White Apache 10 Page 14

  Confused by the White Apache’s friendly greeting, Calhoun took a few moments to marshal his wits and blurt in an official tone, “In the name of the United States Government, I take you into custody.”

  “No,” Clay said softly.

  “No?” Calhoun said, shocked that the man could sit there so casually with a derringer pointed at his head. “Nothing you can say or do will stop me.”

  “What about the filly you’re so fond of?” Clay asked. “She’s back up the canyon, unarmed, with no one to keep her company but her dead father. Adios, Private. Let’s hope we never meet again.”

  “You’re not going anywhere!” Calhoun extended the derringer farther. It was his duty to take the White Apache in or to kill him. Yet in spite of all that had happened, in spite of the ordeal Taggart had put them through, Calhoun found that he couldn’t squeeze the trigger. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t.

  The trooper’s inner conflict was etched on his face. Clay brought the stallion up next to the zebra dun. “You’re no killer, Calhoun. You can’t gun a man down unless he’s trying to do the same to you. And you’re not the kind to shoot someone in the back either. She needs you. Don’t make a mistake you’ll regret the rest of your born days. A woman like her only comes along once in a man’s lifetime.”

  Calhoun, Fifth Cavalry, dutifully sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America and to defend all its citizens, sat and watched as the scourge of the Arizona Territory galloped around the bend.

  For a few seconds, Calhoun stared numbly into empty space. Then, with a toss of his head, he hastened eastward. It did not take long to find Tessa on her knees beside her father. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her hands were clutching her heaving bosom.

  Calhoun was off the dun while it was still in motion. He ran to Tessa and knelt, draping an arm over her shoulders. “I’m here,” he said, as if that would be enough to comfort her.

  Tessa’s gaze was glued to the lawman. “Did you kill him?” she asked in a voice so harsh that it seemed as if another person had spoken.

  “Taggart?” Calhoun said, and he was terrified of her reaction should she learn the truth. “No, he – he got away.”

  “Good. I want the honor of killing him myself.”

  Horrified, Calhoun lowered his arm. “You can’t mean that,” he said. She wasn’t the same kind, gentle woman he thought that he knew. She had become someone as cold as ice, as hard as flint.

  At that moment, Devil’s Canyon echoed with the drum of hooves in regular cadence. Calhoun spun, prepared to sell his life dearly to protect Tessa from the hostiles he was afraid were descending on them. The sight of a long column of blue uniforms of buttons and tack glinting in the sunlight, of seasoned soldiers sitting straight and proud filled him with boundless joy. “It’s Captain Eldritch!” he said, leaping to his feet and waving his arms. “We’re safe now! Everything will be fine!

  Tessa Heritage didn’t answer. As far as she was concerned, her life would never be fine again until she stood over the lifeless husk of the butcher who had shattered her dream of getting to know the father she had always longed to have.

  “We’re safe!” Calhoun said again as the patrol drew near. He wondered if by some miracle the captain could overtake Clay Taggart before the killer got to the open country to the west, and he very much doubted it. Once Taggart reached the mouth of Devil’s Canyon, he could melt into the wilderness without a trace.

  The thought caused Calhoun to stiffen and pivot. In his anxiety over Tessa, he had forgotten the wounded man he had left at the canyon entrance.

  Rafe Skinner was directly in the White Apache’s path.

  Heat blistered the owner of the Acme Saloon. His wound throbbed, and his mouth was parched. Skinner swallowed a few times to relieve dryness in his throat.

  The shooting had stopped a couple of minutes earlier. Judging by the echoes of the gunfire, a regular battle had taken place.

  Rafe suspected that Tom Crane’s ruse had not worked out as intended and that he would never see his old pard again. Just a day earlier, he would have been saddened by the loss. But he wouldn’t feel much sadness for Crane’s passing since he’d learned that Crane thought so little of their friendship and even less of his own daughter.

  Hoofbeats heralded the arrival of a pair of riders who thundered toward Skinner in a swirl of dust. Squinting in the bright sunshine, he reached for his pistol. In his condition, he doubted he could hit the broad side of a barn, but he was not about to have his lamp blown out without putting up a fight.

  Thorson and Gritz came to a halt only feet away from Skinner, and the bearded bear beckoned. “No time for talk! The White Apache is after us! Get up and you can ride behind me.”

  Skinner had already tried to stand several times. “I can’t. I’ve lost too much blood.”

  Gritz cast an anxious gaze into the dust cloud. “Hurry, damn it! I swear I heard him right behind us!

  Thorson did not need a lot of persuading. “Sorry, Skinner. We can’t tote you clear back to Tucson. He’d catch us for sure.” He touched his hat brim. “You can see how it is, can’t you?”

  Rafe Skinner never got to reply. Two shots spaced a second apart rang out. At the first blast, the front of Gritz’s forehead exploded in a shower of gore, some of which rained on Skinner. The next shot blew a hole the size of an apple in Thorson’s face. Both men thudded to the earth at the same time and lay twitching and quivering.

  From out of the dust another figure appeared, riding slowly, a smoking Winchester propped on a muscular thigh. Rafe Skinner attempted to raise his arm, but it was so unsteady that he feared he would hit the black stallion instead of the renegade.

  White Apache drew rein a dozen feet out. He pointed the Winchester. “Are you a member of the posse?”

  “I am,” Rafe said.

  “Any last words?”

  One thing was uppermost on Skinner’s mind. “The girl?” he said. “Is she all right? Or did you butcher her like you have so many others?” On the sly, he firmed his hold on the Remington. He had no reason to expect an answer, and every reason to believe that in another few moments he would be sent to meet his Maker. But he didn’t cringe, he didn’t flinch.

  To Rafe Skinner s astonishment, White Apache swung the Winchester barrel skyward again, then clucked to the stallion. The horse passed so close that Skinner could have reached out and touched it. Too dazed to shoot, he twisted and saw the rogue outlaw ride off into the haze.

  “Why?” Rafe said to the solitary horsemen. “Why did you let me live?”

  It was a question that would haunt Rafe Skinner for many days to come. And it was one to which he received no reply.

  A moment later, the mesquite closed around White Apache. Once in deep cover, he bent the stallion’s steps toward the high Dragoons and the secluded valley he called home.

  WHITE APACHE 10: HANGED!

  By David Robbins Writing as Jake McMasters

  First Published by Leisure Books in 1995

  Copyright © 1995, 2018 by David Robbins

  First Smashwords Edition: April 2018

  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.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Our cover features Match Race, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.

  Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri

  Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with
the Author.

  About the Author

  David L. Robbins was born on Independence Day 1950. He has written more than three hundred books under his own name and many pen names, among them: David Thompson, Jake McMasters, Jon Sharpe, Don Pendleton, Franklin W. Dixon, Ralph Compton, Dean L. McElwain, J.D. Cameron and John Killdeer.

  Robbins was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen he enlisted in the United States Air Force and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant. After his honorable discharge he attended college and went into broadcasting, working as an announcer and engineer (and later as a program director) at various radio stations. Later still he entered law enforcement and then took to writing full-time.

  At one time or another Robbins has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year and a half in Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Greece and Germany. He lived for more than a year in Turkey.

  Today he is best known for two current long-running series - Wilderness, the generational saga of a Mountain Man and his Shoshone wife - and Endworld is a science fiction series under his own name started in 1986. Among his many other books, Piccadilly Publishing is pleased to be reissuing ebook editions of Wilderness, Davy Crockett and, of course, White Apache.

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