Early Dawn, Page 4

  Oh, God, oh, God. If he got her on a horse, her chances to escape would be nil. Frantic, she pummeled his spine with knotted fists. When that didn’t slow his pace, she grabbed hold of his jacket and walked her hands up his back until she was nearly upright. Then she went after his head, knocking off his hat as she cracked him in the temple with her elbow. He grunted and staggered.

  “Leave off, bitch!”

  Eden’s temper, always the bane of her existence, flared hot. Bitch? Hissing air through clenched teeth, she clawed at his ear and tried with everything she had to bury the sharp toes of her Dongola kid boots into his groin. He roared with rage, grabbed her arm, and threw her to the ground. Eden rolled and scrambled to her feet, but before she could run, he was upon her. She nailed him square in the eye socket with her right fist and was about to slug him again when he retaliated in kind, his bunched knuckles coming at her so fast that they connected with her jaw before she could duck.

  Black spots danced before Eden’s eyes. She blinked and staggered, determined to remain on her feet. But her knees turned to water and down she went. The world had gone strangely gray—a swirling eddy of earth, trees, and sky that sucked her into a black vortex.

  Chapter Two

  The unmistakable smell of blood wafted to Matthew Coulter’s nostrils on the cold, rain-washed morning air. Faintly sweet with a metallic bite, the scent rolled over the back of his tongue, putting him in mind of how water from his canteen tasted after he’d been two days on the trail without coming across a stream.

  He drew his horse, Smoky, to a stop so suddenly that the pack mule behind them bumped into the gelding’s rump. The Sebastians. Everywhere those bastards went, they left a trail of blood. Matthew had no idea whom they’d killed this time, only that the remains lay somewhere nearby. Oh, yes. He knew without a doubt that the Sebastians were responsible. He’d been hot on their trail for several days, and the tracks had led him directly here. No mistake, no maybe to it. Wallace Sebastian rode a horse with a paddle gait that left a track as unique as a man’s fingerprint. Matthew would have recognized that odd stride pattern anywhere.

  Shifting in the saddle, he reached back to unfasten the strap that held his Winchester in the sheepskin rifle boot. At close range, he normally preferred to use his revolvers, but in rabbitbrush thicker than fleas on a hound’s back and billowing four feet tall, he’d be a damned fool to take on five fast guns with his Colts. Dancing and rolling to avoid a slug would be nigh onto impossible with his feet tangled in undergrowth. He’d be wiser to hit the dirt, burrow deep in the foliage, and pick off the brutes with his long barrel.

  Smoky snorted, clearly unnerved. Matthew stroked the gray’s neck and then nudged him back into a walk. The poor horse had to plow forward through the bushes, every step impeded by the thick snarl of branches. Herman, the mule, balked and let loose with one of his odd-sounding whinnies, a cross between a bray and a neigh. Damn it. There went any chance Matthew may have had to catch the gang by surprise. Not that he blamed the mule. Even the dumbest animals on earth recognized the smell of fresh blood, and Herman sensed the danger. All his instincts were probably telling him to turn tail and run.

  Grabbing hold of the lead rope, Matthew gave a sharp tug to get the pack animal moving again. As both beasts pressed forward, Matthew made a mental note to slap them on the rump if trouble started. Over the last three years, Smoky and Herman had become Matthew’s only friends. He didn’t want either of them to take a bullet.

  Moments later, they broke into a small clearing surrounded by stands of stunted oak and various bushes heavy with blossoms of pink, yellow, purplish blue, and white that stood out against the gray-green backdrop of brush. What appeared to be a peddler’s wagon was parked to one side of the opening, its garishly painted doors yawning to reveal a gutted interior. The team that had pulled the wagon to this spot was nowhere in sight, the poles and traces lying empty. Pots, pans, shoes, clothing, books, farm implements, and other wares had been scattered every which way across the rain-soaked ground. An old man in a brown suit lay sprawled amid the rubble. Even at a distance, Matthew could see that he was beyond help. The poor fellow’s throat had been slit, an Arkansas grin curving from one ear to the other under his bewhiskered chin.

  Matthew’s skin turned as pebbly as a fresh-plucked chicken’s. In the sunlight that had just broken through the clouds, the blood on the peddler’s neck glistened wet and bright red. He had been dead for only a few minutes. His killers couldn’t be very far away.

  Jerking the lead rope loose from his saddle to set the mule free, Matthew fanned the chambers of his Colts to make certain they were fully loaded—a purely reflexive gesture, because he always kept the chambers full—and then reined his horse in a circle to scan the surrounding brush. In land like this, the horned larks and prairie chickens normally chirped and flitted in the bushes, and small rodents scampered every which way. Not so in this place. A spooky hush lay over everything. The breeze had suddenly abated. Not even a leaf moved in the clumps of gnarly oak.

  Withers twitching, ears cocked forward, Smoky blew and sidestepped, his shod hooves sharply striking a partially buried slab of shale. The tattoo rang out in the hush like rifle shots. Matthew had a bad case of the whim-whams himself. Before dismounting, he rode a wide loop around the clearing to make sure the gang had left. He soon found churned earth, an indication that the fiends had lit out in a northwesterly direction. After studying the tracks, Matthew determined that they’d taken the peddler’s two-horse wagon team with them, draft animals, judging by the size of the hoofprints.

  Matthew burned to go after them. He’d gotten this close to one of them only once before, a memorable afternoon down Tucson way when he’d belly-crawled through cactuses pricklier than whores on Sunday to sight in his Winchester on the youngest Sebastian brother, who’d been dispatched to the nearest town to replenish the gang’s liquor supply. Sadly for Eric Sebastian, the call of the alcohol had been more urgent to him than getting back to his siblings, so he’d stopped off under a mesquite tree to have a few snorts. With no regrets, Matthew had emerged from the cactuses, poised himself to draw, and, after telling the other man why he was there, had sent him off to meet his Maker, making the world a safer place and reducing the infamous Sebastian Gang’s number to five.

  Since then, though, it had been slim pickings, with Matthew hearing of a horrendous crime and haring off after the wrong desperadoes—or, even more frustrating, joining up with yet another posse composed of an incompetent lawman and a ragtag collection of clod busters who started out strong but lacked the stick-to-itiveness necessary to stay on the Sebastians’ trail. In a way, Matthew had understood their lackadaisical attitudes. A man had to lose someone precious and dear—he had to hate and lust for revenge—in order to stay with a chore that seemed endless, paid nothing, and offered few creature comforts.

  Now, after so many false leads and bitter tastes of defeat, Matthew was once again right on the Sebastians’ asses. He swore he could smell the stench of their unwashed bodies lingering in the air. Unfortunately, before he gave chase he needed to properly bury the old man. As hardened as Matthew had grown since departing from Oregon, he still clung to the tenets of common decency that his father and mother had drilled into him. Leaving a dead body out in the open to become carrion for vultures and predators wasn’t in his makeup. He’d even buried Eric Sebastian, the devil take his rotten soul, rather than abandon the bastard in the desert to become crow bait.

  Once back in the clearing, Matthew set to work with a small spade he carried in his pack. The tediousness of the grim task left him with too much time to think. Death. It had a way of creeping up on a person without warning. It troubled him how quickly a life could end.

  The rocky ground made for difficult digging. Fortunately, Matthew was able to go shallow and cover the body with the stones he unearthed. Even so, the sun had nearly reached its zenith by the time he finished the excavation. He closed the peddler’s eyes and tugged off the old man�
��s jacket to cover his bloodless face before lowering him into the shallow grave. Jesus, help me, he prayed as he covered the remains with rock. Since setting out after the Sebastians, he’d seen sights that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days.

  This morning the Sebastians’ victim was an elderly man whose life had been nearly over, but that wasn’t always the case. Those heartless polecats killed young and old alike. Only a few months ago, Matthew had come across a Spanish family down in Mexico—mother, father, four older children, and a brand-new baby—who had been slaughtered like pigs. Judging by the condition of the woman’s body, she’d been repeatedly raped before being sent off to meet her Maker. The memory still made Matthew shake with horror or rage, probably both. Their deaths had been so pointless. But the Sebastians had slain them nevertheless, and with no more regret than Matthew felt over shooting a rabbit for the roasting spit. Bastards. They were worse than animals.

  Removing his Stetson, Matthew stood beside the old man’s grave. Another heavy rain would pack down the freshly turned earth. In only a short while, the peddler’s final resting place would look like nothing more than a rock heap. Passersby wouldn’t even realize someone was buried here.

  The thought sent Matthew back to the perimeters of the clearing with his hatchet. He worked up a sweat cutting two lengths of green wood to form a cross, which he bound together with rawhide thongs. Then he spent a good half hour carving A peddler killed by the Sebastian Gang into the crossbar. As he drove the marker deep into the dirt at the head of the grave, he could at least console himself with the certainty that the old fellow’s resting place would be recognized as such for a couple of years.

  Afterward, Matthew mounted his horse, collected his mule, and went to find the tracks he’d seen earlier. His blood surged with excitement, which he quickly tamped down. The brothers had cut a broad swath through the brush, the trail so clear that a child could have followed it. Matthew was going to catch up with them this time. He felt it in his bones.

  Time to ride. If he’d learned anything over the last three years, it was that the Sebastians had a talent for vanishing into thin air. Matthew wasn’t about to let them slip away from him again. Nohow, no way. Not this time. He would make up for the delay and catch up with them again or die trying.

  Scanning the horizon every few seconds, he followed the tracks. The Sebastians were shrewd. If they suspected someone was on their heels, they’d double back to pick him off. Matthew flexed his shoulders and released a taut breath. Letting down one’s guard was a greenhorn’s mistake, and he was no greenhorn, not anymore. Being on the trail had taught him a host of lessons, the most important being that it wasn’t always speed with a gun that saved a man’s life. Sometimes it was pure, old-fashioned common sense and having eyes in the back of his head.

  Determined to stay alert, Matthew settled into the saddle for the long ride that lay ahead. At the start of this mission, he had always been in a hurry, a feverish eagerness burning in his veins even as he slept, but he’d soon realized that only dogged determination would enable him to succeed where so many posses had failed. It was a lonely and often boring endeavor. Except for changes in the weather and coming upon dead bodies more often than he liked, one day was pretty much like the next, a monotonous repetition of riding mile after mile, followed by sleeping along the trail with only his saddle as a pillow and his animals for company. His rare brushes with civilization occurred only when he fell in with a posse, needed supplies, or went digging for information about where the Sebastian Gang had last been seen. He seldom met anyone intriguing during those brief sojourns in a town. Shopkeepers, sporting women, and drifters. After a while, their faces all looked the same and their stories all sounded alike.

  In the beginning, Matthew had kept a journal, but after a time, he’d given up on that. His Gaelic-speaking mother, born in the old country, had studied relentlessly to attain a good command of English and insisted that her children do the same. Though Matthew had only five years of formal schooling, he’d developed a good vocabulary and spelling skills, but he still wasn’t a great hand at writing. He penned his thoughts pretty much like he talked, simple and to the point. When he wrote home to let his folks know he was still alive, he kept it short. Hello. I’m fine. Hope you are, too. He had no way of knowing if his letters reached their destination because he never stayed in one place long enough to get return mail. Hell, so far as he knew, both his parents could be dead by now.

  The thought saddened Matthew, but not in the sharp, painful way it once would have. He had trouble remembering his loved ones’ faces when he thought of them now, and homesickness had lost its hold on him long ago. The ranch had become a distant memory, the squat little cabin he’d shared with Olivia a blur. Sometimes he almost forgot why he’d undertaken this task. Then a nightmare about Livvy’s death would jerk him awake from a sound sleep, and he’d remember with harsh clarity. Bottom line was, he’d set himself a goal, and he couldn’t give up until every last one of the Sebastians was dead. He’d failed to protect his wife, and punishing her killers was the only way he knew to make up for that.

  Once he avenged Livvy’s death, he had no idea what the future might hold for him. Oregon no longer called his name. Too many bad memories waited for him there. Maybe he’d hire on somewhere as a cowhand or broncobuster, saving his wages until he had a stake and could start his own ranch. Montana still had a lot of wide-open country. A man could make a fresh start there and put the past behind him. It’d be lonely, but Matthew had come to accept that as his lot in life. He didn’t have what it took to be a decent husband—or father, for that matter. A man worth his salt protected his family.

  Guiding his horse through a dense thicket of skunk-brush and mountain mahogany, Matthew followed the Sebastians’ tracks to a promontory where thickets of silver buffaloberry clumped around huge boulders. After picking his way through the dense foliage and rocks, he reined in sharply and stood in the stirrups to see over the edge of the cliff, wondering what the gang members had been thinking to take their horses down such steep, treacherous terrain. In the draw below, he saw only brush at first, but then his gaze caught on a glint of steel. Railroad tracks. Following their course, he saw a train in the distance. The locomotive appeared to have jumped the tracks. Matthew couldn’t determine what might have caused that, but he had a bad feeling it hadn’t been an accident. Squinting to see, he counted five cars between the locomotive and caboose, and they didn’t look to be the kind that carried freight. Too fancy. A passenger train, maybe?

  His chest went tight with dread. Now he understood why the Sebastians had put their horses at risk to go down the steep slope. They’d waited up here to ambush the train. Lips pressed into a tight line, Matthew turned east, hoping to find a safer way down into the draw. To his surprise, he discovered that the Sebastians had ridden this way as well. Their tracks soon led to a gentler slope that looked less dangerous for Matthew’s animals. As he began the descent, he realized why the gang had chosen not to launch its attack from this angle. The people on the train would have seen them coming, just as they could see Matthew now. Two men emerged from the locomotive onto its rear platform. They seemed to be looking at Matthew through binoculars. One of them held a rifle at the ready in the crook of his arm.

  As Matthew drew closer, he saw piles of broken rock scattered across the tracks in front of the derailed locomotive. Mystery solved. To stop the train, the Sebastians had rolled some boulders into its path. Then they’d ridden back to the promontory to await the inevitable collision. Bastards.

  Matthew hoped the man with the gun didn’t get nervous and shoot. If the train had recently been robbed, as Matthew suspected, tension would be high, and the approach of a stranger might make the rifleman edgy. He wore a brown plaid frock suit and a jaunty bowler hat, pegging him as a passenger and possibly a city fellow. Wasn’t that just perfect? Matthew had never met a dandy yet who knew squat about firearms.

  The other man, a bullnecked, portly gent
, wore a black suit and matching billed cap. Though Matthew had never traveled on a passenger train, he figured the fellow to be the conductor or some other kind of railway employee. He lifted a hand and waved, hoping to let them know he was friendly. Being mistaken for a bandit wouldn’t make for a pleasant encounter.

  “Howdy!” he called out as he drew closer.

  The man in black placed his hands on the platform railing and leaned forward at the waist. “What brings you here, mister?”

  Some twenty feet from them, Matthew reined in his horse. The pack mule let loose with a nervous bray-whinny. “I’m after the Sebastian Gang. Their tracks led me here.”

  “You a bounty hunter?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you sure don’t have the look of a lawman.”

  Matthew fingered the thick growth of whiskers on his jaw. “Stopping to wash and shave isn’t easy when you’re trying to run polecats to ground. Name’s Matthew Coulter. Hail from Oregon.”

  “You’re a long way from home, partner.”

  Matthew nudged up the brim of his hat to meet the men’s gazes. “That I am.” He cast a glance at the rock-strewn tracks. “Looks to me like you’re in a fine fix.”

  “Yes, we are.” The dandy in the frock coat lowered the rifle to his side, a gesture that indicated he no longer felt threatened. Problem was that the barrel of the weapon was now pointed straight at Matthew. “We’ve got three dead, and they took a young woman hostage.”

  A chill moved down Matthew’s spine. If the Sebastians had taken a woman, she’d most likely be dead by sundown. If not, she’d be wishing she were. “I’m sorry to hear that. The Sebastians aren’t exactly what you’d call gentle with the ladies.” He inclined his head at the rifle. “If it’s all the same to you, my friend, I’d feel easier if you pointed that gun at something besides me.”