All must die, p.1
All Must Die, page 1
All Must Die
Cassidy Yates, Volume 12
I. J. Parnham
Published by Culbin Press, 2022.
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in 2015 by Robert Hale Limited
Copyright © 2015, 2022 by I. J. Parnham
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
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Also By I. J. Parnham
Chapter One
The first two gunshots were wild, but the third shot sliced into the top of the boulder. Sheriff Cassidy Yates ducked down, fast-crawled along the ground and then got up on his haunches ten feet away.
Three rapid gunshots tore out, but thankfully they were all aimed at his former position, giving him enough time to understand the situation. He dropped back down and beckoned Deputy Wright to join him.
“Our quarry has gone to ground between two boulders thirty feet away,” Cassidy said, while pointing. “The shooters who ambushed us are up on the ridge and they have a clear view of the area.”
“Which just leaves the question of who these gunmen are. Klaude never gave the impression he had any friends in Monotony.”
Cassidy nodded. Then, testing a theory, he rose up. Klaude Stern was facing the ridge and the shooters’ position, and this time the gunfire that had made the two lawmen scurry into hiding didn’t erupt.
“Perhaps we got it wrong,” Cassidy said, ducking down. “The shooters might not be friends of his.”
“But they could be friends of Hamilton Davenport,” Wright said, completing the thought.
Last month, Hamilton had ridden into town looking for work. He’d been rough-clad and surly, so he’d had no success. While drowning his sorrows in the Two Bit saloon, he’d taken exception to a man who was celebrating finding work.
With no provocation Hamilton had shot him, so the case against Hamilton had been clear cut. He’d received a life term. He had been thrown in the jailhouse where he had waited to be taken to Beaver Ridge jail, but a week ago he had been found lying dead beside his cot.
The other two prisoners in his cell backed up each other’s story that Hamilton had tripped up and banged his head on the bars. They’d kept to that story and the facts appeared to support them.
There were no marks on Hamilton’s body other than a livid bruise on the side of his head. The two prisoners had only been locked up for a drunken fight so they had been released with a warning not to leave town until Cassidy had completed the investigation into Hamilton’s demise.
One man, Laidley Rose, was a citizen of Monotony and he’d complied, but Klaude Stern was an itinerant worker and he’d taken the first chance to flee. Klaude had reached Spinner’s Gulch before the lawmen caught up with him, but they’d all ridden into an ambush.
“You men up on the ridge,” Cassidy shouted. “You’re not handing out justice to this man today. Leave now and let the law decide if he’s committed a crime.”
Any hope that the shooters would listen to sense fled when a volley of gunshots tore out. The shots, their ricochets and the echoes created a continuous burst of noise, making it sound as if an army had ambushed them.
When Cassidy noted that none of the gunfire was being directed at them, he moved on behind the line of covering boulders. At the endmost boulder, he edged around the side and found that Klaude had tried to flee, but he hadn’t gotten far.
He was lying on his chest with a bloodied lower back and a bleeding right leg. He was struggling to drag himself forward and his weak movements suggested he wouldn’t survive. Cassidy grunted in irritation.
Then, with Wright at his side, he edged out into clear space. With their target breathing his last, he expected the shooters would now make good their escape, and accordingly he halved the distance to the shot man without reprisals.
Then a gunshot tore out, picking out Klaude’s back and making him arch his body before he slammed down on the ground. With Klaude now lying still, Cassidy hunkered down, but he couldn’t work out where the shooter had fired from.
When a minute passed without further gunfire, he moved on to the body. He turned Klaude over and the man flopped over, his eyes blank. Wright stood with his gun trained on the ridge so Cassidy turned away, but then a wheezing murmur emerged from Klaude’s lips.
“A piece of work,” he breathed.
With one eye on the ridge, Cassidy dropped to his knees beside him.
“What are you trying to say?” he asked, as Klaude continued to mumble.
“In action. . . .” Klaude trailed off. Then his head lolled to the side.
A long expulsion of air blew dust across the ground followed by silence. Even when Cassidy shook his shoulder, Klaude didn’t breathe again.
“I didn’t hear that,” Wright said, edging toward him.
“He was babbling. I don’t reckon—”
A ferocious volley of gunshots cut off Cassidy’s comment and in self-preservation both men hurried toward the boulders where Klaude had holed up earlier. Another burst of gunfire sped them on their way and, unlike before, the shots sounded as if they were coming from several directions, and the shooters were closer.
“Those gunmen sure don’t want anyone to walk away from this,” Wright said.
“Then that’s their mistake,” Cassidy said.
Wright grunted that he agreed and then he moved to stand at the side of the entrance into the gap while Cassidy stood on the other. With their mission having failed and with them facing an unknown number of gunmen, they waited for their adversaries to make the first move.
Ten minutes passed in silence and Cassidy was starting to think that the shooters had left when someone shouted a warning over to his left. Then gunfire ripped out, coming from behind them as well as from both sides.
“We’re surrounded,” Wright said unhappily.
“We sure are, but stay put and let the gunmen come to us,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy steadied his arm against the side of the boulder as he prepared to take the first man to come into sight, but sporadic gunfire continued to rattle away without anyone becoming visible. Neither did he notice where the bullets landed.
With each new volley the thought grew that, like before, they weren’t the principal targets. So he wasn’t surprised when, after a lull in the firing, someone called to them close to the position where they’d first gone to ground.
“Hey, you two over by the rocks,” the man shouted. “I reckon you can come out now. It looks as if we’ve seen them off.”
Wright turned to Cassidy, his raised eyebrows questioning if he thought this was a trick. Cassidy shrugged, but with only one way to find out, he edged into the open to find that a man was standing in clear view on the other side of Klaude’s body. He was tall with an easy smile and with his gun held low, although the smile died when he moved closer to the fallen man.
“I don’t reckon we had much to do with getting rid of them,” Cassidy called. “You were doing all the shooting.”
“I just finished what you started.” The man pointed up the ridge. “I saw three men hightail it away toward Monotony.”
“Did you see enough to recognize them if you saw them again?”
The man started to shake his head, but when Wright came out to join him, he flinched and then tipped back his hat.
“You’re both lawmen.”
“Sure. And you?”
“The name’s Marcel Cartwright. I was heading to Monotony to look for work when I heard a whole mess of shooting going on.”
“And you decided to defend the people being shot at.”
Marcel laughed and moved on to join them. “In my experience, those are the people to side with.”
Cassidy smiled at Wright, who provided an encouraging nod.
“So you’ve had some experience of defending people in trouble, have you?”
“Some.”
Cassidy appraised the man, who smiled as he clearly picked up on the likely direction of this conversation.
“Have you ever thought about being a deputy lawman?”
“I was once deputized, for a short time. Are you offering something more permanent?”
“Wright and me have provided enough law for the townsfolk of Monotony, but the town’s growing and that means we’re getting more trouble. We’ve even got a new jailhouse now.”
Cassidy held out his hand and Marcel moved forward to take it.
“In that case, you’ll need another lawman to help you fill it,” he said.
Chapter Two
“I’ve found no sign of Laidley Rose, and nobody knows wher e he’s gone,” Wright said when he met up with Cassidy in the law office in the early evening.
Laidley was the other man who had been in Hamilton Davenport’s cell when he’d died. Cassidy’s first priority when they’d returned to town had been to find him and see if Klaude’s demise might shake more information out of him. As Wright knew the town, Cassidy had given his new deputy the task of following the gunmen’s trail, a task he’d accepted with relish.
“It’s too early to get concerned yet,” Cassidy said, sitting back in his chair. “After what happened to Klaude, what do you think happened to Hamilton?”
Wright shrugged. “I saw nothing to suggest it wasn’t an accident.”
“Agreed, but even though Klaude knew that was the way we were thinking, he hightailed it out of here, and he must have had good reason because he got shot up.”
“Either way, they were the only witnesses so if we can’t find Laidley, the truth will probably never emerge.”
Cassidy nodded. Then the two men sat in pensive silence until the new deputy returned.
“I picked up the gunmen’s trail and followed them toward town,” Marcel reported. “They looked as if they were hell-bent on causing more trouble. With it getting dark I came back to get help.”
Cassidy smiled. “That sounds like a mighty successful first day as a lawman. Where did you last see them?”
“They were near this large house a mile out of town.”
Marcel pointed to the east, making Cassidy and Wright nod.
“That’s Horace Franklyn’s spread,” Wright said. “He’s one of the wealthiest men in town.”
“Then that probably explains what they were doing,” Marcel said. “It looked as if they were watching the place and planning to break in.”
Without further discussion the three men headed outside and mounted up. As they rode out of town, Marcel explained that the gunmen had been on a rise that overlooked the house, although when they approached the rise, the men were no longer there.
With Horace’s safety paramount, they rode directly to the house. Wright was riding up front and when the house came into view, he turned in the saddle.
“I reckon the trouble’s already started,” he said.
Cassidy hurried on to join Wright and he had to agree. Horace was a private man who usually kept his own company in the evening, and yet lights were burning in all his rooms and the shadows of several people were moving quickly behind the shutters in the main room.
“Let’s hope we’re not too late,” Cassidy said.
The three men dismounted beside the barn. Cassidy ordered Marcel to stay outside and await developments while he beckoned Wright to join him in hurrying on to the house. The two lawmen stopped on either side of the door.
Subdued conversation was coming from the main room, but Cassidy couldn’t make out what was being said. He had been to Horace’s house before, so he knew that a corridor ran the length of the house and that there were two doors into the main room.
He backhanded the front door open and when the corridor turned out to be unoccupied, he and Wright slipped inside and took one door apiece. Again they waited and again Cassidy couldn’t make out what was being said, but the tones were animated and one of the voices was a woman’s.
Concerned now about the situation they would face, he caught Wright’s eye. When Wright nodded, he raised three fingers on his left hand while drawing his gun. He lowered his fingers in a rapid countdown.
Then in a coordinated move he and Wright burst through. Cassidy hurried two steps to the side and, with his back to the wall, he faced the room.
“Everyone put their hands where I can. . . .” Cassidy trailed off when four sets of eyes turned to him. They were all shocked, and were all female.
The women were seated and facing the front of the room where three screens had been placed so that they could see what was happening within the square area created by the screens. This area wasn’t visible to Cassidy and in bemusement he turned to Wright, who had a clear view of the whole room, although his raised eyebrows and furrowed brow didn’t provide any answers.
Cassidy edged a pace closer, revealing Horace standing over Josephine Updike, the wife of the owner of the Two Bit saloon. She was lying on her back on a low table and an open case was on a chair beside her.
The case contained two cylindrical metal objects while Horace held two short wooden handles that were connected to the cylinders. Cassidy couldn’t work out what the metal or wooden objects were, but as Horace appeared to be aiming the handles at Josephine, he turned his gun on Horace, which made him bristle with indignation.
“ ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions,’ ” Horace said, eyeing Cassidy and then Wright.
Horace’s obvious surprise and Josephine’s wide-open eyes that appeared more concerned with Cassidy’s arrival than with whatever Horace was doing to her made him lower his gun.
“Some men were acting suspiciously nearby,” Cassidy said. “I thought they might have broken in.”
Horace spread his hands to hold the two handles wide apart.
“Can you see those men in here?”
“I can’t.” Cassidy frowned and the thought came that if the men hadn’t been planning a robbery, they might have had a different motive. “Is Laidley Rose here?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken to Laidley.”
Cassidy nodded. “We’ll check around outside – there’s no need to be alarmed.”
“You’re the only ones causing alarm.”
“I can see that.” Cassidy turned to the assembled women and tipped his hat, but that only made them glower so he turned again to the case, but he couldn’t work out what Horace was doing with it. “I’ll leave you to carry on doing . . . whatever it is you’re doing.”
Cassidy waited, but when no explanation was forthcoming, he collected Wright and they headed into the corridor. Once they were outside, Wright directed a sly smile at him, but Cassidy didn’t find the situation amusing enough to return it.
When they joined Marcel, he directed him to scout around the rise while he and Wright checked out the immediate vicinity. They split up and took either side of the house, but when the three men met up fifteen minutes later, none of the lawmen had found any sign of anything untoward.
“I reckon the gunmen moved on,” Marcel said. “In the dark, I doubt we’ll be able to pick up their trail again.”
“I agree, but if they didn’t show up here, it makes me wonder where they are now,” Cassidy said, facing the darkness.
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Barney Rose whined.
“Your everything isn’t enough,” Renard Icke said. He leaned over the counter and grabbed Barney’s collar. “You know where your brother’s gone to ground.”
Barney gulped as Renard drew him up close and he couldn’t meet his eyes, making Renard snarl with irritation. Renard dragged him up on to the counter and then over it, making him thud to the floor on his back.
Renard waited until Barney moved to rise and then kicked out, his boot connecting squarely with Barney’s chin and pole-axing him. He stalked around Barney’s still form, waiting for him to gather the strength to get back up, while his two men continued their systematic ransacking of the trading post.
It was clear that Laidley wasn’t hiding here. On the other hand, Volney Atwell had found a few dollars beneath the counter and Ossie Byers had found a wad of bills in Barney’s storeroom.
Barney’s lack of anguish after both discoveries convinced Renard that the well-being of his brother was more important to him than the loss of his money, and that suggested he was still holding out on him. So when Barney rolled on to his knees and then crawled toward the door, Renard slapped both hands on Barney’s back.
He dragged him off the floor and threw him across the post. Barney wheeled into a pile of corn sacks, tipping them over. When Barney came to rest, he was lying sprawled over two sacks. Renard stood over him with one foot raised, but Barney still mustered a defiant sneer at him.
“You can throw me around the post all evening, but I still won’t have any idea where Laidley is,” Barney said.
“I’m obliged for the offer,” Renard said with a smirk.
