Rage for Vengeance Read online

  Dear fans,

  Thanks for your support and letters. The Chet Byrnes Ranch series rides on. Life and times of a man and his extended family forced to move from Texas by a bloody feud to the Arizona Territory. In the mid-1870s his family and associates work hard on the empire building of the Quarter Circle Z in the vast region that ranges from the sparse spiny cactus desert to the vast ponderosa pine forests of the high country.

  I appreciate your thoughts. There are more of these books coming. Currently all of the books in this series are available.

  Your emails are great. If you have any questions, comments, I will sure try to answer your email. If you like it, please rate the novel on Amazon. Helps my sales and I’ll write more of these books for those of you who follow me.

  Thanks and God Bless

  Dusty Richards

  [email protected]

  dustyrichards.com

  Pinnacle Westerns by Dusty Richards

  The O’Malleys of Texas

  THE O’MALLEYS OF TEXAS

  DEAD AIM

  The Byrnes Family Ranch

  RAGE FOR VENGEANCE

  SHARPSHOOTER

  VALLEY OF BONES

  DEADLY IS THE NIGHT

  PRAY FOR THE DEAD

  ARIZONA TERRITORY

  A GOOD DAY TO KILL

  AMBUSH VALLEY

  BROTHERS IN BLOOD

  BLOOD ON THE VERDE RIVER

  BETWEEN HELL AND TEXAS

  TEXAS BLOOD FEUD

  DUSTY RICHARDS

  RAGE FOR VENGEANCE

  A BYRNES FAMILY RANCH WESTERN

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 Dusty Richards

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4323-1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4324-8

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4324-5

  This book is dedicated to a great spokesman and author of western fiction my dear friend Cotton Smith

  There’s an empty place at the campfire tonight.

  Cotton lived and breathed the West,

  and filled the pages of his many books with

  authentic themes of the life he loved.

  He knew the desert by heart from endless

  research as well as long trail rides

  with the Desert Caballeros.

  When he was President of Western Writers

  of America, the organization moved into

  a modern vision we shared to better serve

  our many members and readers.

  Cotton will be there when we get to that

  great pasture in the sky, welcoming us with

  his rich voice and telling us the coffee’s done.

  Until then, he will be greatly missed.

  God bless his lovely wife, Sonya,

  his family, and his many fans.

  A true warrior of the pen has left us. Amen.

  CHAPTER 1

  The sulfurous smell of gun smoke plus sagebrush stung his nose. Chet Byrnes rose up to look over the upset buckboard bed and with his Colt .45 blazed away at the distant shooters. Behind him, Cole Emerson, the young man who rode with him, was crawling back uphill, attempting to keep low in the sagebrush and bunchgrass after recovering the rifle thrown from their buckboard wreck while they tried to outrun the would-be shooters.

  A few infrequent wild shots from the attackers kicked up dust around Chet, and one struck the wood of the bed. They were too far away to do much damage with handguns. Belly-down on top of the rise east of them were the three masked men who, on horseback, had charged the two of them on the buckboard traveling west. Mid-day the glaring sun bore down hot. Their racing buckboard must have struck something, upset and threw both men and the bed off the frame. Their team of horses lost no time heading west with the empty trucks hitting the high spots.

  Cole took a seat on the ground behind the upright bed and levered a cartridge in the rifle’s chamber. “This gun appears to be all right. Where are they at?”

  “There is tall stalk standing up there; one of them is on your right side of that stem and belly-down. Aim low.” Chet finished reloading cartridges in his own Colt.

  Cole nodded and gained his feet to standing behind the upset wagon bed. He laid the rifle barrel on the wood side, took aim, and fired.

  Results were a man screamed in the cloud of dust set off by the bullet on the rim line. “I’m hit, boys. Get them.”

  Another stick figure rose with a smoking revolver. Cole took aim and his second shot struck the shooter and sent him down. He ducked to reload with a smile at Chet. “You see number three?”

  “No, not yet. Bet he won’t expose himself now we have the rifle. My dad always said don’t send a boy when you needed a man. Good shooting.”

  “He may have fled.”

  “Yes. I think he got the hell off that ridge.” Chet listened and could hear a horse running off, no doubt with the last attacker aboard.

  Cole handed him the rifle. “I’ll go try to catch our horses.”

  “Meanwhile, I’ll go see if they can talk and tell us anything.”

  Cole gave him a concerned frown. “Watch them. Wounded snakes can bite.”

  “Oh yes, I know all about that. Wonder why they tried to rob us?” Chet asked.

  Amused by the question, Cole chuckled. “We must have looked rich. Damned if I know, Chet.”

  “Maybe we both should go up there and check on them. I’d bet their saddle horses are up there. That team ran off maybe as far away as Center Point waiting for us by now.”

  Chet laughed. “How much of these so-called robberies are we going to have when we are up and running this stage line that we’re trying to get ready for?”

  “This whole road is isolated, and I guess t
he criminal element holding out up here has no one to stop them until we take a hand in doing that.”

  “Your brother-in-law at the Windmill Ranch, Sarge, covers part of this route driving contract cattle every month to the Navajos for us. Does he have much trouble?”

  “I bet Sarge just handles them if they are dumb enough to try him. He probably leaves them for the buzzards.”

  Amused, digesting Chet’s words, Cole nodded. “I bet he simply does that. Your sister’s husband is a tough quiet guy, and he takes the ranch’s monthly cattle drives damn serious.”

  “He sure does a great job of getting them there on time at it too.”

  They were climbing up the steep slopes through the knee-high sagebrush and grass-clad slope to reach the ridge. Guns in hand, he and Cole both kept an eye on their destination on the top.

  “You hurting?” he asked Cole.

  “Not bad. But I bet we’re both sore in the morning. Lucky we flew off through the air when that bed overturned in our wreck.”

  “My wings aren’t as good as they used to be for cushioning a landing.” Chet’s hip was sore where he hit on it.

  “Hell, mine too. I can see the first guy, and he looks alive.”

  Cole started to the left, leaving Chet with the wounded outlaw lying on the ground. He could see their two bay saddle horses grazing through their bits a short ways away. Good. He was not made for much walking after being tossed out of a wagon. They’d have something to carry them to the next stage stop on the route. He knelt and felt for the man’s pulse on his neck. Nothing. The unshaven kid looked pretty ragged. He turned him on his back. Besides, he needed a haircut and a bath, which he’d probably not get before his funeral was held.

  “This guy is alive,” Cole shouted.

  “Coming. This one isn’t taking in air anymore.”

  Cole gave a head toss back to the other. “I made sure he was disarmed and asked him who he was. He said he ain’t answering questions.”

  Obviously, from the bloody shirt, the outlaw’d been shot in the right shoulder. The scraggy bearded man in his twenties looked in pain seated on the ground.

  “We can leave you here to die. We want answers or else . . . ?” Chet told him.

  “Go to hell.”

  Bent over, Chet grabbed a handful of his shirt and jerked him up in his face. “How about some pancake cactus spines under your fingernails? I can make you real uncomfortable, and I am not messing around with saving you either. Now who are you?”

  “Johnny Duncan—Texas—what are you bastards going to do to me?”

  “Probably cut your throat. What were you three after?”

  “A man said he’d pay us well if you two never got back to civilization.”

  “Who was that man?”

  “I don’t have a real name—” Pain cut his words off.

  “Then how were you going to collect the money?”

  “He said he’d meet us Friday and pay us a hundred dollars apiece.”

  “Where? At Horse Head Crossing?”

  “Yeah. Longhorn Saloon. Wore a brown suit coat. Boss of the Plains Hat. Gray mustache. Maybe forty. I think he was a gambler.”

  “Scars?”

  “Top of his right hand been bad burned a long time ago.”

  “No name?”

  “He never gave it.”

  “How much money was he going to pay you?”

  “I told you. A hundred dollars apiece.”

  “It don’t sound like anyone I know,” Cole said.

  Chet agreed.

  “I can catch their horses and ride up to the next station. Get some help and bring back a conveyance for him in a few hours,” Cole said.

  “You do that. Who got away?” he asked the outlaw.

  “A kid named Soapy Jones. I knew he had no guts for this deal, but he made an extra gun. Rod Place over there came up here with me from Texas. Heard they needed cowboys. Hell, there ain’t no cows up here. We’ve about starved.”

  “How did you meet this guy in the suit?”

  “We built some fence for another guy over by Saint Johns. When we met him the three of us really needed a drink and a little loving from a dove. He offered us twenty bucks apiece to start this deal. Paid us that money and promised us a hundred more to each of us if we stopped you and him—that guy just now went after the horses.”

  “How did you recognize us?”

  “Oh, he had good photographs of you and some pretty little Mexican gal all dressed up.”

  “That was my wife. Was there a name of who made the photo?”

  “I never noticed. He had another of that guy with you and another pretty woman holding a boy.”

  “That was his wife, Valerie, and my son Rocky who she is raising.” Rocky was the boy Chet had fathered back in Texas.

  “You looked like them pictures.”

  “Don’t guess he ever said how he got those photos?” Chet asked him.

  “No, but they were good pictures. He said you’d be coming back through here shortly on horseback or buckboard.”

  Cole was back leading the horses. “I’ll ride on west. Get some help.”

  “Ride easy. Duncan here saw pictures of us that guy had. The ones taken of you, Valerie, Liz, Rocky, and me that we had made. I guess by the traveling photographer who came by Center Point. What was that a month ago?”

  Cole shook his head. “About that long ago. Wonder how he got them?”

  “The guy hired them must be moving up and down our stage line. I have a description . . . now we need to find him. He paid them twenty apiece and promised a hundred more for each one of them if we were disposed of.”

  “Don’t tell my wife . . . she may want to collect it for herself.”

  “Cole Emerson, you know better than that.”

  He was smiling and nodding while handing Chet the reins to the second horse. No way that that boy’s wife would take a reward for killing them. She might shoot the guys who did it but not him.

  “There’s a pint of whiskey in the right hand saddlebag on the horse you got,” Duncan said. “I may need that.”

  Cole retrieved it, handed it to Chet, and left.

  Chet handed it over to the man who used his teeth to get the cork out and then swallowed some of it. Chet loosened the cinch on the horse left behind and then hobbled him so he didn’t run off. It would be a long, dreary day waiting on Cole’s return and then them hauling the man to the doctor. This no-name man who hired them bothered him—especially how he got to possess copies of those photos from the traveling photographer. But it made sense if he wanted them assassinated to have good pictures of his intended victims.

  By mid-afternoon Cole was back with a team of several Navajo boys who worked for their agent, Clyde Covington. They had brought a wagon to reload the bed, plus the truck, team of horses that ran off, and they set in to get things fixed. The spring seat got messed up in the overturn, and the crew of Navajo boys were laughing and having fun while they replaced it with a different one they’d brought along.

  The wounded prisoner was treated enough to move, and the dead man’s body was loaded in the wagon bed to go back west. Chet rode the other outlaw’s horse with Cole and they went ahead of the wagons and team. A crewmember drove their repaired buckboard.

  On the way to station number three they talked about Duncan, and Chet told his man again about the photos the man showed him.

  “This guy Duncan have our photographs to identify us by?”

  “Yes, he described the ones we had made up at Center Point of Liz and I and the one of Valerie, you, and Rocky. Copies of those ones that traveling picture man made of us a months ago. That was how those three knew who we were heading west in the buckboard and got after us.”

  Cole made a pained face. “That stranger must know us then.”

  “Or he has some other purpose for wanting us dead.”

  “Or so we fail to put this stage line in operation from Gallup to the Colorado River together and another party gets the mail
contract.”

  “Call him Mr. X, but I want him and the sooner the better.”

  “What will you charge Duncan with?” Cole asked.

  “Attempted armed robbery and murder.”

  “That’s what they tried. Who got away?”

  Chet shrugged. “Some kid named Soapy Jones. No telling where he went if he’s smart. But I bet we run into him again.”

  Cole agreed and they’d reached the number-three station about sundown. Clyde Covington came from the corral area to meet them. A tall somewhat bent cowboy in his forties, he came shaking his head, concerned about their incident.

  “You two got in trouble already?” His warm smile and laughter made a good ending to a helluva day. Chet turned to meet Clyde’s straight-back proper wife, Iris, who reached up and kissed him on the cheek at the front door of the station.

  “My lands. I heard they had shot at you, and you weren’t here when expected, so I figured our boss has been killed. Whew, you have had some day. I’m glad too that that pretty wife of yours wasn’t along as well.”

  “So was I. It has been a tough day, but we survived it.”

  “Why did they do that anyway?”

  “I think so we couldn’t start the stage line in six weeks.”

  “Can we still do that?”

  “If I have to send all my cow hands up here we will do it.”

  “We’re as ready, I guess, as we can be. They said we’d have the horses here soon.”

  “Last I had any word from the man in charge, Rod Carpenter, in Gallup, he said his men would move the horses in place in the coming week. There is a tack man coming too, and he will bring you the extra harness you will need.”