The Savage Curse

Table of Contents

 

 

Showdown

John laid his rifle aside and rose from his hiding place and started walking toward the road. His right hand rested on the butt of his pistol.

“Hobart,” he called.

There was a loud grunt and Hobart stood up. His right hand was cocked like a frozen bird above his pistol.

“That you, Savage?” Hobart said.

“Looks like it's just you and me, Ollie,” John said. “Isn't that the way you wanted it?”

“Damned right, Savage. You been breathin' my air too long.”

Hobart's hand dove for his pistol as he went into a fighting crouch.

John stood straight, his right hand like magic as it jerked his pistol from its holster . . .

THE VIGILANTE
THE VIGILANTE: SIX-GUN LAW
THE VIGILANTE: SANTA FE SHOWDOWN

 

THE DARK LAND
SUNSET RIDER
TEXAS DUST
BLOOD RIVER
THE SAVAGE GUN
THE SUNDOWN MAN
THE SAVAGE TRAIL
THE SAVAGE CURSE

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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.

 

THE SAVAGE CURSE

 

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / November 2008

Copyright © 2008 by Jory Sherman.

 

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eISBN : 978-0-425-22447-2

 

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1

JOHN SAVAGE GAZED DOWN THE LONG TRAIL. THERE SEEMED NO end to it, and its vacancy only added sting to the nettles of worry that prickled in his mind. So many long trails, so much empty space, bereft of all humanity, of succor to a troubled man. Ben Russell, who rode alongside him, was no comfort nor company. Ben was full of both advice and criticism and he spouted them both with the regularity of a water clock. When Ben was silent, John could still hear him ticking.

“You might think of stopping somewheres, John,” Ben said after nearly ten minutes of blessed silence. “That old sun is headin' for the barn.”

John looked up at the afternoon sky, saw the long loaves of clouds floating in the western sky, their soft underbellies tinged with peach and salmon, as if they were baking in a blue oven. The sun hovered above the horizon, a boiling disk of unrelenting heat, a magnet for sweat and flies, it seemed, sucking out salt and water for the flies to feed on like diminutive vultures at a watering hole.

“Soon as we find a water hole, Ben,” Savage said. “Our canteens have been dry a day and a half.”

“Hell, look at it,” Ben said. “Nary a cottonwood or a shade tree. No people, neither. You picked a hell of a journey this time, John.”

“I didn't pick it. Hobart did.”

Oliver Hobart, the man responsible for murdering John's father, mother, sister, and a bunch of other miners in Colorado, was known to be headed for Tucson. John aimed to see that Tucson was Hobart's last refuge at the end of a long bloody trail.

“You just can't let it go, can you, John? Hell, we done killed most of the men who worked for Hobart. Ain't that enough for you?”

“No, Ben. Hobart's got to pay, too. Most of all, he's the one who has to pay.”

John worried the small pebble in his mouth to stave off his thirst. He knew Ben was wallowing one just like it in his mouth. The horses were parched, too. They were starting to drag their hooves every now and then, and their sweat had dried, leaving dark patches of slick hide to shine in the sun, little granules of dried salt to glitter like crushed diamonds on their ribs and backsides.

John spat and no saliva came out of his mouth. He swallowed and nothing went down his throat beyond a fresh ache. The dryness made his throat sore and the air he drew in made his throat even dryer.

The land undulated and the old road dipped with its fall, and they would ride across old creek beds, or low places that showed signs of false floods where there was seldom any steady rain. Lakes shimmered ahead of them, only to vanish when they rode close, and the brightness played hob with a man's eyes. Both Ben and John squinted now at a mirage that danced a half mile in front of them, little tendrils of light streaming upward from it as if steaming in a morning mist. The phantom lakes could make a thirsty man go mad, John thought, but he hadn't felt a surge of hope after seeing his first one, a good long week ago.

“Supposed to be a well along here somewhere,” John said. “Down in one of these bottoms.”

“Last well we come across was plumb dried up,” Ben said.

“Horses will smell it.”

“You hope.”

John said nothing. Ben was just in his usual argumentative mood and he knew he could not win against him. Ben had his ways. A man could get used to them, but he didn't have to tolerate them all the time. He knew he was probably wrong in going after Hobart over such desolate country, but he couldn't get the images of the slaughter at the mining camp out of his mind. Hobart and his men had ridden up without warning, shooting and yelling, killing everybody along the creek, showing no mercy. He and Ben had been up in a mine, looking down at them, helpless as sod. Neither of them had been armed and they knew if they ran down to help, they would have been shot down like all the rest.

Maybe the guilt he carried about that day was muddling his mind, but killing Hobart, making him pay for what he'd done, had become an uncontrollable obsession with him. And Hobart had gone on killing and robbing. The man was ruthless. He didn't deserve to live.

As they neared the top of the rise, John's horse, Gent, whickered low in his throat and his ears stiffened to hard cones, pitched forward.

“What is it, boy?” John said softly. “You smell water?”

He looked back at Ben's horse, Blaster. The roan was just plodding along, head drooping. But Gent had his head up and the trotter's step had quickened slightly.

John eased up on the reins, giving Gent his head. Gent, to his surprise, did not bolt, nor even increase his pace. Instead, the horse shied away from the top of the rise.

John took command, reined the horse hard, touched blunt spurs to his flanks. Gent broke into a trot, but to John he felt stiff and unwilling. Something wasn't right. Usually, Gent would break into a gallop at the prod of a spur in his flank, or at least jump into a trot. The horse was wary. Afraid of something.

But what?

“Come on, boy,” John said to the horse and poked Gent's flanks with his spurs, digging in deeper than before.

Gent wrestled with the bit, took it in his teeth.

John felt his anger rise.

He jerked the reins, fought with Gent over control.

Gent started to turn back just as they topped the rise.

John loosened the reins, felt them go slack. Then, as Gent bowed his head and began to turn, John wrestled the bit from the horse's teeth, pulled hard, stopping Gent in mid-turn.

“What the hell's wrong with Gent?” Ben said.

“I don't know. Something's got him spooked.”

“Well, he ain't sniffin' water, that's for sure.”

Ben rode ahead, topped the rise. John saw the horse's rump drop below the rise, then stop. He heard a rustle of cloth, the snort of Ben's horse.

John rammed his spurs into Gent's flanks. The horse bucked ahead, topped the rise.

What he saw next brought a choking lump up into his throat, a queasy boil to his stomach.

Ben was stopped, both hands in the air. Off to the side, also on horseback, sat a man with a double-barreled shotgun leveled at Ben's head.

“You hold up there, Pilgrim,” the man said.

John saw the man's thumb touch the crosshatched hammers of both barrels.

Then the man swung the shotgun in John's direction.

John's blood turned ice cold in his veins.

He stared into the twin snouts of the shotgun.

Never had death been so close, he thought. So close.

Time seemed to hang up, smother all sound, all movement, all life in a single second of eternity.

He saw the man's index finger begin to curl around the front trigger. Just a slight movement that seemed so slow he almost missed it.

Out of the corner of his eye, down in the bottom, he saw a small wagon covered with a tarp, hitched to a mule. A man stood next to a pile of stones, buck naked, his clothes a puddle of cloth at his feet.

All that in a single instant.

And death hovered just above John's head like a hawk, suspended there for a thousand lifetimes compressed into that single electric minute.

The shotgunner's finger started to close on the front trigger.