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Synopsis
The start of a crackling new western series by Spur Award–winning author Reavis Z. Wortham perfect for fans of William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone.
A couple stiff drinks after a long day’s ride. That’s all Cap Whitlatch and his one-armed buddy Gil are looking for when they drift into the dusty town of Angel Fire. Problem is, there’s only one saloon—and they don’t accept U.S. currency. Just gold and silver coins. Which means Cap and Gil have to go to the only bank in town to exchange their bills for coins. Unfortunately for them, the bank is about to get robbed—by the wildest sons-of-guns this side of the Rio Grande . . .
It turns out Cap and Gil aren’t the only ones who need the gold and silver to get a drink. There’s a rowdy crew of rough riders from the north, ranch hands from Panther Creek, and vicious bunch of scalp hunters with a grisly cargo of Commanche and Apache scalps. Since the bank president is out of town, the teller can’t exchange anyone’s money. Which doesn’t sit well with some of the boys, who decide to take the gold and silver themselves—with bullets and bloodshed as collaterol. Things turn ugly fast. The town marshal turns his head. Which leaves Cap and Gil to deal with these maurading devils—before they blow the whole town of Angel Fire to kingdom come . . .
“Reavis Z. Wortham is the real thing: a literary voice that’s delivered with a warm and knowing Texas twang.”—C.J. Box
“There’s a term we use in the west, the genuine article, and those words fit Reavis Z. Wortham to a Texas T.”—Craig Johnson
Release date: September 24, 2024
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Print pages: 320
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The Only Saloon in Town
Reavis Z. Wortham
Copyright
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
900 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2024 by Reavis Wortham
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organi- zations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, and educational or institutional use.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off
Print ISBN: 978-0-7860-5044-4
eISBN: 978-0-7860-5045-1
Printed in the United States of America
Chapter 1
As the sun settled behind the low hills behind them, a band of twenty rough, unwashed men appeared on a rise overlooking the heat-blasted adobe village of Jarilla. Fifty miles north of El Paso and anchored by a water well in a sunblasted courtyard, it was more a gathering of squatty buildings in a sea of sage and creosote scrub than anything else.
The bearded German calling himself Deitrich Pletz was the true definition of a savage with filthy, greasy hair hanging to his shoulders. Dressed in a mix of oft-patched clothes and stained buckskins, the man with no morals grunted a humorless laugh and cut rheumy eyes toward Henry Schaefer. Though he spoke English, his accent was thick with the fatherland he’d left at age fifteen.
“I see a lot of money in zis— cesspool.”
Schaefer thumbed the pistol on his belt. “All of ’em?”
“What we can.”
“Don’t see many men.”
“They’re like Apaches in this part of the territory. Some cut their hair to their shoulders, so from a distance you can’t tell ’em from their women.”
Fast to shoot, but sometimes a slow thinker, Schaefer rubbed his big hooked nose as he considered their comments. His salt-and-pepper beard harbored a number of living critters, and on occasion, one would crawl out on the end of that large protuberance originating from between his eyes and take the sun.
“I can tell up close, though, though it won’t make much matter. We’ll just sort ’em out when we’re finished.” Schaefer’s eyes narrowed. “I doubt there are many guns.”
“A handful, but it wouldn’t make any difference if there was.” Pletz spat a stream of brown tobacco juice at a skinny dog that sidled away with its head turned, a submissive grin on its lips. He twisted in his saddle to address his pack of wolflike men, brothers to the carnivorous four-legged beasts of the plains. “Don’t stop. We keep on riding through, but make a head count.”
Twenty men of similar constitution and consideration scattered and drifted down the slope to the village. The inhabitants vanished like smoke at the first sight of the heavily armed riders. Here the hem of a dress fluttered through a door and vanished. There a child’s face appeared in an open window before unseen hands yanked them back before closing the wooden shutters.
Chickens squawked and ran from underneath their horses’ hooves as the army of mounted men poured down hardpack spaces between buildings and wove around like drifting waters. They passed the well and a trough full of clear water glistening in a hollowed-out cottonwood log. Needing the water but not inclined to stop, Pletz waved a grime-encrusted hand toward the opposite edge of the village. Blood had dried around his nails, much like the others.
To his right, two middle-aged Mexican men stepped out of a windowless building to watch them pass. Painted letters on the adobe above the door said, cantina. A single, twisted mesquite post out front was the only place to tie a mount of any kind. Chewed on top by restless animals, the sides were polished smooth from decades of hands and reins.
The pair watching them pass had hair to their shoulders, piquing Pletz’s interest. He absently rested a hand on the butt of a Colt snug in a holster on his right hip. The scratched and scarred stock of a battered Winchester rode in the scabbard on his saddle.
He frowned at the weapons in their hands. One gripped a well-oiled revolver that looked fairly new, and the other cradled a worn but apparently serviceable lever action rifle in his arms. Their presence was an intentional challenge to the men. Though they were vastly outnumbered, the villagers glared at the riders, but neither of them made eye contact with either of the gang’s leaders.
Never changing his mount’s pace, Pletz rode past them with a nod. The younger of the Mexicans nodded back, but the one holding the rifle appeared to be counting the men on horseback. These men looked too intelligent and prepared for him, and the gang’s leader felt the heat rise in his face.
He hated for people to act smarter than him, or more uppity, like they were better than men who made a living with guns. Maybe they recognized him for who he was, but if not, they sure understood what they were, and squaring off with the unknown showed uncommon bravery, or phenomenally stupid cockiness.
Pletz could have gotten a job in some store back east when he first set foot in South Carolina. It would have been a step backward in his mind, working menial jobs back in his hometown of Hamburg. Even as a youngster, he wanted more, and was tough enough to take what he wanted.
He’d honed his moneymaking skills through a variety of schemes and plain robbery, avoiding hunger but living in hovels. The most he’d ever pocketed was when he robbed and murdered a jeweler on his way home one night. The man scuffled and Pletz broke his skinny neck.
After that, he found killing came easy to him, especially for money, and embarked on a monthslong spree of murder robberies until the Hamburg police started going house to house in an effort to find the responsible criminal. When they got too close, he bought a ticket to northwest France and located the port of Le Havre, an embarkation port for emigrants from Alsace, Switzerland, and America. He purchased passage to America with blood money, sailing down the Seine River, through the English Channel, and the Rhineland states.
Once in Charleston, it didn’t take him long to acquire operating cash. With his experience, all he had to do was find a dark alley and cut a businessman’s throat for what was in his pockets. That gave him enough for a room and food. The next night Pletz dragged another well-heeled city man into a different alley and again left a body behind.
For the next week, his coin purse swelled until he had enough money to strike out west. He wanted open spaces, no law, and had a fire in his belly to take other people’s money and lives. Blood became his grail and it led to gold in his saddlebags, and even more in a Texas bank in the fast-growing town of Angel Fire.
The bank was essential for someone who lived on horseback but needed a place to store funds until the time came when he could leave such work and go back east to find a more civilized way of life.
He found what he was looking for out there, and especially in small Indian villages, and Mexican settlements like Jarilla where Schaefer stared straight ahead as they passed the cantina, eyes fixed on some unknown object. “They don’t look too tough to me.”
“Compared to us, nobody’s tough.” Pletz shifted his chew and scratched at some of the irritating livestock living in his beard. “I ain’t much in the mood for working today. I’d like to lay up in the shade for a while and count our wares. What we have needs to dry anyways. They’re beginning to smell pretty high and they won’t be worth a thin silver dime if they rot. Let’s find somewhere to camp for the night.”
“And then we’ll see what happens?” Schaefer raised an eyebrow.
“Unless we run across some Apache camp in the next couple of miles, you know what’ll happen back here at daybreak.”
Schaefer’s hand went to the razor-sharp butcher knife in his belt. It was a habit he bowed to a dozen times per day. The minute they met at a buffalo camp a hundred miles north, Pletz was impressed by the man’s ability to sharpen a knife and the speed in which he could skin a buffalo.
They hadn’t gone another hundred yards from the village when Pletz changed his mind and reined up. He turned his horse back toward the little settlement. Facing his men who showed no surprise at the sudden reversal, he grinned, leaned over, and spat.
“Hell, I don’t see no reason to wait. We keep seeing Indian sign, and I’d rather sleep back there behind them walls than out on a blanket again tonight. Maybe a thick pallet would feel good.”
A sudden energy ran through them all. Pletz felt it and glorified in the feeling he inspired and controlled. These were killers, all. The dregs of uncivilized society and like a pack of cur dogs that would do his bidding or, at the drop of a hat, turn on each other at a moment’s weakness, and that included Pletz and Schaefer, two of the most vicious white men to ever ride west of the Mississippi.
The others placed hands on the butts of their pistols and knives, and some drew long guns from their scabbards. Laughter, thick and phlegmy, came from more than one throat and, feeling the change in their riders’ demeanor, the horses perked their ears and shuffled their hooves.
Pletz rode back through the pack of renegade killers. “Let’s go to work!” He spurred his horse in the flanks and shouted a statement in his native language. “Es ist Zeit für die Kopflhaut!”
It didn’t matter that his words were unintelligible to the mixed group of killers from many walks of life and races. With a grunt, the roan underneath him dug in and broke into a hard run. Thunder followed behind as he charged back into the village and directly toward the two men who still hadn’t moved. Their expressions of concern changed to terrified determination when the guns they held rose. They fired at the same time.
Bullets whizzed at the oncoming charge, and a war whoop erupted from one of the men behind Pletz. One chunk of lead fired by the villagers found flesh. A rider grunted and cursed, and the sound of a falling body followed. Pletz snatched a Colt from a red sash around his waist. It was easier to use at a hard run, and more accurate.
The first bullet missed the man holding the Winchester, but his second shot caught the villager in the side, spinning him around. The rifle flipped into the air, and he fell back against the wall behind them.
A volley of gunshots peppered the man holding the revolver, plucking at his clothing. His face twisted in pain, and he fell and was still. Pletz’s horse slid to a stop at the corpse’s feet, and he dismounted as smooth as any Texas cowboy bulldogging a calf. Still holding the smoking pistol, Pletz hit the cantina’s partially closed door with his shoulder and charged inside.
He paused in the dim light at the sight of a bartender behind the plank counter who raised both hands. “No, por favor!”
Because the bartender’s chopped black hair came halfway down his neck, Pletz shot him in the chest. He dropped behind the bar with a rattle of bottles and broken glass. The only customer bolted out the back door, and the bloodthirsty German threw a shot in that direction that did nothing more than blast a splinter from the thick doorframe.
“Fast as a rat!”
The rattle of gunfire came from outside, telling him his men were at work. Screams and shouts filled the air as he stuck the now empty revolver back into the sash and drew a second, looking for another target. The room was empty, the silence broken by liquid glugging from a bottle somewhere near where the bartender fell.
He relaxed and stepped around behind the bar, stepped over the body, and reached for a bottle of what he figured was tequila. He pulled the cork and smelled the contents. Smiling at the oily odor of agave, he tilted it and took a long, deep swallow around the chew of tobacco in his cheek. Screams and gunshots registered from the outside.
While he was keeping one cautious eye on the door, a flicker of movement caught his attention. It was then he saw a young woman crouched against a stack of casks and wooden boxes in the corner near where the customer disappeared. Face half-hidden by the young woman’s long, blue-black hair.
Pletz tilted his sweat-stained hat back to reveal a pale forehead. “Well, hello!”
She held up both hands in fear. The hard lines around her mouth were deep from fear. “No tengo dinero, pero puedes tomar lo que quiras!”
Fluent in Spanish, Pletz grinned at the translation in his mind when she said there was no money. “Oh, girl. What you have is money, all right, and I’ll take whatever I want with your say-so or not.”
The Colt in his hand barked. The slug caught the woman high in the chest, and she collapsed with a look of surprise and a deep sigh. Laying the smoking pistol on the bar, he took another swallow of tequila.
“Damn. That’s good.”
Gunfire outside rose and fell, devolving into a few scattered shots. He spat out the wad of cotton boll twist and took another long swallow, swishing the oily liquid around the few yellow teeth left in his mouth before spitting it out. A shape appeared in the door, and he snatched up the revolver.
Realizing it was Schaefer, he stuck it back behind the wide strip of red material that held it in place. “One went out the back when I came in.”
Schaefer held up a bloody scalp in one hand and a knife in the other. “Probably this one. What’re you drinking?”
“Mescal.” Pletz thumped the jug down on the wide planks where men had leaned and enjoyed drinks in peace. “Help yourself.”
Drawing his own long, skinny knife from behind the sash, the scalphunter came out from behind the bar and leaned down and went to work on the woman. He wrapped her long hair in his fingers and ran the edge of the blade around the crown of her head. With one foot in the middle of her back, he yanked hard and the scalp popped free.
Schaefer pitched his trophy on the bar, picked up the container Pletz sat down, and took a long drink. Scattered gunfire popped for a few more seconds, and then all was quiet.
Pletz rose and held up the long black hair and gave it a shake. “Mexican hair looks just like Apache. Look how thick this is. I might keep this one for myself for a saddle ornament.”
“You say that every time, but then get to thinking it’s worth a hundred bucks and you change your mind.” Schaefer looked over the bar and saw the bartender’s body. “You gonna take that one too?”
“It’s kinda short.”
“You know them Apaches will cut their hair when they’re grieving. It’ll sell.”
“You’re right. All they can do is say no to paying for it.”
Familiar voices came through the open door. Two rose in argument, and Pletz laid the bartender’s scalp beside that of the woman’s long locks. He went to the door. “If any of you sonsabitches touch them two there that I killed, I’ll stretch your hair on one of my frames. Go finish cleaning up this damned town so we can get some rest tonight and won’t have to worry about any you missed.”
“There’s half a dozen kids we did for.” The voice belonged to the youngest of the band, Leroy Booth. Once a buffalo soldier, he’d killed his sergeant after an argument and disappeared one night.
Pletz and his men came upon him in a cold camp in a New Mexico arroyo with a pair of Apache scalps lying nearby. When they pressed him for information, Booth said he intended to find somewhere to sell them for the bounty. The young man was ecstatic when he realized he’d fallen in with a group scouring the territory for the same thing.
The plaza was littered with bodies lying still in death. Pletz addressed Booth, who was stuffing fresh cartridges in his pistol. “They already dead, them kids?”
“Sure ’nuff.”
“Take ’em.”
Booth turned away to finish his work, and Pletz leaned on the doorframe and studied the conquered village now silent except for the screaming of a wounded burro. One of his bearded men cut the animal’s throat with a knife, silencing it. Small hooves kicked for a moment before they stilled.
He glanced down at the two men he’d murdered and sighed at the realization that their hair was shorter than what the bartender wore. It would be hard to convince the Texas officials they were Indian, though some of the Pimas sometimes cut their hair short for religious ceremonies, or when a family member was killed.
“This business is getting harder and harder.” Pletz went back inside and leaned on the doorframe where he could watch the plaza.
“Yeah.” Booth followed and trailed around to the shelves where he began setting a variety of crock containers and bottles out for the boys who would soon be in and thirsty. “But I ’magine we have a thousand dollars’ worth of hair each by now.”
Pletz studied the village glowing in the twilight. What could burn was on fire, and he frowned. “Don’t you idiots think we could have stayed here tonight? Them fires’ll draw in whoever will see ’em.”
Booth shrugged. “I didn’t start them. You know how the boys are when they get stirred up.”
The rumble of running hooves made them look up to see a man named Sandoval racing down the short street. “Riders coming!”
“How many?”
“Twice our count. I think it might be territorial rangers.”
Like Texas Rangers and rurales down south of the Rio Grande in Mexico, the hard-riding band of New Mexico volunteers were tasked with cleaning up bandits and Indians. Range hardened and iron tough, they were barely better than those they chased, and more than one crossed the thin gray line between right and wrong whenever the situation demanded it.
However, they were damned good at what they did. No one in their right mind stood up to them, and even the desert-hardened Apaches avoided them at all costs.
Pletz spat. “Dammit! I bet they been trailing us. I’ve had a feeling, and it wasn’t Indians like I thought. Get your horses!”
He darted back inside, scooped up his scalps, and rushed back out to see Schaefer vaulting into the saddle. Pletz fired twice in the air, “Let’s ride!”
Wild eyed and bloody, his men assembled in the plaza, whooping with success. The sky was on fire, blazing with color as the sun fell behind the buildings and boiling smoke. It backlit their hats and shoulders with a rim of light that gave them an otherworldly appearance.
They mounted up, flashing bloody scalps they stuffed into bags hanging from their saddles. Schaefer handed Pletz his reins, and he mounted up to lead the whooping barbarians out of town at a dead run in the opposite direction, intending to lose the rangers in the gathering darkness.
Schaefer spurred up beside Pletz and shouted into the wind. “Where to?”
“Head east. We cross into Texas and they won’t follow.”
“We need to sell these scalps. Why don’t we make a run for Chihuahua?”
“That’s where they’re expecting us to go. That swallow of mescal got me to going, and now I have a powerful thirst. I say we ride to Angel Fire. That’s closer. I need to pick up something there and then we’ll go.”
Schaefer nodded and allowed his horse to drift back. Pletz listened to the men riding behind him and thought about all the money they carried in hair, and what he had in the bank there in Angel Fire. He was a firm believer in banks, though they often got robbed.
It was better than burying money. Back in Germany, he had an old uncle who buried several jars of coins between two strangely shaped trees in the woods near where they lived. A fire swept through, taking out all the trees, and he got down sick in the bed for two years. When he was finally healthy enough to go get the money and relocate it, the land had changed so much he never found the jars. For all the family knew, they were still there.
For Pletz, the era of scalphunting was coming to an end. The number of renegade Indians had dropped so much that they were reduced to killing Mexican villagers instead of taking Apache and Comanche scalps. It was time to take off his wolf’s clothing and become something else.
He grinned to himself. Maybe he could shuck those boys, clean up, and return to his roots as a German businessman in Fredericksburg. If that town settled by his people was still growing like he’d heard, he could soon use his own intelligence and the cash in the Angel Fire safe and outsmart everyone there. Before long, he could own that piece of central Texas.
All he needed to do was find a way to distance himself from the others and stay alive.
Chapter 2
“Taking a train would have been better than riding these nags all this way.” My boyhood friend, Gil Vanderburg, tilted his hat back and wiped at the rivulets of sweat coursing down his temples. He rode slumped in the saddle under a hot, late summer sun, riding as comfortable as if he was in a rocking chair, though he usually sat lighter in the saddle.
We were tired of traveling and kept our mounts at a walk following a game trail leading west through an ocean of buffalo grass. I hoped we were coming up on a watering hole with a place to camp for the night, because the past two sleeps were dry camps without a fire.
I’d been watching the land and saw it was changing slightly, with a few more rolls and water cuts than we’d been passing. The breezy Llano Estacado surrounded us without a tree in sight. Some folks back home in Fredericksburg think the plains are flat as a skillet, but like an ocean, they rise and roll well beyond the horizon, occasionally broken up by a creek or gully like the one before us.
“There’s no train to Angel Fire, yet.”
I threw a cautious look behind us. Along the way we’d come across signs of people traveling with unshod horses. I suspected there might be a large Comanche war party about. Before we left town, I’d heard talk of renegade bands who were robbing and murdering in the area.
Gil always had a better idea, and they were usually not quite wrong, but seldom the way he’d seen them. “To take a train, we’d still have to ride up to Fort Worth, and that’s the long way. Pay the fare for us and the horses, and still get back to court too late. Dad wants us to pick up Wilford Haynes and get him back to jail in time for his trial.”
My dad was the county sheriff of Gillespie County and let Wilford out of jail long enough for him to help his family to get their crop in, with the promise that he’d come back when they were done and finish serving his time for stealing a pig from Old Man Johnston. Our town was small enough that everyone knew each other, and the Haynes family was barely surviving with their only son in jail for pig theft, and for knocking Johnston in the head to boot.
Wilford said he didn’t do it, but old Miss Rhodie swore she saw him going by her cabin with the piglet in a sack the night it disappeared, and Dad had to run him in for the assault more than the theft itself, because in his opinion, stealing a piglet wasn’t much of a crime. Hell, a sow usually ate two or three of the litter the minute they hit the ground.
Dad . . .
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
900 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2024 by Reavis Wortham
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organi- zations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, and educational or institutional use.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.
PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off
Print ISBN: 978-0-7860-5044-4
eISBN: 978-0-7860-5045-1
Printed in the United States of America
Chapter 1
As the sun settled behind the low hills behind them, a band of twenty rough, unwashed men appeared on a rise overlooking the heat-blasted adobe village of Jarilla. Fifty miles north of El Paso and anchored by a water well in a sunblasted courtyard, it was more a gathering of squatty buildings in a sea of sage and creosote scrub than anything else.
The bearded German calling himself Deitrich Pletz was the true definition of a savage with filthy, greasy hair hanging to his shoulders. Dressed in a mix of oft-patched clothes and stained buckskins, the man with no morals grunted a humorless laugh and cut rheumy eyes toward Henry Schaefer. Though he spoke English, his accent was thick with the fatherland he’d left at age fifteen.
“I see a lot of money in zis— cesspool.”
Schaefer thumbed the pistol on his belt. “All of ’em?”
“What we can.”
“Don’t see many men.”
“They’re like Apaches in this part of the territory. Some cut their hair to their shoulders, so from a distance you can’t tell ’em from their women.”
Fast to shoot, but sometimes a slow thinker, Schaefer rubbed his big hooked nose as he considered their comments. His salt-and-pepper beard harbored a number of living critters, and on occasion, one would crawl out on the end of that large protuberance originating from between his eyes and take the sun.
“I can tell up close, though, though it won’t make much matter. We’ll just sort ’em out when we’re finished.” Schaefer’s eyes narrowed. “I doubt there are many guns.”
“A handful, but it wouldn’t make any difference if there was.” Pletz spat a stream of brown tobacco juice at a skinny dog that sidled away with its head turned, a submissive grin on its lips. He twisted in his saddle to address his pack of wolflike men, brothers to the carnivorous four-legged beasts of the plains. “Don’t stop. We keep on riding through, but make a head count.”
Twenty men of similar constitution and consideration scattered and drifted down the slope to the village. The inhabitants vanished like smoke at the first sight of the heavily armed riders. Here the hem of a dress fluttered through a door and vanished. There a child’s face appeared in an open window before unseen hands yanked them back before closing the wooden shutters.
Chickens squawked and ran from underneath their horses’ hooves as the army of mounted men poured down hardpack spaces between buildings and wove around like drifting waters. They passed the well and a trough full of clear water glistening in a hollowed-out cottonwood log. Needing the water but not inclined to stop, Pletz waved a grime-encrusted hand toward the opposite edge of the village. Blood had dried around his nails, much like the others.
To his right, two middle-aged Mexican men stepped out of a windowless building to watch them pass. Painted letters on the adobe above the door said, cantina. A single, twisted mesquite post out front was the only place to tie a mount of any kind. Chewed on top by restless animals, the sides were polished smooth from decades of hands and reins.
The pair watching them pass had hair to their shoulders, piquing Pletz’s interest. He absently rested a hand on the butt of a Colt snug in a holster on his right hip. The scratched and scarred stock of a battered Winchester rode in the scabbard on his saddle.
He frowned at the weapons in their hands. One gripped a well-oiled revolver that looked fairly new, and the other cradled a worn but apparently serviceable lever action rifle in his arms. Their presence was an intentional challenge to the men. Though they were vastly outnumbered, the villagers glared at the riders, but neither of them made eye contact with either of the gang’s leaders.
Never changing his mount’s pace, Pletz rode past them with a nod. The younger of the Mexicans nodded back, but the one holding the rifle appeared to be counting the men on horseback. These men looked too intelligent and prepared for him, and the gang’s leader felt the heat rise in his face.
He hated for people to act smarter than him, or more uppity, like they were better than men who made a living with guns. Maybe they recognized him for who he was, but if not, they sure understood what they were, and squaring off with the unknown showed uncommon bravery, or phenomenally stupid cockiness.
Pletz could have gotten a job in some store back east when he first set foot in South Carolina. It would have been a step backward in his mind, working menial jobs back in his hometown of Hamburg. Even as a youngster, he wanted more, and was tough enough to take what he wanted.
He’d honed his moneymaking skills through a variety of schemes and plain robbery, avoiding hunger but living in hovels. The most he’d ever pocketed was when he robbed and murdered a jeweler on his way home one night. The man scuffled and Pletz broke his skinny neck.
After that, he found killing came easy to him, especially for money, and embarked on a monthslong spree of murder robberies until the Hamburg police started going house to house in an effort to find the responsible criminal. When they got too close, he bought a ticket to northwest France and located the port of Le Havre, an embarkation port for emigrants from Alsace, Switzerland, and America. He purchased passage to America with blood money, sailing down the Seine River, through the English Channel, and the Rhineland states.
Once in Charleston, it didn’t take him long to acquire operating cash. With his experience, all he had to do was find a dark alley and cut a businessman’s throat for what was in his pockets. That gave him enough for a room and food. The next night Pletz dragged another well-heeled city man into a different alley and again left a body behind.
For the next week, his coin purse swelled until he had enough money to strike out west. He wanted open spaces, no law, and had a fire in his belly to take other people’s money and lives. Blood became his grail and it led to gold in his saddlebags, and even more in a Texas bank in the fast-growing town of Angel Fire.
The bank was essential for someone who lived on horseback but needed a place to store funds until the time came when he could leave such work and go back east to find a more civilized way of life.
He found what he was looking for out there, and especially in small Indian villages, and Mexican settlements like Jarilla where Schaefer stared straight ahead as they passed the cantina, eyes fixed on some unknown object. “They don’t look too tough to me.”
“Compared to us, nobody’s tough.” Pletz shifted his chew and scratched at some of the irritating livestock living in his beard. “I ain’t much in the mood for working today. I’d like to lay up in the shade for a while and count our wares. What we have needs to dry anyways. They’re beginning to smell pretty high and they won’t be worth a thin silver dime if they rot. Let’s find somewhere to camp for the night.”
“And then we’ll see what happens?” Schaefer raised an eyebrow.
“Unless we run across some Apache camp in the next couple of miles, you know what’ll happen back here at daybreak.”
Schaefer’s hand went to the razor-sharp butcher knife in his belt. It was a habit he bowed to a dozen times per day. The minute they met at a buffalo camp a hundred miles north, Pletz was impressed by the man’s ability to sharpen a knife and the speed in which he could skin a buffalo.
They hadn’t gone another hundred yards from the village when Pletz changed his mind and reined up. He turned his horse back toward the little settlement. Facing his men who showed no surprise at the sudden reversal, he grinned, leaned over, and spat.
“Hell, I don’t see no reason to wait. We keep seeing Indian sign, and I’d rather sleep back there behind them walls than out on a blanket again tonight. Maybe a thick pallet would feel good.”
A sudden energy ran through them all. Pletz felt it and glorified in the feeling he inspired and controlled. These were killers, all. The dregs of uncivilized society and like a pack of cur dogs that would do his bidding or, at the drop of a hat, turn on each other at a moment’s weakness, and that included Pletz and Schaefer, two of the most vicious white men to ever ride west of the Mississippi.
The others placed hands on the butts of their pistols and knives, and some drew long guns from their scabbards. Laughter, thick and phlegmy, came from more than one throat and, feeling the change in their riders’ demeanor, the horses perked their ears and shuffled their hooves.
Pletz rode back through the pack of renegade killers. “Let’s go to work!” He spurred his horse in the flanks and shouted a statement in his native language. “Es ist Zeit für die Kopflhaut!”
It didn’t matter that his words were unintelligible to the mixed group of killers from many walks of life and races. With a grunt, the roan underneath him dug in and broke into a hard run. Thunder followed behind as he charged back into the village and directly toward the two men who still hadn’t moved. Their expressions of concern changed to terrified determination when the guns they held rose. They fired at the same time.
Bullets whizzed at the oncoming charge, and a war whoop erupted from one of the men behind Pletz. One chunk of lead fired by the villagers found flesh. A rider grunted and cursed, and the sound of a falling body followed. Pletz snatched a Colt from a red sash around his waist. It was easier to use at a hard run, and more accurate.
The first bullet missed the man holding the Winchester, but his second shot caught the villager in the side, spinning him around. The rifle flipped into the air, and he fell back against the wall behind them.
A volley of gunshots peppered the man holding the revolver, plucking at his clothing. His face twisted in pain, and he fell and was still. Pletz’s horse slid to a stop at the corpse’s feet, and he dismounted as smooth as any Texas cowboy bulldogging a calf. Still holding the smoking pistol, Pletz hit the cantina’s partially closed door with his shoulder and charged inside.
He paused in the dim light at the sight of a bartender behind the plank counter who raised both hands. “No, por favor!”
Because the bartender’s chopped black hair came halfway down his neck, Pletz shot him in the chest. He dropped behind the bar with a rattle of bottles and broken glass. The only customer bolted out the back door, and the bloodthirsty German threw a shot in that direction that did nothing more than blast a splinter from the thick doorframe.
“Fast as a rat!”
The rattle of gunfire came from outside, telling him his men were at work. Screams and shouts filled the air as he stuck the now empty revolver back into the sash and drew a second, looking for another target. The room was empty, the silence broken by liquid glugging from a bottle somewhere near where the bartender fell.
He relaxed and stepped around behind the bar, stepped over the body, and reached for a bottle of what he figured was tequila. He pulled the cork and smelled the contents. Smiling at the oily odor of agave, he tilted it and took a long, deep swallow around the chew of tobacco in his cheek. Screams and gunshots registered from the outside.
While he was keeping one cautious eye on the door, a flicker of movement caught his attention. It was then he saw a young woman crouched against a stack of casks and wooden boxes in the corner near where the customer disappeared. Face half-hidden by the young woman’s long, blue-black hair.
Pletz tilted his sweat-stained hat back to reveal a pale forehead. “Well, hello!”
She held up both hands in fear. The hard lines around her mouth were deep from fear. “No tengo dinero, pero puedes tomar lo que quiras!”
Fluent in Spanish, Pletz grinned at the translation in his mind when she said there was no money. “Oh, girl. What you have is money, all right, and I’ll take whatever I want with your say-so or not.”
The Colt in his hand barked. The slug caught the woman high in the chest, and she collapsed with a look of surprise and a deep sigh. Laying the smoking pistol on the bar, he took another swallow of tequila.
“Damn. That’s good.”
Gunfire outside rose and fell, devolving into a few scattered shots. He spat out the wad of cotton boll twist and took another long swallow, swishing the oily liquid around the few yellow teeth left in his mouth before spitting it out. A shape appeared in the door, and he snatched up the revolver.
Realizing it was Schaefer, he stuck it back behind the wide strip of red material that held it in place. “One went out the back when I came in.”
Schaefer held up a bloody scalp in one hand and a knife in the other. “Probably this one. What’re you drinking?”
“Mescal.” Pletz thumped the jug down on the wide planks where men had leaned and enjoyed drinks in peace. “Help yourself.”
Drawing his own long, skinny knife from behind the sash, the scalphunter came out from behind the bar and leaned down and went to work on the woman. He wrapped her long hair in his fingers and ran the edge of the blade around the crown of her head. With one foot in the middle of her back, he yanked hard and the scalp popped free.
Schaefer pitched his trophy on the bar, picked up the container Pletz sat down, and took a long drink. Scattered gunfire popped for a few more seconds, and then all was quiet.
Pletz rose and held up the long black hair and gave it a shake. “Mexican hair looks just like Apache. Look how thick this is. I might keep this one for myself for a saddle ornament.”
“You say that every time, but then get to thinking it’s worth a hundred bucks and you change your mind.” Schaefer looked over the bar and saw the bartender’s body. “You gonna take that one too?”
“It’s kinda short.”
“You know them Apaches will cut their hair when they’re grieving. It’ll sell.”
“You’re right. All they can do is say no to paying for it.”
Familiar voices came through the open door. Two rose in argument, and Pletz laid the bartender’s scalp beside that of the woman’s long locks. He went to the door. “If any of you sonsabitches touch them two there that I killed, I’ll stretch your hair on one of my frames. Go finish cleaning up this damned town so we can get some rest tonight and won’t have to worry about any you missed.”
“There’s half a dozen kids we did for.” The voice belonged to the youngest of the band, Leroy Booth. Once a buffalo soldier, he’d killed his sergeant after an argument and disappeared one night.
Pletz and his men came upon him in a cold camp in a New Mexico arroyo with a pair of Apache scalps lying nearby. When they pressed him for information, Booth said he intended to find somewhere to sell them for the bounty. The young man was ecstatic when he realized he’d fallen in with a group scouring the territory for the same thing.
The plaza was littered with bodies lying still in death. Pletz addressed Booth, who was stuffing fresh cartridges in his pistol. “They already dead, them kids?”
“Sure ’nuff.”
“Take ’em.”
Booth turned away to finish his work, and Pletz leaned on the doorframe and studied the conquered village now silent except for the screaming of a wounded burro. One of his bearded men cut the animal’s throat with a knife, silencing it. Small hooves kicked for a moment before they stilled.
He glanced down at the two men he’d murdered and sighed at the realization that their hair was shorter than what the bartender wore. It would be hard to convince the Texas officials they were Indian, though some of the Pimas sometimes cut their hair short for religious ceremonies, or when a family member was killed.
“This business is getting harder and harder.” Pletz went back inside and leaned on the doorframe where he could watch the plaza.
“Yeah.” Booth followed and trailed around to the shelves where he began setting a variety of crock containers and bottles out for the boys who would soon be in and thirsty. “But I ’magine we have a thousand dollars’ worth of hair each by now.”
Pletz studied the village glowing in the twilight. What could burn was on fire, and he frowned. “Don’t you idiots think we could have stayed here tonight? Them fires’ll draw in whoever will see ’em.”
Booth shrugged. “I didn’t start them. You know how the boys are when they get stirred up.”
The rumble of running hooves made them look up to see a man named Sandoval racing down the short street. “Riders coming!”
“How many?”
“Twice our count. I think it might be territorial rangers.”
Like Texas Rangers and rurales down south of the Rio Grande in Mexico, the hard-riding band of New Mexico volunteers were tasked with cleaning up bandits and Indians. Range hardened and iron tough, they were barely better than those they chased, and more than one crossed the thin gray line between right and wrong whenever the situation demanded it.
However, they were damned good at what they did. No one in their right mind stood up to them, and even the desert-hardened Apaches avoided them at all costs.
Pletz spat. “Dammit! I bet they been trailing us. I’ve had a feeling, and it wasn’t Indians like I thought. Get your horses!”
He darted back inside, scooped up his scalps, and rushed back out to see Schaefer vaulting into the saddle. Pletz fired twice in the air, “Let’s ride!”
Wild eyed and bloody, his men assembled in the plaza, whooping with success. The sky was on fire, blazing with color as the sun fell behind the buildings and boiling smoke. It backlit their hats and shoulders with a rim of light that gave them an otherworldly appearance.
They mounted up, flashing bloody scalps they stuffed into bags hanging from their saddles. Schaefer handed Pletz his reins, and he mounted up to lead the whooping barbarians out of town at a dead run in the opposite direction, intending to lose the rangers in the gathering darkness.
Schaefer spurred up beside Pletz and shouted into the wind. “Where to?”
“Head east. We cross into Texas and they won’t follow.”
“We need to sell these scalps. Why don’t we make a run for Chihuahua?”
“That’s where they’re expecting us to go. That swallow of mescal got me to going, and now I have a powerful thirst. I say we ride to Angel Fire. That’s closer. I need to pick up something there and then we’ll go.”
Schaefer nodded and allowed his horse to drift back. Pletz listened to the men riding behind him and thought about all the money they carried in hair, and what he had in the bank there in Angel Fire. He was a firm believer in banks, though they often got robbed.
It was better than burying money. Back in Germany, he had an old uncle who buried several jars of coins between two strangely shaped trees in the woods near where they lived. A fire swept through, taking out all the trees, and he got down sick in the bed for two years. When he was finally healthy enough to go get the money and relocate it, the land had changed so much he never found the jars. For all the family knew, they were still there.
For Pletz, the era of scalphunting was coming to an end. The number of renegade Indians had dropped so much that they were reduced to killing Mexican villagers instead of taking Apache and Comanche scalps. It was time to take off his wolf’s clothing and become something else.
He grinned to himself. Maybe he could shuck those boys, clean up, and return to his roots as a German businessman in Fredericksburg. If that town settled by his people was still growing like he’d heard, he could soon use his own intelligence and the cash in the Angel Fire safe and outsmart everyone there. Before long, he could own that piece of central Texas.
All he needed to do was find a way to distance himself from the others and stay alive.
Chapter 2
“Taking a train would have been better than riding these nags all this way.” My boyhood friend, Gil Vanderburg, tilted his hat back and wiped at the rivulets of sweat coursing down his temples. He rode slumped in the saddle under a hot, late summer sun, riding as comfortable as if he was in a rocking chair, though he usually sat lighter in the saddle.
We were tired of traveling and kept our mounts at a walk following a game trail leading west through an ocean of buffalo grass. I hoped we were coming up on a watering hole with a place to camp for the night, because the past two sleeps were dry camps without a fire.
I’d been watching the land and saw it was changing slightly, with a few more rolls and water cuts than we’d been passing. The breezy Llano Estacado surrounded us without a tree in sight. Some folks back home in Fredericksburg think the plains are flat as a skillet, but like an ocean, they rise and roll well beyond the horizon, occasionally broken up by a creek or gully like the one before us.
“There’s no train to Angel Fire, yet.”
I threw a cautious look behind us. Along the way we’d come across signs of people traveling with unshod horses. I suspected there might be a large Comanche war party about. Before we left town, I’d heard talk of renegade bands who were robbing and murdering in the area.
Gil always had a better idea, and they were usually not quite wrong, but seldom the way he’d seen them. “To take a train, we’d still have to ride up to Fort Worth, and that’s the long way. Pay the fare for us and the horses, and still get back to court too late. Dad wants us to pick up Wilford Haynes and get him back to jail in time for his trial.”
My dad was the county sheriff of Gillespie County and let Wilford out of jail long enough for him to help his family to get their crop in, with the promise that he’d come back when they were done and finish serving his time for stealing a pig from Old Man Johnston. Our town was small enough that everyone knew each other, and the Haynes family was barely surviving with their only son in jail for pig theft, and for knocking Johnston in the head to boot.
Wilford said he didn’t do it, but old Miss Rhodie swore she saw him going by her cabin with the piglet in a sack the night it disappeared, and Dad had to run him in for the assault more than the theft itself, because in his opinion, stealing a piglet wasn’t much of a crime. Hell, a sow usually ate two or three of the litter the minute they hit the ground.
Dad . . .
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Reavis Z. Wortham
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