The Lonely Breed Read online

  His voice was pitched with sadistic glee. “Hold it right there, missy!”

  Thumbing the revolver’s hammer back, he aimed down the stairs.

  Faith squeezed her eyes closed and wrapped her fingers around the carpetbag’s leather handle. She jerked toward the railing as the pistol cracked. The bullet sliced the air a half inch from her right temple, barking into the dust at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Goddamn it!” Faith cried, pulling the bag off the step and heaving herself to her feet. She was no longer aware of the barking cuts and scrapes as she sprinted awkwardly in the heeled leather shoes along the roadhouse’s east wall, the carpetbag flapping against her right thigh. She ground her teeth, awaiting another shot from Willie.

  Crack!

  The bullet puffed dust to Faith’s left.

  Willie’s voice boomed above the wind. “Goddamn it, girl, don’t you run from me!”

  P-shtank!

  The bullet ricocheted off a rock as Faith darted around the corner of the roadhouse. Hearing Willie running behind her, she paused at the corner, staring at the two hitchracks fronting the stoop, her stomach sinking and her pounding heart climbing into her throat.

  She’d vaguely hoped she would find a saddled horse tied to the hitchrack, but there was only the rein-polished hitchracks and the stock tanks, the hay-littered water rippled by the wind. The wagon Willie and the hostlers had used to haul off the dead men was parked before the barn, the tongue drooping to the ground. The horses had been put away.

  Casting a glance over her right shoulder, Faith cursed, her heart beating faster. She turned to the barn creaking in the wind and shrouded with blown dust. One of the two big front doors was open and knocking against the frame. Behind her, a boot kicked a stone. Faith bounded forward and ran toward the barn.

  “Faith, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Her stomach tightened at Thornton’s voice. He must have followed her down the outside stairs. A gun popped twice, blowing up dust and gravel on either side of her running feet. She tripped over her wrapper’s hem and sprawled in the dirt, losing one shoe but somehow managing to hold on to the carpetbag.

  She twisted her head around to peer behind her. Thornton stood at the corner of the roadhouse, Willie beside him. One hand clutching his bloody side, Thornton extended Willie’s revolver straight out from his shoulder, squinting as he aimed down the barrel at Faith.

  He smiled.

  Faith sobbed and shrank back toward the ground, slitting her eyes. “Oh, shit...”

  Behind Faith there was the metallic rasp of shell being levered into a rifle breech. The revolver in Thornton’s hand puffed smoke. At the same instant, the rifle behind Faith boomed three times in close succession.

  Thornton’s slug smacked the barn as the rifle shots blew up dust a foot in front of the roadhouse proprietor and Willie.

  The men cursed and scrambled back around the building’s corner. A strong hand grabbed Faith’s arm, jerking her up with a surprised exclamation. Half a second later, she was being half dragged, half carried through the barn’s open door.

  “Get down!”

  As Faith dropped to the ground in the barn’s musty shadows, she kept her disbelieving eyes on Yakima Henry, who was triggering his rifle toward the roadhouse.

  Chapter 6

  Yakima lowered the Winchester and stared through the wind-shredded gun smoke. The top of Thornton’s head appeared around the east corner of the roadhouse. Yakima rammed a fresh round into the rifle’s breech and quickly aimed.

  A half second after Thornton pulled his head back behind the building, Yakima’s slug blew a dogget of wood from the sun-blistered clapboards an inch from where Thornton’s eyes had been.

  “That oughta give ’em something to think about.”

  Yakima ejected the spent shell, seated a fresh .44 round in the chamber, then off-cocked the hammer. He turned to Faith. The girl stared up at him, rubbing her arm where he had grabbed her.

  His lips stretched a wry smile. “You and Thornton have a spat?”

  “What gave you that impression?” Her voice was tough, but then tears flooded her eyes, and she convulsed in a sob. “He tried to kill me, and I shot him with my derringer!”

  Yakima grabbed her arm again. She winced as he pulled her up. “Come on.”

  “Where’re we going?” she asked as he led her toward the other end of the barn. She kicked out of her one unlaced shoe, and straw and goatheads pricked at her bare feet.

  “Ain’t sure, but we can’t stay here.”

  “What’re you doing back here, anyway? I thought you were dead.”

  “Just took a little swim.”

  In fact, he’d plummeted into Bear Creek Gorge, but twenty feet down he’d grabbed a stout tree root protruding from the bank. The root had snapped, and he’d fallen into the shallow water, but the root had broken his fall enough that he’d suffered only cuts and bruises when he’d hit the rocky creek bed.

  He’d holed up along the creek till first light, then made his way back to the roadhouse. He wasn’t going to let Thornton’s hostlers get their hands on his prized black mustang, Wolf, and his Winchester Yellowboy repeater. Aside from the clothes on his back and in his burlap bundle, the horse and the rifle were about all he owned.

  He kicked open one of the two back doors and looked around. His horse stood to his right, the reins looped over a corral slat.

  Near the horse, Roy Brindley was on his hands and knees, hatless, groaning and shaking his head, the holster on his right hip empty. Earlier, when Yakima had saddled the black and been gathering his possibles from the barn’s lean-to addition, Brindley had led the wagon team into the back corral. When he’d pulled his revolver, Yakima had brained him with his Winchester’s brass butt plate and tossed the revolver into a stock trough.

  Aside from Brindley and Thornton’s stock, the corral was empty.

  “Don’t mind him,” Yakima said, leading Faith toward Wolf and nodding at Brindley, who groaned and grunted, rubbing the steel-blue goose egg sprouting on his forehead. “He’s gentle as a newborn lamb.”

  When Yakima had slipped the reins from the corral slat and swung into the saddle, he reached down and pulled Faith up behind him.

  “I should have my own horse,” she said, casting a fearful look at the barn.

  “No time.” Yakima kicked the corral’s rear gate open and booted the black outside. Hearing footfalls, he reined the horse around as Thornton poked his head out of the barn’s rear doors.

  “Steady, Wolf.”

  Yakima held his reins taut in his left hand and lifted the Yellowboy with his right. He thumbed back the hammer, fired.

  Thornton’s eyes widened. He withdrew his head into the barn as Yakima’s slug punched slivers from the door. Yakima recocked one-handed.

  “Come after us, Thornton”—Yakima drilled another slug into the barn door with an angry thwack!—“and you’re dead.”

  Setting the rifle across his saddle bows, he reined the horse around and spurred it toward the low brown buttes south of the roadhouse. When he’d ridden fifty yards, cracks rose on the wind. He and Faith glanced back.

  Thornton and Willie stood at the corral’s rear gate. Thornton extended the revolver in both hands, his tattered red robe blowing about his legs. Smoke puffed around the barrel as two more cracks sounded.

  The roadhouse proprietor took two lunging steps forward, brought his right hand back, and flung the empty pistol out before him. Suddenly, he clutched his left side and dropped to a knee. He kept his head raised, lips stretched back from his teeth, shaking his right fist.

  The wind tore his shouted words, so that all Yakima could make out clearly was “... get you... dog-eater... takes me... life!”

  Faith turned her worried eyes to Yakima.

  “His thunder’s more fierce than his lightning,” Yakima assured her.

  As he turned forward and gave the horse its head, the black lunged up a cedar-stippled slope and Faith’s han
ds tightened their grip around Yakima’s waist.

  “No, it isn’t,” she said, and canted her head against his back.

  Yakima and Faith rode hard for several hours, stopping twice to rest and water Wolf before continuing their ascent into the Rocky Mountains’ towering, canyon-studded Front Range. Yakima stopped also to listen to the wind and study their back trail.

  Around three o’clock in the afternoon, he stopped the horse near a boulder snag from which a giant fir grew crooked. He shucked the Winchester, swung his right boot over the saddle horn, and dropped to the ground.

  “What’re you doing?” Faith said.

  Yakima tossed her the reins over his shoulder. “Stay here.”

  “Yakima, tell me what’s happening,” Faith urged as he climbed the rocky southern slope, holding the rifle in one hand and pulling at pine branches with the other.

  “I’m gonna see if they’re nipping at our heels,” he said without stopping, tipping his hat brim low.

  “See if who’s nipping at our heels?” She hadn’t heard or seen anyone behind them.

  “Stay there.”

  Faith scuttled forward onto the saddle then, hugging her carpetbag to her chest. She watched Yakima stride fluidly up the slope, moving with the grace of a mountain lion, long hair bouncing across his shoulders.

  He wore fringed buckskin breeches, brown boots, a blue wool shirt, and a red neckerchief knotted around his neck. A Colt was holstered on his right thigh, thonged above the knee. Near the crest, he stopped, stole a glance over the lip, then hoisted himself up and disappeared over the top.

  Hefting his rifle, Yakima jogged across the crest of the wide ridge shelving up through pines and spruces. At the top of a low knoll, he dropped to a knee and stared southeast, along the old Indian trail he and Faith had been following before he’d pulled off a half mile back.

  He squinted his keen eyes against the sun glare and smiled. Three riders appeared around an aspen copse. They were little larger than match heads from this distance, but there was little doubt who they were.

  “Stupid sons of bitches,” Yakima growled, running a forearm across his sweat-slick jaw.

  He stood, hefted the rifle again, and continued jogging south along the ridge.

  Ten minutes later, he’d crested a rise in the ridge and made his way down the other side through bunchgrass and sage, zigzagging between aspens and keeping an eye on the trail below.

  At the base of the ridge, he climbed through a boulder snag and ducked between two flat-topped, wagon-sized slabs.

  He waited, watching, hearing the hoof thuds grow louder until the three men appeared, their horses climbing a low rise. Thornton’s henchman, Willie, took the lead, holding his double-barreled shotgun across his heavy thighs, the brim of his floppy black hat hiding his eyes.

  Brindley and Higgins rode behind, old cap-and-ball pistols on their hips, Spencer carbines in their saddle boots. Brindley looked a little pale from the braining Yakima had given him. Higgins wore his usual high-crowned, Texas-creased hat. The three leaned out from their saddles, scrutinizing the trail as though looking for something.

  “I tell you, Willie,” Higgins said, “he must’ve turned off the trail. I don’t see nothing but elk shit!”

  “Shut up and let me do the trackin’, ya dumb granger,” said Willie with an annoyed air of distraction.

  Yakima stared at Willie, anger boiling in his guts. Willie had never called Yakima anything but “dog-eater” or “rock worshiper,” or, when on his best behavior, “mangy half-breed.” How many times had Yakima wanted to kick the man’s big pig-eyed face to a bloody pulp but held himself back to save his job?

  Watching the three men move toward him, Yakima pulled his head back behind the boulders. Deciding on a course of action, he grinned. In seconds, he’d removed his stockman’s boots and socks and was leaping over boulders toward the trail.

  “Where the hell that damn Injun go, anyway?” Willie said, lifting his head to gaze over his horse’s twitching ears. “There ain’t that many damn trails through these mount—”

  Brindley’s cry cut him off. “Hey! ”

  Out of the corner of his right eye, Willie spied movement.

  At first, he thought a magpie had lighted from the slope along the trail. But when he turned his head in that direction, lifting his chin, he decided a big bird—a wild turkey or a buzzard, maybe—was swooping toward him. A half second later, he saw the man’s outstretched arms and legs, the long black hair billowing as two bare brown feet bore down on him.

  Willie’s heart had only started leaping, and he’d only just started raising his shotgun, when the heel of the right foot smashed his jaw with brain-numbing impact. Lights flashed behind his eyes as he flew out of his saddle, dropping his shotgun and hitting the rocks on his left shoulder and hip. With an indignant cry, he rolled down the slope, snapping sage and loosing gravel in his wake.

  As Willie’s horse gave a startled whinny and galloped up the trail, Yakima landed on a boulder, pivoting on his bare feet and snapping the Winchester to his shoulder. Before him, Brindley and Higgins were sawing back on the reins of their own startled horses while trying to aim their old Colts at Yakima.

  The half-breed drew a bead on Brindley’s right hand, squeezed the trigger. A quarter second after the rifle barked, Brindley screamed. The revolver flew from his hand.

  “Goddamn it!”

  He clutched the bloody paw to his belly, grunting and grinding his teeth.

  “Ahhh... fuck!” Higgins shouted, triggering his Colt as his horse fiddle-footed beneath him.

  The slug spanged off the boulder under Yakima’s feet.

  Ramming a fresh shell in his rifle’s breech, Yakima aimed and fired, blowing Higgins’s hat from his head. He fired three or four more quick rounds, blowing up dust and gravel at the prancing feet of both men’s startled mounts.

  The men grunted and cursed, fighting to remain in their saddles as the screaming horses wheeled and galloped back the way they’d come.

  Yakima fired three extra shots over the men’s heads, and Higgins’s horse bucked furiously. Higgins slid down the horse’s hip before grabbing the saddle horn with his uninjured hand and pulling himself erect.

  Seconds later, the men and horses were gone, dust sifting behind them, hoof thuds dwindling into the distance.

  Yakima heard a grunt behind him, and leapt around, lowering the Winchester’s barrel. At the bottom of the slope twenty feet away, Willie rose up on his left hip and spat grit from his lips.

  The beefy man blinked groggily. His eyes found Yakima, and his upper lip curled. His right hand closed over the grip of the .36 Remington on his hip.

  Yakima levered the spent shell from the Yellowboy’s breech, an angry rasp of steel, and shook his head. “Tch, tch.”

  Willie slid his hand away from the revolver’s grip.

  “Go home, fat man,” Yakima said. “If I catch you trailing me again, you’ll have more than a sore jaw.”

  Willie glowered up at him, his fleshy cheeks flushed with fury.

  Yakima turned, leapt from the boulder to the trail. Faintly, he heard the click of a gun hammer. He ducked, wheeled, saw the revolver in Willie’s hand, and fired.

  The .44 round punched through Willie’s chest, snapping his head back against a deadfall tree. He choked and sputtered for a few seconds, then his chin drooped to his chest and his eyes lost their light.

  Yakima ejected the spent shell, looped the rifle over his shoulder, then climbed back up the ridge to where his boots sat atop a rock, socks stuffed inside. When he’d donned the socks and boots, he made his way back up and over the ridge.

  Faith was waiting for him in the shade of a juniper tree, sitting with her knees up, Wolf ’s reins in her hand. The black whinnied and turned his head with a mouthful of bluestem when he heard Yakima hopscotching down the rocks.

  “What happened?” Faith said, rising. “I heard shooting.”

  “Some people don’t listen to reason.” Yak
ima slid his rifle into his saddle boot and grabbed the reins. “Come on. We have a few hours of light left.”

  “Yakima?” she said, when he’d mounted the horse and extended his left hand to her.

  His eyes met hers.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I never know till I get there.”

  Chapter 7

  Roy Brindley and Ace Higgins were heading hell-for-leather back toward the roadhouse when Brindley jerked his head to one side and pulled back on his horse’s reins. The claybank whinnied sharply and dug its back hooves into the sand and gravel, skidding.

  Higgins, halted his own sweat-lathered mount. “What is it?”

  “Heard somethin’,” Brindley said, staring at the two-track wagon trail behind them, turning his head this way and that, like a bird. He’d wrapped his neckerchief around his bullet-grazed right hand.

  They were in the foothills now, about five miles from the roadhouse. The sun had long since set. Coyotes yammered in the southern hills rising darkly toward a velvet, starry sky.

  “What’d you hear?”

  “I don’t know. Somethin’.”

  “You think that savage followed us?” Higgins laughed. “Come on. I need a drink.”

  “Wait a minute. We turn around, we’re liable to get back-shot, or—”

  A rustling rose from the weeds right of the trail.

  “Christ!” Brindley said, fumbling his pistol from its holster and ratcheting back the hammer, wincing at the pain in his hand.

  The weeds parted and a small animal waddled onto the trail. It stopped and turned toward the men. Two white-ringed eyes flashed in the starlight, and a short, white-ringed tail whipped stiffly. The raccoon chuckled angrily and, its back arched, scampered across the trail and into the thick brush on the other side.

  Higgins laughed. “There’s your savage, Roy. Better ventilate that polecat before he backshoots you!” He turned his dapple gray up trail and heeled it into a trot. “Come on, goddamn it, I need a drink bad!”