Hell Riders

by Marc Henry

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

Thirty years ago, they came together on a war-torn frontier. Now, they’ll stand together once more—to honor one of their own... It’s a thousand miles from snowbound Montana to the Arizona Territory. But for Trap O’Shannon and Clay Madison, it’s a journey they’re duty bound to make—for the bravest man they’d ever known had made it clear: Captain Hezekiah Roman wanted to be buried in Arizona’s dusty red soil. A train takes the fallen hero south, along with his two fellow Scout Trackers and a Nez Perce woman who once fought by their side. But as the veterans recall a tale that begins with a moment of blood and agony decades before, they cannot know that death is stalking this train... or that to a bury a hero, they’ll have to risk their lives one more time. Mark Henry brings the violence and raw beauty of the frontier to life in a bold and brilliant new saga that takes us on an unforgettable journey across the American West. "Crackling with authenticity and page-turning tension. Mark Henry will become a legend." —Richard S. Wheeler, 2005 Spur-winning author of Vengeance Valley

Release date: July 11, 2012

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

The nine A.M. Great Northern train out of St. Regis rarely pulled away from the station before a quarter to ten. That gave Deputy U.S. Marshal Blake O’Shannon a little over an hour to make the trip that normally took twenty minutes. But normally, he didn’t have to plow through stirrup-deep snow.

O’Shannon urged his stout leopard Appaloosa forward, into the bone-numbing cold. A fierce wind burned the exposed areas of his face above his wool scarf. Important news weighed heavy on his shoulders and pressed him into the saddle. He groaned within himself and prayed the train would be late in leaving—not so much of a stretch as far as prayers went, considering the rank weather.

Driving snow lent teeth to the air and gave the sky the gunmetal face of a stone-cold killer. The young deputy stretched his aching leg in the stirrup. He’d only been able to walk without a crutch for a few weeks. If not for the message he carried, a message his father needed to hear, he never would have attempted a ride in such frigid conditions.

“What’s a hot-blooded Apache like you doin’ up here in all this white stuff ?” He mumbled. A bitter wind tore the words away from his lips. He often talked to himself on lone rides, letting the three aspects of his heritage argue over whatever problem he happened to be chewing on at the time.

His gelding trudged doggedly on, but cocked a speckled ear back at the one-sided conversation.

Blake pulled his sheepskin coat tighter around his throat. “Better not let your Nez Percé mama hear you talk like that about her precious mountains,” he chided himself. White vapor plumed out around his face as he spoke. He wished he’d inherited his mother’s love—or at least her tolerance—for the cold.

A weak sun made a feeble attempt at burning through the clouds over the mountains to the east, but the gathering light only added to the sense of urgency welling up inside Blake’s gut. He had a train to catch.

He came upon the stranded wagon suddenly in a blinding sliver swirl of snow at the edge of a mountain shadow.

The driver, a sour man named Edward Cooksey, worked with a broken shovel to free the front wheel from a drift as deep as his waist. A flea-bitten gray slouched in the traces with a drooping lower lip. The horse was almost invisible amid the ghostlike curtains of blowing snow.

Blake reined up and sighed. St. Regis was less than a mile away to the west. He took a gold watch from his pocket and fumbled with a gloved had to open it. He was cutting it close.

Cooksey had a half-dozen arrests under his belt for being drunk and disorderly. Each time he’d gone in only after an all-out kicking and gouging fight.

Blake didn’t have time for this. Still, he couldn’t very well ride by and leave someone to freeze to death—not even someone as ill-tempered as Ed Cooksey.

The deputy cleared his throat with a cough. “Hitch up my horse alongside yours and we’ll pull you outta that mess.” Wind moaned through snow-bent jack pines along the road and Blake strained to be heard.

Cooksey had a moth-eaten red scarf tied over his head that pulled the brim of his torn hat down over his ears against the cold. He wore two tattered coats that together did only a slightly passable job of keeping out the winter air. Stubby, chapped fingers poked out of frayed holes in his homespun woolen gloves. The man was no wealthier than he was pleasant.

“Damned horse bowed a tendon on me. She ain’t worth a bucket of frozen spit for pullin’ anyhow,” he grunted against the wheel. When he looked up from his labor, his craggy face fell into a foul grimace as if he’d just eaten a piece of rotten fruit. “Push on,” he spit.

“You don’t want my help?” Blake was relieved but not surprised.

Cooksey leaned against the wheel and wiped a drip of moisture off the red end of his swollen nose. He brandished the broken shovel. “I’d rather drown, freeze plumb to death, or be poked with Lucifer’s own scaldin’ fork than to take assistance from a red nigger Injun—’specially one who’s high-toned enough to pin on a lawman’s badge.”

Blake caught the sent of whiskey, sharp as shattered glass on the frigid air.

“Suit yourself then.” He lifted his reins to go.

“Twenty years ago, boy,” Cooksey snarled, “you and me woulda been tryin’ to cut each other’s guts out.”

“Twenty years ago, I was four years old.”

Cooksey gave a cruel grin. “I reckon that woulda just made my job all the easier.”

The Appaloosa pawed impatiently at the snow with a forefoot, feeling Blake’s agitation through his gloves and the thick leather reins.

“I doubt that,” the deputy said.

“I tell you what.” Cooksey sucked on his top lip, an easy chore since there were no teeth there to get in the way. “I don’t need any of your help, but I will take that horse off your hands.”

“I said I’d be glad to hitch up the horse and pull you out.”

“I don’t want you to hitch the damned thing up.” Cooksey’s gloved hand came out of his coat pocket, wrapped around an ugly black derringer. “I want you to get your red nigger tail out of that saddle and let me ride back into town.”

Like most derringers, Cooksey’s hideout pistol was a large caliber, capable of doing tremendous damage in the unlikely event it happened to hit anything. Blake was less than ten feet away. At that distance, even the bleary-eyed drunk might get lucky.

“Think again, Cooksey.” Blake gritted his teeth, racking his brain for a way out of this predicament. “You’re not getting my horse.” He’d had enough sense to strap his Remington pistol outside the heavy winter coat, but wearing gloves and sitting in the saddle made him awkward at best. Cooksey definitely had the advantage.

“Hell, you probably stole it from some honest white man anyhow,” Cooksey sneered. “To my way of thinkin’, that makes it more mine than it is yours.”

A fat raven perched in the shadows of a ponderosa pine directly behind the gunman, hopped to a lower limb, and sent a silent cascade of snow though the dark branches. The bird turned a round eye toward the two men.

Blake’s Nez Percé mother said the raven was a trickster. She’d often told him the story of how one had saved her life. He began to work out an idea that would have made her proud.

“Brother Raven,” he said, in his best how-the-white-man-thinks-all-Indians-talk voice. “I am glad you could come visit on this cold day.”

Cooksey’s eyes narrowed. He raised the derringer higher. “What in the hell are you talkin’ about?”

Blake pressed on, keeping his voice relaxed. “I need a favor, my brother. Would you fly over here and tell Ed Cooksey he cannot have my horse?” Blake gave a tired shrug for effect. “I already told him, but he doesn’t believe me. It would help me a lot if you would make him understand.”

“Shut up and clamber down off that horse before I blow you outta the saddle.”

The raven winged its way over to the tree directly behind Cooksey. Wind whooshed off its great wings, and it began to make a series of loud gurgling noises like water dripping into a full bucket.

The would-be gunman’s bloodshot eyes went wide. When he snapped his head around to look, Blake put the spurs to his Appaloosa and ran smack over the top of him.

Cooksey let out a muffled screech and fell back to disappear in the deep snow. The derringer fired once, echoing through the snow-clad evergreens. Blake was off the horse with his hand around the gun in less than a heartbeat.

O’Shannon was a powerful man, tall and well muscled. Even with his healing leg, he had no trouble with the half-frozen drunk. Three swift kicks to the ribs loosened Cooksey’s grip on the little pistol and diminished his appetite for a fight.

Blake snatched up the derringer and took a step back, plowing snow as he went. Snapping the pug barrels forward, he tugged the spent casing and the remaining live round into the snow. He flung the empty pistol as far as he could into the tree line. His hat had come off in the fight. A silver line of frost had already formed along his short black hair. He bent to pick the hat up, panting softly.

“You can come back and look for that in the spring,” the deputy said. Huge clouds of fog erupted into the cold air as he spoke. “Wish I had time to arrest you, but I figure you’ll give me all kinds of opportunity later. You’re too mean-hearted to do everybody a favor and freeze to death.”

Cooksey moaned and tried push himself up on an unsteady arm. He held the other hand to his chest. “You broke my ribs. . . .” His breath came in ragged gasps. “You redskin bastard.”

“Better’n you had planned for me.” O’Shannon caught his Appy and climbed back into the saddle, sweating from the exertion in all his heavy clothes. He winced at the pain in his injured leg. “I gotta move on.” He shook his head and grinned. “I can’t believe you fell for that Indian-who-talks-to-the-raven trick.”

Wheeling his horse in a complete circle, he looked down at the sullen man who still lay heaving and helpless in a trampled depression in the snow. “My mother’s the only one I know who can talk to ravens.”

Blake turned into the wind again and urged the horse into a shuffling trot through the deep snow. He wanted to put as much distance as he could between himself and Edward Cooksey. Twenty yards up the trail he passed the raven, who’d taken up a perch in another pine after the shot. The huge bird fluffed black feathers against the chill. Its head turned slowly and an ebony eye followed the horse as they rode by.

“Many thanks, my brother.” The young deputy winked and tipped his hat. “I owe you one.”

It was a quarter to ten when Blake O’Shannon finally pushed into the outskirts of St. Regis. The wind had let up, but snow fell in huge, popcorn-sized clumps.

The train, and his parents along with it, was gone, shallow furrows in the snow the only sign it was ever there.

He slumped in the saddle, the news he bore for his father still heavy on his mind.

“Pulled out on time for once,” a man with narrow shoulders and mussed gray hair said from a green wooden bench along the depot platform. He’d pushed the snow to one side to give himself room to sit and it formed a white armrest alongside his elbow. A light woolen shirt was all that separated him from the cold. Frost ringed his silver mustache and Van Dyke beard. “All the lines are down so I can’t get word to Coeur d’ Alene or Spokane to stop ’em.” He wrung his hands and shook his head slowly as he spoke. “I assume you’re looking for the train.”

Blake grunted and slid down from his horse to work the kinks out of his sore leg. The snow came well over his boot tops. “Yessir, I was hopin’ to get here before it left.” He gazed down the deserted track and added under his breath: “Pa, I guess your news will have to keep.”

“You have loved ones aboard?” The way the man said it caused Blake to go hollow inside.

“Both my parents. Why do you ask?”

“I tried to get here myself, you know,” the man moaned in a brittle voice. “I’d have made it if that Bjornstead woman hadn’t decided to have her baby at dawn. I have so many patients, you see. Especially since the fires.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I am. Dr. Holier.” The man suddenly stiffened and looked straight at Blake. “It’s a providence you happened along when you did, son.”

Blake shook his head. “And just why is that?” He realized he was squeezing the reins tight enough to cut off the circulation in his hand.

“Four cases this morning—miners at a camp east of town.” The doctor groaned. “I’m ashamed at being so late . . . afraid one has made it on board . . .” He looked wide-eyed at Blake, as if struck by a sudden revelation. “It’s imperative that you stop that train.”

“Cases? Stop the train?” Blake dropped the Appaloosa’s reins. All this talking in circles made his head ache. “Get to the point, man. What are you talking about?”

The doctor bit the silver whiskers on a trembling bottom lip.

“Pox,” he said.

Birdie Baker had a nose for things that were out of place. It was a hooked nose, perched on a wedgelike face, perfectly suited to horn in on other people’s business. Born with a keen sense of order, she took it upon herself to set things right when she observed them to be otherwise—liquor where there should be temperance, wanton women where there should be fidelity, and most of all, Indians where there should be only God-fearing white people.

No one, least of all Birdie, knew the exact reason she hated Indians with such a passion. But hate them she did, and she made it one of her many missions in life to be certain the hotels, restaurants, and trains in western Montana were properly segregated.

Her husband, Leo, shared her feelings if not her zeal and generally backed her up—in a sullen, simmering sort of way. Birdie swung her husband’s title like an ax, as if he was a general or Japanese warlord instead of the postmaster of Dillon, Montana.

Where she was tall with big hands and sharp, accusing eyes, Leo was more of a thick-necked stump. His wire-rimmed spectacles looked absurdly small on his wide face. Deep furrows creased his forehead and frown lines decorated the corners of his nose and down-turned mouth. People often wondered if it was the constant squint through the tiny glasses or the day-to-day burden of living with Birdie that gave Leo his permanent scowl. Those who were familiar with the family knew his eyesight wasn’t all that bad.

Birdie stood on the wide train platform and sniffed the cold air around her, testing it for nearby improprieties. She stomped snow from her highly polished boots and stared down at the balding top of her husband’s head.

“Leo,” she barked. “What have you done with your hat?” He was taking her to a postmasters’ convention in Phoenix. The last thing she needed was for him to take ill and muck up all her vacation plans.

He tugged at a cart piled high with her luggage and his single leather valise. A chilly wind blew back his wool topcoat and revealed a short-barreled pistol with pearl bird’s-head grips in a leather shoulder holster. He looked up at his wife and shrugged off her comment with a scowl.

Birdie was not one to be ignored. “Leo Baker! Your hat?”

“The damned thing blew off while I had my hands full with your blasted steamer trunks,” he grunted. “You know, woman, this is a three-week trip, not an expedition to the Fertile Crescent. I see no reason to bring along your entire wardrobe.”

“Get the bags on board and meet me in the dining car,” Birdie said in her usual imperious manner. The porter standing beside Leo blinked his eyes at every word as if he were facing into a strong wind.

“I, for one, am hungry,” Birdie blew on. “I want to make certain the railroad carries the things I eat before we pull out of the station.”

Leo grunted around his scowl and passed the luggage up to the waiting attendant. “Wyoming has ruined it for us all,” Leo muttered. “We’ll be damned fools if the rest of us give women the vote.”

Birdie watched for a moment before she stepped onto the train. The porter was a young black man, a bit on the scrawny side for handling such heavy bags, to Birdie’s way of thinking. She supposed riding on a train with a Negro was acceptable, so long as he was one of the servants.

Looking after a body—even the body of a friend—was enough to give Trap O’Shannon a case of the jumps. Though he’d sent a fair number of people to meet their Maker in the course of his forty-eight years, he’d never been one to hover too long near the dead. But Hezekiah Roman had been not only his commander; he’d been his friend—and Trap had never had more friends than he had fingers on his gun hand. If Captain Roman wished to be buried in Arizona, then that’s the way it would be. Even if it did mean days on board the same train as a corpse.

O’Shannon pulled the collar of his mackinaw up close around his neck and blew a cloud of white vapor out in front of him. Ice crystals formed on the brim of his black felt hat. His ears burned from the cold and he could hardly feel his feet. He kept both hands thrust inside the folds of the heavy wool coat. Leaning toward gaunt, he had very little fat to keep him warm.

A dull blue light spilled across the muted landscape. Up and down the tracks the snow was peppered with a wide swath of black cinders belched from the coal-fired steam engine.

O’Shannon’s Nez Percé wife, Maggie, stood beside him on the cramped walkway that linked the dining car and the passenger compartments of the train. She wore only a thin pair of doeskin gloves and a light suede jacket with beadwork on the breast and sleeves she’d done herself. Her long hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, kept together with a colorful, porcupine-quill comb her cousin from Lapwai had given her. The cold air pinked her full cheeks. Moisture glistened in dark brown eyes. She was virtually unaffected by the chill, and even appeared to thrive in it.

“Thought Blake might come see us off back in St. Regis.” Her voice was husky-despondent.

Trap crossed his arms over his chest and stomped his feet to get some feeling back. “You know how it is in the lawman business. He was likely busy with some outlaw or another.”

Maggie looked up at her husband and touched his cheek with a gloved hand. She never had been the brooding type. When she got sad, she got over it quickly, wasting no time fretting over things out of her control. “You about ready to go inside?” she said. “You got an icicle hangin’ off your chin.”

“Don’t know why.” O’Shannon’s teeth chattered. “It’s only fifteen degrees. Hardly what a body c-could call c-cold.”

The smiling Indian woman let her finger slide to the tip of her husband’s nose. “Let’s go in.” She winked. Her black coffee eyes held more than a hint of mischief. “I’ll scoot up real close. That’ll warm your bones.”

Trap let her herd him through the narrow accordion entryway. The pink flesh on his hands and arms was still tender and tight from the devastating fires only months before. Maggie hadn’t fared much better. She’d singed almost a foot off the waist-length hair she was so proud of, and the right side of her face still looked like it had a bad sunburn.

She’d stayed so close to him in the weeks after his return from the fires that for a time, Trap thought their healing bodies might grow together and become one person.

He didn’t complain.

The warm air of the dining car hit Trap full in the face. The aroma of hot coffee and bread tugged him toward a table just inside the door. Maggie chuckled behind him, low in her belly, and leaned against his shoulder blades with her head, pushing him to the chairs. He helped her with her coat, and then took off his own before he sat across from her.

“You don’t want to sit beside me?” Maggie raised an eyebrow and pretended to pout.

“I want to look at you for a while when my eyeballs thaw out.” He also wanted to keep his eyes on the far door.

A big-boned woman two tables away was the only other occupant in the car. Given a bronze breast plate and a horned helmet, she could have passed for an opera singer. Trap attempted a smile, but she eyed him malignantly over a hooked nose. He reckoned her to be in her fifties—a few years older than him maybe—but she had so many frown lines around her deep-set eyes, it was difficult t. . .