Authors: Frank Leslie
The Killing Breed (2 page)
There was something about that elusive spirit that made men want to tame it. Thornton himself had wanted to; in fact, he’d thought he had. The chewing burn in his side reminded him that he hadn’t come close. . . .
After she’d shot him and taken off with the half-breed who’d done odd jobs about the place— Yakima Henry—Thornton’s luck had soured. For that reason, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, he blamed her for
all
of it—his ruined health
and
his ruined business.
all
of it—his ruined health
and
his ruined business.
Ruby lifted her head suddenly from the pillow, frowning. Her ears were better than Thornton’s, and it was several seconds later that the roadhouse proprietor heard the drum of hooves outside, and then the squawk of tack and the rattle of bridle chains. Male voices rose as the hoof clomps grew.
“We have business!” Ruby trilled, rising to a sitting position, letting the quilts fall to reveal her large, swaying brown breasts as she turned toward the window.
She started to climb over Thornton toward the floor, but he gently pushed her back. “Hold on, girl.”
Cursing, he dropped his pale, thin legs to the floor and rose, wincing at the hitch in his side. He grabbed the top quilt off the bed and, wrapping it around his shoulders while holding the whiskey jug in one hand, shuffled to the window.
He rarely got any business during the week; most of it came on Friday and Saturday nights, and even that was mostly from the same four or five men working diggings along the nearby creeks, and from a couple of Swedes raising horses over in Bobcat Valley. Few men but the occasional grub-line rider or desperado on the lam rode the trail during the week.
Thornton looked out into the yard where dust and leaves swirled in the raw late-September wind. Four riders had pulled up in front of the roadhouse. They sat their horses abreast, curiously looking around. Because there were a couple of broken windows, the porch boards were rotted with weeds pushing up from beneath, and there was no smoke rising from the fieldstone chimney, they no doubt wondered if Thornton was open.
Thornton himself often wondered.
Was
he open? What was the point in running the place with as little business as he got? But then, it no longer had any market value, and while he’d managed to save a sizeable nest egg, he had nowhere else to go even if his health would allow him to travel.
Was
he open? What was the point in running the place with as little business as he got? But then, it no longer had any market value, and while he’d managed to save a sizeable nest egg, he had nowhere else to go even if his health would allow him to travel.
“Go away,” Thornton grumbled, appraising the men sitting their horses below—five hard-looking, unshaven hombres in heavy fur coats, with rifles in oiled saddle scabbards, revolvers and knives jutting from sheaths on their hips or thighs. The long black hair of one of the riders—the man with the black stovepipe hat banded with snakeskin— swirled around in the wind. The angling late-afternoon light touched a small tattoo forming a green-blue cross on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
Lowry Temple. Shit. He was ramrod of the bunch gathered around him now—three other American regulators and a Mexican pistolero named Chulo Garza.
“Go away,” Thornton grumbled again, setting the bottle on the dresser to his left and reaching for the .38 revolver hanging by its butt ring from a wall hook.
Temple lifted his head to shout above the moaning wind, “Thornton, you in there?”
Thornton let his hand freeze on the pistol’s butt and squinted down into the yard, studying the face of the man who’d yelled. It was Temple, all right. He dropped his hand from the .38 and, grunting his disgust at having to traipse downstairs, tossed the robe onto the bed and reached for his balbriggans.
“Friends?” the girl asked.
“Friends?” Thornton chuckled. “Lowry Temple is no friend. Let’s just call him an ex-employee. Bastard still owes me for a man he didn’t kill.”
When he’d stepped into his threadbare longhandles and donned heavy wool socks, he grabbed his tattered robe off a wall hook, then reached for the quilt. “Did a couple of small jobs for me three years ago and still thinks
I
owe
him
free hooch and a bed whenever he pulls through.”
I
owe
him
free hooch and a bed whenever he pulls through.”
“Thornton!” Temple called once more.
“I’m comin’!” the roadhouse proprietor shouted at the window.
He dropped the .38 into one robe pocket, the bottle into another, stepped into wool-lined elk-skin slippers, and opened the door with another shrill curse. “Stay here, Ruby,” he said as he stepped into the hall and began drawing the door closed behind him. “Don’t want these wolves befouling you, girl. That younker that rides with Temple—Benny Freeze—carries clap like a polecat carries rabies.”
Thornton shuffled downstairs in his slippers and shivered as the chill of the cavernous main saloon hall, with its long, scarred bar and twenty or so tables, pushed against him.
As he descended the stairs, he ran a hand down the rail, his palms scraping several of the jagged holes that had been torn from the wood the night the half-breed had shot his way out of there, hop-scotchingtables while most of the men in the saloon had triggered lead at him. Earlier that night, the breed, Yakima Henry, had carved up four men who had tried to disfigure Faith to settle an old score with Thornton.
Those dead men had had friends and relatives downstairs that night, and the others took umbrage with
any
breed who killed a white man for
whatever
reason.
any
breed who killed a white man for
whatever
reason.
Thornton didn’t mind that Henry had saved Faith. What he did mind was that the breed had been diddling the whore for free and that, the next day, she’d run off with him like a love-struck schoolgirl.
Yakima Henry had moved like a phantom, dodging bullets, swinging from chandeliers, and finally flying through the big plate-glass window at the room’s front as though he’d suddenly sprouted wings.
He’d disappeared into the night, stealing back to the roadhouse the next day to retrieve the girl Thornton had thought was his own.
Faith.
Before she’d left, however, she’d given the roadhouse proprietor something to remember her by. Thornton had been about to punish her for sleeping with the breed behind his back with the traditional knife slash across the lips—which she had richly deserved despite her insistence that she and the half-breed were only friends—when she’d pulled the pearl-gripped derringer from some hidden sheath in her underclothes.
Unconsciously, Thornton brushed his hand against his perpetually blazing side—a doctor in Denver told him the surgery required to clean out the infected tissue in and around his ribs would, in his frail state, likely kill him—and began clomping across the main saloon hall. The big, bullet-shaped stove in the middle of the room had long since gone cold, and the only light in the place was the wan gray shafts pushing through the dirty, fly-specked windows and around the planks nailed over the broken ones. Thornton removed the locking bar from over the two outside doors, tossed it onto the floor with an echoing bang, and pulled one of the doors open with a raucous rake of rusty hinges.
The five riders had tied their horses to the hitch rail and were mounting the boardwalk, the wind rippling the fur on their coats, boots thumping and spurs chinking. Lowery Temple had an incredulous look on his hawkish, mud-eyed face as he cast his glance across the saloon’s front wall and then to Thornton, giving the roadhouse proprietor a bemused up-and-down.
“Didn’t know the Comanche were raidin’ this far north.”
“Goddamnit,” Thornton growled. “If I’m open, I’ll have the sign saying as much in the front window. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
But before he could reach back to close the door, the tall, broad-shouldered Temple stepped forward,removing his stovepipe hat and swiping it across his legs to dislodge the trail dust. His voice even, his eyes hard, he growled, “Thanks for invitin’ us cold, trail-weary pilgrims into your more-than-humble abode, Thornton. Why, you must be a real God-fearin’ man to be so hospitable.” The bounty hunter turned to Thornton, a sneer making his iron gray eyes sparkle.
Thornton stepped back with a sigh as the other four riders followed Temple into the room, a cold draft dogging their heels and blowing leaves over the threshold. The stocky, fiery-eyed blond, Frank Miller, gave his hat brim a wry pinch, while the young clap carrier, Benny Freeze, chuckled sneeringly, the tip of his tongue jutting out from between his little teeth.
The Mexican, Chulo Garza, stared blankly at Thornton as he pushed on past him, while Kooch Manley, stocky, paunchy, fat faced below his weather-stained Stetson, clapped his gloved hands and said, “I been wantin’ a drink for the last five miles!”
Scowling, Thornton closed the door. He kicked at the dancing leaves, then turned to the five bounty hunters standing with their backs to him, appraising the grim environs. He grumbled, “Don’t expect much. I’m out of beer, low on whiskey, and my girls have all drifted to rosier meadows.”
Lowry Temple stood facing the room between Garza and Freeze, turning his head slowly and whistling softly. “What the hell happened, Thornton? I know it’s a weeknight an’ all, but Christ!”
Thornton cursed as he shuffled toward the bar. “Didn’t you hear? The mine company in Gold Cache moved the main trail five miles south. What brings you out to this backside of the devil’s hell? Lost, are you?”
“Me and the boys had business nearby,” Temple said. The other men were sauntering over to a table near the stove, pulling off their gloves and looking around with grim bemusement. “Bobcat Canyon, matter of fact.”
Thornton fished a bottle of cheap rye whiskey off a sparsely populated shelf beneath the bar, and frowned at Temple, who still stood in front of the door. “Bobcat Canyon? That’s where the Johanssen brothers ranch.”
Temple smiled devilishly as he bit the end off a long black cheroot. “Not anymore they don’t.”
Near the stove, fiery-eyed Frank Miller threw his head back and laughed.
Chapter 2
“Christ,” Thornton muttered, carrying the bottle of rye and five shot glasses out from behind the bar, his elk-skin slippers sweeping the worn puncheons. “Oscar and Knute Johanssen were two of my few remaining regulars. And they made damn good gooseberry wine.”
“Nice fellas, too.” Frank Miller tossed his tan hat onto the table, around which he and the others except Temple sat, and ran a hand through his close-cropped blond hair. His crazy blue eyes seemed lit from a conflagration inside his head, and his bull neck was sunset pink. “They cooked us a nice supper, let us sleep in their barn. Even served us breakfast. If they’d had a daughter, I don’t doubt they would have passed her around!”
He and the others laughed.
Thornton shook his head as he set the glasses on the table. “And you repaid their hospitality by killing them.”
“A neighbor wanted ’em out,” Temple said with a shrug.
Thornton sighed. “You’re a strange breed.”
The bounty hunter chuckled as he moseyed up to the table, stretching from side to side to loosen his back. “Am I mistaken, or was that you who hired me to kill three of your competitors up the canyon only—what was it?—two years ago?”
“They were conniving sons o’ bitches.” Thornton was filling the shot glasses. “Had no business in
my
canyon. Bastards and swine crowdin’ my territory. I’d hire you to kill ’em all over again!”
my
canyon. Bastards and swine crowdin’ my territory. I’d hire you to kill ’em all over again!”
He raised the bottle and turned to Temple, who now stood behind Benny Freeze. “But if you remember, that cheating cardsharp, Wendell Myers, is running with his tail up and his tongue flapping between Bismarck and Deadwood. I paid you to bring me his ears!”
“‘Do not judge, lest ye be judged,’ ” Temple clucked as he sank into a chair and ran his hand over a bullet hole in the table before him. “Mine company come in and shoot up the place, too?”
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