The Killing Breed Read online

  Frank punched the door and cursed. “Open the door, you bitch!”

  A whomping thud sounded at the other end of the cabin. Faith wheeled, started back toward the front, stopped, scooped up her Winchester, and continued running. The front door shuddered in its frame as something large and heavy was thrown up against it. A shadow caught her right eye, and she turned to see the fleshy, small-eyed face of the older gent grinning through the kitchen window at her.

  As the front door thundered in its frame once more, she held her rifle high in her shaking hands and screamed, “What do you want?”

  “You, Faith,” the leader said tightly, just loudly enough to be heard through the door and above the boot thuds and scrapes on the porch.

  As another loud thud sounded against the front door, Faith gritted her teeth and pressed the Winchester’s butt to her shoulder. Another thundering whomp, and the door flew wide, splinters spraying out from the frame. The long-haired lead rider in the stovepipe hat flung a wood splinter aside and ducked through the door, striding to Faith quickly, his bristly cheeks flushed, his iron gray eyes grim and hard.

  “Get out of my house!” she shouted.

  She triggered the rifle, and the lead rider’s head jerked back and sideways as the bullet drew a red line across his cheek.

  The slug tore into the door frame to the right of the tall, hollow-cheeked Mexican entering behind him. The man flinched, grabbing his leather hat and jerking a quick look at the smoking bullet hole in the door.

  “Mierda! Puta bitch!”

  Behind him, the goat-bearded kid laughed.

  Faith lowered the rifle to rack a fresh shell, but she’d only ejected the spent one, which clattered to the floor around her boots, before the lead rider was on her. He jerked the rifle out of her hands and tossed it into the kitchen, where it barked off the food preparation counter and clattered onto the floor.

  Faith flung a fist toward the lead rider’s cut cheek. The man grabbed it, jerked it down, and slammed the back of his other hand against Faith’s right cheekbone—a hard, eye-watering slap that threw her straight back and sprawling onto the floor in front of the door to the hall.

  He stepped to one side and, scowling down at her, eyes spitting flames of barely restrained fury, jerked off his neckerchief and dabbed at his cheek. He pulled the cloth away to inspect the blood.

  “That’s no way to treat guests, Miss Faith.”

  The Mexican brushed past him toward Faith and reached for her arm. She jerked the arm away, scrambled to her feet, and ran stumbling down the hall. She could hear foot thuds and spur chinks behind her, the jeering laughter of the goat-bearded kid.

  Faith turned into the bedroom and swung the door toward the frame. She got it only half closed before the Mexican stopped it with his boot, eyeing her darkly through the crack.

  “Goddamnit!” Faith screamed, ramming the door once more against the man’s boot. “Get out of my house, you sons o’ bitches!”

  The Mexican threw his shoulder against the door. Faith groaned and fell as the door flew wide, ricocheting off the wall behind it.

  The half-breed closed on her, lips stretched back from his teeth, his black eyes roaming up and down her body with goatish lust.

  Behind him, the older gent and the kid watched from the open doorway. The stocky blond moved up behind and between them, placing a hand on a shoulder of each, grinning.

  “Hey, you better flip her a coin first, Chulo. Don’t wanna rile Temple.”

  A foot in front of Faith—so close she could smell the rancid sweetness of his breath and the leather of the thick vest beneath his deer-hide coat—the half-breed closed his lips, his eyes burrowing into hers. He leaned forward suddenly. Faith shrieked as his big, black-gloved hands closed on her buckskinmackinaw, and then he was jerking the coat up over her head.

  Faith struggled against him to no avail—in a second he flung the coat across the room, set his gloved hands on her shirt, and tore her man’s gray shirt and undershirt down the middle, exposing her breasts.

  “No!”

  “Holy moly!” the kid howled from the doorway. “Look at those!”

  “Jesus Christ,” growled the older gent, swaggering into the room like a bull into a pen full of heifers. “That’s too much woman for you, Chulo. You’d better let me take the green out of her first.”

  “Yeah, you better whup the green out of her, Kooch!” the kid yelled.

  Ignoring the men behind him, the Mexican reached down, grabbed Faith’s left arm painfully, and tossed her up onto the bed as though she weighed no more than a doll. She bounced off her back, her hair tearing loose from the ponytail and splaying across her face. The Mex ripped his grubby hat off his head, flung it across the room, and threw himself on top of her.

  He pawed her breasts roughly and rammed his fetid mouth down on hers, using his full weight to press her into the corn shuck mattress.

  Faith struggled, turning her head away from him, but the man overpowered her. Pawing her breasts with one hand, he held her head by her hair and kissed her harshly, shoving his tongue into her mouth and grinding his groin against hers.

  The others whooped and yelled behind him, the kid dancing a jig and raking his spurs across the hard-packed floor.

  When the Mexican finally removed his mouth from Faith’s, she sucked a deep breath, then spat his tobacco-sweet spit from her lips. He lowered his head to nuzzle and nibble her breasts. Weakly, angrily sobbing, she rammed her fists across his head and shoulders.

  Suddenly, the others fell silent. A gun hammer clicked loudly.

  Faith looked up. The Mexican froze with his rough cheek against her breast. A long pistol barrel was snugged against the Mexican’s ear. Faith followed the arm extending the gun up to the tattooed face of the long-haired leader hovering over the bed.

  The leader gritted his teeth as he said tightly, “Chulo, what have I told you about the evils of unwed fornication?”

  Chulo turned toward the man angrily. “Back off, Temple. The girl’s mine!”

  The leader looked at Faith, blood beading along the bullet burn on his cheek. “Miss, do you want to lie with this man?”

  Faith sucked a breath and lifted her head. “No!”

  The man called Temple grinned and said wryly, “ ‘Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord with a pure heart.’ Second Timothy, Chapter Two, Verse Twenty-two.”

  “She’s a whore!” Chulo cried.

  “Thornton don’t want her soiled. And I would say that lyin’ with the likes of your mangy Mexican ass would qualify as soilin’.”

  “What about me?” the older gent said with an indignant air.

  Still staring down his gun barrel at Chulo, Temple said, “Doubly so for you, Kooch.”

  “Ah, shit, Temple—you ruin everything, you know that?”

  Breathing hard, Faith stared up at the Mexican sprawled on top of her. Chulo’s eyes flicked to the gun aimed at his eye, then to the steel gray eyes of the man aiming it.

  “Pull your horns in, Temple,” he growled. “I’m getting off your precious whore though I do not understand what good is a whore if we cannot have her.”

  “Same here,” said the thick-necked, wild-eyed blond, staring down at Faith with crossed arms. He shook his head in amazement and chuckled without mirth. “Temple’d rather kill her than have her!”

  Temple depressed his pistol’s hammer and straightened. Chulo glowered at Faith, cursing, as he climbed off her and stood beside the bed, straightening his shirt and adjusting his crotch with a dip of his knees. He cursed once more loudly, regarded Temple with exasperation, then turned on his heel. He pushed past the other men and stomped on out the door.

  Temple stared down at Faith, a bizarre half smile on his thin lips and cold gray eyes. “‘Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts.’ Second Peter, Chapter Three, Verse Three.” His lips stretched, widening his grin a
s he turned to the other three men standing near the door and staring down at Faith hungrily. “Got that from my ma. There never was a more pious whore than Ma. No, sir.”

  “Go to hell, Temple,” the older gent grumbled, dismissing the group’s God-fearing leader with an angry toss of his arm. He turned and stomped through the door, and the other two were close on his heels, tossing incredulous glances behind them.

  Holding the flaps of her torn shirts over her breasts, blood glistening on the small cut on her right cheek, Faith sat up on the bed and regarded Temple angrily. “Thornton sent you?”

  Temple glanced at her breasts, a faint flush rising in his ruddy, dusty cheeks behind the two- or three-day growth of wiry beard stubble. He flicked his inscrutable gray eyes back to her face, smiling that steely smile.

  “Where’s the breed?”

  “None of your business.”

  His smile in place, Temple nodded.

  “Pack a bag,” he ordered, giving his pistol an ostentatious twirl before dropping it into its sheath. “We got a long pull ahead.”

  Chapter 7

  A little earlier in the morning and about three miles from the ranch yard, Yakima Henry jerked Wolf’s reins back suddenly and threw up a hand for Kelly to stop his own horse behind him.

  Yakima had heard the dull thud of an unshod hoof on the still morning air, and now he stared straight ahead. Narrowing his eyes, he picked the wild stud out of the rocks and brush clumps of a rise about a hundred yards away. The bronc held its head low, and it moved down the rise through scattered mesquites and pin oaks with that loose-legged, slightly knock-kneed gate of a tired horse.

  Yakima didn’t take the time to point out the bronc to Kelly. Knowing the horse’s senses were keen, he quickly reached forward to grab Wolf’s nose and backed him behind some boulders littering the bottom of the narrow canyon that he and Kelly had been following for the past half hour. It was warmer now, and they’d tied their coats behindtheir saddles and rolled their shirtsleeves up their arms.

  Quietly, Kelly backed his own horse with gentle urgings.

  Yakima had known the arroyo led to a tinaja, a rock pool that collects rainwater. He’d long ago figured the wild stallion was frequenting the pool, as it was the only good water within several square miles.

  Dismounting, he dropped Wolf’s reins near some buck brush spiking up around the shaded boulders, and quickly shucked his Winchester from its scabbard. He gently racked a shell, off-cocked the hammer, and moved around behind the horses and down the arroyo. Kelly strode along behind him, his own Spencer in his hands, mimicking Yakima’s Apache-like stealth, stepping lightly, breathing through his nose, and holding his arms slightly forward from his body, and still.

  Both men meandered around rocks until they were twenty feet from where their canyon opened into another, broader one. The stallion had dropped down from the canyon’s far ridge and was somewhere out of sight behind the eroded wall to Yakima’s and Kelly’s right.

  Yakima climbed a few feet up the sloping right bank, keeping his head well below the top and angling forward toward the broader intersecting canyon. He dropped down between a boulder with a V-like crack down its middle. Removing his funnel-brimmed cream hat, Kelly hunkered beside him, not saying anything and breathing quietly through his open mouth.

  Yakima stared through the boulder’s notch, raking his gaze across the sun-flooded canyon ahead. His blood raced when he spied the little broom-tail bronc dropping its head to drink from the tinaja nestled in black volcanic rock and junipers about thirty yards to the right of the confluence of the two canyons.

  From this angle, Yakima could see nearly all the bronc’s lean, muscular body, which was scarred here and there from brush and, likely, territorial battles with other stallions. The coyote dun had a white spot on his left shoulder and one white rear sock. Another small patch of white shone up high on its forehead, close to its ears.

  Yakima didn’t have much time. While he was up-breeze of the wild stallion, it was only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds, before the wily beast’s senses would detect its stalkers.

  The half-breed brought the rifle to his shoulder, slowly thumbing the hammer back. He drew a bead on the stallion’s shoulder, slid it slightly up and forward to ensure a heart shot.

  He squinted down the Yellowboy’s brass receiver and oiled barrel, fixing the bead on a small, pale scar in the dusty, sweaty hide about where the horse’s heart would be. Drawing a breath in and holding it, he took up the slack in his trigger finger, feeling the curved trigger press into his deerskin glove.

  A second passed. Then two . . . three . . . four . . .

  In the corner of his left eye, he saw Kelly turn toward him.

  Yakima released the breath he’d drawn, drew another, and snugged his cheek against the rifle’s walnut stock.

  The coyote dun lifted its head suddenly, turned toward Yakima. Yakima’s heartbeat quickened. The horse stood frozen, water dribbling down its bristled muzzle to splatter about the rocks. Its ears twitched and its nostrils worked, testing the air. Its brushy, burr-infested tail arced slightly out from its hindquarters to fall straight down toward the black slab of pitted rock it was standing on.

  The horse was alone. No others were near. No mares, no foals, not even another stallion to fight with. Only a few flies weaved the air about its perfect, regal head.

  Yakima tried to pull his index finger back against the Winchester’s trigger, but the finger wouldn’t move.

  The horse jerked back suddenly, dark eyes widening, and then it raised its tail and turned away and trotted up a low rise beyond the tank. It turned around a thumb of rock and stunted piñons, and disappeared into another intersecting canyon, the clomp of its unshod hooves echoing softly behind.

  Yakima glanced at Kelly, who was scowling at him. Scowling as well, Yakima turned back to the tinaja, lying dark and vacant amidst the rocks.

  Any rancher in his right mind would have shot that stud bronc when he’d had him in his sights. Such a horse would wreak costly havoc on any ranch operation, especially one as fledgling as Yakima’s. Yakima could have tried to catch him, gentle him as Wolf had been gentled, but having two stallions in his cavvy would lead to a different kind of trouble.

  Besides, he had nowhere to house the savage beast. Obviously, the stallion couldn’t be corralled with Wolf or the mares and foals. Until he could be gentled—if he could be gentled—there was the prospect he’d turn Yakima’s log, brush-roofed stable into toothpicks and dust in minutes.

  Yakima should have shot him. But he hadn’t been able to do it. The stallion’s only sin was wanting companionship, after all. To live a good life amongst his own.

  As he pushed off his knees, Yakima glanced at Kelly and growled, “Just gonna have to figure something else out, I reckon.”

  Still regarding Yakima skeptically, Kelly gained his feet and followed him back down to the horses. “But what about . . . ?”

  Kelly let his voice trail off as a soft crack resounded in the far distance. Yakima stopped at the bottom of the canyon and turned northwest, the direction from which the shot had come. The report echoed flatly in the high, dry air, bouncing around the canyons.

  Kelly looked at Yakima. “Hunter?”

  Yakima ran his tongue across his lower lip. “Maybe. Brody Harms lives over on Buzzard Butte, and he hunts these ridges.”

  Harms was an educated loner from Pennsylvania who, stricken with gold fever, had filed a claim a couple of miles from Yakima’s ranch. Every once in a while, when the walls of his diggings shack closed in on him too tightly, Harms would appear on the half-breed’s doorstep with a venison haunch wrapped in burlap for supper, and a bottle of cactus wine.