The Vengeance Seeker 3 Read online

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  Wolf Caulder would never forget the day of the train hold-up. The screaming… the blood-spattered bodies of the victims.

  He swore he’d hunt down the men who’d caused so much death and suffering.

  Now he’d caught up with the ringleader, who lay helpless a few feet away.

  Wolf grinned fiercely.

  The killer’s scream rent the air as Wolf raised the Winchester … and sent the sonofabitch to hell.

  THE VENGEANCE SEEKER 3: TRAIL OF REVENGE

  By Will C. Knott

  First published by Ace Books in 1976

  Copyright © 1976, 2020 by Will C. Knott

  First Digital Edition: May 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  One

  As the train huffed over the rise and began its descent toward the long valley, Weed Leeper got to his feet with the rest of the Dawson gang and followed the men out of the rear coach, leaving Red Tinsdale behind to cover their rear. As they walked quietly through the train, they left a man behind in each car, sitting with his back to the door, facing the passengers. There were only four cars on this run, so that left Abe and Luke Dawson to take care of the mail car, with Weed proud to be stationed at their backs to discourage any foolhardy passengers.

  Indeed, Leeper was looking forward to the action. He knew his ruthlessness, so far, had prevented any description of them from reaching the Pinkerton Agency—and that was the way Weed intended to keep it.

  Inside the coach just behind the mail car, Jenny Hearthwaite was looking out the window at the valley swinging into view. For the first time since leaving Boston, she felt her heart lift. It was lovely country after all, its astonishing immensity so much more heartening than the constricted, grim landscapes of New England. She was sure she would be able to reach these children out here, no matter how wild her father had said they were. Children were children. They were the same everywhere. And out here ... perhaps there would be someone ...

  She felt the tears on her face and was shamed by them. Would she never forget that cad? And his senseless cruelty to her? And worse, her awesome vulnerability to him. She had been like a silly schoolgirl; yes, like putty in his hands.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  Then she looked up, suddenly aware that she was being watched.

  The drummer—sitting two seats up and across the aisle—touched his bowler hat in greeting to the girl and nodded pleasantly, just the touch of a smile on his round, too well-fed face. She wasn’t much, he told himself, but then this part of the ride could get pretty damn dull. And she looked like she could use some company. A mopey dishrag, coming out west hoping for romance and a man tall in the saddle to sweep her off her feet. He could tell she was from back east because of the milky, washed-out look of her. So maybe he could liven things up for them both.

  But at his smile, her pasty face went cold, her pinched nose got still tighter, and she looked quickly away and back out the window.

  He looked out the window himself. Damn it, he thought. Who the hell you kidding, Dudley? You’ve got all the subtlety of a meat cleaver. She’s got your number already.

  Paul Dudley sighed and watched the spectacular landscape stroking past. The train was moving faster now that it was on a downgrade. The dark rampart of the mountain they had just sliced through was still casting its shadow over the train as it snaked its way along the mountain’s flank. God, how he hated this constant traveling! Well, this would be his last trip through Wyoming Territory. He was packing it in after this one.

  He’d give his son a real home finally. Be a real father to the boy at last. And maybe he’d find somewhere a woman who wouldn’t mind taking up with a widowed boy half-grown and his father—a weary drummer home from the wars.

  Maybe. It was a thought, and it gave him hope. He felt better now as he looked out the window and caught his pale reflection in the glass.

  Emma and Josiah Hodkins smiled at each other. They had folded one of the seats back and were sitting facing each other, Mark beside his father, Sarah beside her mother. The brother and sister had been arguing about the number of telegraph poles that had stroked past since the pass.

  Josiah had settled the argument with a total of his own. Two-thousand-four-hundred-and-two he had told them with indisputable authority.

  Now the brother and sister looked at him.

  “You sure, Pa?” asked Mark. He was only ten, but he was confident enough of his father’s affection to question him without fear. Josiah messed his boy’s flaxen hair with a rough hand. “I’m sure enough, boy. So you’ll just have to find something else to devil your sister about.”

  “Aw, Pa!”

  Sarah stuck her tongue out at Mark. She was a year older. “I won,” she said. “I was closest!”

  Watching the two youngsters was Cyrus Tanner, an old buffalo hunter sitting four seats up at the far end of the coach, near the door leading to the mail car. Sitting across and facing him was a man the buffalo hunter had thought might be fitting company for him on this long train ride.

  But Cyrus Tanner had been wrong about that. As soon as he had sat down next to the man, he had realized his mistake. The fellow was a grim, unfriendly man and just about the ugliest son of a bitch he’d ever laid eyes on. He wore a black patch over his right eye, and there was a deep cleft running back from the empty socket all the way to the fellow’s right ear. That side of his face seemed a mite stove in. And his face was gaunt, his cheekbones sticking out from his darkly-tanned skin like those of a bleached skull sitting on a desert floor. And that weren’t the worst of it, neither. One shoulder appeared to be higher than the other.

  An ugly, unsociable cuss, that was for damn sure. They were almost an hour out of Tipton and the stranger hadn’t uttered a word.

  Cyrus took hold of his old Sharps and looked out the window at the valley looming closer as the train uncoiled from around the mountain. As far as he could see was lush grassland. But his old eyes looked in vain for the spot of buffalo. They were all gone now. All gone. At least from these hills.

  But he’d heard about the sizable herds still left in Canada, where he was headed and his pulse quickened at the thought.

  Wolf Caulder smiled at the buffalo hunter, reached into his vest pocket and passed the man a cigar. Then he stripped one for himself.

  As the old hunter took the cigar in startled surprise, Caulder smiled and said, “Thinking about the buffalo, I’ll bet.”

  “Why, that I was,” the old man said, brightening. He reached for a knife to slice off the tip of the cigar and then leaned forward as Wolf thumbed a sulphur match to life and held it to the tip of his cigar.

  The buffalo hunter took a deep drag on the stogie and leaned back with a contented smile. “Yes, I was,” he said to Wolf. “Time was when you could see buffalo wherever your eye fell. Why, they was like autumn leaves covering the earth …”

  Wolf nodded to encourage the hunter, then settled back to listen.

  Abe Dawson, with his brother Luke right beside him, bulled his way into the mail car, his insistent pounding on the locked door having
finally aroused a response. As the two men disappeared inside, six-guns drawn, Weed Leeper turned and hopped back across the swaying platform and reentered the coach they had just passed through. He sat down in an empty seat, facing the passengers.

  There were eight people in the car, the same eight he had noted when passing through a moment before. The conductor, he knew, was still one car back. Weed’s eyes glanced quickly around. A sodbuster and his wife and their two yammering nits were on his side of the aisle; the next two passengers—a drummer on his right and a pinched-looking dame in front of him—were quiet and busy with their thoughts and had not appeared to notice him or the Dawsons as they went through.

  Beside him an old hunter with a Sharps was puffing away on a cigar and ranting about buffaloes to a younger man sitting across from him. This younger man was an odd one, however. He looked as if he’d been dragged head first through a barbed wire fence on the way to being born—as mean and ugly-looking as a rogue longhorn. Weed figured he had better keep an eye on the ugly bastard when things started to blow.

  Weed’s face was covered with a scraggly beard, so scraggly that it was this that had given rise to his nickname. Beneath shaggy brows two red-rimmed eyes blazed. He wore a black, floppy-brimmed hat, a faded red woolen shirt and greasy Levi’s. Two gunbelts sagged across his gut, and both Colts gleamed immaculately in startling contrast to the rest of the man. These two Colt Peacemakers were the tools of his trade; and like all good craftsmen, Weed kept them in near mint condition.

  The explosion from the mail room behind him caused Weed to jump up, both Colts appearing in his grimy hands even before he had become fully upright. He knew at once what had happened. The Express clerk had refused to open the safe; so Luke had had to blow it. It was something they had hoped they would not have to do.

  “Just sit easy,” said Weed to the eight passengers, cocking both pistols, “and you won’t get hurt none.”

  The nester and his son swung around in their seats to see him, the boy peering at him over the back of the seat, his eyes wide.

  At that moment the door to the other end of the coach opened and the conductor entered. He took one look at Weed standing there with both guns drawn and started to pull back, reaching into his coat for what Weed surmised was a small caliber revolver. Weed didn’t wait to find out for sure. He raised his Colt and fired at the man.

  The .45 slug caught the conductor high on the left shoulder, slamming him back against the doorjamb. But even as he slid down the doorsill, he continued to reach for his gun, and as he brought it out—it was a short-barreled Smith & Wesson—Wood took a full step forward, aimed more carefully and fired at the man a second time. This slug caught the man just above his nose, shattering his forehead and blowing the back of his head out. A dark crimson stain immediately bloomed on the doorjamb and the wall beside it.

  The young woman screamed. The sound of it was like a buzz saw cutting through Weed’s eardrums. He swung around to face her, wincing. In an effort to quiet her, he pointed the gun’s muzzle at her. It didn’t quiet her. Now her scream became a knife lancing into his brain.

  Confused, furious, he yelled at her to shut up—but it did no good. He aimed quickly at her open mouth and squeezed the trigger of his Colt. Her scream ended abruptly as the thunder of his third shot filled the car, and as he started to turn back to the mail car, he saw the old man out of the corner of his eyes. The fellow was raising his Sharps like a club and rising out of his seat.

  Still turning, Weed fired into the old man’s gut.

  The fellow was knocked back against his seat, his eyes bugging out in sudden dismay as he felt the slug tear into his vitals. He started to gasp something and let his Sharps drop from his grasp. The stranger across from the fellow was also on his feet by this time, his Colt out and cocked. But the old man’s Sharps collided with the barrel just as the man fired at Weed.

  The slug whistled past Weed’s right knee and before the ugly son of a bitch could bring his Colt up to fire a second time, Weed pumped two shots into him. The slugs flung him back into his seat, the Colt falling from his hand. The old hunter cried out and grabbed Weed’s arm with surprising strength. Weed pulled away, raised his empty six-gun over his head and clubbed the old coot with the barrel, shattering his skull.

  But now the ugly one was reaching out for him. Weed swung around to deal with him, the blood lust singing in his veins by this time. But an arm dropped about his neck and he felt someone attempting to pull the Colt out of his hand. He spun violently back and around flinging the fellow off his back.

  It was the sodbuster—the one with the kids—and Weed grinned, revealing a broken line of yellow teeth. He hated nesters. They stank of cow shit. His father had been a sodbuster, a shit-kicker who drank himself to an early grave with his own lousy moonshine. Weed pumped two quick shots from his other Colt into the man, deliberately aiming his second slug low. He heard the nester scream and saw him double over, clutching frantically at his crotch.

  The man’s wife and two kids were rushing down the aisle toward the nester, and the drummer was cowering, slack-faced, in his seat. Weed shot the wife when she got close enough, clubbed the little girl to the floor, and then found himself wrestling with the boy. He slammed upward into the kid’s stomach with the barrel of his Colt and pulled the trigger. As the kid fell off the weapon, he turned his attention back to the one-eyed fellow.

  He was still game, still trying to move along the seat toward Weed, one hand reaching out. Weed grinned again and stepped closer to him, raising his Colt over his head ...

  Wolf saw the man looming over him through a red haze. His chest was on fire, his right side heavy with blood. But all he wanted now was to get this madman’s neck within the circle of his two hands. Then he would die happy.

  The fellow’s arm swung down. Wolf tried to move his head away. He succeeded enough so that the barrel of the Colt glanced off his shoulder. Before the fellow could pull back to strike again, Wolf had grabbed his forearm with his left hand and then managed to swing his right hand up and catch the fellow about the back of his head. But the man brought his knee up and slammed Wolf brutally in his chest.

  Wolf hung on nevertheless, moving his left hand up to the fellow’s neck, his right hand joining it on the other side. But as his powerful fingers began to close about the scrawny neck, the train’s forward momentum came to an abrupt halt, throwing both Wolf and the other one against the door. Wolf lost his grip and went sprawling into the aisle.

  Flat on his back in the aisle, he saw the door swing open and two men push into the coach. They halted when they witnessed the carnage, then turned to the other—the one with the beard—and pulled him to his feet.

  “Let’s go, Weed!” one of them cried. “The horses are waiting!”

  Behind Wolf came the sound of running feet. A spurred heel came down on his thigh as one of the three men tried to jump past him to join the others.

  Wolf tried to reach up and catch one of the men about his boot. The fellow turned, brought his boot back, and kicked with brutal precision into Wolf’s side. Wolf felt his insides expand into a dark flower of pain that enveloped him completely and he went twisting and tumbling backward into night …

  Wolf was looking up from a bed through the wrong end of a telescope. The tiny figure far above him had a white shock of hair and what looked like a stethoscope hanging about his neck. He was talking to someone standing behind Wolf, and his voice came clearly, despite the enormous distance that seemed to separate them.

  “... but I don’t know why. From the punishment he’s taken, he should be dead now. But his pulse is getting stronger, and I think he’s out of danger.”

  A voice behind Wolf said, “Aside from that drummer then, he’ll be the only one in that coach to survive.”

  The doctor shook his head. “I just wish I knew what it was that could keep a man as badly torn as this alive. A miracle ...”

  Wolf felt his eyes close, like lead weights were pulling his lids down
. The sounds around him faded. But the words of the doctor echoed in his head.

  A miracle ...?

  No. It was Diego Sanchez, alive within Wolf still, whispering to him, over and over: Do not die, my son! Do not die until you have slaked your thirst for vengeance ... until you have drunk the blood of those vultures ...

  Wolf Caulder slept.

  Two

  DAWSON BUNCH FREED

  Buffalo, Wy., August 3, 1879—After less than an hour’s deliberation, the jury returned to a crowded and hushed courtroom today and acquitted all six members of the notorious Dawson Bunch of any complicity in the infamous Tipton Train Massacre. The verdict was not remarkable, after the manner in which the testimony of Paul Dudley, the only surviving witness to this appalling tragedy, was discredited by the skilled attorneys for the defense.

  All members of the gang were promptly freed, with the exception of young Red Tinsdale, who is still being held on a separate count for horse stealing by Sheriff John Watson. Tinsdale was unable to post bonds in the sum of $800 for his appearance at the next term of court and was returned to jail by the sheriff to await grand jury action.

  There has been some talk about transferring the prisoner to the more secure jail in Casper, so as to prevent his possible rescue by other members of the Dawson gang. But Sheriff Watson has assured all concerned that such precautions will not be necessary, as he plans on hiring a special guard to watch Tinsdale twelve hours a day.

  Our sheriff is determined that one member, at least, of this lawless band shall not escape justice.

  Two weeks after the trial of the Dawson Bunch, Sheriff Watson was about to open the door to his office and step out into the cool night to get a breath of fresh air when the door was pulled open and a tall stranger sagged drunkenly against the doorjamb. He would have collapsed if the sheriff had not reached out to catch him. As Watson helped the fellow over to a bench along the wall, the stench of whiskey was so strong that the sheriff found himself commenting to himself that he would probably not need his nightcap now.