Gunmetal Mountain: A Cleve Trewe Western, Book 2

Book 2: Cleve Trewe Western

by John Shirley

Genres: Action & Adventure; Westerns

Synopsis

The second in the action-packed new series from Ralph Compton writer, John Shirley, takes traditional Westerns on a wild ride with the epic adventures of master gunfighter, horseman, and Civil War veteran Cleveland Trewe as he and his strong partner, Bernice, fight for survival in 1880s Nevada …

Civil War veteran Cleveland Trewe stumbles onto a bizarre cult in the Sierra Nevada mountains—where the faithful are healed and fates are sealed … in blood.

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But it’s hard to know what’s going on inside the twisted mind of Magnus Lamb, the charismatic leader of an isolated logging town known for its healing hot springs. Some might say he’s created a peaceful utopia here on Gunmetal Mountain. But for Cleveland Trewe and his lovely traveling companion Berry, this little piece of heaven is more like hell on Earth …

Cleve and Berry first discover the town after an encounter with a dangerous band of Indians. Cleve vows to find “the Coyote,” a young brave last seen headed for the strange settlement of Lambsville. At first, Cleve and Berry are charmed by the town’s natural beauty and simple way of life. But soon they see the community for what it really is: a brainwashed cult with some oddball beliefs, a rigid caste system, and a leader who thinks he’s the new Messiah. This not-so-innocent Lamb has heard about Cleve’s legendary gunfighting skills and wants him to lead an army to expand his power across the West. It’s bound to be a blood-soaked mission, and Cleve wants no part of it. But if he refuses, there’ll be hell to pay …

Release date: August 22, 2023

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Northern Nevada, November 1874

Chance Breen was just sitting in the saddle, he and his mustang half hidden by the gnarled bristlecone pines fringing the top of the bluff, when he spotted a man and a woman riding together far below. The riders were alone, looking small in the broad basin of windblown yellow grass below the limestone bluff. Breen took a spyglass from his saddlebag, his horse stirring nervously under him. “Hold still, damn you,” Breen muttered.

Circled in the spyglass, the man and woman were a scruffy pair. The fellow in the charcoal Stetson was bearded, his long gray coat battered; the woman a little slumped, wiping dust from her eyes, her bonnet hanging behind on its tie. Both looked trail worn. The man rode a sorrel stallion, the woman a dappled Arabian mare. They had scarcely anything packed on their lean, weary mounts. But Breen did see that each had a saddle gun, maybe Winchesters. He could just make out an ammunition belt on the man. Likely there was a revolver to go with it.

Riding from that direction, they must have been traveling alone for a powerful long distance. There wasn’t much out that way. After such a long, parched ride they’d be just about worn-out, and wondering if they were lost.

Yep, Breen figured, they’d be ready to talk to folks. Might be happy for someone to guide them along . . .

Breen grinned, put away his spyglass, and drew his horse slowly back from the edge of the bluff. Then he turned and rode back toward the camp in the small grove of locust trees.

Berenice Tucker Conroy and Cleveland Trewe were indeed saddle weary.

Cleve glanced appraisingly over at Berenice. She’d worn that same black riding habit most of the way. Her jacket was lined but not warm enough. Though tired, underfed, and dusty, Berenice Conroy Tucker never lost her wide-eyed pleasure in the countryside. A natural philosopher—what some called a “scientist”—Berry observed the world more closely than most. She’s not naive, Cleve thought, just recklessly brave. She had grown up in a wealthy family and for the greater part of her life she had lived in luxury. But she had a wild streak, a fervent interest in nature, and a fierce determination.

Looking barren from a distance, northern Nevada’s rough landscape teemed with life if you watched for it. Berry delighted in the snakes and lizards; in bighorn sheep clambering impossible routes across sheer cliff faces, where no track should be. Her gaze trailed hawks and eagles across the sky. She was fascinated by the instinctive strategy of coyotes in the gulleys, cooperating to take a fat grouse. Passing through a dry wash, Berry and Cleve had cooly observed a wolverine driving off a puma. When they camped, Cleve sat quietly beside her, watching her make pencil sketches and notes.

He was forever keeping watch over Berenice. Cleve knew how perilous this country could be. Sometimes his watchfulness and warnings exasperated her and she would sigh and give him a wry look. But she never really complained.

Seven days back in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Range they’d run into rough weather. They kept on, riding head on into cold, bone-dry winds. When they found the trail ahead collapsed into a ravine, they were forced to detour northeast and then south, through sere, nearly waterless country. It had taken them four days to get out of the hills and down into the grasslands of Paradise Valley.

Berry didn’t grumble after they were forced twenty-one miles out of their way to search for another trail, not even when they went two days without water. She was concerned for the horses, when their water ran dry, but said nary a word about being thirsty herself.

Before they set out from Axle Bust, Cleve thought he couldn’t admire her more. He was mistaken.

One day when the thirst got especially bad, Cleve noticed Ulysses and Suzie snuffling the air and whickering as they looked northwest. He decided to give them their head. Cleve and Berry both felt a childlike joy when the horses found a clear, deep waterhole—and the trail that ran northwest, beside it.

Now they trotted their horses along a sketch of a road—merely dirt ruts in the grass. The sun was easing down before them. Their overlapping shadows stretched out behind.

Cleve pulled the brim of his hat down in front, and Berenice put her bonnet on to shade her eyes.

“There is no doubt at all we’re going due west,” she said, watching a slender green coachwhip snake sliding sinuously off through the grass.

He gave an exaggerated frown, pretending to be perplexed. “Now just how do you figure that?”

Berry smiled. “My hypothesis is based on this fact: the sun is sinking low and we’re riding straight for it. Thus—west.”

He nodded sagely. “I concur, Doctor Tucker. I’m pleased to ratify your observation.”

“That is the crux of the scientific method in a nutshell—one’s observations tested by peers.”

“That’s what I am to you, your peer?”

“Why, you’re another kind of hypothesis being tested,” she said pertly. “I theorize that you are suitable for mating purposes.”

“Seems to me we’ve already mated a number of times on the way here.”

“The tests must continue,” she declared. She lifted her chin and put on a pedagogical tone. “A great many such experiments will be necessary.”

“I sure as hell hope I confirm your hypothesis,” he said. “Already made up my mind, on my end of things.”

“So far, the results are encouraging.” Done teasing him, she reached over and took his hand. “Are we really back on track to the trading post, Cleve?”

“I reckon we’re no more than fifteen miles away.”

She sighed, and unconsciously reached up to pat her windblown chestnut hair into place, tucking stray locks under her bonnet. “I must look like a scarecrow,” she said. “The town women will stare and shake their heads.”

“Won’t be many women there to judge you. Mostly men. The men will be agog to see a pretty woman ride in at all. Those men would be pleased to see you even if you were dressed in an old feed sack.”

She laughed. They rode on, and in a few minutes, she asked, “Should we not rest the horses?”

“Oh, they’ll be all right. They’ll be just as happy to get to town as we will. Once there, we’d best stake them well apart . . .” They’d had to work at keeping the horses from mating in the last two days, the mare having come into heat a bit late in the season. They would have a long journey, and a mare in foal shouldn’t undergo such rigors.

“Suzie is looking to confirm her mate, too—with your Ulysses—but on a more temporary basis, Berry observed. “Horses, perhaps wisely, do not mate for life.”

“Does Berenice Conroy Tucker mate for life?”

“She mates for life or not at all.”

Cleve smiled. He hadn’t proposed marriage—”mating for life” might have to be enough. Berry had told him that her only experience with marriage, ending when Mr. Tucker had died, had put her off the institution. She had come to regard it as “a ritual devised by ancient patriarchs to make serfs of women.” But he already felt married to Berry, and he hoped that in time she’d accept the legalities. Convincing her might not be easy, she being as forward-thinking a woman as he’d even heard of: a suffragist, a scientist, a social reformer. He’d dallied with many a woman in his travels. But Berenice was a woman of empathy, strength, intellect, and beauty—and the only woman he’d ever truly fallen for. Settling down didn’t come easily to Cleveland Trewe . . .

After serving as a Union officer in the war, Cleve had traveled extensively in Europe and England. When he ran short of funds, he returned to the States and tried working on his father’s estate and clerking for his uncle. But when he wasn’t traveling—afoot somewhere new—the darkest memories of the war would plague him.

So Cleve headed west. He took work as an itinerant scout, mostly for the cavalry. He found that if he kept traveling, the war receded to the back of his mind. He put in his time as a cowboy, for a long drive with Charles Goodnight. After that he’d tried his hand gambling in Colorado—and when his luck ran dry, he hired on as assistant town marshal in Denver.

A few years of lawing were quite enough. He caught the gold fever and took up prospecting. He traveled from mining claim to mining claim, working feverishly but futilely around Virginia City—and then he got a letter from his uncle.

Threatened by claim jumpers, Uncle Terrence summoned him to the lawless northern Nevada town of Axle Bust. There, Cleve met Berry. And there, too, he reluctantly accepted the job of Elko County sheriff’s deputy.

In time, Cleve left Axle partly to get away from his own growing reputation as a gunman, but mostly because he’d supposed Berenice, the daughter of a mining magnate, was taking up with a certain former beau.

In reality, Berenice had no such union in mind. All alone, she tracked Cleve down on the trail north, and insisted—against all propriety and common sense—on riding out to California with him. They were headed to San Francisco, and maybe farther. There was a certain valley he’d found near the California Sierras . . .

“Let’s get on and see if there’s room at the inn,” he said. “A little canter won’t hurt these two.”

Cleve and Berry picked up their pace, both wanting to get to shelter, fresh water, food supplies, and the possibility of barbering and baths.

As they rode, Cleve scanned the valley: the grassy basin stretching on to the west ahead, the distant blue hills to the north, the tree-topped bluff, rising in red clay to the south. A quarter mile to the south, the bluff ended in a precipice.

Beneath the cliff, a rider swung into view, heading northwest.

“Now who could that be?” Berry asked, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Just a drifter on his way to the trading post, I expect,” Cleve said.

“It appears he’s coming our way.”

“Could be he figured maybe it’s safer to ride with us. The Bannock might be stirred up.”

Cleve and Berry hadn’t seen any Indians since leaving Axle Bust, though in the hills they’d noticed the tracks of unshod ponies likely belonging to the Paiute.

The rider seemed to notice them and halted his dun mustang about four hundred yards distant. He peered at them, then took off his hat and waved it. Berry waved back. The rider turned his horse, coming toward them at a casual lope.

They all reined in at the edge of an old buffalo wallow, and there the rider trotted up with a grin and a wave. He was a thickset man, dressed in beaded buckskins. He had long, uncombed brown hair and a spade beard, and wore the sort of floppy, oiled-leather hat protecting against hard weather. His bronzed, sun-etched face was round, and his gap-toothed grin jolly. On his left hip was a Remington Army revolver. A shotgun waited in a scabbard by the cantle of his saddle.

Cleve kept his expression genial, but he’d let his right hand fall to the butt of his Colt. He knew how to lay his hand loosely on his gun to let folks know it could be easily drawn, without quite making a threat.

“How do!” the stranger said, giving a mock salute. “Well say, you folks are coming from the far country. Headed for the Overland railroad? You’re a long fetch from Winnemucca.” The nearest leg of the Transcontinental railroad was the Central Pacific, with a station at Winnemucca, maybe sixty or seventy miles south from here. Cleve and Berry were both much attached to their mounts and reluctant to ship them by rail, having heard of many a horse getting a broken leg with the pitching of stock cars. Still, Cleve had suggested they head to Winnemucca for the train, since it might be safer for Berry. She refused to risk Suzie, and pointed out that the train would keep her “a considerable remove from the living abundance of the land.” And she treasured a desire to meet Indians up close.

“You two goin’ to Paradise?” the stranger asked.

Cleve thought of a facetious reply to that, but he said, “The trading post. They call it Paradise now?”

“They sure do, this being Paradise Valley. I’m headin’ there. Mind if I ride along? Safety in numbers.”

“You’re welcome to,” said Berry, more quickly than Cleve would have liked.

“What do they call you?” Cleve asked it mildly but keeping close watch on the man.

“My name’s Breen. And you folks?”

“The lady is Mrs. Berenice Tucker,” Cleve said. Still Mrs. because she was widowed. Her husband, a mining engineer, had died in a flooded shaft several years earlier.

Breen touched his hat brim to her. “Miz Tucker.”

Cleve decided not to give his own name unless pressed. His notoriety might have spread to Paradise Valley. “You can tag along, if you choose, Breen.”

He gestured to indicate Breen should start off first. The drifter hesitated, then started out.

Cleve rode after him, keeping a few paces back. Berry caught up to Cleve and gave him a puzzled look, wondering about his coldness to a harmless stranger.

He shrugged. He was just taking commonsense precautions, a procedure Berry often set aside as uninteresting.

“Going to get cold out here,” Breen said, raising his head to sniff the wind. “T’was mighty hot, and I cussed it too. Another fortnight or so comes a sharp wind from the north—Indians call it the Ice Wing. You’ll feel it flyin’ down through this valley. Won’t snow much, but that wind’s enough to make a man’s nose fall off. Was me, did I have money for the fare, I’d take the train to somewhere easier.”

Instinctively wanting to change the subject, Cleve said, “Last time I was through here, I saw a good many herds. Cowboys watching the beef. We’ve seen no one in this valley so far.”

“It’s the season. They get fat enough, they take them down to the Little Humboldt River, not so cold there and plenty of water. Fatten ’em up some more along the riverbanks, then drive ’em to Winnemucca for freighting.” Breen looked over his shoulder at Cleve. “Where you folks headed to after Paradise? Up to Oregon?”

When Cleve didn’t answer, Berry said, “Cleve wanted a look at California.” She took up her canteen. “He’s only seen a small part of it.” She drank from the canteen, with the reins wound around the saddle horn, knowing Suzie would stay on the road. “I’m eager to see California myself. We hope to spend most of the winter in San Francisco. In the spring, we plan to see the Yosemite. I read about it in Hutchings’ Magazine. A wondrous place! Then there’s a valley Cleve wishes to see in southeastern California . . .”

Breen was looking at her openmouthed. He wasn’t used to a woman answering for a man and speaking out so boldly. He closed his mouth, chuckled, and asked, “Going to buy some land, are you?”

“We just might,” Berry said airily. “There are matters yet unsettled. Life is more exciting, is it not, Mr. Breen, when things aren’t quite settled?”

“Ha-ha! That it is!” Breen shook his head. “But it seems to me there’s easier ways to get to San Francisco than what you took. ‘Course, those ways cost a mite . . .”

“We did it our own way,” said Cleve shortly, nettled by this prodding into their business. It seemed to Cleve that Breen wanted to know how much money they might be carrying.

Breen slowed his mustang, dropping back a little. “Ha-ha! Why sure! Don’t mean to pry. Just talking to try out my tongue. Been so long out here with no one to jaw with but Bart here.” He patted the horse and glanced sidelong at Suzie. “That’s a fine mare you’re riding, ma’am. She an A-rab?”

“She is a purebred Arabian, yes, and a very spirited girl too.” Berry used her hand to brush dust from Suzie’s mane. “One who needs a good brushing.”

“How’d you come to be out here, yourself?” Cleve asked. “Business up on that bluff?”

“You could say so. I went to see a prospector friend, he’s got hisself a cabin out that way. Pays me to bring him whiskey. His squaw woman sets a good table too. But it’s no more’n an excuse for the ride, you see. Then I heads out to do some prospecting, all on my lonesome. Found nothing but a piece of silver no bigger’n a booger. Run out of supplies so I’m off to the trader. But a man like me, what keeps him going is his curiosity. And I cannot calculate how it come, you two riding out of that wilderness alone. Maybe you had a Conestoga, back along the trail? Lost a wheel?”

“Nope.” Cleve said. “We rode from Axle Bust on these mounts.”

“Axle Bust! Why a man would take that route at all, I don’t know, if he ain’t prospecting. And you ain’t got the look of prospectors. Could be you needed to get out of Axle Bust right quick?”

Cleve nudged Ulysses up a little and gave Breen a cold look. “You wouldn’t understand our reasons, Mr. Breen. Your curiosity will have to be satisfied with that.”

“Why sure, sure . . . ha-ha!”

Cleve slowed Ulysses, to keep Breen ahead, and the three rode on in silence, except for Breen humming a drover song, sometimes throwing in a phrase or two. “When she see me comin’ . . .” Hum, hum-hum. “. . . is you a cowboy’n has you been paid . . .” Hum, hum-hum.

Another three miles of the same song with many repetitions. Now orange outcroppings of dull red sandstone humped out from the grass. The wind picked up, not yet the Ice Wing, but cold enough to make Cleve shiver. It blew at them in gusts, so the grass rippled like a yellow sea.

A mile more and the outcroppings became boulders. Some were big enough to hide a man and his horse. Cleve noticed Ulysses pricking up his ears, neighing softly, head lifted, eyes searching ahead. He could feel the tension in the horse’s body.

Breen reined in, and muttered something about, “I believe ol’ Bart has a durn rock in his shoe . . .” He dismounted and went down on one knee, frowning at the mustang’s right front horseshoe.

Ulysses stepped past Breen and a gust of wind brought the smell of horses from up ahead. Quite near. Cleve realized he’d let Breen get behind him. He drew Ulysses up short—

“Cleve!” Berry said sharply.

Cleve turned in his saddle to see Breen going for his revolver.

Berry had already drawn her rifle from its scabbard, and she shouted, “Drop it, mister!”

Surprised, Breen turned to her, his hand dropping from the pistol butt, as Cleve drew his Colt Army. Then a shot cracked past him—and he swiveled in the saddle, drawing his gun. A man was crouched by a boulder on the left. Floppy hat slanted low over his face, the shooter was aiming a rifle at Cleve’s brisket.

Ulysses held just steady enough—as Cleve dropped the muzzle of the revolver and returned fire.

The outlaw jerked backward, Cleve’s round cutting a deep groove through his forehead.

Breen shouted, “Davy!” and jumped on his horse, rode toward the boulder. He paused to stare a moment at the dead man. Ulysses was shifting nervously and Cleve was trying to get him back under control so he could aim at Breen . . .

The outlaw cursed and spurred his horse, riding off hard to the south.

Cleve aimed—then Breen was around the boulder, hooves thumping as he rode away south.

Berry fired her Winchester—but not at Breen. Cleve looked up in time to see a bearded man in a plug hat ducking under cover at the top of the boulder.

Spurring Ulysses, Cleve called out, “Take cover, Berry!” He rode at a canter around the big rock, past the dead man. He saw no sign of Breen, but the bushwhacker in the plug hat was just jumping down to the grassy turf. The outlaw landed heavily on his feet, grunting, his hat falling off. He turned a dragoon pistol toward Cleve.

Ulysses was still cantering, which made the shot harder, so Cleve fired three times in under two seconds, the first shot grazing the man, the next taking him in the right shoulder, the third catching him under the chin.

The dragoon dropped from the man’s shaking fingers as the outlaw tipped onto his back. Cleve drew up, glancing around, seeing no one else.

The outlaw gurgled, spat blood, tried to rise—and then went limp.

Cleve noticed two horses—a mustang and a paint pony, about thirty yards back, staked out in a cleft between boulders. There were saddles on the ground back there and a few tin cans—signs of a cold camp. The men had been waiting here for a while, Breen had set the trap, and tried to herd Cleve and Berry into it.

Cleve smiled grimly, then turned Ulysses around, patting the horse’s neck with one hand. “You’re a good man in a fight, Ulysses.” He’d trained the stallion to steadiness around gunfire, but it couldn’t hurt to praise him.

He rode back to Berry; she was down on one knee, in a shooting position, rifle in her hands, looking off to the south, the way Breen had gone.

“You think he’s close by, Cleve?” Just the faintest tremble in her voice.

“He’s probably gone out of range. And if I chase him, he’ll set up to ambush me.”

“Then please refrain.”

Cleve nodded. “I was wondering about that shotgun. Most anyone with honest business out here, they’re going to have a rifle. Shotgun’s more something carried by road agents. I didn’t give him a chance to use it, so he set up for the six shooter.”

He shaded his eyes, stood up in the saddle but saw no sign of Breen—except maybe a little dust rising, a good distance off. “I don’t think we’ll see him again today.”

Berry looked sheepish. “I was foolish to trust him, I guess.”

Cleve dismounted and went to Berry. She stood up and stepped into his arms.

“You did fine,” he said softly. “You’re a wonder, Berry.”

“The other two men?” whispering into his shoulder.

“They’re dead. We’ll put the bodies on their horses, and take them . . .” He shrugged.

“. . . to Paradise.”

Cleve and Berry rode their horses at a walk into Paradise, Nevada.

He was leading the mustang and the paint pony on a lead, the dead men roped like deer over the saddles. Red-brown streaks of blood streaked the flanks of the horses.

Berry had cleaned herself up some, using canteen water. But both she and Cleve were yet dusty, and the hem of her dress was tattered. Cleve’s beard had grown out scraggly. Its tendency to do that was the reason he normally kept himself clean-shaven.

Cleve had passed through this valley once, a few years earlier, coming into. . .