Death Head Crossing

by James Reasoner

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

The Texas Two Step.  .  . Death-Head Crossing is just the name of a little town in Texas--until the population starts shrinking one body at a time. But the deaths are as mysterious as the face of the murderer, and only gunslinger Hell Jackson has what it takes to ride through the reign of terror and put an end to the killings... .  .  .Takes A Deadly Turn Jackson also gets an unwanted partner: Everett Sidney Howard, a cub reporter from New York City looking to make a name for himself riding alongside a famous gunman. Together the two face a gauntlet of dangers from rustlers, night riders, and more unexpected foes, as they close in on a murderous gang that'll stop at nothing to get what they want.

Release date: November 19, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

The old man was going to keep screaming until Jackson rode down there and put a stop to it.

Three of them, and they had the old man staked out in the sun in the bottom of a dry wash. Only one of the men was working on him now. The other two were sitting in what little shade the banks of the wash afforded and sipping from a bottle they passed back and forth. The midafternoon sun glittered off the knife in the third man’s hand as he bent over the helpless victim.

Jackson sat motionless on his horse atop a ridge a hundred yards away. They hadn’t seen him yet, and he doubted that they would stop what they were doing even if they knew he was there. The shrieks of agony were what had drawn him. A town lay a few miles away, and that had been his destination until the old man’s cries had sidetracked him.

Jackson had no way of knowing how long the old man had been undergoing torture, but even from this distance he could see the blood that flecked the long white hair and beard. The old man had been stripped so that the sun could get at him better, his clothes carelessly tossed aside, and now his three captors were probably taking turns with their blades. They would work their way down the leathery body, making cut after shallow cut until all the wounds added up to one terrifying, soul-numbing pain. They had learned the trick from seeing the victims of Apache raids, Jackson supposed. It wasn’t any nicer when being done by white men, though.

Jackson sat his saddle easily, a man in dusty whipcord pants and a work shirt whose sleeves were rolled up over tanned forearms. His hat had seen better days, but pulled low over his forehead, its slightly rolled brim shaded a lean face that was mostly flat planes and angles. Carelessly trimmed dark hair fell on his neck. His boots and his saddle were scuffed and worn, but the leather of the holster he wore on his right hip was supple, well oiled, well cared for.

Just like the gun that rode in the holster.

His belly was growling and grumbling. He had been looking forward to a hot meal in town after several days on the trail and several nights’ worth of cold camps. But as the old man let out another wail, Jackson sighed and knew that his meal was going to be postponed. His face was still and enigmatic, but showing deep in his light blue eyes was the knowledge that he couldn’t ride away from this.

He kicked the horse into an easy walk. No point in galloping up. The old man was probably too far gone to save. All Jackson could do was lessen his suffering. But if he came tearing down into the wash, the three men might just start shooting and wait until later to find out what he wanted. Instead, he rode slowly, his shoulders slumping like those of a man who’s been in the saddle for a long time. That was true enough.

Several minutes passed while he covered the distance between the ridge and the wash. They knew he was coming now. He slitted his eyes and glanced out from under the brim of his hat. The one using the knife had stopped, and had even flung the blade aside. Its point dug into the sandy ground and the knife stood upright, hilt quivering slightly. The other two men joined the third one, and they made an uneven line in front of the old man as Jackson’s horse stepped carefully down a path into the wash. He reined in about thirty feet from them.

Jackson put a smile on his sun-blistered lips but didn’t say anything. His eyes swept over the scene.

The three men were typical hardcases. They wore range clothes and each of them carried a gun. Their horses, tied to a mesquite growing out of the bank a few feet away, looked tired and hard-ridden. Two of the men were bearded and older; the other was a youngster, already gone bad.

Jackson had seen hundreds like them. They could work as ranch hands when they had to, but they preferred easier wages than forty a month and found. They fancied themselves desperadoes, and even though they were almost nothing compared to some who rode the outlaw trail, they could kill you just as dead. Jackson knew them for what they were with only a brief look; then his gaze moved on to their victim.

Surprise made a muscle in his cheek twitch. The old man was an Indio, and it took a lot to make someone like him scream like a woman. They must have been at him for a long time. There were cuts all over him, and Jackson knew now that they had already finished one go-round and were starting another.

None of the three had spoken, and even the old man had fallen silent. His head rolled to one side, but his bloody chest kept rising and falling in a jerky rhythm. Quiet spread out and settled down over the wash.

“Must be one stubborn old man,” Jackson said.

“Must be,” one of the men agreed. “What’s it to you?”

Jackson shook his head. “Nothing. Just heard the yelling and wondered what was going on.”

“You’ve seen it.” The invitation to keep moving was plain in the man’s voice.

“True enough.” Jackson was still smiling. His hands were resting on the pommel of his saddle, a long way from the butt of his gun. A Winchester was shoved into a saddle boot, but at least a couple of seconds would be needed to get it out, so it was no threat. All in all, Jackson didn’t look too dangerous, especially facing three men.

“There a town around here?” he went on. He knew the answer to that question already.

The youngest of the three jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Over yonder about four miles. They got good whiskey and bad women, friend. Why don’t you go sample ’em?”

“Might do that,” Jackson nodded. “Soon’s you tell me why you’re killing that old man and taking so long about it.”

One of them spat. “You ain’t related to the old bastard, are you?”

“Not likely.”

“Then get out of here and stop frettin’ about it. It’s none of your damn business, friend.”

“You’re right about that. It’s none of my business.” Jackson held up his left hand in a deprecating gesture.

The old man turned his head and opened his eyes, blinking away the blood until he could see. From his position on the bottom of the wash, all he could make against the glare of the sun were the silhouettes of his captors. But he had heard Jackson’s voice and knew that someone else was there.

“Help me, Señor,” he gasped, the words obviously painful in his parched throat. “Please . . . you must help me.”

“Was I you, I wouldn’t listen to him, friend. That’d be a good way to get hold of more trouble than you can handle.”

The young one turned and launched a kick that thudded against the old man’s scrawny ribs. “Keep your mouth shut, you old buzzard, less’n you want to tell us where to find that treasure you got hid.”

Jackson saw the other two wince. The boy had a big mouth, and he had just told Jackson what he wanted to know.

“Treasure, eh?” Jackson said, his smile slowly widening. “That’s mighty interesting.”

“Dammit, Hector!” one of the older men exploded. “If that old man was as talkative as you, we’d’ve been out of this sun a long time ago.” He cut his eyes back to Jackson. “This still ain’t none of your affair, mister. Just ride on and there won’t be no trouble.”

Jackson shook his head. “I think I’ll take a hand in this, just to see how it plays.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

Jackson’s hand was still a long way from his gun. The other three men, though, were poised to draw. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

He saw their fingers dip toward gun butts, and his shoulder moved. The .45 slipped smoothly into his hand, the draw so quick they never saw it. He squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times.

It was over in an instant. Gun blasts boomed against the banks of the wash and went rocketing away into the hot, still air. Jackson’s first bullet caught one of the older men in the chest and slammed him backward. The second one made a mess of a bearded throat. The third one ripped through the youngster’s lungs as he turned and clawed at his pistol.

Jackson holstered his gun and looked down at the three sprawled bodies. His horse had stood still during the battle, jerking only slightly as the gun exploded. The animal was used to noises like that.

None of them had gotten off a shot. The boy had cleared leather, but he was the only one. Jackson swung down from his horse and prodded all three with a booted toe. Nothing.

He turned to the old man and knelt beside him. Reaching behind him, Jackson slipped a knife from a sheath behind his holster and cut the thongs binding the tortured man.

“Gracias, señor,” the Indio whispered. “They were bad men. They wanted to . . . to rob me.”

“I know,” Jackson said. He hunkered back on his heels. “Your treasure. Where is it?”

Something like reproach showed in the old man’s eyes. “Señor,” he said.

“I don’t want to steal it from you, old man. I just want to see that it gets where you want it to go.”

The Indio nodded in understanding, then spasms shook him. When he had controlled the pain, he said, “I think I can trust you, amigo. You do not lie to me and tell me that I will be fine. Yes. I trust you.” He paused to gather more of his waning strength. After a moment, he went on. “I have a . . . a granddaughter. You must take the treasure to her. Tell her . . . tell her that her grandfather loved her.”

He lifted a bloody hand and clutched at Jackson’s arm. A film settled over his eyes, and Jackson realized that the old man could no longer see him. “I have a cabin . . . in the hills, by a creek not far from here. Look there . . . under the floor. I am a foolish old man.”

The fingers on Jackson’s arm clenched tighter.

“An old man . . . full of too much mescal . . . talking too much in a cantina . . . foolish, foolish old man . . .”

He sighed, and the sigh became a death rattle. The old eyes kept staring sightlessly into the high sky. The fingers fell away from Jackson’s arm.

Jackson stood up, took off his hat, wiped sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. Another delay. But then, he wasn’t really in a hurry. It wouldn’t take him long to find the old man’s cabin. The town could wait a few more hours. Once he had the treasure, whatever it was, surely someone could tell him where to find the granddaughter.

He didn’t have a shovel. The bodies would have to stay where they were for now. Jackson turned away and walked toward his horse. A tiny sound warned him.

He spun, the pistol leaping into his hand once more, and saw the youngest of the trio struggling to lift his fallen gun. The boy wasn’t dead after all. He had somehow found the strength to get his hand on the gun butt, but now the pistol was too heavy for him. The barrel shook, then tilted down and buried itself in the sand as the boy dropped the weapon.

He looked up at Jackson, the fiery pain inside him distending his eyes, and gasped, “Who . . . who the hell are you?”

Jackson smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m Hell.”

But he was talking to a dead man, a man who had died with confusion etched on his pain-wracked face.

Jackson rode into the town of Death Head Crossing a little before dusk, a burlap bag slung over the saddle in front of him.

The day hadn’t gone anything like what he would have expected when he broke camp that morning. He was a little tired. It had taken him an hour to find the old man’s cabin, then another hour to rip up the floorboards and dig down into the ground underneath the building.

He had found the treasure, though.

Jackson looked down at the bag hanging on his saddle. Now all he had to do was find the old man’s granddaughter and pass on the legacy.

His horse moved at a slow walk, which gave Jackson a chance to study the town. Its wide main street was well-packed dirt, lined on both sides with false-fronted frame structures. Some of the houses on the outskirts were adobe, but the business buildings were constructed of wide planks milled from lumber brought in from the hills. A narrow creek drifted along just to the west of town. Oaks and cottonwoods had sprung up along it, adding a touch of green to an otherwise flat and fairly colorless landscape around Death Head Crossing. Jackson seemed to remember hearing a story about how the community got its name. An early pioneer, passing through the area on his way to another dream somewhere else, had seen a grisly reminder of the nearness of death on the banks of the creek. A longhorn, wild most likely, had died there for some unknown reason, and scavengers had left nothing but a scattering of bones. The bleached skull, with its long sweep of horns, was prominent among them. The pioneer had told of seeing the longhorn’s skull, and the place had gradually been dubbed Death Head Crossing. The name had stuck, and Jackson wondered what the citizens thought of living in a town with such a name.

Evidently, the name hadn’t scared off too many people. Main Street was busy. Several men who looked like cowhands rode here and there, and carriages carrying townspeople rolled along, iron wheels cutting tracks in the dust. There was plenty of foot traffic too. Business was booming. The mercantile stores clustered at the near end of town were full of customers coming and going. Parked next to the sidewalks were farmers’ wagons being loaded with supplies.

Jackson saw a bank, telegraph office, newspaper office, and sheriff’s office and jail clustered near the center of town. At the far end of the street were the saloons and bawdy houses. Some of the citizens probably didn’t like them being there, but Jackson had never run across a town without them. In this case, though, they were carefully separated from the part of town most frequently visited by the upright, God-fearing inhabitants.

He passed a whitewashed church surrounded by scrubby trees. Jackson pulled back on the reins and brought the horse to a stop. He swung down out of the saddle, looped the reins loosely over a bush, and walked to the doorway of the church.

The double doors were partially open, and Jackson pushed through them into the shaded interior. Inside, the church was cool compared to the late afternoon outside. Jackson’s footsteps echoed hollowly as he walked down the aisle toward the raised pulpit at the front.

It had been a long time since he had been in a church, a long time since he had wanted to be in a church. He called, “Anybody home?”

“Up here,” a voice said, floating down from above.

A smile played around the corners of Jackson’s mouth. With an answer like that, the logical assumption was—

He heard someone clambering down a ladder, and a moment later, a tall man in a broadcloth suit emerged from a small room at the rear of the church. “Excuse me, I was up in the steeple repairing the bell ropes,” he said with a smile. “Can I help—” His eyes fell on Jackson then, and he broke off before finishing his sentence. The smile stayed on his face, but his eyes became hard and suspicious.

“What’s the matter, preacher?” Jackson asked.

The minister’s gaze moved over Jackson, took in the easy, alert stance, the way his right hand stayed within a few inches of his gun butt, the low, tied-down holster. “Everyone is welcome in the Lord’s house,” he said after a moment. The rest of his thoughts went unspoken.

“That’s good. But I didn’t come for praying or preaching. I want some information.”

“I’ll be glad to help you if I can, my friend.”

“Do you know an old Indio, lives about five or six miles north of here in a run-down shack? Lived there, I should say.”

The meaning of Jackson’s statement wasn’t lost on the minister. “That sounds like old Julio,” he replied. “Has something happened to him?”

Jackson ignored that question for the moment and went on. “He’s got a granddaughter. Do you know her, or know where I can find her?”

“Of course. Everyone around here knows Philomena. She works as a cook and a waitress over at the boardinghouse.”

“She’ll be there now?”

The preacher was obviously puzzled by the questions. “She should be,” he said. “I insist you tell me what’s happened to her grandfather.”

“His body’s in a wash up to the north,” Jackson said, not sugarcoating the news. “Three men were working him over. Their bodies are there too.”

The preacher had caught his breath at the news of old Julio’s death. Now he blanched at the implications of what Jackson had told him.

“Merciful God,” he breathed. “You killed them?”

“Seemed fitting, after what they’d done to the old man and all. But I figured somebody might want to bury ’em anyway.” Jackson gave a brusque nod and started toward the door. “Thanks for the information about the girl.”

The minister caught his arm as he passed. Jackson stopped and stood still, not looking at him, and after a long moment, the preacher dropped his hand from Jackson’s arm. “Just a minute,” he said. “Who are you? What business have you got with Philomena?”

“Name’s Hell Jackson. And my business with Philomena is between her and me.” The words came flat and cold from him.

He stalked out of the church without a backward look.

Reverend Martin Driscoll followed him to the door and watched him walk away, leading his horse. There was something about this man. . . . Driscoll had been in the West long enough to know a gunman when he saw one, but this Hell Jackson—what an unholy name!—this Jackson seemed even more dangerous than most.

Jackson had no trouble finding the boardinghouse. It was late enough in the day for the mouthwatering aromas of supper to be drifting out into the street from the open door of the two-story clapboard building. He tied his horse at the rail outside, held his hat in his left hand, and walked in.

To the right of the entrance foyer was a parlor, to the left the large dining room that all boardinghouses boasted. Several of the boarders were gathered around a long table, serving themselves from big plates of food in the center. As Jackson stood in the foyer and watched, two serving girls brought in more platters and deposited them on the table.

A heavy, middle-aged woman in a print dress appeared at his side. “Help you, sir?” she asked, but her tone was dubious. Jackson knew he didn’t look like the boardinghouse’s usual type of patron.

“I’m looking for a girl called Philomena,” he said.

“Why?” the woman snapped back at him. “My girls are good girls, young ladies every one.”

“I don’t doubt it, ma’am. I just want to talk to Philomena. I have a message for her from her grandfather.”

The woman snorted. “What sort of trouble is old Julio in now? Doesn’t he think that girl has anything better to do than take care of him?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.” Jackson kept his voice soft. “If you’ll just tell me which of the girls is Philomena . . . ?”

. . .