The Blood of Innocents

Book 3: Guns of Samuel Pritchard

by Sean Lynch

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

When the legend becomes fact, kill the legend.
 
The saga of gunfighter Samuel Pritchard continues in this violent story of blood and bullets from acclaimed Western author Sean Lynch.
 
THE DEVIL CAME DOWN TO IDAHO
 
As both a former Confederate guerilla and Texas Ranger, and now a U.S. marshal, no one knows the dangers of the frontier and cowtowns like Marshal Samuel Pritchard.  A couple of wagon trains traveling the Oregon Trail have vanished and Pritchard's got miles of bad road across hostile territory to investigate. But he must also reckon with a price on his head. Bounty hunter Captain Laird Bonner is the greatest manhunter throughout the west—and he's as ruthless as he's relentless in pursuing his prey.
 
Then the trail for both Pritchard and Bonner ends in an Idaho mining town named Whiskey Falls. Ruled by a man who earned his stripes in Andersonville, the town is a literal hell for everyone who lives there, slaving and dying to satiate their captor's lustful greed. To escape, Pritchard and Bonner must declare an uneasy truce and take on an army of gunmen.
 
This is the story of Samuel Pritchard. A frontier-town peacekeeper who left many outlaws dead in the dust . . .
 
“ Riveting . . . bristles with hard-boiled authenticity.”
—Bestselling author Mark Greaney on Thy Partner's Wife
 
“Sean Lynch spins a tale that is fast, fun and realistic.”
 —Bestselling author James O. Born on Like Hell

Release date: August 31, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 249

Sample

East of Lawrence, Kansas. August, 1874

“They’re not more’n a couple of miles ahead of us,” Pritchard said, as he stood. He’d dismounted his big chestnut-colored Morgan, Rusty, and knelt to more closely examine the horse droppings left by a trio of riders he and his deputy had been tracking for the past two days.

“Will we overtake them before they get to Lawrence?” Strobl asked, in his Austrian accent.

“Likely,” Pritchard replied. “We’ve still got a few hours of daylight left. I’d surely prefer to brace ’em afield. If we have to take ’em in town, it could get a mite messy.”

Strobl nodded his assent. Both men had seen far too much innocent blood spilled during their lifetimes. As a result, each fervently wished to avoid gunplay near noncombatants whenever possible.

Atherton, Missouri, town marshal Samuel Pritchard, who was also the sheriff of Jackson County, and Deputy Marshal Florian Strobl were tracking three saddle tramps who’d passed through earlier that week.

Atherton was a booming lumber-town, bustling Missouri River port, busy stopover on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy rail line between Kansas City and St. Louis, and certainly not unfamiliar with horseback transients. But the three trail-dust-covered men who rode in were evidently unaware the town of Atherton was marshaled by Samuel Pritchard—formerly known as Smokin’ Joe Atherton. Had they known, it’s unlikely they’d have chosen Atherton as the place to do what they’d done.

Assuming the alias “Joe Atherton” as a teenager after he survived being headshot and buried prematurely in a shallow grave, Pritchard fled his hometown, went on to fight for the Confederacy as a horseback guerilla, served ten years as a Texas Ranger, and earned a reputation as the most lethal gunfighter on the frontier. The fact that Pritchard also stood six-and-a-half feet tall, was heavily muscled from a youth spent hauling lumber at his father’s mill, and sported an ominous bullet-hole scar on his forehead over his right eye, did little to diminish his fearsome reputation.

When he finally returned home to Atherton last autumn, three years shy of his thirtieth birthday, Pritchard resumed his true name. He also avenged his murdered parents, and along with his childhood friend Ditch Clemson, wiped out the ruthless gang of murderers and thieves who’d ruled Atherton like Pharaohs since before the war.

In the months following the Battle of Atherton, as it became locally known, Pritchard had also been forced to stave off an onslaught of bounty-killers in a brazen attempt to wrest control of his family’s considerable assets from his younger sister, Idelle, the town’s acting-mayor. This became known as the Second Battle of Atherton.

The spring of 1874 had been a particularly bloody time for the citizens of Atherton. Like most towns straddling the one-time border between North and South, its citizens were still suffering from the lingering after-effects of the Civil War almost ten years later.

As a lawman, Pritchard fought hard to bring a measure of peace to war-weary Atherton, and his determined efforts were finally beginning to bear welcome fruit. In the short time since he’d resigned his post as a Texas Ranger and pinned on a town marshal’s star, Atherton had become a relatively safe place. Despite the First and Second Battles of Atherton, thanks to his fists, guns, and even-handed skill at enforcing the law, it was once more safe to walk the streets.

His loyal friend Ditch, in addition to marrying his sister, had been elected to replace her as mayor. Ditch’s shrewd business acumen, acquired as a successful Texas cattleman in the years following the war, greatly contributed to the community’s prosperity.

Fighting alongside Pritchard to bring peace and justice to Atherton was Florian Strobl, a European duelist who’d originally arrived among the flock of gunmen who’d come to collect a bounty on his head before the Second Battle of Atherton. A disgraced Austrian Count exiled to America, Strobl had switched loyalties after Pritchard spared his life. He subsequently joined the marshal as his deputy, and in that role set out with his boss after a trio of kidnappers and murderers two days previously.

Three strangers rode into Atherton, an otherwise unnoteworthy occurrence, and settled in at the Sidewinder, a restaurant and saloon operated by a local clan of Ro-manichals. After dining on steak and consuming two bottles of whiskey, the newcomers, claiming to be cowhands hailing from the Oklahoma Territory but whose hands suspiciously lacked the callouses of working men, took particular notice of the buxom, teenaged, waitress serving them dinner.

When one of the drunken men, none of whom were less than thirty years old, grabbed the fifteen-year-old girl, clamped a filthy hand over her mouth to suppress her screams, and proceeded to drag her out into the alley behind the Sidewinder, his two companions kept the other patrons at bay with drawn pistols. They also helped themselves to another bottle of whiskey as they followed their companion and his struggling captive out through the back door. Needless to say, no effort was made by the men to pay for their meals and drink.

The saloonkeeper, Manfri Pannell, and one of his adult sons, Vano, came running from the kitchen. They stormed into the alley just as the cowboy who’d first grabbed the girl stripped her of her dress, tearing the garment entirely from her body.

Manfri and Vano, both sturdy, muscular men, ran to the girl’s aid. The other two cowboys, despite their drunkenness, sensed the duo advancing behind them. Both gunmen spun and fired.

Manfri was struck in the shoulder. A .44 slug spun him around and sent him tumbling to the ground. His son Vano was struck squarely in the belly by a bullet fired from the other cowboy’s .45. Like his father, he collapsed.

“You idjits,” the first cowboy scolded. “Them shots’ll bring the law down on us fer sure.”

“What was we supposed to do?” one of the other two cowboys retorted. “Let them two yokels whomp us?”

“We’d best git,” the third cowboy said, holstering his gun. “I’ll go around front and fetch our horses.”

“What about her?” the second cowboy asked, pointing to the terrified, gagged, and naked teenager, still trapped in his companion’s thick arms.

“We’ll take her along with us,” he said with a leer.

Pritchard had been out in the county serving an arrest warrant on a livestock thief when the incident occurred. When he rode back into town after dark, with his passive prisoner in tow, he was greeted at the jail by a crowd of townspeople bearing grim news.

One of Pritchard’s only two full-time deputy marshals, Toby “Tater” Jessup, reported what transpired. Tater, a kind-hearted, middle-aged, former liveryman, tearfully relayed what Doctor Mauldin had reported to him; that Manfri Pannell would recover, but his son Vano had succumbed to his belly-wound shortly after being shot.

Manfri Pannell and his entire immigrant, Romanichal, clan, had been personally shepherded into Atherton by Pritchard himself. He considered Manfri and his family more than friends.

The girl, named Vadoma, was one of Manfri’s nieces. She was last seen, nude and sobbing, on the back of one of the horses as the trio of intoxicated cowboys rode hell-bent-for-leather out of town. All three riders fired their pistols indiscriminately at shop windows, lampposts, and anything else they believed would dissuade pursuers as they galloped out.

Pritchard wasted no time. He turned over his prisoner to Tater to be locked up, retrieved his Winchester from the jail, loaded his saddlebags with provisions, grain, ammunition, and an extra canteen, and re-mounted. Deputy Strobl, who had been awaiting Pritchard’s return, and Mayor Ditch Clemson, a veteran of the late war who’d grown up with Pritchard and fought alongside him too many times to remember, and who’d been deputized on more than one occasion, joined him.

The portly Tater halted Pritchard, Strobl, and Ditch with a raised hand before they departed. He extended three sets of manacles to the mounted marshal.

“Ain’t you forgettin’ these, Marshal?” Tater asked. “They’re for your prisoners.”

“Won’t have need for ’em,” Pritchard told his deputy.

The three lawmen rode wordlessly out of Atherton, heading west. None were strangers to hunting armed men.

The cowboys had several hours’ start on Pritchard, Ditch, and Strobl, but left an easy-enough trail to follow, even at night. Pritchard and Ditch had grown up in the woods along the Missouri River, and knew every inch of ground for twenty miles in all directions. Five miles west of Atherton they found the girl.

Vadoma lay on a patch of grass near a creek, quietly crying, which was how they located her in the darkness. She was still naked, and covered in bruises and welts. After her three captors took turns violating her, they stole her shoes to slow her return to town.

The oldest of Vadoma’s assailants, the leader of the trio and the one who’d initially grabbed her at her uncle’s inn, had drawn his revolver, cocked the hammer, and placed the barrel against her head.

“You’re gonna deliver a message to the posse which’ll be a-comin’ after us,” he said.

Vadoma nodded, her eyes tightly shut.

“You’re gonna tell whoever is a-comin’ after us to stop comin’,” the leader said, as his partners fastened their britches. “You’re gonna remind that posse that we didn’t kill you, even though we could’ve. You’re also gonna let ’em know if they don’t heed this warning, we’ll be waitin’ up the trail for ’em. If’n they find us, we’ll plant ’em all. Can you remember to tell ’em that?”

“I’ll relay your message,” the girl said in her British accent. Her Romanichal Tribe heralded from England, and had emigrated to America less than two years before. “But it will make no difference. The marshal will disregard your warning. He will hunt you down. He will shoot all of you like the dogs you are or hang you from the nearest tree.”

“We ain’t afraid of no tinhorn marshal from no backwater, Missouri town,” one of the other cowboys scoffed. “Nor of any posse of shopkeepers and stable boys.”

“The marshal was once a Texas Ranger,” she said. “He’s known far and wide as a killer of men.”

“She’s lyin’,” the third cowboy said to his companions. “Tryin’ to put a spook into us ’cause we done had our way with her.”

“What’s this marshal’s name?” the leader asked.

“His name is Samuel Pritchard,” Vadoma answered. She opened her eyes and looked up at the man holding a gun to her head.

“Never heard of him.”

“He used to go by another name,” she said. “Perhaps you have heard of that one?”

“What name would that be?”

“Joe Atherton.”

“Joe Atherton?” the youngest cowboy said. “You’re tellin’ me Smokin’ Joe Atherton is the marshal of that hogslop of a town back there?”

Vadoma nodded. “It is said he took the name of his hometown during the war.”

“Now I know she’s lyin’,” the other cowboy said. “Ain’t no way a famous pistoleer like Smokin’ Joe is the sheriff of no backwoods river town.”

“What’s this marshal look like?” the leader asked.

“Tall as a barn, and as wide in the shoulders,” Vadoma answered. “He’s young. He’s not even thirty years old. He has white-blond hair, blue eyes, and a bullet scar on his forehead.”

“Is that so?” The youngest cowboy laughed. “Tall as a barn-hah! A bullet hole in his noggin! Sounds like she’s describin’ the booger man. Does he sport horns and fangs, too?”

“Shut up,” the leader snapped. He prodded Vadoma with the barrel of his revolver. “You ain’t fibbin’? You tellin’ us the truth?”

“You already beat me, defiled me, and are going to shoot me,” the girl said defiantly. “What do I gain by lying?”

The gun was removed from her head. “Get mounted,” the leader said to the other two cowboys, as he lowered the hammer.

“Maybe we’d best finish her?” one of the other cowboys said. He drew his own revolver. “It ain’t savvy to leave the bitch above ground. She knows our faces.”

“Put that lead pusher away,” the leader barked. “Nobody’s givin’ her a pill.”

“What’re you afraid of?” the cowboy said. “You don’t actually believe her made-up fairy tale, do you?”

“I saw Smokin’ Joe gun a man in the Oklahoma Territory,” the leader said, “a few years after the war. He was with a company of Texas Rangers. He wasn’t much more than a kid then. A giant of a kid. But she’s described him, dead-on, all right.”

“She’s probably heard campfire stories,” the second cowboy argued. “She’s only repeatin’ what others have told her about his appearance.”

“Maybe not,” the leader said. “I heard tell a while ago Smokin’ Joe had given up the Rangers and was sheriffin’ somewhere’s up north under a different name.” He holstered his revolver. “Get mounted, like I told you.”

All three cowboys climbed aboard their horses. This time their leader pointed his finger, and not his gun, at Vadoma.

“You remember what I told you to tell that posse,” he admonished her. “Smokin’ Joe or not, anyone who comes after us is gonna wish they didn’t.”

“I’ll tell them,” the naked, abused, girl said. “Have fun looking over your shoulder.”

Ditch wrapped the exhausted Vadoma in his coat and gently put her up on his horse. It was agreed since he was married, and his wife, Pritchard’s sister Idelle, was due to give birth in a few months, he should be the one to escort her back to Atherton.

“Soon as I drop her off in town with Doc Mauldin and her folks,” Ditch said, “I’ll turn around and catch up to you and Florian.”

“Don’t bother,” Pritchard said. “You’ll be needed in Atherton. With me and Strobl gone for who knows how long, it’ll be just you and Tater to look after the town. What if some other hard cases ride in? You’re a solid gun hand, and we both know the only thing Tater’s ever wrestled with is indigestion.”

“But Samuel,” Ditch protested, “there’s three of ’em, and—”

“No ‘buts,’” Pritchard cut him off. “I’ve faced worse odds a hundred times over, and you know it. As much as I welcome your company, you belong back in Atherton lookin’ after your pregnant wife and our town. You’re not just a part-time deputy, Ditch, you’re the mayor, remember? Now get goin’.”

Pritchard’s logic was irrefutable. Ditch nodded to Strobl and his friend and began leading his horse, with Vadoma astride, back toward town.

“I told those three animals you’d be coming after them, Marshal,” Vadoma suddenly spoke up. “I told them it was Joe Atherton on their trail. I said you would find them and shoot them like dogs or string them up. I hope you aren’t angry with me for saying such a thing?”

“Of course not,” Pritchard soothed. “Marshal Pritchard, or Smokin’ Joe, it don’t matter a whit. Those boys’ll get what’s comin’ to them for what they done to you and your family. You have my word on the matter.”

“My word, as well,” Strobl said.

“You just get on back to your folks and get to healin’,” Pritchard said.

“Thank you, Marshal.”

Pritchard tipped his hat to Vadoma and climbed into the saddle. Strobl took the cue and followed suit.

“Let’s ride,” he said to his deputy.

Just as Pritchard suspected, the fugitive cowboys skipped over Kansas City. He figured they’d guess a posse would presume they’d head straight for the nearest big town to blend in and hide out. Instead, the cowboys stayed well north of Kansas City as they headed west, toward Lawrence. The sign they left indicated they were pushing hard, trying to put as much distance between themselves and anyone trailing them.

It was late afternoon, on a blazing hot Kansas prairie a few miles east of Lawrence, when Pritchard and Strobl spotted them. Three riders, a thousand yards ahead in the haze and dust.

Pritchard withdrew his .44-40 from the saddle scabbard and levered the action. Strobl withdrew his Henry .44 and likewise chambered a round. Pritchard had bequeathed the Henry to his deputy after acquiring the 1873 Winchester.

In addition to his rifle, Pritchard was armed with a brace of .45 Colt Single-Action Army revolvers, both sporting custom, five-and-one-half-inch barrels. Pritchard had no way of knowing that the Colt factory wouldn’t offer such guns, which would eventually become known as the Artillery Model, as regular production items for another year. He’d won his pair of custom-barreled Colt pistols in a shooting contest in Abilene, Kansas, at the end of a cattle drive, before returning home to Atherton the previous summer.

Pritchard always carried at least two pistols, a habit developed as a horseback guerilla during the war. Since being bound, forced onto his knees, and shot in the head, he swore an oath that never again would a gun be aimed at him without the ability to shoot back. Consequently, after being dug up, rescued, and nursed back to health by Ditch, he devoted himself to the study of the one-handed gun with religious zeal.

Since his “resurrection,” as Ditch mockingly called it, at seventeen years old, Pritchard dedicated a portion of each day to drawing, aiming, and dry-firing his pistols. Just as some men shaved, bathed, or prayed as part of their daily constitutional, Pritchard dutifully practiced each day with his revolvers.

As a youth, Pritchard had already demonstrated extraordinary skill as a rifle marksman. He’d also been the county fair’s bare-knuckle wrestling champion every year since age thirteen as a result of his great size and strength. His extremely large hands, uncommonly powerful physique, and natural athletic ability, in concert with his ability as a sharpshooter, aided him significantly in his endeavors to become a competent pistoleer. Before long he was uncannily gifted, with either hand, in the use of his revolvers.

His skill with weapons was soon tested in the crucible of combat during the war and further honed by his years as a Texas Ranger. By the time he was twenty-seven, more than a decade after he’d been “executed,” Pritchard, under the alias Joe Atherton, was widely acknowledged as one of the most skilled, and deadly, pistol fighters in all of the Americas.

Before he’d acquired the Colt .45s, Pritchard’s preferred weapons were a pair of 1863 Remingtons converted to accept metallic .44 cartridges by a Dallas gunsmith. The guns had been a gift from Ditch. He’d used those guns, along with the Henry rifle now in Florian Strobl’s capable hands, to avenge the murder of his beloved fiancée, Caroline.

Deputy Florian Strobl was also armed with two revolvers. His guns, nickel-plated Chamelot-Delvigne revolvers, made up for their anemic, eleven-millimeter, cartridge by being double-action in design. Strobl carried the weapons in dual shoulder-holsters under his tailored riding jacket, unlike Pritchard, who slung his guns across his narrow hips in a set of traditional, hand-tooled, holsters suspended from a pair of cartridge-laden belts.

“How do you want to play this hand?” Strobl asked.

“Only one way to play it,” Pritchard said. “Straight at ’em. If they haven’t spotted us yet, they soon will. This Kansas ground is flat as a nickel, and there ain’t been a tree nor brush for miles. If we can see ’em, they can see us. Likely the only reason they haven’t eyeballed us yet, I’m guessin’, is they’re hung over and exhausted.”

“Won’t they make a run for it when they see us?”

“They will,” Pritchard conceded, “but it won’t make any difference. Our horses have been eatin’ grain, not grass. We’ll catch up to ’em easy enough.”

Pritchard’s horse, Rusty, was twelve years old, stood eighteen hands tall, and had been his faithful companion through countless battles, raids, and frontier skirmishes since the day he fled Atherton as a youth. The highly intelligent animal had a nose for action, and its ears were perked up now, anticipating the imminent fight.

Strobl’s mount, a deep-black, medium-sized, quarter he’d named Schatz, was spirited and reliable, as well. The elegant Strobl stood six-feet tall, but had a slender build, and could easily count on Schatz to run down most other horses. Particularly those horses that had been ridden hard by fugitive longriders with little rest for the past two days and fed nothing but bone-dry prairie grass while on the move.

“They lit out of Atherton before they provisioned up,” Pritchard added. “I heard they ate a good meal at the Sidewinder, but that was two days ago. Those three fools are likely just as hungry and tuckered out as their horses. You ready, Deputy?”

“But of course,” Strobl said nonchalantly.

“Let’s go get them sons-of-bitches,” Pritchard said, spurring Rusty to a trot. Deputy Strobl, astride Schatz, followed closely on his heels.

Pritchard and Strobl got within two-hundred yards before the three cowboys, slumped in their saddles, finally heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats and looked back. When they spotted the twin riders fast approaching, they immediately spurred their horses to a full gallop.

The lawmen had been steadily advancing on them with their own horses at a measured trot. As soon as the three fugitives took off, Pritchard and Strobl spurred Rusty and Schatz to a full gallop, as well. The lawmen’s eager horses instinctively raced to catch their fleeing counterparts. In no time, the distance between pursuer and pursued began to shrink.

Both Pritchard and Strobl knew that accurate gunfire, even with a rifle or carbine, was nearly impossible from atop a galloping horse at much beyond point-blank range. Nonetheless, when Pritchard and Strobl narrowed the gap to less than one-hundred yards, the marshal took aim and fired several rounds from his Winchester.

Strobl understood what Pritchard was doing. Though unlikely to hit any of the fleeing riders ahead, the shots would rattle them and prompt the fugitives to spur their nearly-spent horses to even greater effort, quickening their impending collapse.

Sure enough, after a little more than a mile of all five mounts charging at full gallop, Pritchard and Strobl watched as one of the cowboy’s horses crumpled forward to the ground. Its rider was tossed over the saddle and went sprawling on his face in the dry, Kansas, dust.

By then, Rusty and Schatz had closed the space between the lawmen and fugitives to less than one-hundred feet.

The downed cowboy’s two companions, less out of loyalty to their stranded comrade and more from the inescapable realization that their own foaming horses were only steps from similar catastrophic failure, suddenly brought their mounts to an abrupt halt.

“What are they doing?” Strobl asked, as he and Pritchard reined their horses back to a trot. Less than fifty feet now separated the lawmen from the downed horse and rider, and another twenty-five from his two partners. The pair of cowboys hastily dismounted.

“Their horses are played out,” Pritchard said, as he and Strobl slowed theirs to a walk, “and they know it. They’re either gonna surrender or make a fight of it.”

The thrown cowboy, minus his hat, struggled shakily to his feet. He held one shoulder and appeared to be in pain.

“I’m Marshal Pritchard,” Pritchard called out, as he halted Rusty, “of Atherton, Missouri.” Strobl pulled Schatz alongside him. “This here’s my deputy.” Both lawmen held their rifles at port arms. The hammers were back, and their fingers near the triggers.

“You’re all wanted men,” Pritchard continued. “Throw down your irons and throw up your hands.”

None of the three cowboys made an effort to comply.

“You rode all the way from Missouri,” the leader called out, “to arrest us for pirootin’ with a knee-high saloon trollop?”

“She weren’t no painted cat,” Pritchard said, “and you know it. She was an innocent young kid slinging hash at her family’s tavern.”

“You said you were a Missouri lawman, didn’t ya?” the cowboy next to the leader said, changing the subject. “This here is Kansas. You ain’t got no legal authority here.”

“Same authority you have to kidnap, rape, and murder in Missouri.”

“Who’d we murder?” the leader asked.

“Barman at the Sidewinder,” Pritchard said. “Shot dead in the alley tryin’ to rescue his young cousin. He was a friend of mine.”

“Didn’t know he expired,” the leader said. “It wasn’t our intention to plug no barkeep. It was his own fault, though. If’n he didn’t want his lamp blowed out, he should’ve minded his own business. Ain’t no law against havin’ a few drinks and cavortin’ with a townie skirt. Weren’t no cause for a ruckus.”

“A fifteen-year-old girl disagrees. So do I.”

“We didn’t hurt her,” the leader said. “Not much, leastways. We didn’t do nothin’ to her wasn’t . . .