Riders of Judgment Read online

  “I sure don’t want any hard feelings between us, Danny Duggin,” Bob Dennard said, taking a quick glance at the cocked Colt in Danielle’s hand. “I made a mistake and I admit it. Lucky you didn’t shoot me for my ignorance. I’ve been telling your brothers that I want to—”

  “Not now,” said Danielle, cutting him off. She turned her gaze to Tim. “Help me raise the ladder. I’m going up there.”

  “No,” said Tim, taking her forearm and preventing her from walking over to the ladder on the ground. “You’ve got no business climbing a ladder, the shape you’re in.” He raised a hand and waved Jed in from the darkness. “Jed and I will go up there.”

  Danielle started to protest, but thinking about it, she knew Tim was right. She let out a breath. “All right, I’ll stay here,” she said. “You and Jed be careful.”

  “I’m going, too,” said Bob Dennard, “in case you two need some help.”

  Tim gave him a firm look. “You can go up there, Dennard, but don’t think you need to watch over me and my brother Jed.”

  Bob Dennard looked embarrassed. “I should have said that a different way. I’m only interested in seeing who that is. Call it my nosy nature.”

  Danielle stood back and watched with her Colt ready in her hand as Jed joined Tim and Bob Dennard. Tim and Jed raised the ladder and set it in place while Bob Dennard kept an eye on the roofline.

  Tim was the first to carefully climb the ladder, his Colt poised and ready. Jed climbed close behind him, then Bob Dennard followed, seeing Tim step over onto the tin roof.

  Tim stepped across the roof as quietly as possible. Seeing the man lying in a heap against the front façade of the building, his hands empty and slightly raised, Tim called out, “Don’t try any tricks, ambusher, or I’ll kill where you lay.”

  “It’s no…trick,” the man said, lying over on his right side, his holster beneath him. “I’m…done for, sure enough.”

  “Serves you right, mister,” Tim said, stepping closer, hearing Jed move in and beside him. “You tried to kill, but ended up getting killed yourself.”

  “I don’t…need no sermons,” said Branson.

  “And you’re getting none either,” Jed Strange cut in. “Who are you anyway? Why’d you bushwhack our brother?”

  “Name’s Pete…Bristol. I was going to—”

  “He’s a damn liar,” Bob Dennard interrupted. “He’s a hired assassin named Clyde Branson. I’ve seen him a dozen times over the years. Most likely he’s working for the Delmanos. Ain’t that right, Branson?”

  Clyde Branson raised his face weakly and said, “Is…that you, Dennard?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Tell these men who you’re working for, Branson, before you make your trip to hell, you back-shooting snake.”

  Branson coughed, struggling to catch his breath. “Don’t…act…so innocent, Dennard. You’ve done the…same thing before.”

  “Who is it, Branson?” Dennard insisted, ignoring Branson’s remark. “It’s the Delmanos, isn’t it? They’re paying you to kill Danny Duggin.”

  “What’s…the difference,” gasped Branson. “It never got done.”

  “How much?” Dennard asked, stepping in closer, looking down at the wounded man.

  “Two…thousand dollars,” Branson said, his voice faltering more and more. “But not…just for me. It’s open to all takers. Saul Delmano wants…Duggin dead…real bad. You might even be tempted—”

  “How many men know about this two-thousand-dollar reward?” Dennard hissed, cutting him off.

  Even as his breath weakened, Branson murmured, “Hell…every gunman from here…to El Paso. Now tell…these boys how you make…your living.”

  “That’s enough of your mouth!” Bob Dennard cocked his pistol and aimed it at Branson’s head.

  “No! Don’t shoot him!” Tim started to reach over and stop him, but even before he could grab Bob Dennard’s gun hand, Dennard let the pistol down with a sigh and nodded at Clyde Branson.

  “Never mind, this mangy cur is dead,” said Dennard, straightening up and lowering his Colt into his holster.

  Tim and Jed Strange both looked at the dead, hollow eyes of Clyde Branson, then back at Bob Dennard. “We don’t hold with what you were about to do, Dennard,” said Tim.

  Dennard shrugged. “Well, as you can see, it never got that far.”

  The three of them turned at the sound of Danielle’s footsteps on the tin roof behind them. “Is he…?”

  “Yes, he’s dead,” said Jed Strange. “Bob here knew him. His name is Clyde Branson—a killer for hire. He said Saul Delmano has a two-thousand-dollar reward on your head.”

  “Yeah,” said Danielle, “heard most of it while I was back there on the ladder.”

  “What are you doing up here, Danny?” Tim asked. “You were supposed to stay down there and take it easy.”

  “Don’t worry, I took it as easy as I could,” Danielle said. As she spoke to Tim, she turned a cold gaze to Bob Dennard. “You were pretty quick to want to kill a dying man, Dennard. What’s wrong, was he saying things you didn’t want known?”

  “Now look, Duggin,” said Dennard, “I don’t deny what I am. I make my living hunting down men for money. If it’s wrong, why do you think the law allows it? Because the law knows it can’t keep up with all the riffraff out here, that’s why.”

  “I don’t care how you go about making your living, Dennard,” said Danielle, “but I saw what you were about to do.” She looked away from Dennard to Tim and Jed, getting their approval from the look in their eyes. “My brothers and I won’t be having you ride with us, will we, Tim, Jed?”

  The twins only shook their heads, lowering their pistols into their holsters. Danielle stepped past Clyde Branson’s body, over to the front edge of the roof, where she looked down at the gathering crowd on the dirt street below. “Somebody go get the town sheriff,” she called down to the uplifted faces. “Tell him there’s a man shot.”

  The people on the street looked back and forth at one another, then a young man turned and raced away toward the sheriff’s office where a light now glowed through the window.

  “You’re making a mistake not riding with me, Duggin,” said Dennard, as Danielle turned back around. “Ask your brothers here. Branson said the price on your head is open to all takers. Do you realize how many cold-blooded killers there are between here and the border? You’ll never make it past Dodge City.”

  “I already know there’s a lot of cold-blooded killers out here,” replied Danielle. “But at least none of them will be riding beside me.” She turned to her brothers. “Come on, Tim, Jed—we’ve got to make some plans and get out of here.”

  As the three turned to walk away across the tin roof, Bob Dennard called out, “All right then, play it your way, Duggin. But I’m going after the reward on Saul Delmano and anybody with him, with or without you!”

  “It’s a free country,” Danielle called back over her shoulder.

  “Damn right it is!” Bob Dennard called out. “We get out there in the thick of things, I’m warning all three of you…stay out of my way!”

  At the threat in Dennard’s words, Tim Strange started to turn from the ladder and issue some warnings of his own. But Danielle grabbed his arm, stopping him.

  “Let it go, Tim,” she said. “Dennard just showed you what kind of man he is. Let him rave and threaten and curse all he wants to. We’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter 1

  September 8, 1871

  Danielle recounted the events of the past months in her mind, most of the memories bringing a bitter taste to her mouth. Before Daniel Strange’s death at the hands of his killers, he had been known as the best gunsmith in or around St. Joseph, Missouri. He and his wife, Margaret, had raised all three of their children to be decent, God-fearing, law-abiding, and equally as important, to be respectful of others regardless of that person’s station in life. Along with these indisputable values, the Stranges had taught their children to be independent to a fault, f
or life along the western frontier was not a kind place for the meek, the helpless, or the reluctant of spirit. While the Strange children were honest and soft-spoken, they had a presence beyond their years and knew how to handle themselves in most any situation.

  Along with all the other things a frontier child must learn, Daniel Strange had taught his daughter and sons at an early age the skill, safety, and responsibility of handling and carrying a firearm. By the time his children were able to read and write, they could handle a Colt as well as any grown man and, of the three, while Daniel didn’t make it a habit of saying so to Tim and Jed, young Danielle was by far the best. And the fastest. At thirteen, Danielle Strange could strike sulphur matches at a distance of thirty feet with the customized Colt her father had designed to fit her hand.

  Tim and Jed Strange had taken up their father’s trade at gunsmithing and had mastered it at an early age—so had Danielle. When it came to repairing or even designing and building a firearm, the Strange children were equal in every regard. Yet, when it came to pulling the trigger, while the Strange twins were both excellent marksmen in their own right, it was daughter Danielle who had what her father always referred to as the gift. Whether firing from the hip or from horseback, Danielle Strange’s talent was undeniably the best in the family.

  Had it not been for the tragic death of Daniel Strange nearly two years earlier, Danielle might well have spent the rest of her life in St. Joseph, Missouri. She may have married and raised a family, or have taken courses at the women’s college in St. Louis and spent her life teaching school. But these things were not to be, not for now anyway. Fate had dealt her a different hand, and all she could do was play the few cards left to her. She thought of this now, in the dark hours of night as she sat cleaning and checking her brace of Colt pistols.

  Her father, Daniel Strange, had left home on Sundown, the big chestnut mare, and had gone off on a cattle-buying trip, his trail snaking across Indian Territory. Days later, the chestnut mare had returned by herself, lathered and weary from the road. The following day, a note from U.S. Federal Marshal Buck Jordan had arrived along with Daniel Strange’s wallet at the sheriff’s office in St. Joseph. From that day to this, Danielle Strange had ridden the vengeance trail, seeking out her father’s killers one at a time. What had begun as a list of ten names—the names she’d extracted from one of the killers before he’d died—was now down to one. Saul Delmano.

  Danielle whispered the name to herself in the darkened room. The only light was the halo of the lantern by which she’d cleaned and checked her Colts. She looked around at Tim and Jed, the two of them having fallen asleep in her room, Tim leaning back in a wooden chair against the wall, Jed curled down on the floor, wrapped in a blanket he’d taken from the closet. Danielle smiled to herself, feeling closer to her brothers than she ever had.

  It had been Tim and Jed who had come and found her in Indian Territory, where she’d taken up with some of her father’s killers in order to draw all of them into a trap. Tim and Jed had broken the news to her about their mother’s death, and she had suffered her loss alone, with no time for proper grief. “Sorry, Mom,” Danielle whispered now in the darkness, thinking about it. Feeling herself give in to deep sadness, Danielle shook the melancholy off before it got the best of her. She stood up from the side of the bed and dressed herself quietly, winding the cloth binder methodically around her torso, as she had done so many mornings before on this trail of blood. Then she clenched her teeth against the pain in her side, pitched the pistol belt around her waist, buckled it, and tied the rawhide strip around her leg, securing the oiled holster in place.

  Finishing, she walked over to her sleeping brothers, looked at each of them in turn, and said, “Rise and shine, we’ve got a long day ahead.”

  In a moment the twins were up on their feet, picking up their hats and adjusting them down on their foreheads. Having slept no more than a hour or two, and in their clothes and gunbelts at that, Tim and Jed rubbed their hands on their faces, forcing themselves awake, and soon the three of them left the room and descended the wooden stairs. On the front porch of the doctor’s office, Danielle took an envelope from inside her shirt and slipped it under the door. She looked back at Tim and Jed, who stood watching her questioningly. “I wouldn’t think of leaving without paying the doctor his due,” she said.

  They turned and walked abreast to the livery barn at the far end of the street. Before dawn, Danielle, Tim, and Jed Strange were in the saddle and riding single file along the dirt street out of town. There was no more to say about whether or not Danielle was fit to ride. They had talked it out last night until both Tim and Jed saw there was no use in arguing any further on the subject. Danielle had made up her mind to go, and nothing was going to change it.

  As the three of them rode past a darkened alley, they did not see the five men standing back in the far shadows watching them ride by. One of the men, a gunman named Loot Harkens, started to raise his pistol from his holster, but beside him a deep, gruff voice whispered, “Don’t be a fool, Loot. Want to end up like Clyde Branson? Let them go for now. Once they get out there in the wilds, there won’t be nothing to keep us from killing them.”

  “Yeah, Loot,” the voice of Hank Phipps whispered, “Tarksel’s right. They’re not going to get very far. I’ve got news for Mr. Danny Duggin, and his two look-alike brothers…there ain’t none of the three going to live to see their next birthday.”

  “I like your attitude, Phipps,” said Al Tarksel. “See if you can get Loot here to settle down, before I have to backhand him into the next county.” Al Tarksel was a big man, weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, all of it hard muscle and bone. He spread a flat smile at the other men in the darkness. “Boys, I know that since Axel Eldridge got himself killed last month, there ain’t been nobody to really take charge of this gang.” He let his eyes cut from one to the other as he spoke. “But just to keep things well organized, I’ve decided that from here on, I’m taking over.” His smile faded as he added, “Any objections?”

  The four men looked at one another, then turned back to Al Tarksel as he said in his deep voice, “If there is, let’s get it settled here and now.” He called each of them by name, looking them square in the face. “Loot, any problem with me taking over?”

  Loot Harkens shook his head, saying, “No. Far as I’m concerned, you’re the boss.”

  “Hank?” Tarksel asked.

  “Fine by me,” Hank Phipps replied, sounding a bit nervous.

  “Hector?” Al Tarksel stared coldly at Hector Sabio.

  After a pause, Hector shrugged, looking sullen. “Sí, you are in charge. But I say to you the same thing I say to Axel back when I join.” He thumbed himself on the chest. “I am a free man. I come and go as I choose. If I decide to quit and return to Méjico, I do so without asking anyone’s permission.”

  “I can’t run this bunch if everybody does as they damn well please, Hector,” said Al Tarksel. “Are you sure that’s your final say on it?”

  “Sí, I say nothing more,” said Hector in a firm tone.

  “All right then.” Al Tarksel reached out a big hand, clamped it around Hector’s throat, and lifted him nearly off the ground. Hector’s boot toes scrapped back and forth in the dirt as if running in place. His eyes bulged, both hands clamping around Tarksel’s thick wrist. Al Tarksel only stood smiling, flat and cold. Hector reached down with his right hand and tried to snatch his pistol from his holster. But as he raised the gun, Al Tarksel slapped it away and kept squeezing.

  “God almighty!” said Jack Pearl. “Let him go, Al, you’re killing him!”

  But Al Tarksel didn’t let go until Hector Sabio hung limp as a wet towel. Then he dropped Hector to the ground and looked at Jack Pearl. “What about you, Pearl? Any objections to me taking over as boss?”

  “Hell no. What do I care?” Jack Pearl looked down at the Mexican. “You didn’t have to kill ole Hector, though. He was a damn good man. He was just running his jaw some. He
wouldn’t have quit us and gone back to Mexico. Hell, he’s wanted in every province down there! They’ve been wanting to cleave his head off for years.”

  “Then I just saved everybody a lot of trouble,” said Al Tarksel. “Now, are we all through here?” He stared at Jack Pearl as the others nodded in agreement.

  “I told you, I’ve got no problem with who’s in charge,” said Jack Pearl. “I just want my part of that two thousand dollars when we kill this Danny Duggin.”

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” said Al Tarksel, “anybody who rides with me, I’ll see to it they get what’s coming to them.”

  Jack Pearl only stared at Tarksel, realizing what Tarksel had just said could be taken a couple of different ways. But Jack Pearl didn’t need to have it spelled out for him. He knew that two thousand dollars was worth more to one man than it was to five. For the time being, Jack Pearl thought, the best thing for him to do was keep a close watch on his back and keep his mouth shut.

  “Are we ready to ride?” Tarksel asked, still staring at Jack Pearl.

  “Yep.” Jack Pearl smiled. “I’m just waiting on you to make the first move, boss.”

  “Then let’s get going.” Al Tarksel stepped over Hector Sabio’s body and walked toward the horses that were hitched back at the far end of the alley. In minutes the five men were mounted and riding along the dirt street as the first rays of sunlight seeped upward on the eastern horizon.

  The young U.S. federal marshal’s name was Charles Fox McCord, but most of the other marshals called him C. F. for short. The outlaws along the Cherokee Strip had taken to calling him The Fox. It was a name they used with a great deal of respect, if not with much affection. During the brief two and half years that C. F. McCord had been riding for the federal district court out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, his reputation as a lawman had become almost legendary. When folks who had only heard of C. F. McCord met him for the first time, they had a hard time believing that this thin, clean-jawed young man could be the same marshal who had brought in some of the most hardened killers in Indian Territory.