Blood on the Trail

Book 1: Jeremiah Halstead Western

by Terrence McCauley

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Silver Cloud, Montana. A mining town welcome to all seeking to make their fortune. And a place where a lawman has to watch his back before some hardcase empties his pistol into it.

Deputy US Marshal Jeremiah Halstead is escorting notorious outlaw John Hudson across the territory for trial when he's ambushed by a pack of Hudson's men anxious to rescue their partner from his custody. Halstead puts the blast on them, but outnumbered and outgunned, he has little choice but to hole up in an old mining town known as Silver Cloud, Montana. It's a place where he can keep a lock on his prisoner while figuring out how to get past Hudson's gang alive.

But the folks in Silver Cloud are none too happy playing host to the lawman or his kill-crazy prisoner. Unable to trust the sheriff to back his play, Halstead finds himself standing alone against Hudson's gang as they slip into town, recruiting gunmen to help free their leader.

Except for Ed Zimmerman. He's spent his whole criminal life in John Hudson's shadow. He wants Hudson dead and buried so he can become the leader of the gang. And if he must, he'll put everyone in Silver Cloud six feet under—including Deputy US Marshal Halstead . . .

Release date: March 29, 2022

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“Come on, Col!” Jeremiah Halstead yelled as he spurred the mustang on. “Faster, girl. Faster!”

The Deputy United States Marshal crouched low beside the mustang’s neck as bullets from the Hudson Gang cut through the air all around him. High and low and right past him. None of them had found their mark yet. None of them would, if he had anything to say about it.

He knew it was almost impossible to hit a man from the back of a running horse. Returning fire would only be a waste of ammunition. Urging the mustangs to run faster was a much better idea.

The horse Halstead was pulling on a lead rope was also a mustang and Col’s sister. She had no trouble keeping up the pace despite the prisoner tied over her saddle like a dead deer. He imagined John Hudson must be complaining something awful. His ribs were probably mighty sore given the pounding they were taking, but the wind in Halstead’s ears drowned out the cries of the outlaw.

Halstead could feel Col begin to reach her top speed as the air and blood began to flow through her body. The young mare had been Texas born and usually needed a little bit of time to limber up in the cold Montana weather, but once she did, she was the fastest horse Halstead had ever ridden. He knew he would need every bit of that speed now if he had any hope of out-running the Hudson Gang.

Halstead kept the horses running straight across the flatland in hopes of putting as much distance as he could between himself and the gang.

He stole a quick glance back at his pursuers and saw the group of ten outlaws was quickly falling behind. Halstead knew this was not only because of the speed of his mounts. They were only a few miles out of Rock Creek, and the Hudson Gang’s horses were already showing signs of being winded. The animals had spent too much time in the town livery being overfed by the hostler.

The Hudson Gang were overfed, too, but in a much different way. They had managed to cow the sheriff and take over the town of Rock Creek for the past several months. The outlaws had grown soft on whiskey and women. They robbed drunks in alleys and took a share of the winnings at the gambling tables whenever it had pleased them. Easy living in the town they terrorized had made man and beast soft, much to the benefit of Jeremiah Halstead.

But experience had taught Halstead to know better than to take the gang lightly. The Hudsons, as they were known, had a reputation throughout the territory as being a brutal, determined band of stone-cold killers. He knew that even if he managed to get away from them now, these men would continue to stalk him every step of the two-day journey to the federal court in Helena. U.S. Marshal Aaron Mackey wanted to see John Hudson hang in the territorial capital and Halstead had no intention of letting his boss down, especially since this was his first official assignment as a deputy.

After a quick overnight stop in the town of Silver Cloud, he would head on to Helena and see to it that John Hudson received the justice he deserved.

Halstead saw a stand of pine trees in the near distance and steered the mustangs to head in that direction. He was glad the second horse with John Hudson across her back had been able to keep pace with them despite the large prisoner she carried.

Halstead had to crouch even lower in the saddle as he rode among the low-hanging branches of the pines.

He drew his mustang to a gradual halt and brought the horses around to see where his pursuers were now. They had spread themselves out in a line about three hundred yards away and were moving at a much easier pace.

Smart, Halstead thought. They know where I am. Best to rest the horses while they plot their next move.

Halstead pulled out the field glasses from his saddlebags and took a closer look at the men. He could see the thick vapor coming from the muzzles of the horses. They were blowing hard and fast in the cold autumn air. They were not used to riding this hard anymore. The speed and distance had taken a toll. They were fat and out of shape and would need a long rest before they were ready to take up the chase again. The liveryman back in Rock Creek had been too generous with the oats, and the lack of exercise had made them sluggish. If the men of the Hudson Gang continued to chase him now, he doubted all of the mounts would make it even halfway to Helena.

Judging by the way they were breathing, he figured at least three of them would come down with pneumonia if they did not already have it. An outlaw was not much of a threat without a horse in open country like this. And since Halstead had their leader tied over the saddle of his mustang, he hoped the remaining members of the Hudson Gang knew enough about horses to know chasing him would get them killed.

But relying on another man’s common sense to save his own life did not sound like much of a plan to Jerry Halstead. He had never been much of a gambler as he preferred to make his own luck.

Halstead had bristled at Mackey’s orders that all of his men wear all black when picking up a prisoner. He felt like he looked like a preacher or a mortician but did not dare question his friend’s orders. Now that he was among the pines, he understood Mackey’s reason. Black made for good cover in many situations. At night, for instance, and now among the shadows of the pines. The Hudsons knew where he was, but they could not see him. They were on tired mounts in open ground. All of that was in his favor.

It was time to tilt the odds even further in his favor.

Keeping hold of the rope of the second mustang, Halstead climbed down from the saddle and led both horses to a pair of pines. He slung Col’s reins around one of the branches and tied the second mare carrying John Hudson to a tree close by. Col had a tendency to nip at her sister when her blood was up, which it certainly was now.

John Hudson began squirming, but Halstead had bound his hands and feet tightly under the barrel of the mustang too well for him to get free. His prisoner wasn’t going anywhere.

Halstead took a knee and took a good handful of Hudson’s hair as he raised his head to look at him. The prisoner screamed through his gag in protest.

“Quit fussing,” Halstead told him. “You’re not hurt, just uncomfortable. And you’d be sitting upright now if you and your boys hadn’t given me so much trouble back in Rock Creek.”

Hudson struggled in vain to pull his hair free from the deputy’s grip. His fleshy face was red from anger and from riding across the saddle for so long.

“Now, I’m going to have a conversation with your men in my own way. If this turns out like it should, I’ll see to it you’re riding proper. If it doesn’t, then you’ll stay as you are until we reach Silver Cloud.”

Halstead gripped the hair tighter as he pulled Hudson’s head up even higher. “But if you cause me any trouble or try to get away, I’ll catch you and I’ll drag you all the way back to Helena. Not fast, but real slow so you make the journey.” He shook the prisoner’s head. “Look at me so I know you understand.”

John Hudson did look at him, causing Halstead to smile. If looks could kill, Jeremiah imagined he would be dead. He figured that must have been the same icy glare that had cowed the good people of Rock Creek for so long while he and his gang controlled the town. The same glare that had held them in check until John Hudson had pushed them just a bit too far.

“Don’t be angry with me, Hudson. If you hadn’t gone and killed the mayor, I wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t be tied over a horse.”

Halstead released his grip with a hard shove and left the outlaw to dangle helplessly over the saddle. The deputy had no sympathy for him. John Hudson was a bully and Halstead hated bullies.

He went back to Col and rubbed her neck. The horse had barely broken a sweat despite all the running and seemed content to eat the shoots of grass that had grown up around the roots of the pine trees.

“There’s my girl,” he said as he dug a carrot out of his saddlebag and fed it to her. He did not dare give her another because he might need her to run again at a moment’s notice and did not want her belly too full of food. But he liked to reward a horse as soon as he could following a good effort, and Col had given him her all.

He dug out another carrot and fed it to Col’s sister, who he had not gotten around to naming. Both animals had come north with him from Texas and had proved themselves many times on the trail. They might have been smaller than most horses in Montana, but he would put them up against any other mount for durability and speed.

While the animals enjoyed their treat, Halstead slung the field glasses around his neck and pulled his Winchester ’86 from the scabbard on the left side of the saddle. He had an old Winchester ’73 in his right scabbard but selected the ’86 for its range and stopping power. He figured he would need to take these boys at a distance, and the ’86 was the right tool for the job.

He walked toward the edge of the trees but remained in the shade. He raised the field glasses and took a closer look at the men following him.

He saw they had stopped completely now and kept their mounts in a straight line as they looked at the stand of pine trees where he was hiding.

“Ten men in the gang and not a brain between them,” Halstead said to himself as he looked them over. Then he remembered none of the men who rode with John Hudson had ever been called upon to do much thinking. Hudson had always been the brains of the outfit. All the outlaws had to do was rob what he told them to rob and kill whomever he told them to kill and everything worked out fine. That’s the way they had done it for years, or so Halstead had been told when Mackey sent him to bring John Hudson to justice.

The marauders had left a trail of blood behind them that spanned from California all the way to Wyoming and back again. The West was littered with the bodies of stagecoach passengers they had robbed, mining camps they had hit, banks they had held up, and Indians they had massacred and scalped.

As he looked through his field glasses, Halstead saw three of them still had those scalps tied to their saddle horns, dangling from ropes like morbid trophies. A few people had stood up to them of course, but none of them had lived long enough to tell the tale.

That was until John Hudson had been foolish enough to go and kill the mayor of Rock Creek, and the townspeople rallied against him and threw him in jail. The rest of the gang had managed to get out of town before they were lynched and made camp somewhere in the rocks that overlooked Rock Creek, waiting to make their move.

And as he looked them over now, Halstead could tell they were a motley, grimy bunch despite having spent the better part of the past three months in the relatively refined comfort of Rock Creek. The outlaws were of all shapes and sizes and colors. He even remembered some of their names Mackey had given him back in Helena, though he could not tell which outlaw corresponded to which name as he looked them over now.

He figured one of the younger men was probably Hudson’s little brother Harry. The others were known simply by whatever title John Hudson had seen fit to call them when they joined his murderous gang. Men with names like Bug and Cree. Pole and Mick. Weasel, Bandit, and Ace. Cliff was the easiest to spot in the group, even from this distance, as he was the only black man in the bunch. The broadest of them, too, with a black patch over his left eye.

Besides Harry, only one of them was said to go by his given name. Ed Zimmerman, who Mackey said was every bit as bad as John Hudson himself. Maybe even worse. He sported two guns, just like Halstead and had acquired a reputation as something of a gunman even before he had joined up with the Hudsons.

Halstead wondered which of the men he was looking at now might be Zimmerman, but there was no way he could tell something like that from this distance. Jeremiah thought of himself as being pretty handy with a pistol, too. He figured he would probably have to go up against Zimmerman at some point between here and Helena. He would be interested in the outcome, especially because his life would be on the line.

He kept watching the men as they maintained a ragged line and although none of them looked at each other, he could see their mouths moving. The small puffs of vapor that rose from them as they spoke confirmed as much.

Halstead did not have to read lips to know they were talking about what they should do next. The lawman had taken their leader into the pines, where there were plenty of shadows and cover to be found. A man could hold off a group their size for quite a while, especially if he knew how to shoot. And they had enough experience to know a deputy marshal knew how to shoot. He might not have his uncle Billy Sunday’s eye or his Sharps rifle, but Halstead could still kill a man at a fair distance with his ’86.

And the longer they talked, the more he began to wonder if they might not be a bit smarter than they looked.

He hoped not. For his sake.

Harry Hudson had somehow found himself in the middle of the line, though he had not planned it that way. It was just where he had happened to end up when that damnable lawman rode into the pines with his brother.

Although he was John’s brother, there had only ever been one leader of the gang and that had been John. That had always been fine with Harry. He had never been one to make decisions on his own, especially when he could avoid it. He supposed that was why he had followed his brother off the family farm in Kansas and into the life of an outlaw in the first place.

“He’s your brother,” Cree said to him. The man’s dark, swarthy complexion had reminded John of a Cree Indian who had managed to stick a knife in him once. As Harry remembered, Cree was simply a French-Canadian with dark features. “It ought to be your call about what we do next.”

Harry was about to stroke his bushy beard as he often did when faced with a difficult decision but stopped himself before he did it. He remembered John’s admonishment that the motion made him look like a weak fool. “He might be my brother, but it’s all of our hides at stake here, fellas. I think we ought to come to some kind of agreement, don’t you?”

“If it was my brother,” the red-haired man named Mick offered, “I wouldn’t take any chances. We’ve run that fancy lawman to ground. No shame in that. I say we wait until dark and ride in after him when we’re on more even footing.”

“What the hell do you know about anything?” Bug said. His wide, wild blue eyes had earned him his name. “I’d bet they don’t even have horses in Ireland.”

“I was born in California,” Mick countered, “same as you, you bug-eyed bastard.”

“Simmer down,” Bandit told them. He was the best-looking man of the group; clean-shaven except for the moustache he waxed into a tantalizing curl. John had named him Bandit on account of the ease with which he stole the hearts of the ladies he wooed, preferably wealthy widows if one happened to be in the vicinity. “We won’t get anywhere with you two barking at each other like a couple of dogs.”

“I ain’t never been one for waitin’,” Weasel offered. He was a pinch-faced man with a long neck that John had thought made him resemble his namesake. “I say one of us distracts him with a manner of peace offerin’ while I ride around the side and come at them that way. Sneak up on him and put a bullet in his back, then free John. Best to do it now afore he gets too settled.”

“Just like a weasel,” Ace concluded. John had called him Ace because he was something of a card sharp. The gang had relied on his winnings in gambling halls to keep them afloat when times were lean. He was good enough that he did not have to cheat all that often. “I say we ride right at him together before our horses get sluggish. Damn it, boys. It’s only one man in there.”

“One man with a fancy rig,” Pole noted. He was the tallest of the group, more than six feet tall by plenty and as skinny as a bean pole. “You see them irons he was sporting in town? A Thunderer on his right hip and another holstered above his belt on the left. Never saw a man with a rig like that. Probably knows how to use them, too.”

All of the chatter was giving Harry a headache. He had agreed with every man who spoke as each of them had a point to make. They had been bad men long before they had joined up with John and him. He felt like a fool telling any of them they were wrong and did not want to risk the consequences if he was.

Fortunately for him, not all of the members of the gang had spoken yet. He looked at the large black man at the far right of the group. “Cliff, you haven’t said anything yet. What do you think?”

The black man with the patch over his left eye did not speak often, but Harry knew that when he did, the rest of the gang listened. He had gotten his name because John said he resembled a cliff. Anyone who tried to go over him always wound up busted up or dead. He stroked the neck of his horse where the scalps of three dead Indians hung. “Our horses ain’t used to this kind of work anymore, boys. They’re just about played out. I know mine is and all of yours are, too. I can hear a rattle in Cree’s mare, which tells me she’s down with pneumonia or will be soon. They might have one good charge left in them, but not much after that. If this Halstead fella takes off with those mustangs of his, we’ll be left with a bunch of tired horses and nowhere to ride them.” He looked down the line of men looking back at him. “I love a fight just as much as the rest of you boys, so don’t go thinking I’m trying to shirk anything. I want John back, too, but we’re not outfitted well enough to do it right now. Them’s just the facts as I see them is all.”

Harry had hoped Cliff would have come up with something better than that, but he was right. The horses were just about done in. His own mount was shivering from the effort of the chase and he imagined none of the other animals were faring much better.

That left him to ask the final member of the gang for his opinion. He also happened to be the quietest and the deadliest among them now that John was out of the way. He looked to the far left of the group at Ed Zimmerman. “Well, we’ve heard from everyone else besides you, Ed. What do you think?”

Zimmerman had not taken his eyes off the stand of pine trees since they had slowed down. He was looking into them now as he said, “I never thought I’d say this, but every one of you idiots is right in his own way. We’re stuck here with tired horses and a target in thick cover.” He nodded toward the trees. “This boy isn’t just fancy, he’s smart. He’s packing two Winchesters. One’s a ’73 and the other’s an ’86. Saw them when he tied off his horses in front of the jail back in town. That means we’re already in his range, depending on what he’s got it loaded with.”

Harry was glad he could finally contribute something to the discussion. “It only holds if we stand still, Ed, and there’s ten of us. If we rush him, he’s bound to miss most of us.”

“But not all of us,” Zimmerman told him. “And I won’t count on him being the type to panic. I watched how he handled himself in town. He’s about as cool as they come, and I’d wager my share of the money that he’s every bit as good as he thinks he is. He’s a fighter and we can’t buffalo him like some homesteaders on a wagon train.”

He pulled up one of the four scalps dangling from his saddle horn and began to feel the hair between his fingers, as if it might tell him something. For all Harry knew, it just might. Ed had always been the strangest man in their outfit.

Harry hung his head. He had asked the question, hoping someone would have an idea they could all agree upon. But everyone had a different opinion on what they should do next.

“That didn’t help much.”

Zimmerman cleared his throat and spat over his horse’s head. “I say we play it Weasel’s way for once. That’ll mean one of us rides out there and tries to talk to him. Can’t hurt. We can’t scare him off, but maybe we can buy him off. We’ve got enough to spare. A man in his position might be willing to take the money and let John go. You can tell him we’ll ride on and away from Rock Creek if he wants. Tell him we’ll ride clear out of the territory. Promise him the moon. We can always kill him later after we get John back.”

Ace cursed. “No way in hell I’m giving up Rock Creek. The only reason why we left was because they had John. I’d rather see that place burn than have them say they rode us off.”

“Then we’ll burn it,” Zimmerman said, “because even if we get John back, we’re going to have to kill that deputy who has him. Halstead doesn’t strike me as the kind of loose end you leave untied.”

“So what?” Bandit said. “Won’t be the first lawman we killed.”

“Won’t be the last,” Pole added.

“He’ll be the last we kill in Montana,” Zimmerman told them, “because once word gets out that this Halstead fella is dead, Aaron Mackey will come looking for us. And believe me, boys, you don’t want to still be in Montana when that happens.”

Weasel was far from impressed. “Hell, I heard all them same stories you have, Ed, and I don’t believe the half of them. What’s one man against the ten of us? Eleven if we can get John out of this.”

Zimmerman continued to stroke the scalp in his hand. “I’m not going on any rumors or fairytales. I’m going on what I’ve seen, and I can tell you Aaron Mackey’s worse than anything you’ve heard. If we kill Halstead, he’ll kill all of us. That’s a fact.”

“I don’t care about Mackey right now,” Cree said. “I care about that half-breed whose got us pinned down in there.”

“He’s not a breed,” Zimmerman said. “His father’s white and his mother’s Mexican. Heard them talk about it in The Railhead last night.”

“I don’t care what he is,” Cliff said. “He’s in our way, and someone’s got to do something about it.”

Zimmerman finally took his eyes off the stand of pine trees and looked at Harry. A shiver went through Hudson when he did.

“I say one of us needs to ride out to talk to Halstead,” Zimmerman said, “while Weasel flanks him from the right over there. I’d prefer to send more, but if too many of us disappear, Halstead’s likely to notice. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best plan we’ve got, given the circumstances.”

Harry swallowed hard as he felt the eyes of every man in the gang on him. They did not have to say what they were thinking. Harry was smart enough to know they doubted him. They thought he was weak and stupid. They thought he had lived his life in his brother’s shadow. What’s more is that he knew they were right.

He also knew it was up to him to decide what needed to be done.

He tried to keep the quaver out of his voice as he said, “Sounds like a good idea to me, Ed. I’ll ride ahead a bit to get into shouting distance of him while Weasel here w. . .