Death Rattle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Sidewinder Strikes

  “Rattlers,” Brad said. “I saw two of them go right under that guardhouse yonder. Big ones.”

  Both men looked down at the ground, then at the stones under the corners of the guardhouse.

  Brad slipped the rattles quietly from under his shirt, held them in the palm of his left hand so that they made no sound.

  “You ain’t huntin’ no rattlers,” Tom said, lifting his gaze to Brad. “We’d a heard ’em if’n they crawled under the guardhouse. He’s lyin’, Ned.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right, Tom.”

  Ned brought the rifle down, aiming it at Brad’s gut. Ned’s thumb raised to a point just above the hammer.

  Brad opened his hand. The rattles dropped. He shook the thong and the rattles crackled with sound.

  Tom jumped backward. Ned’s eyes widened and his thumb came down on the hammer of his Winchester.

  Brad’s right hand flew to the butt of his pistol, a blur of flesh so fast that Ned couldn’t follow it or understand its meaning . . .

  Berkley titles by Jory Sherman

  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

  SIDEWINDER

  DEATH RATTLE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  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 publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEATH RATTLE

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / December 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Don Jory Sherman.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44562-4

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  For Stephen Woodfin

  ONE

  The stagecoach lurched and swayed as it rounded a bend in the rough mountain road. The driver, Quincy “Quince” Mepps, braced himself for the turn. “Lean to the right, Hugh,” he said to the young man riding shotgun. Quince leaned against Hugh as the stage rounded the turn. Hugh Pendergast set the shotgun in his left hand down at his feet and braced himself with his right hand. He felt the tug of gravity, but the wheels stayed down. He heard the creak of metal and wood and leather as the coach careened around the rocky outcropping. Dust spooled behind the stage in twin funnels that merged into a rose-tinted tawny cloud.

  The rocky road descended into a saddle cavity, then rose in a steep incline. The four-horse team strained against their traces as they began the climb. The coach slowed and both men leaned forward as if to defy the gravity that pulled at them and the coach.

  “Giddyap,” shouted Quince as he cracked the reins against the rumps of the hind horses. “Always hated this hill,” he told Hugh. “A bitch-willy, for sure.”

  “I don’t like it,” Hugh said.

  “That intuition of your’n again, Hugh?”

  “More like a gut instinct, Quince.”

  “Hell, they’s better places for bandits than this blamed hill.” He grunted against the slow tug of the weight beneath them that slowed the coach.

  “It’s all them rocks up at the top, Quince. They bother me ever’ time we struggle up this grade.”

  “Mountains is all rocks,” Quince said.

  “Those are ambush rocks.”

  Quince snorted, looked at Hugh with a merry-cheeked grin as the coach slowed even more and the horses struggled to pull the load, four chests billowing out as they breathed, veins streaking to the surface of their legs.

  “Come on, boys,” Quince urged the team, “bust on up to the top.”

  The horses cleared the top of the incline, and the coach lumbered up behind them and stopped dead as a large rock rolled in front of the right rear wheel. Then another rock rolled in front of the left front wheel. The spokes groaned and one of them cracked with a sound like that of a bone breaking.

  One of the lead horses whinnied and shied away from a man-sized shape that emerged from the jumble of rocks.

  The coach stopped dead in its tracks as the other horses dug in their hooves and backed away from the threat. Another man jumped in front of the lead horse on the left flank. He grabbed the reins with both hands and pulled the horse’s head down. The horse’s neck bowed, and it snorted steam and snot through its nostrils.

  Quince grabbed the brake handle and pulled it back. This was an instinctive action as he felt his
stomach wrench at the sudden stop. He tried to stand up to see what had stopped the team, but a man stepped up on the coach and laid a sawed-off shotgun hard against Quince’s belly.

  “You just sit tight,” the man said. “Drop them reins.”

  Quince opened his hands and the reins fell out of them like dead snakes.

  Hugh reached for the shotgun at his feet.

  He heard two loud clicks from the man who had Quince braced against the back of the seat.

  “You just sit tight, sonny,” the man with the shotgun said.

  “We ain’t got no strongbox,” Quince said, as if that information would make the man go away and leave them be.

  “Shut up,” Shotgun said.

  Two more men came out from behind the rocks. Both were on horseback. They, like the others, wore yellow hoods over their faces. The hoods looked like bleached flour sacks dipped in yellow dye.

  One of the men on horseback rode up and stuck a rifle in Quince’s face. He cocked it, and Shotgun jumped down, no longer needed.

  The second horseman rode up to Hugh and drew his pistol, a Colt .45 with bone grips that were etched brown with deep grooves.

  “You Hugh Pendergast? Harry’s son?” the man said. He cocked the Colt’s hammer back and the click made Hugh jerk as though electrocuted.

  “Y-yes,” Hugh stammered.

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” the man said. He shoved the barrel flush against Hugh’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

  The back of Hugh’s head exploded into a cloud of crimson spray, and pieces of shattered bone flew back. A black hole appeared in Hugh’s forehead. His head snapped back, and then all the life went out of his neck. He slumped over, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eyes glossed over with the final frost of death: vacant, sightless.

  Smoke curled out of the shooter’s pistol barrel, made a lazy spiral as the man swung the snout over to fix on Quince.

  “You tell Harry Pendergast to get off my tail, Quince. This is just a warning.”

  Quince’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  He recognized the voice, and he felt the clammy clutch of fear deep in his belly.

  “The silver’s in the boot,” Quince said, his voice quavering with fear. He sounded as if he was shivering in a cold wind.

  “I know where it is,” the man said. He nodded to Shotgun and the other man on horseback, who rode around to the back of the coach. Shotgun opened the boot and began removing silver bars. He handed them up to the man on horseback, who filled two gunnysacks, tied them together, and slung them over his pommel.

  “You sit here for ten minutes, Quince, then drive your team on into Denver. You be sure to tell Harry what I said, hear?”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” Quince said. A series of tremors ran through his upraised hands. His mouth was dry, his lips bloodless.

  The man holstered his pistol and wheeled his horse. The other men walked back behind the rocks. Quince heard the creak of leather as they mounted their horses. A few seconds later, he heard the scrape of iron hooves on stone, the crunch of gravel, then the pounding gallop of at least a half dozen horses. He lowered his hands, bent down, and picked up the slack ends of his reins. He sat there until he no longer heard the hoofbeats, sat there with his eyes fixed on the body of Hugh Pendergast, Harry’s son.

  Pendergast’s Denver Detective Agency was now short one man, and the Panamint Mining Company was out some five thousand dollars worth of silver bullion. And maybe, he thought, the Leadville Stage would soon be short a driver.

  The man who had killed Hugh was Earl Fincher. Quince was pretty damned sure of that.

  And Earl Fincher was a man to be feared, like no other.

  TWO

  The three riders rode up to the outcroppings on both sides of the road.

  A hawk sailed ahead of them on invisible currents of air, dragging its rumpled shadow over the wagon ruts. It disappeared over the rim of the road.

  Brad Storm examined the wagon ruts. They were deeper where the stage had stopped. He saw boot tracks in the dust and, alongside, the shoe prints of a horse.

  “This is where they jumped us,” Quince said. “We come to a dead stop and before I knew what was happenin’, one of ’em came up from behind those rocks and shoved a sawed-off Greener in my face. Two of ’em held the lead horses, so we was stuck.”

  “Is this where ...” Harry Pendergast stammered.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Pendergast. Another’n rode up from the left side and asked—”

  “Asked what?” Pendergast said.

  “Asked Hugh if he was your son.”

  Harry Pendergast cringed, and his face drained of color. Sweat oozed from under his hat and crawled down his forehead like rainwater. Tears filled Pendergast’s eyes, and he squinched them shut as if to block out Quince’s words.

  Brad turned his horse and rode over to the two men.

  “It’s just like you said, Quince,” he said. “Two men came around to the boot. I guess they knew the silver bars were in there.”

  “Yeah, they did.”

  “You know who those two men were?” Brad asked.

  “Nope, just the one what shot Hugh. I recognized his voice.”

  “Earl Fincher,” Pendergast said.

  Streaks of clouds hovered in the western sky, white and purple against the blue. The sun was a piercing light that shimmered above the snowcapped peaks of the mountain range, a boiling disk of yellow fire.

  Brad looked at Harry without comprehension. The name meant nothing to Storm. Harry’s wet eyes seemed to swim in sadness from their sockets. He looked out of place on the sorrel horse he rode, with his business suit, brocade vest, riding boots, starched white shirt, and bolo tie, the pert black derby on his head. They had all met at the Oro City Livery early that morning. Quince had ridden up to Brad’s ranch the night before with the sad news and the message from Pendergast that his son had been murdered. Quince had told him the whole story about the holdup, saying five men had jumped him and Hugh a week ago. There had been no rain and the tracks of the stagecoach and the horses and bandits had not been erased by wind or water.

  The sorrel horse Pendergast rode looked as uncomfortable as Harry. It rolled its baleful eyes at Ginger, Brad’s roan gelding, as if beseeching Ginger to get him out from under Pendergast.

  “Never heard of him,” Brad said.

  Quince looked off at the sky, staring at a single wisp of cloud as if he wished he were miles away from this place of death.

  “I caused the arrest of Fincher about six years ago,” Pendergast said. “He did three years in Cañon City for robbery.”

  “So?” Brad said.

  “I suspected him of murder but couldn’t prove it.”

  “You think that’s why he murdered your son?” Brad said.

  Harry’s eyes narrowed in a scowl, and he looked off at the side of the road where grasses grew in desperate clumps among the small rocks and the little islands of prickly pear cactus. He stared at the bleak landscape far off the road, and it all blurred together in a meaningless jumble of empty land devoid of life.

  “I’ve sent for Pete Farnsworth,” Pendergast said. “He should be in Leadville by tonight. You’ll meet him at the Clarendon.”

  “What’s that have to do with Earl Fincher?” Brad asked.

  Harry heaved a sigh and looked at Quince.

  “Some months ago, I was contacted by a man, I won’t tell you his name, who told me he and other mine and smelter owners were being held up by a gang of hard cases. These hard cases wore yellow hoods and demanded what they called ‘protection money.’ At first, none of those owners acceded to these requests. Then the robberies and the beatings began. This man hired my agency to find these men and put them out of business.”

  Brad felt the weight of what Pendergast was telling him. Hooded men with guns. Faceless men. Brutal men. Killers.

  “I don’t think it’s just the mine and smelter owners these men are holding up,” Brad said.

  “What do
you mean?” Pendergast asked.

  “My wife, Felicity, said the prices of food and goods had gone up in town, and when she asked why, nobody would tell her. Then I sold some cattle at auction a week ago, and had to pay a higher percentage of the sale. When I asked why, the man told me he was paying higher cartage fees and more for feed. But he wouldn’t tell me more than that, and when I asked, he looked scared and made damned sure nobody but me could hear him. So maybe this gang is widening its loop.”

  “I spoke to the sheriff in Leadville,” Harry said, “and he told me he didn’t know anything about a gang wearing yellow hoods.”

  “Did you believe him?” Brad asked.

  “At the time, yes. I think you and Pete might ask again. If they’re holding up people in town, the sheriff has to know about it. Sheriff I asked was named Rodney Dimsdale, and he was elected after the previous sheriff was killed mysteriously.”

  “What do you mean ‘mysteriously’?”

  “He supposedly fell off his horse and broke his neck. But witnesses Pete talked to said Sheriff Brown was brutally beaten at his home.”

  “Lou Brown,” Brad said. “I wondered about that. Word was that he was breaking a horse and it threw him.”

  “I think differently,” Pendergast said.

  “All this talk gives me the willies,” Quince said. “I knowed Lou, and I met Rodney Dimsdale. Voted for him.”

  “Lou was a straight arrow,” Brad said, “and he knew horses. I bought one from him, one he broke himself. It was tame as a tabby cat.

  “But you said Dimsdale was the new sheriff?”

  “Well, Dimsdale was shot and killed, so that’s more for you and Pete to look into, Brad. Will you meet with him at the Clarendon tonight?”

  “Or tomorrow morning,” Brad said. “I’ll tell Felicity I’ll be away for a time.”

  “Good,” Harry said and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small badge with the legend Denver Detective Agency engraved on its gold and silver surface. “You might need this, Brad.” The badge glinted in the sun.