Ride the High Range Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Teaser chapter

  MANY DEADLY RETURNS

  One word was all Rider said. “Bodine.” Without hesitation, the bartender pointed to a big man seated at a table, relieved that it was not his name this messenger of death had called out.

  Bodine, having heard his name in the silent barroom, instinctively reached under the table when he recognized the tall scout. He brought his pistol up, aimed and cocked, ready to shoot. Ignoring the weapon threatening him, Rider walked up to stand over the table. Bodine grinned. “Well, look who’s here. What the hell do you want?”

  “Johnny Hawk says hello,” Rider pronounced, his voice low and lethal. He grabbed the edge of the table and turned it upside down on Bodine, sending him and his chair crashing to the floor. By the time Bodine pulled the trigger, his pistol was aimed straight up at the ceiling. Before he could pull it again, his wrist was pinned against the floor by Rider’s foot. Desperate to free his gun hand, he clawed at Rider′s leg with his other hand. His eyes wild with fright, he looked into the cold dark eyes of his executioner. . . .

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

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-47662-8

  Copyright © Charles G. West, 2010 All rights reserved

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  For Ronda

  Chapter 1

  “Moran!” Henry Butcher called out, then waited for the boy to pull his horse up even with his.

  Jim Moran nudged his horse into a gentle lope and passed the other riders in the twelve-man raiding party plodding a dusty road that followed the Solomon River. When he reached the head of the column he pulled in and looked expectantly at Butcher. “You call me, Captain?” As leader of the gang of raiders, Henry Butcher liked to be called captain, although he had no rank, and in reality, no military standing in the Confederate army.

  “Yeah,” Butcher replied. “Ride on up ahead and see what’s farther up this river. Me and the rest of the boys will stop here for a spell to water the horses.” This was not the first time he had sent Jim ahead as a scout since leaving the remnants of Quantrill’s Raiders behind in Missouri. The young boy, barely fourteen years of age when he had joined Quantrill’s band a year and a half ago, was a perfect choice to reconnoiter the countryside ahead when approaching a town or crossroads. Jim had a sharp eye, and with his smooth cheeks and dark hair, he displayed a picture of innocence that gave no cause for suspicion in the event he ran into the local law or a Union patrol. Adding to that, the boy appeared to be fearless. Judging by the wheat fields on either side of the road, Butcher knew they were approaching civilization of some kind, hopefully a community ripe for the picking.

  “Yes, sir,” Jim replied, and pushed on ahead. It had been six months since they had received word that Lee had surrendered and the war was over. Butcher had insisted that General Lee might have surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, but the war was still going on in Missouri. So they had continued their particular brand of guerrilla warfare—bushwhacking small Union patrols, attacking stage coaches and robbing trains—all of which helped cripple the Union forces according to Butcher. Their activities, though small in perspective, had attracted the Union army’s attention, resulting in a concentrated effort to run them to ground. As a result, Missouri had become too hot for them and was the reason Jim Moran found himself on this late fall afternoon astride a weary sorrel gelding on a dusty road north of Salina, Kansas.

  Butcher had sworn that he would keep raiding if he had to ride to Montana to stay ahead of the troops hunting them. Some of the men were talking about calling it off and going back to whatever was left of their homes. Butcher, a flint-hard brute of a man, had suggested that such talk was treason and would be dealt with accordingly. In spite of this, three of their original fifteen had slipped away in the night, leaving them to be a force of a dozen men. Butcher was furious, but because of an increase in Union patrols chasing the raiders, he was reluctant to turn back to search for the deserters.

  Jim gave this a lot of thought as he rode along the river road. He was thinking that maybe he should have gone with the three who took off. One of them, Amos Barfield, had told Jim that the real war was over, and they were now no more than a gang of common outlaws, and Butcher knew it. Jim had a lot of respect for Amos. He was a little older than the others and not half so wild when it came to killing and burning. Amos had shown a special interest in the naive young man who had shown up one day near the Marais des Cygnes River in Linn County, Missouri, squirrel gun in hand, to volunteer to ride with Quantrill’s Raiders. Upon talking to the boy, Amos soon learned that Jim held no motives beyond answering the call to defend his homeland after the war had claimed the life of his father at Vicksburg, and he had traveled all the way from his home in Tennessee to find Quantrill. The notorious Rebel guerrilla leader was killed in May 1865, and it had been Jim’s lot to end up riding with a remnant band that had spl
it off from the original. Although young and inexperienced, Jim was welcomed by Henry Butcher to join his ragtag gang of ruffians. The more Jim thought about it, the more convinced he became that he should have listened to Amos Barfield. He was right about Henry Butcher, Jim decided; he was little more than a common bushwhacker and a bully who intimidated his followers with fear. There was a difference between ambushing Union patrols and riding roughshod over small civilian settlements, and Jim had decided that the latter was not to his liking.

  Back on the banks of the Solomon River, Butcher’s men took advantage of the time to rest while Jim was scouting the countryside ahead. Joe Coons, a short stocky man of thirty-four years of age, took it upon himself to build a small fire to boil some coffee. Joe was unofficially second in command and had always been the first to back any plan Butcher came up with. “We’ll have us a little coffee in a minute or two,” he announced as Butcher settled himself on the ground beside the fire.

  After the horses were watered, the rest of the men gathered around to partake in the pot of boiling coffee. Joe gazed around the circle at the gaunt faces, evidence of their desperate endeavor to stay one step ahead of their Union antagonists. Maybe it was time, he thought. Maybe Amos and the others had been right. It was a treasonous thought and he hesitated to mention it to Butcher, but he was noticing signs from the other men of a definite lack of dedication to the original cause. It had been over three weeks since they had held up that train depot and they were all short of supplies and ammunition. “You know, Henry,” he started reluctantly, “the pickin’s around here is got pretty damn lean. Maybe we oughta forget about the Confederacy and go on down to Texas. I mean, hell, the war′s officially over.”

  Joe’s remark brought a squint to Butcher′s eyes and an instant lowering of his heavy eyebrows as he sent a piercing gaze in Joe’s direction. Before Butcher answered, Quincy spoke out. “I been thinkin’ ’bout that myself. Hell, this damn war was over when Lee surrendered. It’d be a lot safer down Texas or Mexico way, I reckon, but Montana’s where the gold is.” His comment captured the attention of the others gathered around, causing some nodding and grunts of agreement, as well as a darkening scowl from their leader.

  “Maybe you boys are thinkin’ somebody else oughta be callin’ the shots,” Butcher replied, his voice low and carrying a warning. His words were aimed mostly in Quincy’s direction, for he had pegged him to be the most dangerous challenge to his authority.

  “Ah, hell no,” Joe Coons quickly responded, however. “No such a thing, Henry. You’re the boss.” He glanced around him for support. The others were equally as quick to respond with signs of reassurance. No one of them was anxious to challenge Butcher′s authority. “I was just sayin’ that, since we’re really raiding just for profit right now, we might as well go somewhere where the damn army ain’t lookin’ for us.”

  “That’s all we’re sayin’,” Quincy added, somewhat indifferently. “You’re the boss. Just thought it’s about time to think about movin’ on to someplace where they don’t know us.”

  Butcher continued glowering at them for a minute or two while he considered what Billy and Quincy had suggested. It had in fact never crossed his mind to give up the pretense of carrying on the war, but what they said made sense. He relaxed his scowl and said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I was plannin’ to do just that very thing, but we need one more good raid for supplies first. Maybe there’s a town up the road where we can take care of that.” His announcement was met with approval by all, and an instant lightening of the somber mood.

  “Yonder comes the kid,” one of the men called out.

  “Good,” Butcher answered, “we’ll see what we’ve got now.”

  Jim hopped down from the saddle and turned the sorrel loose to drink. “Come on over and get you some coffee, boy,” Joe said.

  Butcher gave him only a few seconds before demanding, “Well, what did you see? Is there a town up there?”

  “Nossir,” Jim replied as he held his cup out while Tom Banks poured. “There ain’t nothin’ but a right good-sized farm—nice house and a big barn, but there ain’t nothin’ we’d want to bother with. Just peaceful folks tryin’ to make a livin’.”

  “The hell you say,” Butcher responded. “Sounds like easy pickin’s to me—just what we’re lookin’ for. We’ll ride in there and take what we need.”

  Jim was not comfortable with the response. The scene he had discovered was a typical family farm—a man and his two sons working to clean out some hedgerows between two fields, his wife and daughter picking late beans from the fall garden. He felt compelled to express his opinion. “They’re peaceful folks. They don’t have nothin’ to do with the war.”

  “Well, by God, they do now,” Butcher replied with a wicked smile upon his face.

  Seconding his boss as usual, Joe said, “They most likely fed a lot of Yankee soldiers with all the wheat raised in them fields we passed. It’s time they paid for it.”

  Jim was suddenly sickened by the gleeful reaction of the men, all anticipating an easy romp over this Kansas family. He remembered then something that Amos Barfield had said. “You watch. Pretty soon they’ll be stealin’, rapin’, and murderin’ with no conscience at all.”

  “This ain’t right,” Jim stated. “I don’t want no part in it.”

  His comment received an immediate response from Butcher. “I’m the one says what’s right and what ain’t,” he roared, glaring at Jim. “Why, you ain’t much more than a snot-nosed kid. This is war! What the hell do you know about what’s right?”

  “I know this ain’t right,” Jim calmly replied, and turned at once to go to his horse.

  “Grab him!” Butcher shouted. A couple of the men reached for him, but they were not quick enough to stop him from reaching his horse and galloping away with just one foot in the stirrup. “Shoot him!” Butcher commanded when Jim headed back toward the farm. In the confusion, several of the men scrambled to get off a shot, hoping for a lucky hit, but Jim was already beyond the accurate range of their revolvers.

  “Dammit!” Quincy exclaimed in anger when he missed with his revolver. “That damn boy is gonna warn ’em!”

  “Get after him!” Butcher ordered. “He might warn ’em, but we’ll be right behind him, so they ain’t gonna have much time to do anything about it.” All twelve were soon on his heels.

  “Come on, boy,” Jim implored as the tired sorrel’s hooves pounded the dirt with a steady tattoo, giving the best it had to offer. He looked over his shoulder at the gang of riders gradually shortening the distance between them, their horses fresher than his. He was determined to warn the innocent folks of the hell that was about to descend upon them. At the same time he was reprimanding himself for not choosing to see the obvious evidence before that Butcher′s gang had transformed from Confederate guerrilla fighters to common outlaws. “Don’t let me down, boy,” he encouraged the rapidly failing horse.

  The house and barn were in sight now, but Butcher and his men were charging no more than one hundred yards behind him. Galloping into the barnyard, he heard shots from his pursuers and realized that the men he had ridden with for a year and a half were trying to kill him. “Take cover!” he shouted. “They’re comin’!” But he saw no one in the field or garden where they had been before. “Grab your guns!” he yelled. “Raiders! Raiders!” He could hear Butcher right behind him as they poured into the yard.

  He wasn’t sure what happened next until some time later. At that moment, he vaguely remembered a glimpse of the barn doors opening and a wave of Union soldiers flowing out and the popping of rifles as the sorrel went down head first, throwing him from the saddle. Unable to move for a few seconds until his brain stopped spinning around in his head, he finally attempted to get to his feet in an effort to gain cover behind the carcass of his horse. He had taken no more than two steps when he was slammed in the shoulder by a rifle slug, spinning him around before landing him on the ground again. Trapped in the cross fire between his forme
r companions and the Union soldiers, he was forced to lie where he was, next to his dead horse, while a swarm of hot lead flew overhead.

  Riding at the head of his gang, Henry Butcher was the first to slide from his saddle, fatally wounded. “It’s a trap!” Joe Coons yelled as he backed his horse while emptying his six-gun at the charging cavalry. In the chaos that followed, two of the outlaws fell from their saddles as the raiders tried to retreat. Taken completely by surprise, the outlaws could do little but scatter, every man for himself, but in the confusion of horses bumping into each other amid the cursing and shouting of their riders, they were easy targets for the soldiers’ rifles. Only four of the twelve-man gang managed to escape to scatter across the Kansas countryside, and only one was able to effectively return fire. Quincy managed to get off one shot, killing one of the soldiers before he fled with the others.

  Lieutenant Jared Carrington stood over the body of the fallen soldier as his men checked the bodies of the outlaws. He was far more irritated than sad to have lost a man in the ambush. He looked at the unfortunate occurrence as a mark against his ability to take care of his men. “This’un’s alive, Lieutenant,” a soldier called out, and raised his Spencer carbine to finish the job. He hesitated before pulling the trigger. “He don’t look much more’n a boy,” he said after a closer look at the thin mustache and scraggly beard on the otherwise smooth face.

  The lieutenant walked over to look down at Jim, whose revolver was still in his holster. He quickly reached down and pulled the weapon and tossed it to a short stump of a man dressed in a fringed buckskin shirt and trousers. “Boy or not,” the lieutenant said, “if he’s old enough to shoot at us, he’s old enough to hang.”

  Johnny Hawk turned the Colt Army model revolver over in his hands, examining it before he spoke. “This here weapon ain’t been fired no time lately. It’s stone cold.” He continued to gaze down at the wounded boy, who was now staring back defiantly. “From where I was over yonder by the porch,” he continued, pointing at the farmhouse, “it looked more like he was being chased—and he was hollerin’ somethin’ like ‘grab your guns’—almost like he was tryin’ to warn these folks.”