Trigger Happy

Book 2: Nathan Stark Western

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

Accompanied by his Crow partner, Moses Red Buffalo, the famed army scout Nathan Stark takes on a mission in Montana Territory that forces him to choose between duty and honor in this action-packed frontier adventure from the Greatest Western Writers of the 21st Century.

Steely-eyed. Quick as a rattler. Unforgiving as the desert sun. The stories of Nathan Stark’s grit and determination as a manhunter across Indian territory are legendary. He stalks the wild western frontier on behalf of the army, pursuing hostiles to avenge his slaughtered family—and redeem his own failure to protect them.

Once again reluctantly partnered with Crow scout Moses Red Buffalo, Nathan has been assigned to assist the U.S. cavalry in escorting a large band of Blackfoot Indians across Montana and into Canada. Refusing to leave, Chief Thunder Elk threatens to wage war if his tribe is not left alone. Wealthy rancher Bennett McGreevey wants the land the Blackfoot call home, and he’s powerful enough to ensure the army does his bidding.

But Nathan Stark is not a soldier. And no cattle baron is going to give him marching orders. It’s a perfect storm for bullets to rain sheer hell across the land . . .

NATHAN STARK—A MAN TO RIDE THE RIVER WITH.

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Emerging from breakfast in the Fort Randall mess hall, Nathan Stark and his fellow scout Moses Red Buffalo paused to gaze off in the direction of a low hill about half a mile southwest of the fort’s wall.

They watched four buzzards circling in the sky above the crest of that hill, taking turns swooping down to a particular spot, landing for a minute or so, then rising again. Something up there—something dead—was providing the scavengers with their own breakfast.

“Noticed a couple of them up there yesterday,” said Red Buffalo. “Didn’t think too much of it. Figured they were probably picking clean the remains of a jackrabbit or maybe a coyote.” Red Buffalo frowned. “Now there’s four and they’re still mighty busy with it. Got to be some bigger critter, wouldn’t you say?”

“Reckon so,” Nathan allowed.

“Make you curious?”

“Curious enough to walk up there and take a look, you mean?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Nathan gave him a dubious look. “Ordinarily, I’d tell you to go ahead and have at it. My curiosity ain’t that strong and whatever it is those buzzards are picking at is long past any help. But, seeing how today is shaping up to be about as boring as yesterday and the day before that, the notion of a hike in the cool morning air to do some exploring, pitiful as that amounts to, is at least something to do. So yeah, let’s go have a look.”

The pair headed for the front gate, reporting tersely to the sentry on duty that they were going to check something out, and then angled in the direction of the distant hill and the circling buzzards. As civilian scouts under no current direct orders, they had far greater freedom to come and go than the uniformed soldiers of the garrison.

In his middle thirties, Nathan Stark was lean, though solidly muscled, with wolfish facial features and a mane of thick dark hair. He wore a flat-crowned Stetson, faded red bib-front shirt, buckskin trousers, well broken-in boots. A Colt Peacemaker rode in a holster on his right hip. On his left was sheathed a ten-inch bowie that he had pried from the dead fingers of his slaughtered father.

For his part, Moses Red Buffalo, a full-blooded Crow Indian, was of indeterminate age, somewhat stockier in build, perhaps an inch shorter. He wore his glossy black hair in two long braids trailing down from a brown slouch hat with an eagle feather stuck in its snakeskin band. A buckskin vest over a thin cotton shirt and fringed buckskin trousers tucked into high black leather boots completed his outfit. He, too, had a holstered Colt strapped around his middle and a bone-handled knife thrust in his belt. He also carried a Henry repeating rifle.

The pair gave off an unmistakable air of competence, alertness, and dangerous readiness as they glided lightly, silently, across the expanse of Dakota prairie grasses and began their ascent up the slope of the hill. The approach of the intruders caused the buzzards to squawk and flap their wings in protest.

Red Buffalo swung the muzzle of his Henry out ahead, slashing the air and snarling, “Scat, you ugly black varmints! Clear out before I blast you into more piles of putrid meat for other scavengers to feast on!”

“Here now. I thought Injuns, especially you bein’ a Christian one and all, walked in harmony with God’s creatures, great and small.”

Red Buffalo scowled. “Filthy birds! They are not God’s creatures. They are the spawn of the devil!”

Educated in his younger years at a Catholic mission school, Red Buffalo had become a devout Christian—one of many beliefs the two scouts did not share.

Nathan was considering some further remark to needle the Crow, but before he could decide what it should be, he was struck by a viciously foul odor that caused him to stop in his tracks and turn his face away.

“Egad!” he exclaimed. “Whatever’s giving off that terrible stench is something a hell of a lot bigger than the carcass of a jackrabbit or even a coyote.”

Red Buffalo faltered a bit from the same terrible stink but continued on a few more steps—close enough to come within sight of the bloated, shredded form at which the birds had been pecking. He halted, winced distastefully, and said, “You’re right, it is neither of those things. It is the body of a man!”

That was enough to bring Nathan the rest of the way forward. Gazing down, he grunted, “I’ll be damned. I wonder who …”

“Whoever it is—or was—his clothing and boots mark him as a white man,” Red Buffalo stated.

“Yeah, you’re right. Say, wait a minute …” Then Nathan exclaimed once again, “Well, I will be damned! You’d never know it by the ruination that’s left inside them, but I recognize those duds. That shirt, the fancy leather belt … we’re looking at what’s left of none other than Dietrich Bucher.”

“Yes, I see it now, too,” agreed Red Buffalo.

“So the low-down, stinking snake didn’t get away after all!” declared Nathan.

A week earlier, Dietrich Bucher, a third scout assigned to Fort Randall, had come up missing in the wake of an attack on the fort by a war party of renegade Sioux under the leadership of a chief called Hanging Dog. Bucher had been part of a gunrunning scheme that could have resulted in a bloody massacre of the troops if not for Nathan’s efforts.

Bucher had been unaccounted for following the battle, neither among the surviving nor the dead, and most believed he had cut his losses and escaped.

Here was the proof that hadn’t happened.

As the two men continued to gaze down at the ravaged remains of the German, Red Buffalo said, “No, he didn’t get away. It’s kind of puzzling, though, that he ended up here.”

Nathan frowned. “What do you mean? The Indian attack backfired on him just like it did on his partners. What’s so puzzling about that? I say it’s well-deserved payback suffered by the whole lot of treacherous varmints.”

“I got no trouble with that part of it,” Red Buffalo said. “What I’m saying is I find it curious how Bucher came to fall in this particular spot.”

“You and your curiosity.”

“Don’t you see? How did he manage to get struck down clear up here? Could have been a wildly stray bullet, I suppose. But otherwise, the fighting was all down on the flat, closer around and in the fort. Look at the ground hereabouts”—Red Buffalo swept his free hand—“there’s no sign of Indian ponies or any other activity having taken place anywhere near here. And if a Sioux made a kill this far apart from the rest of the fighting, wouldn’t he have taken Bucher’s cartridge belt and boots? Not to mention his scalp.”

Nathan’s frown deepened. “No, he’s still got that. Leastways what the blasted birds didn’t tear away.”

“Don’t you see at all what I’m getting at?” Both Red Buffalo’s expression and his tone conveyed frustration. “Another thing. If this body has been up here a whole week, don’t it seem like—”

The rest of what he was going to say was cut short by a sudden wind-rip of sound—a peculiar thurrrp! of disturbed air that would have been indecipherable to most people but was all too familiar to the experienced ears of Nathan and Red Buffalo.

It was the sound of a bullet sizzling through the sixteen inches of space that separated them as they stood discussing their grisly discovery. And unless there was the slightest doubt, the confirming boom of the heavy rifle that had hurled the menacing slug reached them a ragged second later.

By then the two men were peeling away from each other and pitching themselves to the ground.

Nathan hit the dirt and rolled to the side until he came to a halt in a slight depression filled with higher, thicker prairie grass. He sensed, without seeing, that Red Buffalo was executing a similar maneuver. The high grass wasn’t going to protect Nathan from another bullet, of course, but with luck it would make him a harder target for any further attempt by the bushwhacker.

But an anticipated second shot didn’t ring out.

Nathan bellied tight to the ground. He swept off his hat with his left hand and with his right drew his Colt. Then, edging forward a few inches, he cautiously parted the high grass and peered out.

“What the blazes was that?” Red Buffalo called from a few yards away.

“Somebody was trying to part the hair on one of our heads with a bullet,” Nathan answered.

Red Buffalo grunted. “A bullet makes an awful dull razor, though a right smart skull splitter. Who’s gotten proddy with you lately?”

“Ain’t got the time nor inclination to rattle off that whole list. You spot where the shot came from?”

“No, not yet.”

“There!” Nathan said abruptly. “That brushy ridge due north. See the powder-smoke haze in those bushes?”

“Got it,” Red Buffalo replied. A moment later his Henry roared once, then a second time as he sent some return fire back in the direction of whoever had opened up on them.

Extending his right arm, Nathan triggered the Colt in his fist three times, rapid-fire, and blistered the air with some lead of his own.

“You realize, don’t you,” said Red Buffalo, “that a handgun doesn’t have the range to make it as far as that ridge?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Nathan replied. “But the same ain’t true for that Henry of yours. Did you do any good?”

“No, not as far as I can tell,” Red Buffalo admitted grudgingly. “But I darn sure gave the bushwhacker something to think about.”

“Hell, I did that much,” Nathan scoffed. “Burned some powder, let off some steam. Made sure the dirty so-and-so knows he missed me and that I am annoyed by the attempt.”

“Annoyed enough to go after him?”

“You really have to ask?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Whoever it is don’t seem to be in a hurry to plunk away no more. Probably still best to wait a bit, though. Not be in too big a hurry to poke our heads up. In case he’s laying back waiting for another crack at what he missed the first time.”

“Uh-huh.”

As it turned out, neither Nathan nor Red Buffalo had to worry about being the ones to poke their heads up. The shooting had not gone unnoticed by men down in the fort. In a matter of minutes, four riders came boiling out the front gate and then made the sharp turn to proceed up the hill toward where the scouts were hunkered down.

Nathan recognized Corporal Cahill at the head of this detail. He had come to consider Cahill one of the more tolerable troopers at Fort Randall. He was young and inexperienced, but eager to listen and learn and work his way up through the ranks by effort, not favoritism.

When the riders were three quarters of the way up the slope, Nathan shoved himself up on one elbow and shouted, “Corporal! Dismount your men and walk them on the south side of their horses! There’s a bushwhacker up on that high ridge to the north and ain’t no telling when he might decide to open up again!”

Cahill promptly responded to the suggestion, ordering his men to quit their saddles and walk behind the chests and forefeet of their horses.

No more shots came from the ridge to the north.

When Cahill and his men reached the crest of the hill, Nathan and Red Buffalo pushed guardedly to their feet, all the while keeping a sharp eye on the distant ridge.

“Are you two all right?” Cahill asked. “We heard the shooting. You say you were fired upon from ambush?”

“One shot,” Nathan told him. “The rest of it was our return fire.”

“Do you think you scored a hit on the scoundrel? Is that why only the one shot?”

Nathan shook his head. “More likely we just drove him off. But keep your men spread out and a close watch, just in case he’s waiting for us to let our guard down and give him a bunched-together target.”

The men accompanying the corporal quickly fanned out, not waiting for an order.

“Any idea who it was? Or why he shot at you?”

“No, but we damn sure aim to find out,” Nathan assured the corporal.

Cahill snapped a nod. “We’ll report back to the fort and then form a more fully provisioned detail to ride in pursuit.”

Red Buffalo, who had remained keenly focused on the ridge, now turned his head, saying, “That would waste valuable time. If we’ve put that ambusher on the run, as it appears, he’ll be able to gain several miles on us before we set after him in the way you suggest.”

“Moses is right,” Nathan was quick to add. “If that varmint has lit a shuck, we need to start after him pronto!”

“But—”

“I’ll take full responsibility,” Nathan said, cutting off Cahill’s objection. “Let me and Moses take two of your horses and head out right away. You’ll have plenty to take care of here, mounting a burial detail.”

The young corporal looked bewildered. “Burial detail? I don’t understand.”

Nathan jabbed a finger in the direction of Bucher’s carcass. “Was up to me, I’d leave the scurvy snake to the buzzards and worms. But since he was attached in a scout capacity to Ledbetter’s command, I imagine there’s all sorts of proper protocol the good colonel will want followed.”

His attention drawn to Bucher’s remains, Cahill recoiled in horror when he got a closer look. All natural color drained from his face, replaced by a somewhat greenish tint, and for a moment Nathan thought the lad was going to throw up. By force of will, Cahill managed to keep his breakfast down.

The same wasn’t true for one of the other soldiers, however. Happening to be standing closest to the carcass and getting a better view when he turned to look down, this trooper immediately doubled over and spewed more foulness onto the hilltop.

“In case you missed it, that’s Dietrich Bucher,” Red Buffalo said to Cahill. “What’s left of him.”

“What happened to him?” the corporal asked in a ragged voice.

“We don’t know,” replied Nathan. “We were drawn up here by the buzzards. This is how we found him. Before we could determine anything more, somebody started shooting at us.”

“Do you think the shooter is responsible for Bucher’s death?” Cahill wanted to know.

“No way of telling,” said Nathan. “Since he took what you’d have to call an interest in me and Moses showing up here, you got to figure he at least knows something about it.”

“All the more reason to take after him with the least delay,” Red Buffalo added.

“Yes, I can hardly dispute that,” said Cahill.

Nathan said, “So let us see to that and you go do what you need to do about reporting to the colonel and the rest. Probably be a good idea to get Captain Northby, the fort doctor, up here, too. Maybe he can figure out what killed Bucher and led to him being left here like this.”

“Yes. Of course,” Cahill responded dully. His gaze had once more returned, as if unbidden, to the ravaged carcass. “I … I must do those things.”

While Cahill was still in a somewhat stunned state, before it occurred to him to try and raise any further objection, Nathan and Red Buffalo commandeered a pair of horses—along with a Winchester for Nathan—and rode north away from the cluster of soldiers.

Since a slight chance still remained that the ambusher might be hanging back and biding his time for another try, they took the precaution of splitting apart and swinging wide to either side of the ridge where they’d seen the haze of powder smoke. Then, from opposing directions, they slowly, cautiously converged on the spot.

Red Buffalo got there a few minutes ahead of Nathan. When Nathan arrived, the Crow was kneeling behind a line of low, spiny rocks and studying the ground before him.

Without looking up, Red Buffalo said, “This is where the ambusher shot from. The way the grass is flattened, it looks like he bellied down, probably rested his rifle barrel on these rocks so he could steady his sights on us.”

“Let’s be glad he didn’t steady them any more accurately than he did.”

Red Buffalo stood up. “No sign of a spent cartridge, the shooter must have picked it up and taken it with him. Reckon he had a horse tied somewhere down below.”

“He did,” Nathan confirmed. “I spotted sign of it when I was on my way up. Matter of fact, there were two horses tied down there.”

“Two? You mean the shooter has a partner?”

Nathan shook his head. “No. When the horses took off—about a half hour ago, I judge—only one of them was carrying a rider. One of the animals was shod. The other one, the one carrying the rider, wasn’t.”

Red Buffalo’s brow puckered. “You saying our shooter was an Indian?”

“I’m saying it was somebody who favored climbing on an unshod mount. Draw your own conclusion. We won’t know for sure until we catch up with him.”

“But why two horses? Where did the second one come from?”

Nathan turned his head and looked back toward the grassy hill where earlier they’d made their grisly discovery and then been shot at.

“If I had to guess,” he replied, “I’d say it might have belonged to Dietrich Bucher.”

“Does that mean you think our shooter killed Bucher, too?”

“Like I told Cahill, it seems likely he’s connected in some way. How, I don’t know. Bucher sure as blazes wasn’t no fresh kill, not even close.” Nathan scowled. “So if the hombre who took a potshot at us was his killer, going back at least a couple days or more, then why was he still hanging around to make the try on us?”

“Like I said at the outset,” Red Buffalo reminded him, “there are some very puzzling things about all of this.”

“Yeah, you called it right enough,” Nathan allowed.

“Something else just occurred to me,” said Red Buffalo. “The sound of the shot that came rolling down from this ridge after the bullet passed between us … that seemed like the boom of a mighty powerful gun, not just another Henry or Winchester. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it. But what difference—”

Red Buffalo interrupted with, “Didn’t Bucher carry a Sharps Big Fifty buffalo rifle? He still had his boots and belt, but there was no rifle left laying back there.”

Nathan’s scowl returned, darker than ever. “I’ll be damned. Maybe Bucher’s horse and now maybe his rifle, too, both in the hands of an ambusher hanging around for some mysterious reason. Puzzling don’t begin to cover it.”

“There’s one thing neither puzzling nor mysterious,” Red Buffalo declared. “The reasons behind it may not be clear, but it’s a certainty that whoever fired that shot meant to kill one of us.”

Nathan clenched his teeth. “Then here’s another certainty. We’re going to catch up with that bushwhacking skunk and throttle some answers out of him! We take him alive, we’ll find out what we want to know.”

Red Buffalo cocked one eyebrow. Then, referring to Nathan’s well-known hatred for all red men, resulting in him becoming widely dubbed the Indian Killer due to the many campaigns he’d joined relentlessly fighting them, the Crow said, “Won’t that go against your grain? If the ambusher favoring an unshod pony turns out to be an Indian, I mean. You saying you’d refrain from killing him if you had the chance, in order to get some answers?”

Nathan glared at him. “You’re an Indian and I’ve put up with you without killing you, haven’t I? Maybe I’m losing my edge.”

“Or maybe,” Red Buffalo replied, a hint of a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth, “I’m just more charming than most Indians.”

“Thing to remember is that I said we’d take this skunk alive for the sake of getting some answers. Red man or white, once we get those I never mentioned anything about leaving him alive.”

A dozen miles due north of the ridge from which he had taken his errant shot at the hated Indian Killer, a young Creek brave called Black Sun urged his pony up the ascending floor of a narrow arroyo that climbed into an expanse of broken, rocky terrain. At the top of the incline, the arroyo flared out into a flat oval surrounded by higher rock walls. Along the base of these tall cliffs grew a line of stubborn grass and a few patches of tangled brush. From a notch at one point in the cliffs, a spattering of freshwater poured down from some elevated spring.

After crossing the flat area, Black Sun slipped from the back of his pony and released the animal to go drink and find graze in the line of grass. He did the same for the saddled horse he had been leading on a tether. As the horse moved away from him, the brave’s eyes came to rest on the stock of the buffalo rifle thrusting up from the scabbard hanging on one side of the saddle.

Black Sun scowled fiercely at the weapon and cursed it under his breath. Then he cursed himself for giving in to the temptation of attempting to use it before he was fully prepared.

The lure, the legend of the Big Fifty—cursed far ahead of Black Sun by the men of many tribes for its effectiveness at helping to wipe out the vast herds of buffalo which were the very lifeblood of their people—had been too much for the young man to resist. What a satisfying thing it would be, he’d thought in a moment of hate-fueled foolishness, to not only kill the despised Indian Killer but to do so with the equally despised weapon that had also caused so much harm to his race.

Unfortunately, Black Sun hadn’t had sufficient time to familiarize himself with the gun. Although he had become an adequate marksman with other rifles he’d acquired in the past, the distance involved for the shot he attempted that morning, coupled with the fierce kick of the Big Fifty, had resulted in missing his target—the target he’d wanted to hit far worse than any previous one he’d ever taken aim at.

Black Sun once more uttered a curse. But along with it, he also made a silent vow to himself. A vow to never again be so impatient and foolhardy. He had not tracked Nathan Stark, the Indian Killer, all this way—all the way from Indian Territory—to fail at meting out the vengeance he was obsessed with delivering as payback for the slaying of his father and brother at Stark’s hands.

For weeks the Creek brave had trailed Stark, only to arrive at Fort Randall here in the Dakotas just ahead of the clash with Hanging Dog’s renegade Sioux. Black Sun had barely escaped a Sioux war party himself and it was on that occasion that he’d fled to the safety of this place where no one else seemed to venture.

Following the battle at the fort, he cautiously emerged to assess the aftermath. During that time he had been filled with dread that Stark might have fallen during the battle, a victim of the Sioux, robbing him of his chance for revenge. Monitoring the activity at the fort from surrounding concealed vantage points, Black Sun had been relieved to spot Stark still alive and engaged in the cleanup and repair.

It was one day as he continued this reconnoitering, watching and waiting and planning for his chance to strike at Stark, that Black Sun had spotted the man with the Big Fifty Sharps also monitoring the fort from the grassy hill.

When it became alarmingly evident that the man was preparing to line up a shot at the very same target Black Sun was interested in—again a threat to rob him of his revenge—the Creek brave had ghosted up behind the man and prevented him from succeeding. That much had gone well. He not only managed to yank the man’s head back by his hair and slit his throat before he knew what was happening, but he’d also had time to roll the would-be thief over onto his back so that, before he died, he saw Black Sun’s face and heard his explanation of “Mine!” ahead of the eyes going dull and the last bit of life draining away.

After making the kill, Black Sun had taken the man’s rifle and horse and returned to his rocky hideout, wondering why the man—a white eyes—had reason for also wanting to kill Stark and what, if anything, it might mean for Black Sun’s effort to do the same.

In the end, the young Creek decided, it changed nothing. With the rifleman eliminated and neither the presence nor death of this would-be killer even known to Stark, Black Sun still had the chance to finish what he’d come so far to do.

So he’d returned to conducting his vigil of the fort, watching for the opportunity he so desperately wanted. He’d spotted Stark moving within the walls a handful of times, but he never ventured anywhere Black Sun could close in on him. Not for the first time, the vengeance seeker weighed the risks of sneaking into the fort under the cover of dark and attempting his strike that way. If he was forced to wait much longer, he told himself, he would have to work up the nerve for such a measure …

And that was when the idea first struck him about using the Big Fifty.

The range and power of the rifle were renowned for that very reason—the impressive distance at which it could deliver deadly impact. If the Indian Killer was providing Black Sun no opportunity to get close enough to use his knife or tomahawk, then maybe here was another means to deliver his revenge. It wouldn’t be the same as sinking a knife blade or tomahawk edge into Stark at close range, so they were eye-to-eye and he knew who was killing hi. . .