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  ESCAPED PRISONERS

  Bullets from the hillside stitched up dirt all across the campsite. The other three prisoners lay pressed to the ground. Tim jerked his head toward the ring of keys on the ground behind them and said to Jed, “We’ve got to get out of here. Can you get to those keys?”

  “I can try,” Jed replied. “Keep me covered.”

  Jed hurried, turning and crawling on his belly, shots whizzing dangerously close to his back. He snatched the ring of keys and scurried back across the ground. Tim fired two shots from the marshal’s pistol toward Jack Pearl, who rose up and fired down the hillside at Jed. Pearl ducked down as Tim’s bullets sent chips of rock slicing into his forearm.

  “I got them, Tim,” Jed said, his breath pumping short and fast as he crawled back to his brother’s side. He shot a glance back at the marshals in the clearing and saw that they were too busy firing to pay any attention to the prisoners. He drew into a ball on his side, unlocked the cuffs on his ankles, and let them fall. Quickly, he rolled over and did the same for Tim.

  “I’ve only got two shots left in this pistol, Jed….”

  Ralph Compton

  Riders

  of Judgment

  A Ralph Compton Novel

  by Ralph Cotton

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2001

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2001

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65123-0

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK — MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Prologue

  Newton, Kansas. September 7, 1871

  For the past two weeks Danielle Strange had been recovering in bed in the upstairs back room of Dr. Lannahan’s office. Her gunshot wounds had been healing quickly, but not quickly enough to suit her. Now that she was up and able to dress herself, she was restless and wanted to get on her way. She had spent over two years of her life hunting down her father’s murderers, a gang of desperados who had left his body hanging from a tree. There had been ten outlaws in the gang that had killed Daniel Strange. Posing as a young gunman named Danny Duggin, she had used the gun-handling skills her father, the gunsmith, had taught her early in life. Danielle had tracked the killers down, one and two at a time, and had taken her vengeance upon them. Only one of those outlaws remained alive. His name was Saul Delmano, and she eagerly wanted to get back on his trail before it grew too cold to follow.

  “The longer we stay here, the more time Delmano will have to prepare himself for a fight against us,” Danielle said to her brothers, Tim and Jed Strange. On a chair beside her bed lay the cloth binder that Danielle was accustomed to wearing. The binder kept her breasts flattened enough that when worn beneath her loose-fitting shirt, no one could tell she was a woman. The only reason she wasn’t wearing it now was because the binder constricted her painful wounds.

  Her twin brothers, Tim and Jed Strange, looked at one another, then turned back to Danielle. Tim said, “Danielle, you’re still too weak to ride and fight. You’ve done more than most any man could have done. But you’re only human. We can’t traipse out of here and take a chance on that hole in your side breaking open again, or that fever settling back upon you.”

  “Tim’s right,” Jed joined in. “The way the doctor explained it to us while you were unconscious that first week here, is that you’ll be walking on new legs for a while. He said it could take half the coming winter getting all your strength back.”

  “I can’t spend half the winter here, if that’s what you’re getting at,” said Danielle. She nodded toward the supper her brothers had brought her on a wooden tray. The plate and bowl on the tray sat empty on the nightstand beside the small featherbed. “I’ve got an appetite again, and I’m starting to get around pretty good, all things considered.” She patted the mended bullet hole in the side of her clean boiled shirt. “By morning I ought to be able to ride.”

  “By morning?” Tim Strange shook his head. “That’s pushing things too hard, Danielle.”

  Danielle turned a firm gaze toward him. “Quit calling me Danielle. I’m Danny Duggin until this thing is over.”

  “Sorry,” said Tim, “I just wasn’t thinking there for a second.”

  “All right, but be more careful,” she replied. She offered him a slight smile to show she wasn’t angry, and said, still patting a hand on her side, “I’m still pretty sore in m
y ribs, but it’ll go away soon.”

  “Yes, it will,” Tim Strange said, “and when it does, we’ll talk about leaving here and getting on Saul Delmano’s trail. But not a minute before. Besides, the doctor still needs to give me and Jed a clean bill of health.”

  Danielle took a breath and tried to regain her patience. In her attempt to convince her brothers that she was ready and able to ride, she’d almost forgotten that they, too, had suffered wounds at the hands of the outlaw gang they had fought and left dead on the ground before coming here to Newton. “I’m sorry, Tim,” Danielle said, looking from one of her brothers to the next. “How are you two doing?”

  The twins nodded in unison. “We’re doing all right, Danielle,” said Tim. “We’re mostly healed up pretty good.” He nodded at Jed. “Just so you won’t think we’re not keeping busy, listen to what Jed found out at the saloon.”

  Danielle looked at Jed expectantly. “Well, what is it?”

  A grin spread across Jed’s face. “You remember Bob Dennard, the bounty hunter you had trouble with back in Fort Smith?”

  “I remember him,” said Danielle. “He wanted us to ride with him and find Saul Delmano.”

  “That’s right,” Jed said. “Well, I’ve talked to him some, and he knows a lot about Saul Delmano. He said Delmano’s family operates a large cattle business that stretches all the way across the border into Mexico. He said Saul Delmano’s father, Lewis Delmano, is not much more than an outlaw himself, except that he’s made lots of powerful political connections over the years. Dennard says if Saul Delmano is holed up with his crew along the border, he’s going to be awfully hard to get to.”

  “Sounds like Bob Dennard is still trying awfully hard to throw in with us,” Danielle said. “I appreciate him giving you the information, but we’ve still got no room for him riding with us. Does he still think I’m Danny Duggin?”

  “Yep, he does,” said Jed, “and so does everybody else except the doctor. We’ve done good keeping your secret. I told Dennard that Tim and I are your younger brothers, that we’re here as family helping you out. He seems to believe it. He wants to ride with us awfully bad. Said if he’s not riding with us, he’ll be going after Saul Delmano alone. If he does, let’s hope he doesn’t cause us trouble getting to Delmano.”

  Danielle Strange thought things over for a moment, pacing slowly back and forth across the small room, one hand held to her tender side. Tim and Jed Strange stood quietly watching her.

  Across the street, other eyes were watching her, too. Atop the mercantile store, an outlaw named Clyde Branson stood with his rifle lying across the edge of the roof. He watched Danielle each time she stalked past the dusty window. Thinking Danielle was the deadly young gunman, Danny Duggin, Branson whispered to himself, “Come on, Duggin, let’s get this over with.”

  Danielle was pacing slowly, and that was to Branson’s advantage. He knew he would only get one shot, so he’d better make it count. He wet his thumb against the tip of his tongue, then ran it across his rifle sight. There was two thousand dollars riding on this shot. He couldn’t afford to miss.

  Clyde Branson counted off the seconds it took Danielle to walk past the window in the light of the lantern, then turn and come back. For a moment there she must have stopped, out of sight, probably talking to someone. Branson had eased down and waited. When nearly a full minute had expired, he saw her move past the window again, and he tightened his hand on the rifle stock. He would let her make a couple of more passes, then he would take her down. It would take a few days for word of Danny Duggin’s death to make its way to the Delmanos. But that was all right with Branson. He would already be waiting at the Delmano spread by then. All he’d have to do was pick up his money and head over into Mexico.

  Inside the room, Danielle stopped pacing again and said to her brothers, “How are the horses doing? I haven’t seen Sundown since the day we got here.” Sundown was the chestnut mare her father had ridden the day his killers had come upon him. The big mare had managed to find her way back to the Stranges’ small ranch, and Danielle had been riding the animal ever since.

  “Sundown’s fine,” said Jed Strange. “All three of our horses are fine. To tell the truth, they needed the rest. We’ve pushed them pretty hard all summer.”

  “Well,” Danielle said, turning and starting to pace again, “they’ve had all the rest they’ll be getting for a while—”

  Her words stopped short when she stepped in front of the dusty window and the sound of the rifle exploded across the street. The shot sprayed shattered glass across the room, the bullet barely missing Danielle’s head.

  “Look out!” Jed shouted as he and Tim sprang forward to grab Danielle. But she had already dived past the window and onto the floor.

  “I’m not hit!” she said, crawling back hurriedly across the floor toward her brothers. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek from where a small piece of flying glass had nicked her. “Give me my guns!”

  “Stay down!” Jed shouted as Tim reached over, grabbed one of Danielle’s pistols from its holster slung over a chair back, and pitched it over to her.

  Danielle caught the pistol and, rising into a crouch beside the window, peeped around the edge of the frame into the darkness outside. Another shot exploded, this one ripping a long sliver of wood from the windowsill. Danielle ducked back, but not before seeing the rifle’s muzzle flash. “Quick! It’s coming from the mercantile roof!” Danielle shouted to her brothers.

  The twins wasted no time. They were out the door and running down the wooden stairs as Danielle poked the barrel of her Colt through the broken window and fired three shots toward where she’d seen the rifle flash.

  In seconds Tim and Jed had raced across the dark empty street. Cutting through an alley as they saw Danielle’s pistol firing from the broken window, they turned and ran through mud and broken whiskey bottles to the rear of the mercantile store. A few feet back from the rear wall, Tim stopped and brought his brother to a halt beside him. He nodded at the ladder reaching up to the roof and said, “We’ve got him. There’s only one way down unless he makes a jump for it.” Twenty feet back in the darkness, partially hidden by stacks of firewood, a horse stood waiting, its reins hitched to a cedar post.

  “I’ll get his horse just to make sure,” said Jed in a lowered voice.

  “Yeah, good idea,” Tim agreed. “Do it while Danielle keeps him pinned down up there.”

  Pistol shots barked from the window where Danielle stood, taking aim at the roofline. Tim ventured forward, Colt in hand, and kicked the ladder away from the wall. Meanwhile, Jed slipped across the muddy path to the waiting horse, calming it with a raised hand. He unhitched its reins and led it farther back into the darkness, noting the animal’s fancy silver-trimmed bridle and reins. “Whoever he is, he rides in style,” Jed whispered to himself, running a hand along the hand-tooled California saddle with its Mexican silver inlay.

  At the rear of the mercantile, the shooting had stopped as Danielle reloaded her Colt. “You up there!” Tim called up to the roof. “You best come down with your hands raised. We’ve got you surrounded.”

  There was no answer from the roof, but behind Tim came the sound of running boots, and he almost turned and fired before he recognized the red-bearded face of the bounty hunter, Bob Dennard, coming closer. “Don’t shoot, it’s me!” Dennard called out.

  “You better hug this wall, Dennard,” Tim called out, gesturing toward the roof with his pistol barrel. “If he’s alive up there, he might start shooting down here any second.”

  Bob Dennard flattened back against the wall beside Tim Strange, glancing up along the roofline, drawing his pistol from his tied-down holster. “I heard the shooting and came running. What happened?”

  “Whoever’s up there took a shot at Dan—” He caught himself, about to say Danielle. “Somebody shot at Danny through the window!”

  “I should have figured as much,” said Bob Dennard, peering upward, scanning the roofline as he spoke.
“I tried telling you, these are big people you’re wanting to lock horns with.”

  “I believe you, Dennard,” said Tim Strange, “but Danny says he wants nobody else riding with us—no offense.” As he spoke, Tim’s eyes searched along the edge of the roof, sweeping darkness in case the rifleman tried to jump down and make a run for it.

  “No offense taken,” said Dennard.

  “Hey up there!” Tim called out again. “Either give it up and come down with your hands raised, or I’m coming up after you. Make up your mind!”

  This time a weak voice called out from atop the roof, “I can’t come down…I’m hit bad.”

  “Then throw down some hardware, pronto!” Tim responded. He looked over through the pitch of the night and saw that Jed had taken the horse to a spot where if anybody jumped down from the roof on the far end of the building, he would spot it immediately.

  “Here…comes my rifle,” the halting voice said. After a second, a rifle fell to the soft ground a few feet out from the building.

  “Now your pistol,” Tim Strange demanded.

  “I…can’t get it drawn. I’m hit…bad, and laying on it.”

  Tim gave Bob Dennard a questioning look.

  Bob Dennard shrugged.

  “I wouldn’t take his word for it,” Jed warned.

  “I’m not going to,” said Tim. He called up to the roof, “We’re coming up. If I don’t see both your hands empty when I step onto the roof, you’re worm bait. Is that clear enough?”

  Danielle came limping from the alley, a Colt in one hand, her free hand pressed to her side. She’d thrown on a riding duster and closed the front to conceal her woman’s figure. “He’s not lying about one thing,” she said, stepping up to her brother and Bob Dennard. “He is hit. I don’t know how bad, but I shot him when he raised up with his rifle.”

  As Danielle spoke, her eyes met Bob Dennard’s. “I reckon you remember me,” Dennard said, looking a bit sheepish.

  “Yes,” Danielle replied none too friendly. “You’re the one who mistook me for an outlaw and tried to ambush me outside of Fort Smith.”