Breakout, p.1
Breakout, page 1
Breakout
Mickey Dole’s gang have broken jail, killing and plundering in their bid for freedom and ranch-hand, Clem Shaw, joins a posse that includes a devious bounty-hunter and a reluctant lawman. As the hunt progresses, Clem realizes that the situation is not as clear-cut as he thought: not all his enemies are in the fugitive gang which is now divided amongst itself.
There will be more deaths and shootouts before Clem unravels the puzzle and finds himself on the wrong end of a gun.
By the same author
Outlaw Vengeance
Warbonnet Creek
Red Rock Crossing
Killer’s Kingdom
Range Rustlers
Track Down the Devil
Comanche Country
The Raiders
Murdering Wells
Hard Road to Holford
Crooked Foot’s Gold
Breakout
Greg Mitchell
ROBERT HALE
© Greg Mitchell 2011
First published in Great Britain 2011
ISBN 978-0-7198-2362-6
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
This e-book first published in 2017
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Greg Mitchell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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 ONE
Sheriff Bill Gleeson was normally a cautious man, especially when guarding a desperate crew like Mickey Dole and his three henchmen. But he made one mistake and its consequences escalated disastrously.
It all started when a crowd of drunks in the Lucky Seven saloon decided that it would be a good idea to lynch the gang that had attempted to rob their town’s only bank and had killed two bystanders in the process. A group of paid-off trail herders had arrived in time to thwart the bandits’ escape plans and, after further gunplay and deaths on both sides, the outlaws surrendered. The following day there was talk of lynching, so Gleeson and his three hastily recruited deputies took what they considered to be the necessary precautions.
The sheriff placed two men on the street outside his office door and posted the third inside. Then, as the whiskey-fuelled situation began to look more serious, he went through the dividing door to check on the prisoners in the cells. He studied them as he walked down the corridor between the cells on each side.
Dole no longer looked the defiant outlaw who had reluctantly surrendered the previous day. He was pale and visibly nervous. His lined face showed fifty years of the weathering and a couple of days’ growth of black whiskers was the picture of anxiety. Shifting his long, skinny frame to the front of the cell, he said, ‘That sounds like a crowd gathering out there. I hope you ain’t gonna let us get lynched.’
‘They won’t get you while I’m alive,’ Gleeson promised. ‘That’s just some of the town no-goods. They make a lot of noise but none of them tried to stop you hombres yesterday. They’ll find it mighty dry out in the street and will soon head back to the saloon. I have two extra deputies outside just to make sure they don’t even reach the front door.’
Dole’s cellmate, Jack Craig, then weighed in to the discussion. An insignificant individual who looked as though he would be more at home behind a store counter, he pressed his face to the barred cell door and whined, ‘What if you’re wrong? It’s our lives at stake here.’
From the cell on the opposite side of the narrow corridor, Lew Barstow immediately saw the idea behind his comrade’s frightened mutterings. Craig was a new member of the gang but had proved to be tougher than he looked. Barstow gripped the bars with his massive hands and said in what he hoped sounded like genuine fear, ‘You’ve gotta give us a chance, Gleeson. We’re trapped here like rats.’
Then Gleeson made his last mistake. He turned to face the big outlaw before realizing that he was too close to the bars of Dole’s cell. Realization of this came the hard way.
An arm swiftly encircled his throat, choking off the sheriff’s gasp of alarm. Equally quickly a hand plucked the revolver from his holster. Cocking the weapon and pushing the barrel against the side of the lawman’s head, Dole snarled, ‘Keep quiet and hand over your keys.’
Gleeson offered no further resistance. He could only make the best of what he knew was a very bad situation. Reluctantly he passed back the ring of large keys that he had been carrying.
Jack Craig eagerly snatched the keys and, swearing under his breath, tried several in the lock before he found the right one. At last the cell door swung open.
‘Don’t forget us,’ Barstow whispered. There was an armed deputy in the main office.
Craig hurried across the aisle and opened the other door. Barstow and Len Stirling quickly moved out and tiptoed to the connecting door, positioning themselves one on each side of the opening.
‘Call your deputy,’ Dole whispered to his prisoner.
‘Go to hell.’ Bill Gleeson had a strong idea of what was coming and had no intention of calling another man in so that he too could be murdered.
‘That was your last chance.’
With the gun pushed against his prisoner’s body, Dole squeezed the trigger. The shot was muffled slightly but the deputy in the main office heard it. He threw open the door and stepped through. Even as he peered through the haze of gun smoke and his shocked mind reacted to seeing the body on the floor, it was too late. Strong arms seized him from both sides, twisting his half-drawn gun from his grasp. Dole shot him at point-blank range.
As the man on the floor writhed in his death throes, Stirling, with the deputy’s gun, followed his leader into the main office.
Alerted by the shots one of the outside deputies came back through the front door. He had a sawn-off shotgun in his hands but it did him no good. There was not even time to cock it. Stirling fired once and the man dropped with a bullet in his brain.
Barstow scooped up the gun, stepped over the fallen man, yelled defiantly through the open door and emptied one barrel into the startled crowd outside. Then he slammed shut the door and shot home the bolt.
The horrified would-be lynchers went into retreat, emitting a mixture of surprised, fearful and, later, angry sounds. The startled yelling became fearful again as Stirling stepped to a side window and emptied his revolver into the already fleeing mob.
Barstow laughed in delight and gave them the second load of buckshot. A couple of wounded men lay in the crowd’s wake and another, slumped over a horse trough, was ominously still.
‘Get all the guns and cartridges you can find,’ Dole ordered. ‘We’re getting out of here before those jackasses get over their fright.’
A search of the office revealed their confiscated sidearms in a closet, a Winchester repeater with a box of ammunition, and a few shotgun cartridges. Quickly they buckled their familiar weapons into place and loaded them while collecting the guns and gunbelts of the dead lawmen and looping the belts over their shoulders.
Barstow replaced the fired cartridges in the shotgun and Dole levered a round into the firing chamber of the rifle. He glared around at the others. ‘Now we’re getting out. Grab any horses you can get. That pack of yellow dogs will run rather than stand up to us. Kill anyone who gets in the way.’
Clem Shaw felt little sympathy for the weary horse that he bestrode. It had spent most of the morning in strenuous efforts to get rid of him and there was no other way to teach it that bucking was hard work and not particularly enjoyable. Bert Anson’s ranch had a surplus of good cow ponies going to waste and Clem had been hired to ride the buck out of some before they were put on sale. He would have preferred more regular ranch work but the ranches were not hiring with winter fast approaching. Indeed, he felt himself fortunate to have found this temporary job. He was young enough to still have his nerve but old enough to have seen the many tricks of which rough horses are capable. The work was risky and though he liked it he was realistic enough to know that it was a young man’s game. Sooner or later he would have to settle down somewhere.
The pony had lost most of its excess energy but the ranch was still a mile away when he saw a rider galloping towards him. He recognized the distinctive Appaloosa colour of Randy Anson’s favourite horse and there was no mistaking the tall, broad-shouldered rider with a face that looked as though it had been chiselled from granite. Randy worked on the ranch for his uncle and aunt whose only son had swapped ranch life for a law practice in Chicago. From the little that Clem had seen Randy was a serious, cautious type and it seemed out of character to see him riding so urgently.
The Appaloosa was in a lather of sweat when the rider hauled it to a stop. His face had lost its normally impassive expression, his bright-blue eyes appeared wide open and shocked and his voice seemed cracked and nervous.
‘Cle
Clem was shocked by the news. Many questions were running through his mind but his horse was no longer fit enough to keep up with Randy’s mount and he had no opportunity to ask them. His pony was still trailing by a hundred yards when they swept over a low rise. Below, in a windbreak of sheltering pines, was the ranch house with its outbuildings and corrals.
A strange buckboard with a pair of horses stood in front of the house at an awkward angle. Coming closer the riders could see that a wheel was caught on a gate post. The well-trained team were standing patiently, waiting for someone to release them. But they would have to wait a while longer.
Both riders jumped from their horses as they arrived and ran through the open front door.
Clem was not prepared for the scene he encountered in the front room. The horror of it struck him more than a physical blow could have done. The bodies of Ruth and Bert Anson, still tied to chairs, lay on their sides in pools of blood. Both had been shot in the head. All signs of a peaceful home had been replaced by absolute chaos. Curtains were torn down, drawers and closets were open and indications of hasty plundering abounded.
For a second or two he stood there in shock until his companion brought him back to reality.
‘They ransacked the place. There’s all sorts of stuff missing,’ Randy muttered. His voice seemed to quiver with rage. ‘I think they got Bert’s cattle money too.’
‘Cattle money?’
Randy explained. ‘Before you came here Bert sold a lot of cattle. I know he made a couple of thousand dollars on the deal. He didn’t trust banks and had the money in a tin cashbox. I’ve had a quick look around the place but can’t see it. My guess is that either Bert was forced to tell them where it was or those killers found it.’
‘You know the place better than I do, Randy, and would be the best judge of what was taken. The sheriff will need to know all the details. If you see what you can find out here, I’ll have a look around outside.’ Clem shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘I never heard of hold-up men arriving in a buckboard before. I think we’ll find horses and saddles missing as well. If you feel up to it I’ll leave you alone here and see what I can learn from outside.’
‘Go ahead. I’ll have a good look around here.’
It was a relief to get out of the house. Clem looked around in the dirt. There were hooftracks and bootprints. Some had been made by Randy and himself and their horses. The tracks of someone in flat-heeled boots stood out because normally ranchers and cowhands did not wear them. He was not a skilled enough tracker to know exactly the number of raiders but guessed there could have been four or five.
His next task was to unhitch the matched pair of bays from the buckboard. They had been used hard and were coated with dried sweat. Their brands meant nothing to him as he was new to the area. ‘If only you could talk,’ he told the animals as he led them round the house to the corrals at the back. In one corral he found a couple of the ranch’s riding stock and two strange horses, still showing the marks of hard riding. After removing the harness from the team horses, he allowed them to drink deeply before putting them in the corral with the others. He did the same with his own and Randy’s mount, which by then had cooled down.
A search of the saddle shed revealed that two saddles and bridles were missing. The signs were there and it did not take an Indian tracker to discern that four raiders had arrived, two on horseback and two in a buckboard. Four men had left the ranch on horses.
The bunkhouse had been plundered and his few belongings scattered around. His saddle-bags and Winchester carbine were gone, but otherwise he had little that was worth stealing.
He was on his way back to the house when he saw the riders descending the high ridge a quarter of a mile to the east. The sun glinted on rifle barrels that the two foremost horsemen had in their hands. They disappeared briefly in a stand of cottonwoods at the foot of the slope and when they came into view again they were headed right for the house.
Clem had seen enough. He pushed open the back door and found Randy looking at the ruins of what had once been a neat kitchen.
‘There’s four riders coming and by the look of them there could be trouble. Do you reckon that gang has come back?’
Randy loosened his six-gun in its holster. ‘They’re in for a hell of a shock if they have.’
CHAPTER TWO
Randy moved swiftly across the room and looked out of the window. He relaxed slightly as he recognized the riders. ‘That’s our neighbour Jud Harris and a couple of his hands. They have Maryanne with them too. They must have heard the shooting.’
The pair walked out on to the veranda as the newcomers halted before the building. The two cowhands, one in his twenties and the other middle-aged, had that same hard look as their boss. The leader was a large man with a short grey beard and an angry expression.
But it was the girl who caught Clem’s attention. She was young, dark-haired and beautiful. The worn flannel shirt, dusty divided skirt, and crumpled black hat did not detract in any way from her beauty and, by way of contrast, might even have enhanced it. She sat on her sorrel pony with the easy confidence of a skilled rider. But there was a serious, almost angry expression on her face as she looked about. He briefly removed his hat to the lady, then remembered that his dark hair would be tousled and that it was many hours since he’d combed it. Hastily he jammed his battered hat back on his head but he seriously doubted that the girl even noticed him. All the newcomers’ eyes seemed fixed on Randy.
Harris wasted no time on formalities. ‘What’s goin’ on around here, Randy?’
‘There’s all sorts of trouble, Jud – real bad trouble.’
‘And there’s gonna be more when I find out just who was shootin’ at my Maryanne. Was it you?’
‘What are you talking about?’
The girl spoke for herself. ‘I was on my way here to bring a dress pattern over for your aunt. Someone opened fire on me from the house as I came out of the trees over there. I got out before their aim improved. The person was hidden by the window curtain but whoever it was had a good try at shooting me.’ She looked hard at the young man before her. ‘Who was it shot at me, Randy?’
‘I don’t know, but you’re lucky they missed you, Maryanne. There’s been a double murder here. Someone raided the house while Clem and I were away. They killed Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bert. We’ve only just found them. The place has been ransacked.’
‘Oh no. . . .’ the girl gasped, and some of the colour went from her face. She shuddered and said in a shocked voice, ‘That’s awful.’
Jud Harris also seemed stunned for a second, then he gathered his senses and snapped, ‘Do you know what happened?’
‘Get off your horses,’ Randy said, ‘and I’ll tell you all I know. But it’s not much. It’s not a pretty sight in the house but you’re welcome to come in if you want.’
Clem said, ‘It might be an idea if the lady doesn’t.’
Harris glared at the young cowhand in his dusty boots and worn batwing chaps. He was always a little suspicious of drifters. ‘And who would you be?’
‘I’m Clem Shaw. Anson hired me a couple of days ago to gentle some broncs he was going to sell.’
‘You ain’t from around here,’ Harris accused, as though being an outsider was a crime.
‘You’re dead right there.’ The hard edge to Clem’s voice indicated that he had supplied all the personal information he intended giving. He was not in the mood to be answering questions from those who had no real right to ask them.
Dole had set a hard pace since leaving the Anson ranch, determined to increase the distance between his gang and the posse that would inevitably follow. He did not worry about the horses because, like Indian raiders, his men would steal the next lot of fresh animals that they encountered. None of their mounts was really fit but that did not matter. It was cattle country, and at ranches they would soon find replacements.
