Last Lawman (9781101611456)
Read Last Lawman (9781101611456) Online
Authors: Peter Brandvold
One Final Request
“Dusty…?”
Spurr grimaced as he placed a hand on the sheriff’s left shoulder. He was shot up bad. He might have been dead. He wasn’t moving. Spurr jerked the man’s shoulder slightly and was surprised when Mason stiffened and lifted his head a little.
The man grunted, tried straightening his back, but cursed softly and rested his chest back down against the grulla’s neck. His hat was gone, and his thin, sweat-matted hair was mussed.
“Easy, Dusty,” Spurr said. “I’ll get you down.”
Mason turned to him. Even the man’s face was splattered with blood—likely from the many wounds in his chest and belly. Blood slithered down from both nostrils, matting his mustache. He ground his jaws. His eyes were dark and flat with pain.
“Spurr…?” His voice was a wheeze that barely made it through his lips.
Spurr squeezed the man’s bloody arm, his own knees threatening to buckle. “I’m here, Dusty.” He blinked hard as tears oozed out of his eyes to roll down his cheeks.
“Spurr,” Mason said again, only slightly louder this time. His eyes bored into Spurr’s for a full ten seconds, his jaws quivering as he ground them together. And then he said between quick, shallow breaths, “Kill ’em….”
Berkley titles by Peter Brandvold
The Rusty Spurr Series
THE LAST LAWMAN
The .45-Caliber Series
.45-CALIBER CROSS FIRE
.45-CALIBER DESPERADO
.45-CALIBER FIREBRAND
.45-CALIBER WIDOW MAKER
.45-CALIBER DEATHTRAP
.45-CALIBER MANHUNT
.45-CALIBER FURY
The Bounty Hunter Lou Prophet Series
THE DEVIL’S LAUGHTER
THE DEVIL’S WINCHESTER
HELLDORADO
THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS
THE DEVIL’S LAIR
STARING DOWN THE DEVIL
THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE
RIDING WITH THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS
DEALT THE DEVIL’S HAND
THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET
The Rogue Lawman Series
GALLOWS EXPRESS
BORDER SNAKES
BULLETS OVER BEDLAM
COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL
DEADLY PREY
ROGUE LAWMAN
The Sheriff Ben Stillman Series
HELL ON WHEELS
ONCE LATE WITH A .38
ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN
ONCE A RENEGADE
ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER
ONCE A LAWMAN
ONCE MORE WITH A .44
ONCE A MARSHAL
MANHUNT
Other titles
BLOOD MOUNTAIN
THE LAST LAWMAN
A RUSTY SPURR NOVEL
PETER BRANDVOLD
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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 LAST LAWMAN
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley edition / October 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Peter Brandvold.
Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.
Cover design by Edwin Tse.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61145-6
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ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
ONE
The kid cried, “Spurr, you whoremongerin’ ole devil—I’m all shot up over here!”
“I told you to stay to ground, you worthless pup!”
Guns blasted from the three front windows of the outlaw shack. Chunks of hot lead screeched through the air, thumped into the ground near where Deputy Sheriff Kenny Potter lay writhing, his rifle in the dirt beside him. He had both hands cupped to his bloody left side, holding his guts in.
“Spurr, I can’t get up!” the kid cried as a bullet blew up sand and gravel two feet beside his curly head. He whipped his face away from where the bullet had hit, screaming,
“Spurr!”
Deputy United States Marshal Spurr Morgan chewed out a frustrated curse, brushed the back of his buckskin glove across his patch-bearded cheek, and raised his ’66 Winchester to his bowed, old shoulder. He fired once, twice, three times, the rifle thundering and stabbing smoke and flames toward the brush-roofed, adobe-brick cabin.
The echoes sounded like shrill witches’ squeals as they chased each other around the New Mexico canyon.
The sun-washed outlaw shack fronted a lumpy stone escarpment about sixty yards away from the dry wash that Spurr was hunkered in. Two of his bullets hammered the gray wooden casing around two windows with loud, wooden
whumps!
The third slug winged through the window right of the Z-frame door, evoking a clipped scream from inside.
“Goddamn you, Spurr!” shouted one of the train robbers holed up in the shack. “You just blew one of my ears off!”
“Come on out of there peaceable-like!” the old lawman shouted, “or I’m gonna shoot off a helluva lot more than that, Philpot!”
Spurr, Sheriff Ralph Adams, and Adams’s deputy, Kenny Potter, had tracked the outlaw gang, known far and wide as Philpot’s Dogs, out of Jicarilla, New Mexico Territory, and into the nearby Jicarilla Mountains. Adams had been shot in the left leg the day before when Hector Philpot’s bunch had bushwhacked the three lawmen. Spurr had patched up the sheriff as well as he could and sent him back home for tending.
Spurr and the young deputy, Potter, whom Spurr doubted was a day past twenty and was as green as willow bark, had continued to the shack here along Turkey Gulch, in one of the range’s dry canyons. The gang of five was holed up inside with the eight thousand dollars they’d stolen from a payroll shipment belonging to a mine in southern Colorado. The mine had been contracted by the federal government, which had made looting it a federal offense.
Thus, Chief Marshal Henry Brackett had sent his most experienced, also oldest, deputy, Spurr Morgan, down from his headquarters in Denver to run the dogs to ground. Since Philpot’s gang had shot up Jicarilla on their southern dash to the border, Adams had insisted that he and his wet-behind-the-ears deputy throw in with the federal lawdog.