Wanted: Dead or Alive

  WANTED:

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  A Western Duo

  WANTED:

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  A Western Duo

  RAY HOGAN

  Cover design by Djamika Smith

  Book design © 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover art © RonBailey / iStock. © attitude1 / Adobe Stock

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Library e-book ISBN: 978-1-5047-8707-9

  Trade e-book ISBN: 978-1-5047-8708-6

  CIP data for this book is available from

  the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Contents

  Between Life and Death

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  Wanted: Dead or Alive

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  Between Life and Death

  I

  Dade Lockett drew the big chestnut gelding he was riding to a quick halt in the deep brush. The muted thud of horses walking nearby had come to him through the darkening hush arousing instantly the quick caution that countless days and nights on remote and lonely trails instills in all men. Silent, broad hand resting lightly on the worn butt of the pistol on his hip, he waited, listened. Somewhere ahead in the valley he was entering, a cow lowed mournfully, and high above it a limp, ragged column of crows winging westward etched themselves blackly against the gray sky.

  He heard the sound again, this time more distinct and accompanied by the dry swish of displaced branches whipping back into place. Fingers tightening about the handle of his weapon, he fixed his eyes on a dense stand of oak brush off to his right where the noise seemed to originate. He froze as a voice cut through the stillness.

  “Forget it, mister!”

  Lockett allowed his hand to slide away, hang at his side. There were two of them, and they had come in on him from opposite points that indicated they had spotted him before he had become aware of their presence. He settled back gently, swore; both were wearing flour sacks over their heads in which holes had been cut for eyes and mouths—night riders.

  The pair closed in, one to the left, the other to his right. The sacks, bleached bone white in the failing light, had a draw string that held them snugly about the neck and allowed the lower portion, slashed at the sides, to spread over the shoulders. These were no spur-of-the-moment, makeshift masks, Dade realized; undoubtedly they were being used regularly. Their horses, ordnary-looking bays, were unbranded, as could be expected. He studied the riders briefly, shrugged.

  “Well, what’s on your mind?”

  The man on his offside leaned forward, rested a forearm on the horn of his saddle. “Don’t go getting wise with us or we’ll mighty quick show you,” he said in a hard voice. “Now, what’re you doing here?”

  “Riding through.”

  “To where?”

  Lockett shook his head. He was on open range as far as he knew, and unless somebody’d got around to changing the custom, a man had the right to travel across such land as long as he did no damage and caused no trouble. “Don’t see as it’s any put-in of yours where I’m …”

  “Making it my put-in!” the masked rider snapped, and reached for the coil of rope hanging from his saddle.

  Dade Lockett smiled bleakly. “Now, if you’re thinking about using that on me, best you change your mind,” he drawled, his voice low, almost kind.

  The man hesitated, glanced at his partner. “There’s two of us, only one of you,” he said. “You figure you can handle them odds?”

  “I reckon. One thing for sure, when you get done making your move there’ll only be one of us left and it’ll be me or your friend there. Sure won’t be you.”

  “Leave off the rope,” the rider on the right said. His voice sounded deeper, more muffled. “Ain’t no call for it near as I can see. Says he’s riding through, maybe that’s what he’s doing.”

  “Then why’s he so god-damn’ jumpy about answering questions?”

  “Expect it’s them flour sacks,” Lockett said mildly. “Always had me a sort of a thing about talking to somebody I couldn’t see. Now, were you to pull them off …”

  “Nope, guess not,” the second man said. “This here place you’re riding through to … it around close?”

  “Place I’m heading for ain’t so close, it being Tucson. Where I’m going right this minute I ain’t sure.”

  “Could it be to some folks named Raker?”

  “Raker? Never heard of them. I was told there was a town called Mule Springs, however.”

  Silence greeted that. Finally the man with the rope said: “What’re you going there for? You got yourself a job of some kind lined up?”

  Dade grinned, wagged his head. “You sure got the knack for asking questions that ain’t none of your business.”

  “I’m making it my business.”

  “Then I suppose we’d just better figure on going ’round and ’round. Who’ll open the ball, you or me?”

  “Never mind,” the other rider cut in wearily. “Ain’t no call for this … and it’s getting late. We’ve got something else better to do. Mister, you say you’re just plain riding through, that go for Mule Springs, too?”

  “Far as I’m concerned.”

  “Then move on. We ain’t going to give you no trouble long as you keep going.”

  “Well, I sure thank you. It’s mighty seemly,” Lockett said dryly. “Yes, sir, it purely is.”

  The rider to his left swore angrily. “You looky here, saddle bum! If you …”

  “Easy,” Dade said, raising his hands in mock protest. “Just showing how much I appreciate what you fellows are doing for me. Were I you, however, I’d get on about that business your partner was mentioning. I’ve got me a funny feeling that if we’re together much longer, things are going to start happening and I sure don’t want to be responsible for that.”

  The rider cursed again, spurred forward. “By God, I ain’t …”

  “Aw, come on, let’s get going,” his partner said, quickly riding in between the two. “Rest of the boys’re probably waiting on us.”

  The masked man swung off, muttering oaths. His friend cut in beside him, looked back to Dade. “Mule Springs is about a dozen miles straight south. Head out.”

  Lockett made no reply, simply watched the pair fade off into the brush. Somebody was due for trouble, he reckoned, remembering what had been said; visits from hooded night riders were never sociable affairs. After a moment he glanced to the sky. A while yet until full dark, and
the man had said it was around twelve miles to the town where he’d intended to rent himself a room in a hotel, spend a night in a real bed, under a ceiling for a change. He guessed he could still make it if he pushed right along.

  Gauging his directions by the flare hanging in the west, he moved on, thoughts again shifting to the masked men. Everybody had trouble, it seemed—including him. His had begun three years ago and centered on a man named Pete Dillard. He’d been just past twenty then, and Dillard around double that. But Pete had had a way about him that wiped out the age difference, and being wise and smooth and expert in many things, he had drawn Dade Lockett to him. They had knocked about together for a time and then the opportunity had come to hit it big—to get rich. A stagecoach carrying close to $50,000 was making a run from one of the Colorado mining towns to Denver. There’d been no hold-ups in the area for years, Dillard had learned, and the coach would have no extra guards. Relieving it of all the gold would be a lead-pipe cinch.

  They’d laid plans, or rather Pete Dillard, the expert, had, and the stagecoach was duly stopped and robbed. The only thing wrong was that there was nearer $2,000 in gold coin in the strongbox, than $50,000, and then afterward, during the escape from a posse quickly formed, Dade caught a bullet that knocked him off the saddle while another killed his horse. Dillard had not paused to give the help he could so easily have rendered, had instead hurried on with the gold and left Lockett to the posse, and to a judge who, a month or so later, sentenced him to a two-year term in the territorial prison. Bitter, disillusioned, his hatred for Pete Dillard had increased with each passing day spent behind the high, grim walls of the reformatory, and when his time was finally finished and he was once again a free man, he set out to right the wrong he felt had been done him.

  Working his way down into New Mexico, he found himself a job on a Río Arriba cattle ranch, built up his tack as well as his poke. Then, ready at last, he bought the horse he was riding from the rancher for whom he rode and started on the search for Pete Dillard. His so-called friend and partner was somewhere in Arizona Territory, according to a rumor he had picked up. Likely he would be found in the Tucson area; he had spoken of the town, had a yen someday to have himself a ranch close by. It was a long shot, Dade realized, but it was all he had to go on, and, bearing that in mind, he took pains to make inquiries for Dillard in all of the settlements and at the ranches he encountered along the way. It would take time, perhaps years, for during the three that had elapsed since the stagecoach robbery, Pete Dillard could have moved about considerably.

  It didn’t matter to Dade; one thing he had learned in prison was a bitter sort of patience of a kind that caused him to look upon the world and all who populated it with hard, sardonic humor. Someday he’d find Pete, and when he did, he’d collect his half of the stolen gold for which he had paid with two years of his life—and then he’d kill Pete Dillard for leaving him behind to die when he could so easily have helped him escape. He had it all worked out. Pete would die but it would be in a manner that would not cause him again to face prison. While waiting for the day to come, he had spent time and effort in honing his already considerable abilities with a six-gun; it would simply be a matter of calling out Dillard, forcing him to draw, and shooting him down. That way the law would let it pass, it having been a fair contest with the faster man the winner. But that would come only after he had collected his share of the gold.

  Lockett drew the gelding to a halt once more. A light, soft and yellowish, was ahead through the trees—a ranch, or some squatter. He’d stop there, ask a few questions concerning Dillard, and move on if the answers were the same as all those received before when he’d paused along the way to inquire … A few more minutes reaching Mule Springs would make no big difference.

  II

  Lockett moved on through the brush, almost a solid wall of mock-orange, doveweed, and briar bush at that point, broke finally into the open. With the chestnut tossing his head and snorting from the clawing branches, Dade again drew to a stop. The valley now lay before him, a broad, sweeping expanse rimmed by fairly high ridges to the east and west, limitless plains to the south and north. The amber light of day’s end lay upon it all in a gentle glow, but in the washes and other hollows darkness was now beginning to build. Lockett sat motionlessly for a time, drinking in the scene while the long, deep loneliness that occasionally touched him came, placed its stillness within him, and then as his eyes drifted on to settle upon the small ranch house just ahead, the remoteness that gripped him became more pronounced.

  He had never known the warmth and love of a home such as this represented. That it was small, appeared in gross disrepair, and presented only the poorest of aspects, did not matter; it by far surpassed the string of orphanages he had known as a boy, struggling to grow up in one of the larger Eastern cities. And looking at it now, seeing the peaceful, friendly glow of lamplight in the windows, smelling the good smell of wood smoke curling up into the gathering night sky, he was moved as always to think of what he had missed in life—of what might have been. But such thoughts were without rancor; there was no one to blame, that had simply been his lot and he accepted it now as he had done while a boy. But there had always been hope and for such he had looked when he grew large enough to escape the sooted, cold buildings and brick streets of his birthplace and make his way west to the frontier where there was excitement, adventure, and fortunes to be had.

  It was a different world, he discovered, but one that posed the identical problem he’d faced before—that of survival. In this the raw, new West was no different from the cold, bloodless East; it was a matter of holding your own against all comers or be ground under, and this Dade Lockett did, filling his swiftly passing young years with time in the gambling halls, the wild trail towns, the roaring gold camps, the noisy saloons. And then one day he’d met Pete Dillard. Lockett shook off his dark thoughts. Tipping back his head, he sniffed the still, warm air. Coffee boiling on a stove. Fresh bread. Frying meat. At once he roweled the chestnut. Maybe he could wangle an invitation to a good supper, or, if necessary, buy himself a seat at the rancher’s table. In either instance the answer could be no worse than a flat no, and a man telling him that’d sure get no … A spatter of gunshots ripped through the hush. Lockett hauled up short as half a dozen riders, white cloths over their heads showing up ghostlike in the gloom, burst from the line of brush to the east of the yard, firing as they came.

  Dade swore, settled back to watch. This was the unlucky rancher the night riders had planned to visit. Evidently the two he’d run into were scouting the area prior to the actual raid. They probably thought he was someone, a hired gun perhaps, the rancher had hired on to help him fight. The raiders surged toward the house in a fairly straight line, triggering their pistols at whatever struck them as targets. A sudden splash of light fell across the yard as the door to the house was flung open. A man, young, possibly even a boy from his bearing, ran into view, a rifle in his hands. He dropped to one knee on the hardpan, began firing at the masked riders. They broke formation at once, and swung apart into several directions.

  Another figure came through the doorway. A girl. She looked to be about the same age as the boy. She had what appeared to be a single-barreled shotgun, and, bracing it against her shoulder, she released a blast at the nearest raider. It was a clean miss, for the man at whom the load of shot was aimed gave no indication of having been hit, but continued on. Yells sounded from the rear of the house. A third person, an old man with bowed legs, white hair shining in the weak light, was crossing the yard at a shambling run. He evidently had been in the bunkhouse when the attack started, and was trying now to join with the other members of the family. A hooded rider, sweeping around the corner of the low-roofed structure, swerved in his course, spurring his mount directly for the oldster. The horse, instinctively striving to avoid hitting the man, shied wildly but his rider savagely jerked him back on course. He struck the old man a glancing blow, knocked him into a
pile of split wood near the back door of the house.

  Lockett frowned, turned his attention back to the front. The boy was down, sprawled in the dust. The girl had snatched up the rifle, was frantically attempting to lever a fresh cartridge into its chamber. The mechanism had jammed and she was having no luck—nor would she, Dade knew; the particular weapon involved was well known for its tendency to falter. The night riders began to shout back and forth among themselves, laughing, making jokes. The one who had downed the old man cut back to rejoin his companions, now closing in on the girl in a half circle.

  “Get a torch, somebody!” a voice shouted. “Might as well do this up right.”

  “There’s burning wood ’round back.”

  “Get some!” the first voice directed. “We’ll be corralling the gal.”

  The girl threw the useless rifle aside, began to back toward the house. Two of the riders spurred toward her.

  “Whoa-up, lady!” the one to her left shouted, laughing. “Ain’t no cause for you being scared!”

  “No, ma’am!” the other added. “We’re just aiming to have us a little fun with you. You sure won’t mind that none, will you?”

  The girl stumbled over the old shotgun. She stooped, grabbed it by the barrel, prepared to swing it as a club. “Stay back!” she warned.

  The two men halted before her, laughing. Other riders in the yard had paused to watch. “There ain’t no use you acting that way,” one called. “It’s all coming out the same in the end, anyways!”

  Dade Lockett, a man not inclined ever to horn in on another’s affairs, scrubbed angrily at the stubble on his jaw. Getting himself mixed up in a quarrel like this was the last thing he wanted. He had his own plans, his own problems, and they certainly didn’t include bucking up against a bunch of hooded night riders. Still, having spent all of his cognizant life with the short end of the string as his lot, he had a natural affinity for the underdog, and, too, the odds were all wrong. The two men on the place were both down and now the band of raiders were moving in to grab the girl, carry her off to somewhere for their amusement. It was pretty hard to look the other way, and he reckoned he’d best break his rule this one time and see if he couldn’t put a stop to at least what was about to happen to the girl. Then he could ride on.