Shawn Starbuck Double Western 3 Read online

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  A BULLET FOR MR. TEXAS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  THE MARSHAL OF BABYLON

  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

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  The Shawn Starbuck Series

  Piccadilly Publishing

  A Bullet for Mr. Texas

  If ever a man asked for enemies, it was Pierce Hagerman, known as “Mr. Texas.” Hated by all who knew him—including his own young son and beautiful daughter—the powerful rancher invited murder with every ruthless act he committed. Now a secret killer had been hired to give Mr. Texas what he’d been asking for …

  Shawn Starbuck came to Hagerman’s ranch, Hash Knife, following the trail of his lost brother Ben, but he stayed to become hired bullet-catcher to the tyrant. It was a stay that would put his heart—and his life—on the line, and climax in a blaze of flaming violence.

  One

  Shawn Starbuck wheeled lazily, hooked his elbows on the edge of the bar and glanced about the saloon. Except for two men at a corner table playing cutthroat poker, he was the sole patron. With his free hand he reached up, mopped at the sweat beading his face. The day was blistering hot—but no hotter than usual for July, he had been assured.

  Taking a swallow of the cool beer he was holding, he shifted his gaze to the glare beyond the building’s open doorway. The dusty street with its board sidewalks was also deserted. As was the custom in such Western towns, no one in Brasada was moving about at that hour of the day.

  He sighed heavily. It had been a long haul from the Hebren Valley country. He had crossed some of the worst stretches of land in the state, and he was glad that it was all behind him. Not that he hadn’t weathered tougher trails in his search for Ben, the brother who had run away from home ten years or so earlier, but unquestionably this had been the hottest.

  It was done now, however. He had only to cover the twenty miles or so that yet remained and then he would reach Hagerman’s Hash Knife ranch, his intended destination. Hopefully, he might find Ben there.

  The quest for his brother, who had fled their Ohio farm home while still a boy in his mid-teens, following a turbulent scene with their father, was seemingly endless. It had taken him back and forth across the frontier in ceaseless fashion while he pursued various clues, ran down tips and investigated rumors that had come to him. So far his efforts had gone for naught; each time the person involved was clearly not Ben or else had moved on, leaving behind only the disturbing possibility that he might have been.

  He could be facing disappointment once again at Hagerman’s. That thought stirred him, caused him to shrug indifferently. He had grown accustomed to failure, had come to accept it philosophically, consider it a part of his way of life. He reckoned he could do little else, for his description of Ben, based on what he recalled of a boy now grown into a man ten years older than himself, was pitifully meager.

  And the name—Ben Starbuck—had no meaning. His brother, in seething, departing anger, had declared he not only was leaving home for all time to come but was also ridding himself of the family name and thus slashing forevermore all connection with Hiram Starbuck. Thus, Shawn had little of a concrete nature to go on except the presence of a small scar above his brother’s eye and a determination to one day find Ben, or proof of his death, and thereby settle old Hiram’s estate and claim his own rightful share.

  “You looking for company, cowboy?”

  Shawn, pulled from his thoughts, turned to face the woman who had moved up next to him at the bar. She was yellow-haired, had heavily rouged lips and cheeks, and wore a gaudy red and gold dress that clung to her body. He had noticed her earlier leaning against the railing of the gallery that ran the width of the saloon’s second floor.

  “My name’s Artha, and being company for lonesome cowpunchers is my business.”

  Starbuck grinned. It pulled down the corners of his eyes somewhat, reversed the studied gravity of his features and gave him an almost boyish look.

  “Maybe I look it but I’m no more lonesome than usual. Just doing some thinking.”

  The woman brushed at a loose strand of hair straggling across her forehead, motioned to the man behind the bar. “Nate, I’ll have a rye on my friend, here.”

  The bartender, a squat, red-faced man with a close cropped mustache, lifted his brows questioningly at Starbuck, reached for a bottle and glass when Shawn nodded. One of the men engaged in the two-handed poker game swore suddenly. His opponent laughed.

  “Thinking,” Artha said slowly. “Means you got yourself a girl somewheres and you’re doing some wishing.”

  “No, it was about my brother. I’m here looking for him.”

  Artha took up her glass, tossed off half its contents in a single gulp. “He here in Brasada? Could be I know him.”

  “Not exactly sure he is.”

  “So ... What’s he look like?”

  “Expect we sort of favor each other, but he’ll probably be some heavier. Eyes will be blue, real light maybe. Hair’ll be dark.”

  “Sounds like forty other jaspers I know,” the woman said bluntly. “He got a name?”

  “Ben Starbuck—but I doubt if he’ll be using that.”

  “Then how the hell—”

  “Good chance he calls himself Damon Friend.”

  Artha was quiet for a long minute while she swished the remainder of her drink about in the glass. Finally she shook her head. “Don’t ring no bells. Seems to me you don’t know much about him yourself.”

  “Been a long time since I saw him—ten years and a bit more. We were only kids then.” Shawn turned to the bartender hovering close by and listening. “You think maybe you’ve seen him?”

  Nate, the bartender, brushed the sweat off his face. “Hard to say. Ain’t much of a description, and there’s a lot of men riding through nowadays.”

  “He could have put on a boxing exhibition. Did in the last town where I managed to track him.”

  “Boxing ... You mean that fancy kind of fighting, like that man on the belt buckle you’re wearing?”

  Shawn nodded. “He’s put on matches to raise money a couple of times that I know of. Might have done it here.”

  Nate stroked his mustache, stared at the card players. “No, sure don’t recollect no such a exhibition, as you call it. You a fighter, too?”

  “Pa taught us both how to take care of ourselves. He was an expert at it—could have been a champion, I guess, had he wanted. Buckle belonged to him. Came to me when he died.”

  “What made you think this Ben would be here in Brasada?” Artha asked, downing the rest of her liquor.

  “Not exactly here that I was expecting to find him. Got a tip that a ma
n sort of answering the right description worked for a rancher named Hagerman—the Hash Knife outfit. You know where it is from here?”

  “Know!” Nate echoed. “Hagerman’s the reason there’s a town!”

  “Big spread, that it?” Starbuck’s hopes rose a notch. A ranch with a large number of hired hands always presented good possibilities.

  “Big ain’t the word for it,” Artha said caustically. “Two hundred thousand acres and Price Hagerman’s working for the day when he’ll have a steer standing on every last one. He’ll make it, too, if he don’t run out of meanness and bullets—which ain’t likely.”

  “Easy, now,” Nate murmured. “Long as there’s Hagerman’s, we’re in business.”

  The woman shrugged. “If there wasn’t, I’d just go somewheres else. Hagerman ain’t got no lease on my life. Pulls on his pants same way as any other man does.”

  Nate winked broadly at Starbuck. “And I reckon you sure ought to know, Artha,” he said, slyly.

  Her shoulders twitched again, gently rippling the smooth skin under its thin covering. “His money’s good as the next jasper’s ... You think your brother’s working for him?”

  “What I hope.”

  “Well, guess he could be. I don’t know all the hands on Hash Knife—must be fifty, maybe sixty of them. And there’s a couple other saloons in town. Some go there. All this talking—it worth another drink to you?”

  Shawn bobbed his head at Nate, leaned back against the long counter. He was a tall man, running to leanness, with dark hair that tended to curl along his neck when it was in need of trimming, as it was now. His brows were thick, overhung gray-blue eyes that appeared almost colorless in the shadowy lamplight. He seemed much older than his actual years, for the change had been sudden and it had taken but a short time for the hard way of life common to the frontier to convert the raw farm boy into a cool-nerved trail rider adept not only in the ordinary trades of the time but also in the science of staying alive in a world of violence where only the quick and the skilled moved safely.

  “Hoping you won’t go carrying tales about what Artha said.” Nate’s voice was hesitant, was burdened with a thread of worry. “She don’t mean nothing by it.”

  “Stops with me,” Starbuck answered. “If this Hagerman’s big as you claim, doubt if he ever pays much attention to what folks say about him, anyway.”

  “You can just bet he don’t!” the woman declared. “He likes it. Makes him feel taller. There’s some who even call him Mr. Texas!”

  Shawn grinned at her. “Maybe it fits.”

  “He likes to think it does, but there’s those who don’t—”

  “Never mind now, Artha,” Nate broke in. “Don’t go getting too wise.”

  “Somebody like him having enemies, that’s not new,” Shawn said, coming about and placing his empty mug on the bar. “Any time a man gets busy and makes something big of himself there’s always a few ready to start sniping at him.”

  “A few, maybe, but it ain’t usual for everybody to be doing it—even their own flesh and blood!” the woman snapped.

  Nate’s palm came down hard on the counter. “That’s aplenty now, Artha! You’ve shot off your mouth enough.”

  “His own kids—Ron and that Rhoda—they hate him like poison!”

  “You don’t know that,” the barman said. “You’re only guessing.”

  “Don’t have to guess. I been with Ron more’n once and I’ve listened to him bitch. Anyway, you can easy see it in them—way they act.” Artha paused long enough to drain her glass. “Know what? I got a feeling he hates them bad as they do him!”

  Starbuck rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Sounds like quite a family. Where does the mother fit?”

  “She’s dead—since the boy and his sister were only buttons, I’ve heard tell,” Nate said. “All live in a big, fancy house with a Mexican woman doing the cooking and housekeeping.”

  “Explains a lot,” Starbuck said idly. “Having a mother around makes a lot of difference. Always sort of keeps things in balance.”

  He was thinking of his own mother, Clare, in that moment. Matters had gone smoothly for the Starbuck family while she lived. A quiet, intelligent woman who had been a school teacher prior to marriage, she had been the buffer that stood firmly between her iron-fisted husband and their two sons. In a little more than a year after her death from lung fever, Ben had gone.

  He wiped at the moisture on his jaw. “Well, I don’t expect to have any truck with your Mr. Texas and his kin, only with his hired help.” Reaching into a pocket, he added: “How much I owe you?”

  “Dollar’ll cover it all—your beer and Artha’s rye.”

  Shawn dropped the coin on the counter. “How’s the best way to get to Hash Knife?”

  Nate had drawn up slowly, was looking toward the saloon’s entrance, a frown pulling at his features. An elderly man wearing knee high, flat heeled Hyer boots, with corded pants tucked into them, a white shirt with string tie, and a flat crowned hat was coming into the room. He carried cross-belted guns and there was a star pinned to his chest.

  “That’s Ira Blackburn, the marshal,” Nate said in a low voice. “Looks like he’s got something on his mind.”

  Two

  The lawman’s eyes, flat and filled with hostility, were on Starbuck. The tall rider sighed quietly. He had encountered that look before—one reserved for unwelcome drifters and suspected outlaws—and recognized in it the promise of trouble.

  “He’s probably thinking you’re the jaybird who’s supposed to have a bullet for Price Hagerman,” Artha murmured. “Figures every stranger that rides into town is the man.”

  Shawn watched Blackburn pull to a stop an arm’s reach away. The old lawman’s persimmon face was frozen. His mustache bristled.

  “Don’t recollect seeing you around here before,” he said.

  “First time,” Starbuck replied.

  “You got a name?”

  “Starbuck ... Shawn Starbuck.”

  The poker game in the corner of the saloon had come to a halt, both men now standing to get a better look at the proceedings. Nate, features expressionless, was leaning against the back bar.

  “Mind telling me what you’re doing in my town?”

  Shawn shifted irritably. He had nothing to hide but such confrontations always evoked a glow of anger within him. Some lawmen seemed to think they owned the town they represented and were privileged to challenge any and all who entered their precincts.

  “Looking for his brother,” Artha said, taking it upon herself to make a reply. “Figures he works for Hagerman.”

  Blackburn crossed his arms, the belligerence in him growing stronger. He considered Starbuck through narrowed eyes. “That so?”

  “The way it is.”

  “Brother’s name is Ben—or maybe he’s calling himself Damon Friend. He’s a fighter—a boxer, or whatever you call them fancy kind. Was asking if he could’ve put on a show here.”

  Shawn flicked the woman with an annoyed glance. Such details he had not intended for the lawman—or any lawman—to hear. Ben was wanted for murder in New Mexico Territory and information on him described him as a skilled boxer who likely staged exhibitions of the art.

  “A boxer, eh?” Blackburn murmured, expression still unchanging. “What makes you think he’s at Hagerman’s? Never heard no mention of them names, neither one.”

  “Word came to me,” Shawn replied, relieved that Artha’s revelation had raised no special interest in the old lawman. Either the New Mexico sheriff had not forwarded details of the charge standing against Ben this far east or Blackburn had simply forgotten.

  “Where you hail from?”

  “About any place you’d care to mention. Been looking for my brother for some time and every once in a while I have to stop, find myself a job and raise some cash. Sort of makes me a citizen of quite a few—”

  “I’m talking about your home—where you come from at the beginning.”

  “Ohio. T
own called Muskingum. My folks had a farm along the river.”

  “You prove that?”

  Impatience moved Starbuck. “I need to?” he asked in a level voice.

  For a first time there was a relenting in Ira Blackburn’s contentious attitude. He raised his left hand slowly, carefully, brushed his hat to the back of his head and wiped at the sweat collected on his brow.

  “No, reckon not—leastwise for the time being. Can’t see no call for you traipsing out to Hagerman’s, however. Like I said, there ain’t nobody out there by them names, far as I know.”

  “Best I see for myself, marshal.”

  “Why?” Hostility rose again in the lawman. “Ain’t my telling you enough?”

  “Not that. Happens I’m the only one who can recognize him. Not sure what he looks like, and he could be going under some name other than the ones I mentioned.”

  “Meaning you don’t know what he calls himself or what he looks like?”

  “About the size of it.”

  “Then how the hell you expect to ever find him?”

  “Only one sure way. There’s a scar over his left eye. Hid mostly by the brow, but it’s there. One thing for sure I can go by.”

  Ira Blackburn shrugged, cocked his head to one side. “Know what I’m thinking, mister?”

  “I can guess,” Shawn replied indifferently. “It won’t change a thing. Whether you believe me or not, it’s the truth—and I’m riding out to Hagerman’s place.”

  Again the marshal brushed at his forehead. “Well, there ain’t no lawful way I can stop you, but if you want some good advice, forget it.”

  “Can’t. Rode across a lot of country getting here. Not about to move on until I do what I came for.”

  Blackburn stared at Starbuck for a long breath and then, with a slight twitch of his shoulders, said, “Suit yourself,” pivoted and marched stiffly out of the saloon.

  Artha laughed derisively. “There goes the toughest lawman in Texas!”

  “Was once,” Nate said, shaking his head at her. “Was a time when he walked plenty tall—Abilene, Wichita, San Antone and the like. Wore a star right along with the best of them.”