Death in the Desert

Drawing Fire . . .

Kathy heard the gunfire, and her heart leaped into her throat.

“Hold on, honey!” she said.

“They're shooting at us!” Emily screamed. Her grip on Kathy's waist tightened.

Kathy didn't know what to do, and the horse started to panic.

She froze.

Clint was inside city hall when he heard the shots.

“Damn it!” he swore.

He rushed to the front doors and swung them open. As he stepped out, he saw four men at one end of the street, carrying guns. At the other end, Kathy and Emily were on their horse. He was closer to them than he was to the four gunmen, so he made a snap decision.

He stepped out into the street, drew his gun, and shouted, “Kathy! Here!”

Kathy saw Clint, saw the open front doors of city hall, and knew what she had to do. She wheeled the horse around and kicked it with her heels.

Steve Harwick saw the man come out of city hall and step into the street.

“That's gotta be Adams,” he called out. “Get 'im!”

The four of them turned their attention—and their guns—toward him.

THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts

Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.

LONGARM by Tabor Evans

The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.

SLOCUM by Jake Logan

Today's longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.

BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan

An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill's Raiders.

DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer

Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .

WILDGUN by Jack Hanson

The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!

TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun

J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he's the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.

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DEATH IN THE DESERT

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2013 by Robert J. Randisi.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61045-9

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / November 2013

Cover illustration by Sergio Giovine.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The smell of death.

There was nothing quite like it.

Especially for a man like Clint Adams, who had smelled it many times before.

It came to him on the wind even before he rode within sight of the town of Medicine Bow, Arizona. He'd spotted a signpost for the town a few miles back, decided it was a likely place to stop for a beer and a meal, and a few supplies, before moving on. He wasn't going anywhere in particular, just sort of drifting, spending some time alone. He'd recently stayed in a town with a lot of men and guns, and he needed to be by himself.

But as he spotted the town, the smell of death drifted to him on the air. It was unmistakable. Even his horse, Eclipse, smelled it and shook his head in distaste.

“Easy, boy,” Clint said, patting the big Darley Arabian's neck, “I smell it, too. We'll have to take a look-see, though.”

He continued on the road into Medicine Bow, rode slowly and carefully down the main street, which was empty. In fact, there was an eerie, empty feeling to the place that you felt in many ghost towns, but the street and the buildings did not have the deserted look that ghost towns had. In fact, several of the buildings seemed to have recently been painted. Yet there was nobody on the street, nobody walking the boardwalks, and no sounds coming from any of the buildings.

He spotted a saloon and decided to take a look inside.

He steered Eclipse that way, dismounted, and spent a few seconds holding the gelding's head and speaking to him in soothing tones.

“Easy, take it easy, boy,” he said. “I'll check this place and we'll move on.”

The horse nickered uneasily, but remained where he was as Clint mounted the boardwalk and approached the saloon doors.

He went through the batwing doors slowly, but there was no need. There was no one inside the saloon. Some of the tables had partially finished drinks on them—glasses of beer and whiskey, unfinished whiskey bottles—as if everyone had left in a hurry.

He walked to the bar, also found half-full drinking glasses there.

“Hello!” he called out.

No answer.

Clint leaned over to look behind the bar, then walked around to take a better look. There was nothing there. Nobody and nothing, except for lots of dirty glasses and empty whiskey bottles.

“What the hell . . .” he said to himself.

He went to the back room behind the bar, found nothing but supplies. In the rear of the saloon was a door that led to an office. He opened it, stepped inside. A desk, some filing cabinets. On the desk was a half a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.

He went back to the bar, got behind it, and drew himself a beer. He sipped it, found it cold. Just the presence of beer told him it wasn't a ghost town, but the fact that the beer was still cold meant people had been there quite recently.

He carried the beer mug with him and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

In the upstairs hallway he saw six doors, so numbered. The first four he tried yielded nothing. The beds were unmade, and there were articles of clothing lying about, but nothing in the closet or the dresser drawers. It was as if someone had packed in a hurry.

He left the fourth room and walked to the fifth. He stopped in front of the door, took a healthy swig from the mug to finish the beer, and then tossed the glass aside. It struck the floor and bounced, but did not shatter. He had a bad feeling about the last two rooms.

He opened the door of Room 5 and walked in.

The smell hit him first. Then he realized that he had already been smelling it. On the trail, on the street, in the saloon, and in the hall. In this room, it was stronger still, because this was where it was coming from.

He walked in and looked at the bed. At first sight the man looked like he was sleeping, with the sheet and blanket pulled up to his chin. But as Clint moved closer, he could see from the paleness of his skin that he was dead. He lifted the sheet just enough to look underneath. The man was naked, and there were no wounds. That was what he had been after, the wounds that had killed him. But there were none. So with no wounds, what had the man died of? His skin was bluish and dry looking. His eyes were closed, so Clint left them that way, even as curious as he was to see what was underneath the eyelids.

Also, as bad as the body smelled in the room, this one single corpse could not be sending out the smell of death as far as the trail.

Not by itself.

And not with all the windows closed.

He left the room and walked down the hall to Room 6.

In Room 6, he found a dead woman and child. Like the man, they were lying in bed. The woman was naked, but the child—a girl of about three—was wearing a nightgown. Like the man, they had no wounds.

Clint backed out of the room quickly, and made his way down to the bar. He got a bottle of the cheapest whiskey in the house, took off his shirt, and washed his hands and arms with the rotgut. All he could figure was that these people had died of some disease. He could only hope he didn't contract it. He hadn't touched them, but he'd touched the sheets, and he'd breathed the air.

He put his shirt back on and left the saloon. His first thought was to ride out of town, but wherever he went, he might be bringing an epidemic with him. So he decided to stay where he was, check the town out a little more thoroughly.

He tried the livery next.

He left Eclipse outside the stable and went inside. He found two dead men—a young man lying in a stall and an older man in an office. Like the others, they had no wound, the same kind of pallor.

He moved on. And at each stop, more puzzling finds.

He found a dead man in the hardware store, a dead woman in some rooms above a dress shop, three dead men in the field and grain, three more dead men in two different saloons. The men in the saloons seemed to have been trying to drink themselves to death before the disease could get them. He also found eight more people in two other hotels.

On a sudden flash of insight he looked for a doctor's office. When he found it, he found six more dead people—four men, a woman, and a little boy.

Twenty-seven dead people so far. No wounds, same pallor. Definitely an epidemic so far. He decided not to run. There was no place to go, He was either infected or he wasn't. He decided to go through the doctor's things, see if he could find any notes. If the population had evacuated the town in the face of the disease, the doctor had probably taken his notes with him, but he might have left something behind.

First, though, Clint was hungry, and he had to take care of that.

In search of food, he spotted a café, went there, tied Eclipse off outside, entered a kitchen. It was fully stocked. He wanted something quick, so he made some bacon and eggs, soaked some leftover biscuits in the grease to soften them up. He found a shed out back with some vegetables and cured meats. If he was there long enough, he'd make himself a bigger meal. For the moment, bacon and eggs would do. And some good, strong coffee. He topped it off with a bottle of whiskey from a nearby small saloon that had no bodies in it. He grabbed a bottle of the most expensive whiskey, and this time drank half of it down.

So fortified, he took Eclipse to the livery, unsaddled him, brushed him, fed him, and left him there to rest.

Having taken care of his horse, Clint returned to the doctor's office to see what he could find out.

Not much, as it turned out.

He sat at the doctor's desk, went through some drawers. He found one note about a man who had come in with symptoms—weak, feverish, unable to keep food down. It was the last page in a notebook, and there was no new one around. The doctor must have taken it with him. According to the date in the book, the first man had come in to see him two months ago.

Two months for the disease to kill the town. Less, probably. He had no way of knowing when the people had actually left, although his best guess was less than a week ago. The beer was still cold.

Where had they gone?

How had they known they wouldn't be taking the disease with them?

And were they really gone?

He had no way of knowing how large the town really was. He'd searched the same general area, had come up with twenty-seven dead. What if they had moved to the other end of town, drawn a deadline in the street? Nobody allowed to cross from either side.

It was getting late. In the morning he'd saddle Eclipse and ride the length of the town, make sure it really was abandoned. There might still be some people who had remained behind.

He went back to the café, cooked himself a steak dinner with vegetables, washed it all down with coffee and the rest of that bottle of whiskey. He found a pallet in the back room, decided not to use any of the beds in the hotels. No point in taking unnecessary chances.