Montana Revenge Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  BAKER QUESTIONS A FEW BOYS . . .

  “Anyone who knows anything about this lynching and don’t come forth will be prosecuted with the lynchers. That will be a murder charge, too.” . . .

  “Maybe them Mannons can answer that,” a boy in his late teens spoke up.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Danny Egelstone.” He removed his bowler hat in an instant. His freckled face shone in the midday sun.

  “Why would they know?”

  “He stole their horse—sir.”

  “Guess you boys would all testify in court to that . . . ?”

  “We-we never saw that part—” Egelstone turned back to the others, and they all shook their heads.

  “Wonder why he’d steal a horse anyway, he had one of his own?”

  Hats shook again, and they all looked down at their boots and brogans acting uncomfortable.

  Titles by Dusty Richards

  THE HORSE CREEK INCIDENT

  MONTANA REVENGE

  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.

  MONTANA REVENGE

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / September 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Dusty Richards.

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-0-425-21758-0

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  PROLOGUE

  A PATCH of light from the open schoolhouse window shone on the ground a few feet away from the pair. From inside the building, the sawing of Jake Iver’s fiddle strings playing “Sally Good’n” sliced the breathless hot night air. Voices of the dancers and sounds of the activities going on inside carried out into the school yard crowded with parked rigs and hitched horses.

  “Hush your mouth before someone hears us.”

  “I never—”

  “Did you see that damn Texan Hanks in there dancing with my girl?”

  “Hell, yes, let go of my shirt. You’re going to tear it.”

  “I want him dead. He ain’t taking her away from me— no way.”

  “What can you do about it?”

  “Go get’cher brother. Before this night’s over that sumbitch is going to be popping up daisies.”

  “How’re you ever going to kill him and get away with it?”

  “You leave the thinking to me.”

  “You’ll have us all hanging.”

  “That’s it. Hang the sumbitch.” His steely eyes glared at the window.

  “Damnit—you ain’t thinking about what’ll happen to us—”

  “Hell with that. Go get your brother, we’ve got work to do.”

  Two hours later, the smell of sour vomit filled the air and the wind carried an aroma of the approaching storm. Thunder growled like a deep-throated bear galloping toward them. Lightning lines danced on the western horizon and illuminated the Texan’s still body suspended by the rope around his neck.

  “Quit puking!”

  “Ah, damnit to hell.” More dry heaves. Then tears ran down the boy’s face in the darkness. “I never figured it would take him that long to die. Hell, oh, I don’t ever—”

  “Shut up. Now we need a note to pin on him. You sneak up to the schoolhouse. Dance’s over. Get some paper and make a note says ‘horse thief’ on it.”

  “I can’t spell that.”

  “What can you spell?”

  “Hoss stealer.”

  “That ought to work. Now we can’t let anyone see this pocket watch or his knives. I can get rid of ’em.”

  “How much money he have on him?”

  “Close to ten bucks.”

  “Do we really need a note?”

  “Hell, yes, we hung us a horse thief and the world needs to know it.”

  “Oh, God, I hope this works.”

  “It will. Get to cutting.” The leader gave him a shove to start him off. “That rain’s a’coming.”

  The boy mounted up and rode off.

  The third one shook his head. “I didn’t like you crippling his good horse.”

  “You’re too young to understand. Just keep your damn mouth shut. Our lives depend on it.”

  “Pa ever hears about it, we all may be dead, anyway.”

  “Will you shut up.”

  Thunder rumbled across the rolling plains. Wind rustled through the box elders and cottonwoods. The second one finally returned with the note. With the paper pinned on their victim’s shirt at last, the three rode off leading the extra horse.

  ONE

  THUNDER rumbled like a wagonload of loose potatoes over the house’s roof. Herschel sat up in bed and listened above the rush of hard-hitting rain tearing at the house. Heckuva storm outside—but something else had wakened him. He turned an ear to listen.

  “What is it?” His wife Marsha b
olted up beside him and swept the lock of stray hair back from her forehead.

  “Someone’s downstairs at the front door shouting for me,” he said, concerned, and threw the covers back.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  He struck a match and checked his pocket watch. “Three in the morning.” With a shake of his head, he blew the match out and continued to dress in the darkness while she lit a lamp. Who in the world wanted him at this time of night? No telling. This was one of the drawbacks of being the sheriff.

  “Wonder who’s down there,” she said in a hushed voice. His wife of six months put on her robe. She was the light of his life, more than his new job, more than all his plans to bring equal justice to Montana.

  “I have no idea,” he said, finished dressing. “But something must be bad wrong.”

  The lightning flash filled the house’s interior as he hurried down the steps to answer the persistent pounding on the front door. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  “Oh, Sheriff Baker—” the shorter man said when Herschel opened the front door for him. “You’ve got to do something. They’ve murdered poor Billy Hanks.”

  “Come in here, Cove. What’s this about a murder?” Herschel used his shoulder to close the door behind the familiar rancher from north of Billings, and then went to light a lamp. Shaking the match out, he replaced the chimney and looked at the drenched man holding his sodden hat at his side. Puddles had begun to gather on Marsha’s polished wood floor beneath the tail of Cove Tipton’s canvas duster.

  “Evening, ma’am,” Tipton said to Marsha, who was descending the staircase in her robe. “Sorry to bother you so late.”

  “No problem, Cove,” she said, and smiled at him.

  “There’s been a murder,” Herschel said to her when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  She stopped and nodded calmly, but looked taken aback by the news. “Sorry to hear that. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Good idea, we’ll need some. Give me your coat and hat,” Herschel said to Tipton. “How was Hanks killed?”

  “He was hung.” Tipton looked around to be certain they were alone. “Oh, Lord, Herschel, it was the worst thing I ever rode up on. Him twisting on that rope in the wind and all—”

  “I’m sure it was tough. Was he still warm?”

  “What do you mean?” Tipton handed Herschel his duster and hat.

  “I mean, was his body still warm when you got there?” He hooked the coat and hat on the wall pegs. Though it knifed his conscience, there was nothing he could do about the water on Marsha’s floor.

  “I don’t remember,” said Tipton.

  “That’s fine. Any idea why someone would want to hang Billy?” He herded the balding man into the lighted kitchen.

  “No—I can’t think of a soul. He was just a fun-loving cowboy.”

  Herschel pulled out a chair at the table for Tipton and nodded to Marsha, who had finished stoking her range and was dipping water out of the reservoir to fill her granite pot.

  “Water’s still hot. Shouldn’t take much to get it boiling,” she said.

  “Good, I’ll watch it,” Herschel said. “Better go see about the girls. They may be upset.”

  She agreed with a nod and left them.

  “Did I do that—” Tipton started to get up, but Herschel waved him down.

  “They’ll be fine. You need to start back at the beginning.”

  Tipton swept his thin, gray-streaked hair back with his hands and looked at the table as if he didn’t know where to begin. “There was a dance last night up at the Sharky Schoolhouse. Afterward, I drove the widow, Missus Wynne, home in her buggy, and then I was riding my horse back to my place when I saw his body swinging there on a tree when the lightning struck close by.”

  “Any trouble up there at the dance tonight?”

  “Oh, that big Swede Yarman got a little tipsy and loud. We sent him home early. It was a pretty peaceful dance, all in all.”

  “Is Hanks’s body still up there?”

  “Oh, no. I cut him down and he’s out there over my horse.” Tipton gave an involuntary shudder.

  The pot on the range had begun to boil. Marsha wasn’t back, so Herschel rose and added ground coffee to the boiling water. “His horse wasn’t around?”

  “Never seen it—who’d do such a thing—” Thunder cut Tipton’s words off, and the house shook hard enough that the china dishes rattled on the shelves.

  “Cove, I have no idea, but I guess I’m going to have to find out.” Herschel took his seat across from the man. Visions of the happy-go-lucky Texas cowboy Billy Hanks went through his thoughts. Handsome. Wavy, dark brown hair. Devil-may-care attitude—Billy rode some tough broncs at the city park contests. Polite, but always with an eye for the ladies. Worked for the Bar 9. Never in any trouble—oh, a scuffle or two—but that was just young-fella stuff. He’d come up from the Lone Star State with a herd of cattle and, like Herschel had earlier, had obviously liked Montana and stayed. “Coffee will be done here in a few minutes. Then we better go wake up the coroner.”

  Looking prim and proper, Marsha returned wearing a blue checkered dress and inspected his handiwork in the pot as she put on an apron. “Girls are fine. Getting dressed. I see you’ve fixed it—” A new blast of rain slashed the house. The windows became instant bright lights and the rain’s loud voice rolled off down the valley. “Oh, I’ll be glad when all this storming is gone.”

  “Sure good for the grass,” Tipton put in.

  “If a rancher ain’t wanting rain, it’d be a strange day, wouldn’t it?” Herschel sat back and squeezed his chin. Who would want to kill that boy? Much less hang him? Oh, well, he’d have to figure it out—somehow.

  “I could use less fury when it rains.” Marsha busied herself putting skillets on the stove and getting out a sack of flour. “You two men will eat breakfast before you run off, won’t you?”

  Herschel agreed with a nod. “Maybe the rain will let up by then and it won’t be so stormy.”

  “Oh, I found this, too, pinned on him.” The rancher drew out a piece of paper. The damp sheet was from a tablet that children used in school with lines for cursive writing. Using his hand, Tipton flattened it out on the table. HOSS STEELER was hand-printed on it in big letters with a pencil. The S’s were backward.

  “They weren’t very smart. Couldn’t write or spell very good.” Tipton used his index finger to point it out.

  Herschel nodded. Or they wanted the reader to think that. At this point, he wasn’t certain of anything. “When did it start raining up there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I only saw him ’cause of the lightning, but it hadn’t rained there then. Why?”

  “Guess I’ll have to ask a million questions to ever solve this. This paper is dry. Or almost.”

  “Yeah. Got a little wet in my pocket. Sorry.”

  “No problem. I am trying to piece this all together.” He stopped and smiled at his oldest stepdaughter, Kate, age ten, who’d entered the kitchen. “How are you this morning, Kate? You know Mr. Tipton?”

  She nodded quickly and made a small smile for the man. “We’ve met—Mother said that Billy Hanks was murdered last night?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “My, he was sure a nice cowboy.” She wrinkled her nose. “I have to go milk now, you will excuse me?”

  “Yes, and I’ll be back later to pitch the hay,” Herschel said.

  “Oh, I can do it.” She turned and spoke softly to her mother, who was busy making biscuits. Then she lit the small lantern and took the tin bucket from the sink. With a swish of her blondish braids, she was gone out onto the back porch to put on her rain gear.

  “You’ve sure got some nice young girls in your marriage to Marsha.”

  Herschel agreed. From a bachelor rancher’s life to the stepfather of three young girls, plus sheriff of Yellowstone County—things had changed fast in his life over the past six months.

  “Got him a handful of headaches,” Marsh
a said, popping the pan of floury biscuits into the oven. The aroma of bacon cooking filled the kitchen while she swept around the men filling their cups.

  “It’s a good handful,” Herschel said, stretching his arms over his head and sharing a wink with his wife.

  “I’ve been to Herschel’s cabin down on the ranch before the fire and he never had nothing like this.” With a wave of his hand, Tipton indicated the kitchen and the house.

  “Shh,” Herschel said, holding his finger to his mouth. “Folks will think I’m on the take.”

  “Naw, they know you better than that. But this sheriff business, I can see, is going to be a tough job for you.” Tipton nodded and chewed on his lip. “You want to keep this paper?”

  “Yes, that’s evidence.”

  “I just figured you’d better read it.”

  “I need all the evidence I can get—you think Hanks was stealing horses?”

  “Why would he? Had that good sorrel he rode. He never acted sneaky to me. I’d bet Paul up at the Bar 9’ll say that’s a lie, too.” Tipton jabbed his index finger at the note.

  Herschel accepted the man’s words with a nod. Damn lynchings anyhow. Slow-acting law and short sentences had added up to lots of vigilante activity in the Montana Territory. He’d hoped to stop them in his jurisdiction and here was the first one, not sixty days into the job. Was this lynching really over horse stealing, or a convenient murder? Wouldn’t be the first lynching done as a cover-up. The thunder growled farther away, and Herschel felt better about the weather and Kate being alone out at the barn.

  “You liking living up here in town, Marsha?” Tipton asked her.

  “Oh, yes and no. That ranch down there was my home for several years. Now this place must become that.” Busy turning bacon, she smiled back at the rancher.

  He turned to Herschel. “You liking law work better than ranching?”

  “I guess. I chose it.”

  “You certainly did and lots of us small fellas are glad. Who’s taking care of the ranch?”

  “I sold mine to buy this place, and we have a family down there taking care of things at Marsha’s outfit. Matson’s their name, come well recommended.”