Evil Breed Read online

  THE WIDOW MAKER

  “Can’t you at least leave him here so I can bury him proper?” she asked.

  “Hell, no,” he replied with a smirk. “That would cost me two hundred dollars.” His smile widened when he added, “I expect that’s a lot more than he was worth when he was still kickin’.” He hesitated a moment longer, grinning at the grieving widow before giving his horse a nudge. “Well,” he slurred sarcastically, “sorry I can’t stay to supper with you, but I’d best get ol’ Grady here back to Bismarck before he starts to stink.”

  “Goddamn you to hell, you filthy son of a bitch!” she suddenly shouted after him.

  It was all the warning he needed. His pistol already drawn, he wheeled in the saddle and fired three times before she had time to raise her pistol and aim. Killed almost instantly, Ruby Crowder crumpled to the ground amid the screams of her terrified daughter.

  “I can’t abide a foulmouthed woman,” Slocum calmly stated, and holstered his pistol.

  EVIL

  BREED

  Charles G. West

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,

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  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

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  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October 2003

  Copyright © Charles West, 2003

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66285-4

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  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.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Version_1

  For Ronda

  Table of 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

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Hello, there, little missy. Is your daddy home?”

  The thin little girl seated in the soft dirt of the creek bank craned her neck to look up at the huge man riding the iron-gray stallion. Absorbed in her play with the rag doll in her lap, she had not heard the stranger approaching until he spoke. Startled at first to discover the horse and rider right behind her, she quickly felt a feeling of dread as she looked up into the cruel face hovering over her. Although his greeting had sounded friendly enough, the words did not flow naturally from his lips. There was no hint of kindness in that face, a face half covered with heavy black whiskers with one long jagged scar that ran from his left eye to his chin. Annie was at once frightened by the inherent evil she saw in the deep-set eyes that appeared to penetrate the mind of the nine-year-old child.

  “Is your daddy down at the house?” Slocum asked again when there was no immediate response from the frightened youngster. He was accustomed to this response from small children, even amused by it. “How about your mama? Is she in the house?” He glanced in the direction of the rudely constructed dwelling, built almost entirely of blocks of mud and straw. It was typical of so many prairie houses, commonly referred to as soddies. “Where’s your papa?” Slocum pressed, his glance still focusing on the soddy some forty or fifty yards from where he now sat his horse. There was no sign of anyone in the pitiful garden plot beside the house or in the corral, where a pair of mules and one saddle horse stood gazing in his direction.

  Finding her voice at last, Annie answered, barely above a whisper, “Papa’s not home. He’s gone after the cow.” She hoped that now the sinister stranger would go away, but the narrowing of his eyes and his impatient frown told her that he was not satisfied with her answer.

  Without another glance at the child, he turned his horse and moved off down the creek at a slow walk, eyeing the sod house cautiously. When he reached a point directly behind the house, he rode up from the creek and walked the gray up close to the back of the crude structure. Without consciously thinking about it, he reached down and eased his Colt .45 up a little to make sure it was sitting lightly in the holster. Then he dismounted and dropped the reins. Pausing a moment to Listen, he men moved quietly around the side of the dwelling to a window.

  Making no attempt to be secretive or hide himself, he peered into the open window. Huh, he thought silently when he saw the woman. Naked from the waist up, she presented a bony back to him as she scrubbed the grimy garden soil from her neck and arms, using a cloth soaked in soapy gray water from the basin on the table. She was not aware of her visitor even though the bright afternoon sun cast his shadow across her pale shoulders. He watched with amused interest for a few moments before moving toward the door. Slocum seldom had thoughts of lust, so he was not distracted from his primary mission by the sight of a woman’s bare flesh.

  Without bothering to announce his presence beforehand, he walked through the open door and was standing before the startled woman. Terrified when she turned to discover him, she shrieked as if in pain and frantically clutched her bodice to her breast in an effort to cover herself.

  Slocum sneered at her modesty. “Don’t trouble yourself, lady. I’ve seen bigger tits on a bird dog.”

  Horrified, she took a few stumbling steps backward, certain that she was about to be struck down by the fearsome brute. Slocum merely grunted his amusement and looked around at the squalor that was home to this woman and her family. Bringing his accusing gaze back to focus on the cowering woman, he snapped, “I reckon you’d be Mrs. Crowder.” She didn’t respond. “Where’s Grady?” Again she made no reply. Her eyes wide with fright, she shook her head slowly, still unable to find her voice. His patience already exhausted, he suddenly grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her up close to his face. “I ain’t got no time to waste on your scrawny ass. Your little brat said Grady went to get the cow. Went where?” he demanded, yanking hard on
her hair.

  She cried out again, flinching from his other hand that was poised above her face, threatening to backhand her. “I don’t know,” she said in a whimper. “The cow got out. Grady went looking for her.”

  “Which way?” he demanded, raising his hand, still threatening to strike her.

  “Yonder way!” she cried, pointing toward a low rise on the other side of the creek.

  He hesitated a moment, looking in the direction indicated before releasing her to drop to the dirt floor at his feet. Then he took another look around the room to make sure there was no rifle propped in a corner somewhere that she might grab as soon as he showed her his back. Taking note of the obvious poverty she lived in, he smirked. “Grady weren’t much better at farming than he was at robbing banks, was he?”

  Outside the door, he encountered little Annie, who had run to the house, fearful that her mother might be in danger. She backed away immediately to put a safe distance between herself and the dark monster. Slocum favored her with a crooked grin as he strode past her and stepped up into the saddle. The child was terrified after having peeked through the open door to see the abuse of her mother. He gazed at her a moment longer before turning his horse toward the rise on the opposite side of the creek. She would soon be without a father. Slocum didn’t give a damn.

  * * *

  Grady Crowder cursed the obstinate milk cow as she watched him approach. Taking slow, deliberate steps in an effort not to startle her, he got within ten yards of her before she turned and trotted off again. “Damn you!” Grady spat. He wished then that he had taken the time to slip a bridle on his horse. At least he wasn’t wearing his gun. He might have been tempted to shoot the ornery beast. Still cursing under his breath, he started to run after her again, almost stumbling on the rough prairie ground. This time she stopped after increasing the distance between them to only thirty yards. Maybe she was getting tired of playing this game, he thought, and stopped running. Evidently he was right, because she now chose to ignore him and started grazing on the thin prairie grass.

  Unaware of the dingy gray horse slowly topping the rise behind him, or the dark sinister figure deliberately drawing a rifle from the saddle sling, Grady approached his disobedient milk cow. His curses now converted to words of calm, he reached down to pick up the rope trailing behind her. He never heard the bark of the rifle as he stood up again and was suddenly knocked to his knees by the solid impact of the .45 bullet between his shoulder blades. Stunned, he wasn’t even sure what had happened as a veil of darkness descended over his eyes and he suddenly lost all control of his body. Consciousness slipped away and he fell facedown on the prairie.

  * * *

  Slocum didn’t move for a few moments, his rifle still raised and aimed in Grady’s direction. When it became obvious that a second bullet was unnecessary, he replaced the weapon in the sling and nudged the gray with his knees. Approaching his victim slowly, his hand resting on the handle of his pistol in case Grady might not be as dead as he appeared to be, Slocum pulled up beside the body.

  “You sure don’t look like you’re worth two hundred dollars,” he said, looking down at the last member of the five-man gang that had made an unsuccessful attempt to rob the First Citizens’ Bank in Bismarck. The bounty was one thousand dollars for all five. Grady Crowder had been the hardest to find, but Slocum eventually found every man he started out after. He dismounted and tied a rope around Grady’s ankles.

  * * *

  Back at the house, a worried Ruby Crowder uttered an involuntary cry of alarm when she heard the single rifle shot. She had lived in fear that someone would come looking for her husband ever since he had agreed to go along with Rafe Wilson and his brothers. Grady hadn’t even gone inside the bank. He just held the horses while the Wilsons went inside. It was bad luck that the sheriff was in the bank at the time. The Wilson brothers were caught by surprise and had to shoot their way out. Rafe and one of his brothers were wounded in the gun battle, and all five were lucky to escape, even though they left without one penny of the bank’s money.

  Grady had assured her that the law wouldn’t likely come this far to look for him. The bank hadn’t lost any money, he reasoned, and this territory wasn’t even in the sheriff’s jurisdiction. It was Indian territory. But the day she feared had come. Grady hadn’t counted on a bounty hunter.

  There had been only one shot, and Grady didn’t have his gun with him. Maybe the shot she heard had been a warning shot. What should she do? She had to help her husband. Annie, standing beside her, began to cry. Ruby pulled the child close to her and tried to tell her not to be afraid. But Ruby was afraid as well. The menacing brute who had surprised her at her bath looked to be capable of any amount of evil. Determined that she must be prepared to protect herself, she took Grady’s pistol out of the bureau drawer and stationed herself by the window.

  Her wait was not long. She saw his head first, when it appeared above the rise, with his flat-crowned, wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. Trembling with fear, she tried to steady the hand that held the heavy pistol as she stared at the emerging specter from below the rise. Like an evil sun rising on the horizon, he emerged: head, shoulders, massive trunk, until the man and his horse both topped the rise. But there was no sign of her husband. At once her heart beat with excitement. Maybe Grady got away! But then another thought invaded her mind. Grady may be dead! Maybe that was what the shot had meant. Afraid to take her thoughts any further, she told herself that surely the man would be aiming to capture her husband in order to take him back for trial. Then she caught sight of the rope stretched taut behind the saddle, seconds before her husband’s body bounced over the top of the rise, raising a cloud of dust as Slocum dragged it down toward the creek.

  Crying out in stunned despair, she ran from the house in an effort to reach her husband’s body before Slocum dragged it through the creek. She was too late. Driving his horse right by her, Slocum didn’t stop until he was at the corral.

  “I reckon I’m gonna need that horse,” he said, nodding toward the one saddle horse in the corral. “I don’t wanna drag his sorry ass all the way to Bismarck—too hard on my horse.” It didn’t escape his eye that she was holding a pistol in her hand. “Your cow’s likely down by the creek, if you’re of a mind to go get her.” He watched her carefully, waiting for her response. She seemed to be in a trance. Her eyes, devoid of tears, were staring wide in shocked disbelief, seeing nothing, the pistol in her hand forgotten. She was seemingly unaware of her daughter, who had run from the house and had now clamped both arms around her mother’s leg.

  Slocum, indifferent to her grief, shrugged his shoulders and dismounted. Wasting no more time, he pulled out the two poles that served as a gate for the corral and bridled Grady’s horse. With a cautious eye still on the devastated widow, he picked up Grady’s body and, in one motion, slung it across the horse’s back. In motions practiced countless times, he quickly took the rope tied around Grady’s ankles, looped it around the horse’s belly a couple of times and knotted the loose end around Grady’s wrists. That done, he grabbed the seat of Grady’s pants and tugged a couple of times to make sure the corpse was secure.

  “That oughta do just fine,” he said, one corner of his mouth raised in a crooked grin as he cocked his head toward Grady’s wife. Still the woman stood transfixed in a state of shock that served to paralyze her entire body. Her demeanor was a curiosity to Slocum. Most wives screamed and fought in similar situations. This one acted as if she’d been hit in the head. He shrugged and stepped up into the saddle.

  “He didn’t even go in the bank,” she said, surprising him with the plaintive utterance.

  “Ain’t for me to say, lady,” he replied, turning his horse’s head toward the east. “I just go get ’em.”

  “Can’t you at least leave him here so I can bury him proper?” she asked.

  “Hell, no,” he replied with a smirk. “That would cost me two hundred dollars.” His smile widened when he added, “I expec
t that’s a lot more than he was worth when he was still kickin’.” The slight narrowing of her eyes and a sudden tremble in the hand that still held the pistol were enough to alert him to watch himself. He hesitated a moment longer, grinning at the grieving widow before giving his horse a nudge. “Well,” he slurred sarcastically, “sorry I can’t stay to supper with you, but I’d best get ol’ Grady here back to Bismarck before he starts to stink.”

  “Goddamn you to hell, you filthy son of a bitch!” she suddenly shouted after him, his sarcasm serving to shake her from her trance.

  It was all the warning he needed. His pistol already drawn, he wheeled in the saddle and fired three times before she had time to raise her pistol and aim. Killed almost instantly, Ruby Crowder crumpled to the ground amid the screams of her terrified daughter.

  “I can’t abide a foulmouthed woman,” Slocum calmly stated, and holstered his pistol. He started out again, then pulled up on the reins. Looking back at the sobbing child trying to get her mother to speak to her, he said, “I expect you’d best head for the settlement. Salt Springs is thataway.” He pointed toward the distant horizon to the east. “You oughta be old enough to put a bridle on one of them mules.” Satisfied that he had done more than he felt obligated to do, he kicked his horse to a fast walk.

  He had gotten no farther than the edge of the yard when he heard the shot, and a bullet whistled harmlessly off to his right. Turning to look back at Annie, who was now terrified that she had missed, he threw back his head and laughed. “Not bad,” he said. “That’s about the age I first took a shot at a man.” The memory of that incident forced a smile to his face. It was the last time his pa had ever whipped him, and his ma never forgave him for making her a widow. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. In fact, he had no idea if his mother was still living or not. He and his twin brother had left home right after that. His brother was the only other person he had any use for. It was natural, he reckoned, since they were identical twins. But the two of them had parted not long after leaving home together. The last Slocum had heard of his brother, he was looking for gold in Montana territory.