes, her expression oblique. Her bosoms appeared to rise and fall sharply just once.

  Was she remembering what he himself couldn’t help flashing back to—the other night when he’d toiled naked between her spread knees and she’d raked her fingernails painfully across his shoulder blades, howling? Tucking her lower lip under her upper front teeth, she lifted her foot from his lap then leaned forward to pull on her sock.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That feels better.”

  “Should give you a little support. I don’t think it’ll swell too much.”

  “I’m sure it will feel much better in the morning.”

  “Arliss?”

  Lifting her coffee cup to her lips, she looked at Bear over its steaming rim.

  “You realize that my business trump’s your business out here, right? When I ... or we ... run down the Jackal, I’ll be taking him back to Denver to stand trial on a laundry list of charges. Just so we’re clear ... ”

  “Oh, of course, Marshal,” she said with an innocent shrug and a winning smile. “We couldn’t be clearer on that!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Haskell turned in early and woke up early, well before dawn.

  Quietly, while Tifflin and Arliss slept, rolled in their blankets on separate sides of the fire ring, Haskell got a new fire going with dry brush he’d scrounged the previous night. He filled his coffee pot from one of his canteens and set the pot on a rock in the flames to boil.

  He sat on the log near the fire, lit an Indian Kid, and pulled the file Henry Dade had given him, detailing what little was known about the Jackal’s life and times, out of his saddlebags. Smoking, listening to the coffee pot begin to hiss as the flames snapped and sputtered, Bear reviewed the thin file.

  Tucked in the back of the folder was an age-yellowed clipping from a Dallas newspaper detailing a holdup many years ago in northern New Mexico. Jack Hyde had been one of the members of a small bunch of west Texas hoorawers who’d robbed a stagecoach carrying over a hundred thousand dollars in gold bullion to one bank from another. The money was being delivered for the American purchase of an old Spanish land grant.

  All but two hoorawers had been run down and killed in central New Mexico, south of Albuquerque. Hyde and a Mexican named Oscar Alvear had been the two survivors. They’d gotten away from two posses and a contingent of U.S. Cavalry, but a month later they were both taken down in Wichita Falls by a local marshal and his deputies. Hyde and Miller were both sentenced to twenty years in the federal pen.

  Another clipping, folded with the first, was a brief notice of Jack Hyde’s escape from the pen, when a group of prisoners he was part of were being transported from a spur rail line they’d been laying track for, to the prison. Hyde was the only escapee of the bunch.

  Haskell had read both clippings on the long, slow train ride down from Denver. He’d read them both again now, hoping to stumble on some important piece of information he’d overlooked before. But nothing rattled his cage. The first clipping was of only passing interest; it offered nothing to help Haskell run the man down now, nearly twenty years later. The second clipping, about Hyde’s prison break, was common knowledge. No lawmen had ever been able to lasso him since though many had tried.

  The Jackal was still on the run. And now he was here in western Texas, working for one party of a land war. Haskell just had to find out which party had hired him, try to get a description and cut a warm trail, and bring the slippery bastard to justice once and for all.

  Then he could haul his sorry ass out of this west Texas furnace and return to the cool breezes of the high country. It was still hot during the
day in Denver, but the nights were wonderfully cool—just right for drying his sweat after a sweet, energetic tussle with a beautiful lady in his suite at the Larimer Hotel ...

  Haskell poked the Indian Kid into his mouth and stuffed the file back into its saddlebag pouch with a frustrated chuff. He wasn’t sure why he was frustrated, but he was. He had the vague feeling he was missing something important but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  As he reached for the coffee pot, intending to pour himself a second cup of mud, Arliss whined in her sleep.

  Haskell looked at her. She rolled onto her back. Gray smoke from the fire was billowing over her.

  “Smoke,” she mumbled, moving her arms and legs under her blankets.

  “Easy,” Haskell said.

  “Smoke,” she said again, shaking her head. “Oh, God ... smoke!”

  Haskell set down the coffee pot and placed his hand over one of her ankles, over her blankets. “Arliss ... easy.”

  “Oh, God, smoke!” she fairly screamed, and sat bolt upright, reaching for her rifle.

  Haskell grabbed the rifle and pulled it out of her hands as she was about to cock it. She stared at him, wide-eyed. For several seconds, she stared right through him. Then she blinked and slowly closed her mouth. Chagrin rose into her pale, sleep-drawn, frightened features.

  “Christ!” This from young Tifflin, who was also sitting up now, having been awakened by the girl’s outcry. “What in the hell got into her?”

  “Nothing,” Arliss said, blinking, slow to shake off the dream.

  Nightmare, rather.

  “Nothing.” Arliss held her hand out toward Bear. “I’ll take my Winchester back now,” she said crisply.

  Haskell extended it to her, stock first.

  “Christalmighty!” young Tifflin laughed. “I never seen the like of a girl as crazy as her.”

  Arliss loudly cocked the Winchester and aimed it at his head. She didn’t say anything. She just aimed the barrel at the firebrand’s head.

  Tifflin shrank back against his saddle. “Ah, shit—here we go again!” He looked at Haskell. “Call her off! Call her off!”

  Haskell looked at the young firebrand and shook his head. “You don’t learn, do you?”

  “I learn! I learn! I’ve learned my lesson now!”

  Arliss pursed her lips until they became a dull pink line across the bottom half of her face. “One more insult out of you, you limp-peckered moron, I’m gonna give you a new bellybutton.”

  “I’m done! I’m done!” Tifflin howled, raising his cuffed hands to his face again. “I promise I’m done!”

  Arliss depressed her carbine’s hammer and set the rifle aside.

  “Whew!” Tifflin said, slowly lowering his hands. He looked at Haskell. “I gotta drain the dragon.”

  “What you just shot down your leg didn’t do it, huh?” Haskell chuckled. “Stand up and shuffle over here, and I’ll free your feet. But just your feet.”

  Tifflin cursed and gave a grunt as he leaned forward and heaved himself to his feet. He sort of hop-shuffled over to Bear’s side of the fire.

  He looked at Arliss and said, “This ain’t no insult, Miss Posey, so don’t get your neck in a hump. But my pa’s gonna get an earful about how you and the big lummox here—I can insult him, can’t I?—have been treating me. Ambrose Tifflin is gonna get an earful, all right, and he ain’t gonna be one bit happy about how his only son has been so poorly treated.”

  “Let me look around for my fiddle,” Arliss said, kneeling to pour herself a cup of coffee, “and I’ll play you a sad song.”

  “Hurry up and cut them ropes, lawdog,” Tifflin said. “I gotta pee like a Prussian plow hor—!”

  He cut himself off just as Haskell slid his bowie knife from its sheath. Bear felt something wet on his cheek and right shoulder. Rain? He looked up at Tifflin, who stood just ahead of him and slightly right.

  Tifflin’s chest had opened up. What appeared to be part of the young firebrand’s shredded heart was hanging from the splintered, pale ends of two or three shattered ribs. Thick blood was bubbling out around the gore to slither down the front of the kid’s shirt.

  Just as Haskell heard the thunderous although distance-muffled roar of the big-caliber rifle, he realized that the kid was not giving birth to some revolting red beast inside him. He’d been shot!

  As the kid stumbled forward, looking down in shock at his shredded heart, Haskell yelled, “Down!” and threw himself off the log he’d been sitting on. He grabbed Arliss around her waist and rolled off his left shoulder, tossing her like a bundle of laundry over his right hip and over the log.

  As another large-caliber bullet hammered the front of the log, Haskell threw himself over the log to land beside Arliss, who was glaring at him, furious for the way he’d manhandled her and trying to wrap her mind around the reason for it.

  Again, the thundering report of the big gun blasted the early-morning quiet to smithereens, sending deep-throated echoes vaulting around the canyon.

  “My rifle!” Arliss cried and lurched toward the carbine.

  Haskell grabbed her and shoved her back down behind the log. “Forget it!”

  “I need it—obviously!”

  “That cannon blasting away at us is a Sharps Big Fifty, accurate to up to five hundred yards depending on the accuracy of the man shooting it. Judging by the gap between the hits and the reports, he’s at least two hundred yards away, maybe farther. You might as well throw rocks at him as try to peg him with your little Winchester from that distance. Now, keep your head down, because you look a whole lot better with it on your shoulders!”

  “A Sharps, you think?” Keeping her head down, Arliss cast Haskell an anxious, hazel-eyed glance, her hair in her eyes. “That’s what the Jackal uses.”

  “I know that much about him!” Haskell said a quarter-second before another large slug thudded loudly, angrily into the log, causing it to lurch. Bark and wood slivers flew.

  The big rifle belched hellfire.

  “He’s here,” Arliss said, chin to the ground, eyes raised. “He’s that close.”

  “Little good it does us. The bastard’s got the upper hand.” Knowing the Jackal was probably injecting another long, brass cartridge into the single-shot cannon’s open breech, Bear jerked a quick look up over the log. Through the gray dawn light, he could see a rock outcropping roughly two hundred yards away, toward the canyon’s east ridge.

  Aside from the distant eastern ridge, it was the highest ground round. The shooter had to be on it.

  The lawman’s suspicion was confirmed when smoke puffed and orange flames lanced from the top of the outcropping.

  Haskell jerked his head back down behind the log, pressing his chin to the ground, as another large round—probably a .50-caliber—hammered the log. The log quivered. There was a cracking sound. Haskell lifted his eyes to see a long crack running roughly vertically through the log.

  “Jesus,” he wheezed. “He’s gonna try to blast right through the log until he has us in his sites!”

  Quickly, he raised his head again and looked around. All they had for cover besides the log was brush and a few rocks, which meant no cover at all. A clump of cedars stippled a low rise that separated their position from the trail, but the cedars wouldn’t offer much more cover than the brush.

  Not from the size of a weapon the Jackal was wielding.

  The killer had the higher ground, and he could keep Haskell and Arliss pinned down behind the log until he’d pulverized it and had an open view of his quarry.

  Bear had staked out their horses roughly fifty yards behind the camp and in a copse of wind-twisted post oaks and sycamores. No real cover there, either. If Haskell and Arliss tried to run to the horses, the Jackal would likely open up on the mounts, and then his quarry would be in an even worse fix.

  Haskell looked at Jordan Tifflin, who lay belly down in a pool of thick blood welling beneath his chest, and winced. Tifflin’s face was turned toward Haskell, his lips
pooched out. His half-open eyes were staring at the blood leaking from his half-open mouth.

  “What are we going to do?” Arliss said just after another blast had hammered the log, widening the crack.

  Haskell considered. Meanwhile, two more rocketing blasts hammered the log, spraying him and Arliss with bark and slivers.

  Silence yawned.

  Haskell lifted his head, cast his gaze toward the rise.

  “What’s he doing?” Arliss said, edging a glance of her own over the log.

  “Big-caliber guns like that run hot and get jammed easy.” Haskell rose and leaped the log, grabbing his Henry and cocking a round into the action. “You stay here. I’m gonna storm the son of a bitch!”

  “Bear, wait!”

  “No waitin’, honey!” Haskell cast a glance over his right shoulder. Arliss was sitting up, staring at him worriedly. “When he starts shooting again, you run back to the horses and mount up and ride the hell away from here!”

  Haskell turned his head forward and ran as hard and as fast as he could, holding the Henry by its neck in his right hand. He bounded up and over the low knoll and through the cedars. Leaving the cedars, he began tracing a serpentine course.

  The Jackal’s cannon was likely jammed, but he’d get it unjammed before Haskell could run the two hundred yards to the rise. All the lawman could do was run as fast as he could in a zigzag pattern and hope Jack Hyde didn’t set a steady bead on him. If Bear could make a hundred yards, he could start throwing lead back at the Jackal—lead that would actually reach the son of a bitch atop the rise!

  Haskell’s left arm sawed back and forth as he ran. His knees rose high. He stepped on a rock, nearly fell, but then got his boots beneath him once more, and continued running. Air raked in and out of his lungs. A sharp pain grew in his right side.

  When he’d run what he thought was a good seventy yards, something moved atop the outcropping directly ahead of him. He threw himself to his right as smoke puffed atop the rise, and orange flames lanced the lightening dawn air. Haskell hit the ground, rolled onto his belly, and heard a crackling thud behind him. He glanced over his left shoulder to see a branch fall from one of the cedars.