Open Range Fury E-Book

George Arthur

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale Fiction
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Anson Hawkstone is on the trail of an errant husband who deserted his wife and infant child to become a cowboy in Wyoming Territory. But Hawkstone's quest becomes complicated when he encounters three women, a deserted Mormon wife, a white Kiowa captive, and a Chinese girl abandoned by her parents and ends up escorting them on their wagon journey to Cheyenne. But a range war is about to happen and Hawkstone and the women become caught up in it, leading to an inevitable showdown involving Hawkstone, a ranch foreman, a bounty hunter, and the missing husband.

Leseprobe

Open Range Fury

Anson Hawkstone is on the trail of an errant husband who deserted his wife and infant child to become a cowboy in Wyoming Territory. But Hawkstone’s quest becomes complicated when he encounters three women – a deserted Mormon wife, a white Kiowa captive, and a Chinese girl abandoned by her parents – and ends up escorting them on their wagon journey to Cheyenne. But a range war is about to happen and Hawkstone and the women become caught up in it, leading to an inevitable showdown involving Hawkstone, a ranch foreman, a bounty hunter, and the missing husband.

By the same author

Shadow Shooters

Writing as George Snyder

The Gunman and the Angel

Dry Gulch Outlaws

Open Range Fury

George Arthur

ROBERT HALE

© George Arthur 2018

First published in Great Britain 2018

ISBN 978-0-7198-2777-8

The Crowood Press

The Stable Block

Crowood Lane

Ramsbury

Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.bhwesterns.com

Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

The right of George Arthur to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter One

In 1877, during a soft spring rain, Anson Hawkstone rode the buckskin mare north of Santa Fe as the trail became rocky and steep. He felt pulled toward Wyoming Territory by the request of his seagoing, world-sailing mate, and had trailed the boy more than a month this far. Before Hawkstone crossed into Colorado, he relived his last conversation with the sea captain, now shipyard owner, Captain Ben Coral.

First, there had been the letter.

Hawkstone carried the letter from Fort McLane to the Apache village where Rachel Cleary, now Rachel Good Squaw, the medicine woman, lived in her small hut, the hut shared with Hawkstone when he was in the area. Rachel and Hawkstone carried personal history, from early days when she was a sixteen-year-old orphan carrying his child. He had been raised from the age of seven by Apache, and did not know about her ‘family condition’ when he and Ben Coral, both sixteen, went to sea and for eight years sailed in and out of world ports. He returned to San Francisco to find Rachel turned out by the orphanage as a girl of low morals, the baby born dead, and she had been seized by a tribe of Chiricahua Apache and taken to Arizona Territory. After two years, his search for her failed. He married, and while he scouted for the army out of Santa Fe, his family was blown apart during a bank robbery. He never recovered, and once he had butchered those responsible, he turned outlaw and spent three years in Yuma Territorial prison. When released, he returned to his Apache tribe to seek a kind of peace.

It was years later, when shot to pieces and near death, that he was taken to the medicine woman and found his Rachel once again, now forty, living with another Apache tribe near Fort McLane, seeing to their medical needs. She welcomed Hawkstone, and wanted him with her when he could.

While children lined with belly-aches, and coughs, and men came to the medicine woman with gunshot wounds and broken bones, and women sought help with ailments and childbirth, Rachel Good Squaw, the medicine woman, was there. Hawkstone hunted with braves, and alone, to provide the village with meat. He spoke with cavalry officers who, at times, tried to harass villagers, and in a small way his presence protected the little band. She prepared his meals, and at night, when they were alone together in the hut, they read or spoke of their past while they had been apart, and after the lantern was blown out, they held each other.

In this way, they lived their life.

Rachel sat in the pine chair outside her hut and listened while Hawkstone read the letter from his shipmate, Ben Coral. She smoked her clay pipe and nodded at the words. Her flaming red hair sparkled in the setting sun. She wore a buckskin skirt to her knees and calf-high moccasins. She was smooth to touch and soft to hold and had elegant hands. He sat in the chair he had built and placed close to hers, while her hand rested on his arm as he read.

When the letter was finished, she said, ‘This means you’re gonna leave me. You’ll go to San Francisco, to Ben, and you’ll chase after this jasper who deserted Ben’s daughter and young-un. What was his name, again?’

‘Linus Raines. Ben writes the boy took off to cowboy in Wyoming Territory.’

‘Just an infant,’ Rachel said. ‘He took off and left that girl with a tiny baby.’ She nodded and inhaled from the pipe and blew smoke, as if she knew the pain of such feelings. ‘Yes, you should go.’

Hawkstone studied her face. The blue clay tattoo line ran from her lower lip to just under her chin. Her triangle face still carried high cheek bones and sharp features, except for the full lips.

‘I think you’ll be glad to see me leave,’ he said.

Rachel looked off across the mesa away from the village. ‘Yes, I’ve had enough man cluttering my life, being underfoot. I want you to go.’ She turned to him with soft eyes. ‘My Viking sailor, that Peacemaker strapped to your hip, with light curly hair and those hazel eyes, big and raw-boned. You do bring your moments for me. You have a way about you, Anson Hawkstone.’ She pointed the pipe at him. ‘You better not be gone too long. When I start to miss you, the ache is more than I can bear. I crave you deep and serious. Before too long you better get yourself back to me, hear? Now tell me a Ben Franklyn.’

Hawkstone smiled at her. ‘The proof of gold is fire, the proof of woman, gold; the proof of man, a woman.’

For a man used to the open plain, San Francisco appeared cluttered and haphazard, with jerky movement and loud screech, bang, clump noises. Not so at the docks. The docks made sense.

Ship masts swayed with the tide, and an afternoon stiff breeze blew across the bay to assault docks and city alike; the wind blew unchecked, gaining strength across the open Pacific from the shores of Japan.

Hawkstone and Ben Coral sat on the foredeck of an almost complete clipper, the ship still smelling of fresh-cut fir and calking, still on the ways, ready to slide into her element. They drank Jamaican rum that he was reminded poured like syrup and tore at the throat going down.

‘She’s yours if you want her, Hawkstone,’ Ben said. ‘A three-master with enough cargo hold and clouds of sail to blow her across any ocean, carrying whatever goods you like. She’s the Distant Star, and she waits your command.’

Ben Coral was still called ‘Captain’, though he now owned a shipyard that built clippers. He had earned command coming over the scuppers and pushing up to deck crew, then mate, then captain. His presence demanded respect. Over six feet tall, with a bush of black and grey facial hair, his mahogany eyes were penetrating and his hair surrounded his head. He had huge hands, and a reputation for running a stern but fair ship. He and Anson Hawkstone had shipped aboard another clipper as boys, and in eight years had visited to drink and eat and couple with girls from many of the backwater ports of the world, through the South China Sea to the Chinese coast, to the London docks and Moroccan shores, to the man-spoiling islands of the South Pacific where they sampled innocent maidens eager to please.

‘I ain’t a man for the sea no more,’ Hawkstone said.

Ben leaned forwards. ‘Ah, my friend, I can tell by the way you fondle her with your eyes. Your blood needs the mix of sea water mixed in it. You need the motion of a good ship under the soles of your boots.’

Hawkstone slugged down a gulp of the Jamaican rum. ‘I got Rachel now. My wandering days are done. I’m only here because of your letter.’

Ben slapped Hawkstone’s knee. ‘Hell, bring Rachel aboard. Many captains now carry their wives. It would be an adventure unlike any she’s ever known.’

‘She likes what she’s doing.’

‘Ah, Anson Hawkstone.’ He leaned back. ‘I was her favourite, you know? It could have been me got her in a family way them years ago. She liked me better than you.’

Hawkstone smiled. ‘Hold that thought. She liked you. She went with me.’

‘By luck. One word from me, a gesture. Ah, we went to sea as lads and left the poor girl in that way. No excuse for us.’

‘I didn’t know.’

Ben nodded. ‘And how is she now? Did those years with the Apache harden her? Has she lost her fiery softness?’

They sipped rum.

Hawkstone said, ‘As a captive girl she went with a brave. Had two sons. Father and sons were slaughtered by the cavalry out of Fort Grant down along the San Pedro River. She moved, became the medicine woman and kept to herself until I found her again.’

‘And now you’re with her?’

‘When I can be. When she can put up with me. She’s forty now, Ben, she has little patience for the ways of men.’

‘Then she has changed.’

‘Some. But at times when we’re alone together, the girl is still there. She shows herself to me. The woman too. Now and then the woman lets it slip how much she cares. She doesn’t mean to. It might be a gesture or a word, but it’s there.’

‘Only she’s done with you now and sent you after my letter.’

‘She has. I’m here.’

‘First off, Hawkstone, you’re not to kill the barnacle slime. You can break his bones and shoot him to pieces, but don’t kill him.’ He handed Hawkstone a tintype photo of the stiff couple. Linus Raines was not a handsome man. Martha looked better than he thought she might. ‘I got plans for the bastard that will be worse than dying, but will end that way.’

Hawkstone studied the photo as he slugged down rum. ‘Ben, I didn’t even know you got yourself married.’

Ben nodded. ‘She was French, from one of the islands off Colombia. She never really took to sea. Having baby Martha almost killed her. Finally, one of them South Pacific diseases done her in, and that was the end of that. I had Martha on my hands and a ship to run. But she took to it good. The girl is a natural born sea gal. I’d hoped when she come of age she’d hook up with a sailor. Didn’t matter to me, a seaman, however plain and simple, or how deep in the hold his berth swung. I had money and influence and my ships were sailing the sea. I could’a done something for the lad, brought him up to the deck, made him a mate, even a captain. But, no, she got herself in that San Francisco crowd with money and snobbery, and my little girl fell under the spell of a dandy named Linus Raines, and he insisted Martha call him her “Gypsy Man”.’

Ben’s lips tightened. He slugged down rum. ‘He ain’t no man, Hawkstone. First thing, he stays out all night, carousing and spending what ain’t his, then he gets my Martha with child. When that ain’t enough, he decides to go cowboy in Wyoming Territory. Just up and packs and rides out. I sent men after him, but he’s slippery as a snake. I heard he was in Nevada, somewhere’s around Virginia City. Then Utah Territory, headed up through Colorado to Wyoming Territory. He’s gone now, and I want you to find him and bring him back, not dead, but barely alive won’t bother me one bit.’

‘What you going to do with him?’

Ben Coral leaned back and studied the glass in his hand. ‘What’s gonna happen to Raines ain’t fit for a man to know or see. Return him to me, and his future is foregone.’

Chapter Two

No word reached Hawkstone about Raines through Virginia City and Nevada, nor across Utah Territory, nor at Bent’s Fort near La Junta, Colorado, which was more a mountain-man trading post than military fort. Riding into Colorado Territory, sagebrush and greasewood remained but also gave way to tall spruce, aspen, firs and pines, and plenty of rocks. Along the South Platte out of Denver toward the plateau headed toward Nebraska was Pawnee country. Riding his buckskin mare with an old grey pack horse, Hawkstone entered the Pawnee grasslands of Colorado where the Crow river flowed on the right and the Rockies touched clouds on his left. Up north were the Laramie mountains. He shared a campsite with Arbuckle’s coffee and beans with a wrangler, Bronco Tex Withers. Bronco Tex had five mares he had been working for two months or more. He had roped them from a mustang herd running along the grasslands and had the mares broke, shod and gentled some.

Bronco Tex looked like a scarecrow in a wheat field. He hadn’t shaved in a week. He was dressed in dirty cowpuncher clothes, and when he removed his hat, his forehead shone bright white against his sun-scorched face.

‘Gentled some,’ he said, looking off where the mustang mares were tied to a cluster of cottonwoods along a creek. ‘They can be rid, and mebbe trained to work cows in a few weeks. Ain’t no way they’d pull a wagon. Nothing for kids to ride.’

‘What you going to do with them?’ Hawkstone asked.

‘Sell ’em to you, pard. I was gonna drive them to a man named Garth Austin who deals in horses he sells to the army at Fort Laramie. He’s up just south of Cheyenne along Orchard Valley.’ He sighed deep and closed his eyes. ‘I ain’t got that kind of riding and herding in me no more.’ He pointed to the five mares. ‘They’s good broncs, hardly buck at all when you swing in the saddle. I’ll sell them to you for twenty dollars each. Old Garth will give you fifty or sixty sure.’

‘I’m looking for a fella. Not sure I need to do horse trading too.’

‘You going that way, just take them along. Let ’em eat the grass and drink creek and river water along the way. They won’t be no trouble. You might ride one now and then so they know what they’s for. Garth will give you a profit. Who’s the fella you looking for?’

Bronco Tex looked at the wedding photo, but had no word on the lad, Linus Raines. Hawkstone gave him the hundred in gold coin. He figured that if Austin didn’t buy the mustangs, he’d sell them himself at Fort Laramie, even half broke. The next morning, he pushed them along north.

The mares were a handful. One appaloosa mare had a colt running beside her, a long-legged youngster which frolicked around the old grey mare as if teasing, but didn’t stray far from its mother. Besides the appaloosa, there was a reddish-brown bay, a calico pinto, a light dun and a chestnut roan. A group of four Cheyenne followed the mares for a day as though looking for a way to take them. Hawkstone wasn’t sure if he’d kill them trying to take his horses, maybe not. They looked starved and pathetic. Farther north had been war with the Dakotas, the Sioux, and added slaughter would continue. Crazy Horse had surrendered, but more soldiers rode towards Fort Laramie every day along the old Oregon Trail up from Kansas and Nebraska. Not near as many used the Trail now the Union Pacific was in, but not all could afford to haul household goods cross-country by rail, so many wagons were still used to roll for Oregon.

Wind from the Rockies carried a bite to it, enough for Hawkstone to keep wearing his buffalo coat. Under it was the leather vest over his green flannel store-bought shirt, and Levi’s jeans with copper rivets at the pockets from Fort McLane, not far from Rachel’s hut. He kept his flat-brimmed plains Stetson pulled low, and when early spring bitter gusts hit, he tied his kerchief over the hat to his chin. He had stopped wearing spurs when he gave up droving, many years ago. Even then they had been dull, not as sharp as some which left bleeding wounds in the sides of their mounts. The years when he rode through the Brazos of South Texas with its clusters of sharp cactus balls that stuck to everything, he wore thick leather chaps. He had not needed them in Arizona Territory, nor did he up here in the high prairies.

Most trails originated along the banks of rivers. Hawkstone continued to push his small herd along the South Platte along the north-east corner of Colorado. He planned to cut across to the North Platte at the Wyoming border, then into Orchard Valley and maybe connect with Garth Austin. The day was about noon, a Thursday, sunshine blanketed grey from fast-moving clouds racing through passes along the Rockies looking to bring more than a hatful of rain. If the storm got noisy he’d have to hobble the mares, or at least tie them along a string.

But the rain held off as he walked the buckskin behind the tiny herd. They came down off a mesa, and edged along a rocky bluff, Hawkstone looking for shelter. Ahead, farther down towards a feeder creek, he saw a wagon in a clearing, sitting alone without horses. It looked too small to be a Conestoga, maybe a converted Studebaker bedding packer, about the size of a cattle drive chuck wagon, with the canvas arch top shaking in the cold wind.

‘Hello, the wagon,’ Hawkstone called as the small herd spread to eat grass. The grey pack horse came up and stood beside the buckskin.

‘I got me a scattergun,’ a woman said from somewhere behind the wagon.

‘Good for you. You won’t need it for me. I bring no harm.’

‘Says you. Every man wants something.’

Hawkstone shifted in his saddle. ‘Name is Anson Hawkstone from down Fort McLane way in Arizona Territory.’