Reborn in Vengeance (Preview)

Chapter One

Billy watched as the man known as The Hound stepped to the edge of the ravine. His quarry was at the bottom. The cowboy had fallen down there trying to escape. 

Seemed a foolish and desperate move, running from them out here on the dry, desolate patch of high desert above the more fertile canyon. Given the way he was lying on the bottom of the arroyo, it hadn’t paid off. 

They’d dragged him up here to give him a beating. Let him walk back to his ranch to let his bruises inform his boss how things worked in Prospect Valley. 

People had to know Captain Eli Stanton and his militia were in charge, and if you wanted to do business in Prospect Valley, then the Captain was going to get his cut.

Three men with their hats pulled low over their eyes and black bandanas covering the rest of their faces joined The Hound at the lip of the deep chasm.

“Is he dead?” Billy, the youngest of the foursome, asked.

All four peered down and adjusted their hats so they could get a better view in the dying light. At least two of them were about to declare the man deceased when he struggled to his feet and started limping down the middle of the ravine.

“Tougher than he looks,” the young man’s older brother, Sven, said.

The Hound nodded and went back to his horse. He drew his Sharps rifle from the leather case attached to the saddle and walked back to the ridge.

“What are you going to do with that?” the young man asked as The Hound cocked the rifle.

The Hound didn’t bother replying. Instead, he got down on one knee and took aim at the limping man’s back.

“That really necessary?”

“Shut up, Billy,” his older brother said.

“We were told to give him a beating. I’d say chasing him off this ledge qualifies. Hell, more than qualifies.”

“I said shut up, Billy.”

Billy watched the man with the coldest blue eyes he’d ever seen start to squeeze the trigger.

He kicked the barrel of the long rifle at the last second, sending the shot wide. Instead of putting a .52 slug in the man’s back, The Hound took out a cactus on the other side of the arroyo.

Billy saw those cold eyes turn his way. He stood his ground. “No one said anything about killing anybody.”

“No one said anything about not killing anyone either,” The Hound responded. “I told him not to run. There has to be a consequence.”

Falling down the ravine seemed consequence enough, but Billy didn’t say so.

”Don’t do something like that again unless you’ve decided you’re not long for this world.”

The Hound looked down to where the man had fallen. He was struggling to get up. He looked at Riggs, who, unlike the other two, had been working for Captain Stanton for a while.

“Can I borrow your rifle?”

“I reckon so,” Riggs said before he turned and went toward his own horse.

“No,” Billy said, “I didn’t sign up to be a murderer. I ain’t finding myself on the end of a rope on account of you.”

Riggs laughed as he unsheathed his long gun—a Sharps rifle, like The Hound’s, that he’d brought home after the war. “We are the law around here, boy.”

Billy stepped in front of Riggs. “I can’t let you do it.”

Riggs considered this. He looked past the two brothers to The Hound. “He ain’t wrong.”

The Hound shook his head. “He shouldn’t have run.”

Riggs looked at Sven. “I think he’s got a point as well.”

Sven stepped aside. Billy didn’t.

It happened so fast no one saw The Hound reach for the Colt Peacemaker at his hip, let alone put it to Billy’s head.

“Get out of the way. I ain’t asking again.”

Billy turned slowly until he was facing down the wrong end of The Hound’s Peacemaker. The Hound thumbed back the hammer.

“You’d kill me over this?”

The Hound didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. The look in his eyes said it for him.

Billy was going to move when Sven said, “I can’t abide anyone drawing down on my brother.”

The Hound looked over to see Sven pointing a pistol his way. He looked past Billy to Riggs.

Riggs shrugged. “This seems like your fight.”

“You taking their side, then?”

“I ain’t taking a side at all.”

The Hound shifted his eyes to Sven. “No one points a gun at me, but if you put that iron back on your hip, I might forget this happened.” 

Riggs looked at Sven. “Seems the best solution.”

Sven kept his eyes on The Hound’s as he said, “You first.”

“Fine. That cowboy is probably long gone anyhow.”

The Hound moved the gun off of Billy, but instead of holstering it, he swung to Sven.

Sven hadn’t cocked his gun, so all he could do was watch the wrong end of The Hound’s weapon come his way. The Hound would have carved a trench through Sven’s forehead with a lead slug, but Billy saw the move coming and, for the second time in the last five minutes, ruined The Hound’s kill shot.

Billy tried to wrestle the gun away, but The Hound brought his knee up into Billy’s groin and used his free hand to put his knuckles across Billy’s temple. Billy fell to the ground.

The Hound swung his gun back to Sven, but Sven had drawn back the hammer. The Hound was still very fast. They pulled the trigger at nearly the same time. Sven put a slug through The Hound’s shoulder, but took a bullet through the throat. Sven dropped his gun and put his hands to his neck to try and stem the blood pouring out. 

Billy was almost to his feet and his own revolver was almost clear when The Hound turned and smacked Billy in the face with the butt of his pistol. He grabbed Billy by the front of his shirt and tossed him toward the ravine. Billy caught some scrub brush and kept from going over.

He looked up to see Sven fall to his knees and then slump to the dirt. Turning his head, he saw The Hound above him.

“You killed my brother, you son of a bitch.”

The Hound responded by thumbing back the hammer of his Colt.

Billy closed his eyes.

Riggs hit The Hound in the back of the head with the butt of his long rifle, and The Hound tumbled over the side of the ravine. He tumbled down the rocky side of the arroyo, hit the bottom, and didn’t move.

Riggs put the rifle down and held out a hand to Billy. Billy didn’t take it.

“If I wanted you dead, I would have let The Hound shoot you.”

“Why? I thought you and he were friends.”

“At best, we were colleagues. Man like that don’t have friends. He’s a rabid dog, and at some point, he and I would have had a problem. No one with a lick of sense takes on a man like The Hound in a fair fight. I saw an opportunity to put a rabid dog down and took it.”

Billy reached for the man’s hand, but Riggs moved it away.

“Then again, Captain Stanton has a certain amount of affection for our dead compadre. He might think less of me if he knew I was the one who put him down.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Billy said as he struggled to find purchase with both his hands and his feet. “I give you my word.”

“Your word is your bond?”

“I give a man my word, I mean it.”

“Because you’re a man of high moral character?”

“That’s right.”

“You know what we need in this business less than rabid dogs?”

“Come on, Riggs, just help me up.”

“Men with high moral character.”

Riggs kicked Billy in the forehead, sending a third man tumbling into the ravine.

Billy landed on top of The Hound. The Hound didn’t seem to notice. 

***

Billy was still moving, so Riggs picked his Sharps back up and aimed his rifle down at Billy. 

There was zero sincerity in his voice when he said, “Sorry, kid,” before he put a slug through Billy’s chest.

Billy stopped moving.

The Hound didn’t appear to notice this either.

Riggs was still worried The Hound might still be alive. He had a bullet in him, and Riggs had cracked him in the head something fierce, but whatever else The Hound was, he was a survivor. During the war, the man had walked away from battles that left piles of dead men more times than seemed possible.

The Sharps rifle was a single-shot, but the ravine wasn’t that deep, so he put down the rifle and drew his pistol. He briefly considered going back for his Spencer repeater, another souvenir from what the brass called The War of Northern Aggression. 

It didn’t have the same accuracy or range as the Sharps, but instead of a single slug, it held seven bullets and had a lever action to put a cartridge in the chamber. It also had better range than the pistol. 

If he couldn’t make the shot with his Remington revolver—yet another war souvenir, only this one was modified to take .44 cartridges instead of lead balls—he had time to try it with the Spencer. It was likely a waste of a good bullet, regardless. The Hound had to be dead.

He’d sleep better if he were sure. The Hound had always struck him as the kind of man you had to kill twice.

He sighted up on The Hound’s head and pulled the trigger. Dust and the man’s hat flew up in the air. Even from up here, Riggs could see the blood on the side of the man’s head. If he wasn’t dead before, he was now.

Riggs still found a rock to sit on while he rolled a smoke. He enjoyed a cigarette as he watched the sun set on three dead men.

Finally, Riggs gathered up the horses. Captain Stanton wouldn’t be happy to be down three men, but there was no shortage of desperate war veterans coming West who would be glad to do this kind of work. With The Hound gone, Marlow Riggs had earned himself a promotion.

Chapter Two

The man known as The Hound was vaguely aware of the sound of four horses leaving. By the time he opened an eye, the sun was down. The light of the moon barely reached him at the bottom of the arroyo. His head was bloody, but he didn’t know why.

All he knew at the moment was pain and thirst. His head and shoulder hurt the most, but everything else did as well. He didn’t realize there was a corpse lying across his back until he tried to move.

He didn’t have the strength to push the dead man off of him, but he was able to wriggle free. Once he’d shed the dead man, he tried to stand. It was slow going. Even the parts of him that weren’t throbbing didn’t want to move.

 He wasn’t sure where he was or how he got there, but his instincts told him not to stay. He was gearing up to try to put one boot in front of the other when a creature, probably a snake or possibly a coyote, moved in the darkness.

He drew the gun he carried, a Colt 1851 Navy revolver, without thinking about it.

His body wasn’t ready. The action made him lose his balance, and he ended up face-first on the rocky ground. The pistol left his grip and skittered off into the darkness. Whatever had made the noise moved on.

He forced himself to his feet once more.

He only made it a step before he fell back down again.

He might have lain there an hour, or it might have been a minute. However long it was, he didn’t recover enough to muster the energy to stand up again. He still felt with every fiber in his being that to stay where he was would mean death. Part of him was saying, the hell with it, just stay on the dirt and rocks and give himself up to whatever fate he deserved.

Most of him, however, didn’t like that idea at all.

He started to crawl. He wasn’t moving very fast, but he was moving. He didn’t know where he was going, but he was going somewhere. For now, that would have to do.

Chapter Three

Like his owner, the old dog they called Mutt didn’t move all that well anymore. Every once in a while, though, Mutt got a burst of energy that seemed almost supernatural. Usually, it had to do with squirrels or prairie dogs.

When Mutt sat up quickly and barked once before jumping off the moving wagon, both Eden McCrae and her dad, Henry, figured this was the case. 

“Damn it, Mutt, get back here,” Henry shouted as he pulled on the reins and got his old horse, Stubbs, to a stop.

Mutt didn’t come back. Instead, he ran through the scrub brush to the edge of a ravine just off the road and looked down.

“I said, get back here.”

Mutt looked at him and then back at the ravine.

“Back here now, you stupid furball, or I leave you to the coyotes.”

Mutt didn’t appear to believe him.

Eden laughed. “He knows your bark is worse than your bite.”

Henry looked over at her, and she anticipated him saying something about respecting her elders, but after a second, he shook his head and smiled. “That dog makes dirt look smart sometimes, but I have to admit, I’d miss him.”

“What do you think he sees down there?” Eden said as she climbed down from the wagon. Unlike most of the women in Prospect Valley, she wore jeans, boots, and a man’s work shirt instead of a dress. The next time she put on perfume would be the first time.

She told her father this was because he needed help, and no self-respecting blacksmith of any gender would wear a dress to work. Once he no longer needed her assistance, she swore she’d become more ladylike.

She knew he didn’t believe her, and there were times she didn’t believe it either, but unlike the kid he’d brought on as an apprentice, she was consistently helpful.

 Despite her less-than-feminine ways, the young men in town still noticed her. One day now maybe she’d notice one back, and he’d need his apprentice to step up and carry more of the workload, but it hadn’t happened yet and Eden was beginning to doubt it ever would. Prospect Valley didn’t have a great selection of eligible bachelors, and even if it did, her father still needed her help.

Eden made her way to Mutt. She joined him at the edge and looked down, expecting to see some critter teasing their old dog. What she didn’t expect was to see a man lying on his stomach, his blond hair sticky with dark, dry blood.

She stared at him a moment, unsure what to think.

“Well,” Henry shouted, “what is it?”

“I think it’s a dead man.”

Henry was slower than both of them getting off the wagon. He’d taken a musket ball to his thigh during the Battle of Lost Shoes. His leg had never worked right after that. Still, if he ever caught Eden feeling sorry for him, he’d remind her he was lucky.

By the time he made it to the edge, Eden had already started climbing down.

“Edie, what are you doing?”

“What if he’s still alive?”

Henry peered down. “That seems unlikely.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be sure?”

Henry shrugged. “What are we going to do if he’s not?”

Eden didn’t have an answer to that, so she concentrated on her descent.

Once down, she approached the fallen man slowly. She wasn’t sure why. He didn’t appear to be in any shape to do anyone harm.

She watched his back, hoping to see signs he was breathing. She didn’t see any. She wasn’t sure if him being dead made him more or less scary. She looked up at her dad. He gave her his “you got yourself into this, you get yourself out” look. Which meant he wouldn’t be offering up any advice.

She moved closer to the man. She couldn’t tell much about him. He was tall and had the look of someone who worked with his hands, nothing soft on him. If he had a hat, it was long gone. He had a pair of leather holsters hanging on his hips, but they were empty.  She couldn’t be sure without seeing his face, but she didn’t think she knew him.

The gun belt and the black bandana around his neck made her think whatever happened to this man, he might have deserved it. She felt bad thinking this way, but life under Captain Stanton’s rule had a way of bringing out the worst in people.

She knelt down, but she still didn’t see any sign he was breathing. The head wound was uglier up close. His shirt was torn at the shoulder. His dark shirt didn’t make the blood obvious like his light hair did, but she could see he’d been bleeding there too.

She looked past him. No footprints, but the dry dust had been moved. She figured he’d either crawled here or someone had dragged him.

Eden put her hand gently on his good shoulder. She wasn’t sure what this would tell her, but it seemed the thing to do.

His shoulder jerked, and he rolled over. She was too busy looking at his face to see the hand go to an empty holster.

Eden jumped back. Until he moved, she had been convinced he was a corpse.

He looked at her with cold blue eyes that reminded her of the sky. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“What happened to you?” she asked as she got closer.

He seemed to be thinking about it, but instead of trying to speak again, he shook his head.

She didn’t know if that meant he didn’t know or he didn’t want to talk about it.

He tried to sit up, but the effort exhausted him, and he fell back to the dirt.

Eden looked up to her father. “He’s alive.”

“I noticed.”

Eden stood up. “What should we do?”

“We can get him home and have Jonas fetch the doc.”

“What about the supplies?” Eden asked.

Henry thought about it, and eventually he said, “They’ll still be there this afternoon, or even tomorrow if it comes to that.” He looked around before turning back to her. “There’s a low spot just down there. I can climb down and drag him to the low spot. I reckon if you bring the wagon over, the two of us can get him up out of there and into the wagon.”

“It’d be faster if I dragged him,” she replied. “No offense, we might all die of old age before you got down here.”

“You sure? He don’t look light.”

“I’ll try while you move the wagon. If it’s too much, I’ll let you take a turn.”

Henry’s face said he didn’t like it, but she knew he wasn’t looking forward to climbing down either. He nodded and headed back for the wagon. Mutt stayed where he was standing as a lookout.

She leaned close to tell the injured man the plan, but he was out cold again. She considered telling her father not to bother. Even if he were alive, part of her felt this was a bad idea. She looked back to the top of the ridge and saw Henry was already halfway to the wagon.

Eden got her hands up under his shoulders. She could hardly lift him, but with considerable effort, she was able to pull him along through the dirt.

She was only about halfway there when her father joined her.

“You look pretty good for a woman about to die of old age,” he told her as he leaned close to the blond-haired stranger. 

“Is he dead?” Eden asked.

He pulled aside the black bandana still obscuring part of the man’s face and they both saw the scars on his neck and face. 

 Henry put the back of his hand to the stranger’s mouth.

“It might be better if he is,” Eden told him.

“Why would you say a thing like that?”

“He looks like one of Stanton’s goons.”

Eden could see Henry considered this. She thought he might agree but his face softened and he said, “We don’t know that. Besides, he’s still breathing.” 

The two of them dragged him to the low spot.

“Get that rope and tie it to the wagon. We’ll let Stubbs get him up.”

Eden nodded. She wondered if they should have employed her dad’s old horse to get the man this far, since she was exhausted from trying to drag him by herself.

She quickly found the rope and secured it to the back of the wagon. Henry must have already thought of this since the wagon was backed up to the edge of the ravine. She tossed the rest down to her dad and then got on the wagon and took the reins. 

“Tell me when,” she called down to Henry.

Henry didn’t reply until he had the rope tied to the fallen man.

He told her, “Take it as slow as she’ll let you. I’m not sure he can take much more.”

Eden made a clicking sound with her tongue, and the old horse started moving.

“Easy does it, Stubbs,” she said in her best soothing voice.

Stubbs seemed to understand. She took it slow. It didn’t take long before the blond stranger with a hole in his shoulder was up on flat ground outside the ravine.

It wasn’t easy getting him in the wagon, but they managed.

Henry took the reins before he got moving. He looked back at the dog, who was still holding his vigil at the edge of the ravine.

“This is your fault,” he told Mutt. Mutt ran back to the wagon. His burst of energy had faded, so Eden had to help the old dog back onto the wagon.

“If I have to dig a hole to bury this cowboy, I’m putting you in with him,” Henry told his old dog.

Mutt, knowing he’d never do it, wagged his tail and then got comfortable for the ride back to the house.

Chapter Four

Riggs arrived back after dark. He was planning on going straight to Captain Stanton’s quarters to deliver the bad news, but Ruth Harlan, the owner of the saloon in Prospect Valley, brought up some dancing girls, including Stanton’s favorite, a buxom redhead who went by Pearl. Riggs thought there were better saloons and better girls in some of the other towns under their control, but Stanton only had eyes for Pearl.

 As always, when Pearl visited, he made it clear that under no circumstances was he to be disturbed.

Riggs was glad to put it off. The Captain wouldn’t be happy to hear his number one enforcer was no longer walking the earth. Riggs figured he’d be the only one upset. If Captain Eli Stanton, however, was broken up about it, everyone else had to act like it. Especially Riggs.

He arrived at the office early in the morning and saw a hungover Stanton, wearing Union Blues, as if he were still a captain in the army instead of an extortionist leading his own version of the Black Hand out on the prairie. 

Rumor was he never really in the Union Army, but a Confederate soldier who’d never gotten close to the rank of captain. The rumor was he’d taken the uniform off of a dead man and, seeing the way the war was going to end, switched sides. Supposedly, if one looked closely, they could see where he’d sewed up the bullet hole around the heart.

True or not, he was the Captain now. 

He was looking as mean as ever, sitting behind his desk, flanked by an American flag and a stuffed mountain lion. Stanton wearing a sour face probably meant Pearl had done something to remind him she only loved him because she got paid. Riggs had seen him in this state before and knew Stanton often sought relief through violence.

 Riggs noticed Stanton had his old sword in the scabbard hooked at his waist, and he wondered if coming back to the fort had been a mistake. Perhaps, he should have kept riding.

“You left with three men. Word is you came back alone.”

“Yes sir, that’s correct.”

“You have an explanation?”

“The kid, Billy, and The Hound got into it over something after we put a scare into a cowboy. I don’t know what. My guess is the kid wanted to make himself a reputation.”

Stanton thought about this for a second. It was bullshit, but it was close to the truth.

“Wouldn’t be the first young buck to make the mistake of testing The Hound. That explains why Billy isn’t here. By my count, that leaves two more.”

“Sven was Billy’s brother. When he realized what was happening, he attacked from behind. When I realized what was happening, I jumped in, killed Billy myself while The Hound took on Sven. Sven, though, had already made his move. They both ended up at the bottom of a ravine. Billy, too, after I put him there.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes, sir. I went to him, but his wounds were too grave.”

“You determined this with your years of medical experience?”

“I’m no doctor, but I have seen many a man leave this Earth. I have seen men survive things perhaps they shouldn’t, but no man to knowledge has ever survived a .46 rimfire to the head.”

Stanton considered this. In Riggs’s experience, the man was slow to acknowledge when things didn’t go the way he wanted them to, and this was no exception.

“Where’s the body?” Stanton asked.

“I had no way to bring him up from the bottom of the ravine,” Riggs said, realizing he might have made a mistake leaving The Hound out there in the desert. He should have known Stanton would need to see this for himself.

“So, you left the man there all night?”

Riggs could have pointed out Stanton was too busy with his whore to see him, but that wouldn’t matter to a man like Stanton, so all he said was, “I’m sorry, sir.”

Stanton stood up. “Go tell the boy to get my horse ready and have some hitch up a wagon. I assume you remember where all this took place?”

“I do, sir.”

“Then get moving. The Hound deserves better than to be coyote food.”

With Riggs leading the way, they left the fort a half-hour later. The Captain rode behind him, and four militia men rode in the flat-bed wagon.

It didn’t take long to find the ravine. Riggs got there first. It looked as if they were too late to keep the coyotes away. He could see two bodies that they’d already gotten into. The problem was there should have been three of them. The only thing in his favor was the coyotes had done enough damage it wasn’t clear which two bodies were down there and which one was gone.

Stanton peered over the edge. “I reckon I owe you an apology.”

Riggs didn’t know what to say.

“This is much steeper than I pictured. Next time, describe it to me better.”

“Sorry,” Riggs replied. Captain Stanton’s aversion to physical labor that didn’t involve hurting others was working to Riggs’s advantage.

Stanton rubbed his beard. “There’s not much left to bury, probably not worth the trouble. I suppose having the Padre say a few words over the ravine would be funeral enough.”

Riggs nodded. He felt relieved Stanton wasn’t counting limbs and assumed all three men were still at the bottom. 

“I reckon this is bittersweet for you, Marlowe. Other than myself, you were Emmet’s best friend.”

Riggs was surprised to hear not only his first name but The Hound’s come out of Stanton’s mouth. He replied, “He was a good man.”

“No, he was a vicious bastard, but sometimes a man needs a vicious bastard around, and he was the best vicious bastard I’ve ever known. I’m going to need a new vicious bastard, Marlowe. Are you up to the task?”

Riggs held back a smile. “I believe I am, sir.”

Stanton looked him over and then nodded with approval.

“The Hound might not get a proper burial, but we’ll give him a proper wake. Move some collections up a day or two to make sure we send the man out properly.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter Five

Eden and Henry McCrae had a small house on the backside of his blacksmith business near the center of Prospect Valley. Like everyone else who wanted to do business here, he had a “protection certificate” posted on his front window. 

Supposedly, having that piece of paper let criminals and undesirables know not to mess with this business because it was under the protection of Captain Eli Stanton and his militia. But everyone knew the certificate was to protect them from Stanton and his militia. If any outside criminals and undesirables came to town, the militia wouldn’t lift a finger.

Henry sent Eden to fetch Jonas while he checked on the stranger. Jonas was supposed to be working on pounding out shoes while they were gone.

Eden was surprised to find him doing just that.

He was engrossed enough in putting the hammer down on hot metal he didn’t notice Eden was there until she tapped on his shoulder. He turned, looking annoyed at the interruption, but smiled when he saw it was Eden. 

Eden was sure he was attracted to her. He was seventeen now, only a few years younger than she was, but she still saw him as the kid they had taken in after his parents died and, despite his efforts, probably always would.

“We need your help,” she told him, then turned and left.

Jonas put down the hammer and dipped the shoe in the water bucket before chasing after her.

“Is he dead?” were the first words out of his mouth when he saw the blond stranger lying in the wagon.