CHAPTER ONE
Ugly Juan Maldado had put up quite the resistance in an arroyo near Devil Ridge, east of Fort Hancock, till a round from Jed Breen’s Sharps rifle busted the murdering rustler’s left shoulder. Although Breen cauterized the wound, he half expected Maldado to die before the reward could be claimed—especially when the soldier boys at Fort Hancock refused to take Maldado since he had never stolen government horses or mules. The post surgeon declined to operate on the badly wounded Mexican because he had not been wounded by a bluebelly or had ever worked as a civilian contractor for the United States Army.
The army boys decided to be uncooperative, Breen figured, because they wouldn’t be claiming the reward on Ugly Juan Maldado, but that wasn’t Breen’s fault. Breen had earned this one, wearing out two good horses, spending six weeks sleeping—when he could risk sleep—in the scorching furnacelike heat, getting his fine new Stetson punched through the crown with a .45 slug that, two inches lower, would have blown off the top of his head.
He thanked the boys in blue for their trouble—at least they hadn’t denied him water or a sip of the surgeon’s brandy—and pushed on.
Two and a half more days of traveling along the road that paralleled the Río Grande he finally reached El Paso.
Sheriff Burt Curtis shook his head when he examined Ugly Juan Maldado. “I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” he exclaimed. “This ol’ greaser ain’t dead.”
“That’s right,” Breen said with relief. “Now if you’ll just sign the affidavit that says he was delivered to you alive and well.”
Curtis looked up, narrowing his eyes. “He ain’t exactly alive, though. And sure ain’t well.”
“Not many men would be called well after having a Sharps blow out most of his shoulder blade.” Breen extended the white piece of paper and pencil.
The sheriff looked at the paper without moving. “Why didn’t you amputate?”
“My pocketknife was dull.”
“You coulda took him to Fort Hancock.”
“I did.” Breen waved the paper. He wondered if Curtis was hoping the outlaw would die so he wouldn’t have to sign the paper. Or maybe Burt Curtis couldn’t read or write. “The good boys in blue declined to be of service.” That proved to be the right thing for Jed Breen to say.
Burt Curtis, who had fought under John Bell Hood in the late War Between the States, began spitting out all sorts of profane thoughts about bluecoats and Yankees in general. When he finished, Breen still held that paper tightly so the wind wouldn’t snatch it away and blow it to Mexico.
“Maldado’s not dead,” Breen said. “And that means five hundred extra dollars.” He held out the paper and pencil again. “If you’d do me the honor, Sheriff Curtis.”
The county lawman rolled his eyes, spit onto one of Ugly Juan Maldado’s brogans, and took paper and pencil. “Maybe the murderin’ piece of scum’ll live long enough to hang. That way the county gets paid for the gallows buildin’, the printin’ of the invites to the hangin’, and the buryin’ and such.”
“You mean you get paid for all that.” Breen smiled as the sheriff returned the signed document.
“But it ain’t nowhere near as much as the extra five hunnerd you be gettin’.”
Indeed. The Joint Citizens Committee of El Paso, Brown City, and Sierra Maloliente had specified that fifteen hundred dollars would be paid upon positive identification of Ugly Juan Maldado if the outlaw was dead. Another five hundred dollars if he was brought in alive. Breen wasn’t exactly sure why. Bringing in a corpse would save expenses, so to a professional manhunter like Jed Breen it seemed more logical to pay more for a dead man than a fellow you’d have to feed and house and, as in the case of Ugly Juan Maldado, splurge on a doctor to keep the man alive long enough to be executed. Breen figured the citizens of El Paso, Brown City, and Sierra Maloliente wanted the honor of dragging the scoundrel through prickly pear and rocks before stringing him up. Maybe that was worth paying five hundred bucks.
“If he dies, you could still hang him,” Breen said.
The sheriff looked up, eyes registering the truth of Breen’s statement. “Reckon I could at that.”
“But,” Breen said, “maybe you ought to fetch a doctor to look at Maldado. See if he can’t do a better job of keeping him alive to drop through that trapdoor.” Feeling generous, he reached into his dust-covered vest, pulled out a half eagle, and tossed it to Burt Curtis. “Keep the change from whatever the sawbones charges you . . . I mean . . . the county.”
Burt Curtis bit into the coin to make sure Breen wasn’t cheating him.
“And join me at the Exchange Saloon when your prisoner is comfy in your best cell. I’ll buy you supper and a bottle of rye to wash it down.”
It paid, Breen had learned in his years plying his trade, to keep the law dogs happy.
* * *
Two weeks later, Jed Breen could hardly remember the last time he had felt this fine. He was riding back toward Purgatory City from El Paso on a fine strawberry roan won at a card table—aces full over jacks beating kings full over deuces—and had two thousand dollars in his saddlebags for turning in Ugly Juan Maldado to the county sheriff, alive and likely to live long enough to be lynched or tried and hanged legally. Breen’s stomach was full from the fine cuisine one could find in a city like El Paso, even if that chow didn’t taste anything like a man of means could enjoy in some real town with real class and real food—New Orleans or Kansas City or Memphis or St. Louis or Galveston—but it sure beat what passed for grub in Purgatory City.
Suddenly, Breen started thinking about taking a vacation or a leave of absence. Bounty hunting proved to be hard work, and often work that never paid much money. Plus, it was tough on one’s backside riding hell-bent for leather across the dusty inferno called West Texas. Unless you were going after pickpockets or runaways, the job could be downright dangerous, bringing in owlhoots who did not want to spend twenty years in Huntsville or get their necks stretched on the gallows or nearest hanging trees.
San Francisco perhaps. Hell, right now Fort Griffin or Fort Stockton would feel like Paris or Rome.
He stopped daydreaming and decided on something more reasonable. When he got back to Purgatory City, he would treat his friends, or the closest men that came to being his friends—Matt McCulloch and Sean Keegan—to supper and whiskey at the finest establishment in that hellhole. That would likely set Breen back ten bucks. If that. Depending on how drunk Keegan got or how many fights he started. A grin stretched across Breen’s stubbled face as he pictured the look on Keegan’s face when he showed him the reward money.
An instant later, the grin died.
Jed Breen saw black smoke coming over the top of the ridge. He reined in the strawberry roan, while reaching down first for the Sharps, then stopping and dropping the right hand to the butt of the double-action Colt Lightning holstered on his right hip.
The roan snorted. Breen wet his lips with his tongue. The wind blew hot, sending the smoke toward the east. He tried to get his bearings, figure out how far he was from Purgatory City, whose house or stagecoach station that might be. But Jed Breen had never been known as neighborly and even the most God-fearing and generous Christian in that part of the Western frontier likely wouldn’t feel neighborly toward a bounty hunter, especially one known as one of the three jackals.
Matt McCulloch and Sean Keegan were the other two.
It wasn’t a grass fire. Not smoke that thick and dark, and it wasn’t like there was much grass this time of the year—or any time, really—to burn.
He listened, but heard only the wind. Then he clucked his tongue and gently spurred the roan. The hooves clopped and Breen drew the Lightning from the holster, keeping the barrel pointed at the ground and away from the roan’s belly.
At the ridgetop, Breen reined up and saw the homestead about a quarter mile off to the east at the bottom of the hill. It was a dirt-and-adobe structure, so only the roof and door were burning, along with the privy over toward the corral. He saw a patch of white and blue between the burning home and the empty corral. Breen didn’t know who had tried to homestead there, but he damn well knew what that patch of white and blue meant.
He thought about grabbing the binoculars out of his saddlebag or using the telescopic sight on the Sharps, but the sun was at ten o’clock or thereabouts, and he didn’t want to risk the rays reflecting off the lenses . . . if any of the butchers remained nearby.
For fifteen minutes, Breen studied the homestead and every inch of ground within a rifle shot. Finally, he kicked the horse into a walk, and tried not to hear the hoofbeats or the wind, but something else—the click of a weapon’s hammer, the call of a hawk or raven, a coyote’s yip.
A war whoop.
When he reached low ground, the roan turned skittish.
“Hell,” Breen whispered. “I smell it, too, boy.” His throat turned to sand.
Fifty yards from the flames, he pulled on the reins. The roan had been fighting the bit for about twenty-five feet, and Breen wasn’t the kind of scoundrel to force a horse or anyone into the scene. Without holstering the Colt, he dismounted. Only after turning the horse sideways, keeping the ridge and road he had just descended to his back, did he holster the Colt and open the saddlebags—just not the one that held the reward money.
He found the hobbles and quickly secured the roan’s forefeet. Rubbing his hands on the gelding’s neck, Breen rose and looked over the saddle, staring at the surrounding countryside and the inferno beginning to burn itself out. He grabbed the canteen, uncorked it, took a mouthful to rinse out the gall and sand, and spit it onto the dirt. The next mouthful he swallowed.
The roan let Breen know he was thirsty, too.
“I know,” Breen whispered, corking the canteen and wrapping it on the saddle horn. “But you’ll have to wait.”
He slid the Sharps from the scabbard and patted his trousers pocket. Three shells. Five already in the Colt, plus a shell belt filled with .38-caliber bullets. He tugged on his Stetson’s brim to pull the hat snug before he moved off the road on the right, nearest the burning homestead, and crouching, he sprinted twenty yards, stopped, and dropped to one knee. Again, he studied the terrain.
If the fire was burning out, he told himself, whoever set it had to be long gone. That was common sense. Again, he wet his lips. Again, he remembered that common sense had gotten many a man killed in that savage, ...
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