Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 31
Zach pegged it as the room Lou was in. He flew down the hall, his heart racing faster than his feet. Festerman must be trying to force himself on her! Zach suspected, and had a burning urge to put a lead ball between the bastard’s eyes.
Horace heard Adam Tyler bearing down and straightened. He shouted a warning as he clawed for a pistol, but he had not yet cleared his jacket when the gambler’s derringer spat flame and smoke. Horace staggered, his left eye gone, and as he oozed to the floor the other man came to life, drawing a short-barreled flintlock.
Again the gambler’s derringer cracked and the second man shared Horace’s fate. Tyler cleared both their bodies and was through the door in a blur.
Shouts and bellows were breaking out all over the place. Zach reached the two dead men and shoved against the door, only to find that for some reason it wouldn’t budge. It was either locked or blocked.
“Lou!” he cried.
A door down the hall opened. A man and a woman in black and white outfits rushed out but retreated when Zach showed his pistols.
“Lou! Tyler! Open the door!”
Zach could hear voices on the other side, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. He rammed his shoulder against the panel, but it resisted. About to try again, he swung around at a resounding crash.
The front door had been flung open. Into the mansion hurtled two thugs with shotguns.
Lon Festerman was trying to drive Lou into a corner. He speared the poker to one side, then the other, forcing her to retreat. Two shots in the hallway brought him up short, and they both glanced at the door as it was pushed open and slammed shut again by a tall man in a black frock coat and wide black hat. Lou assumed he was one of Festerman’s underlings, but Festerman seemed shocked.
“You!”
The tall man grabbed a chair and braced it against the door so no one else could get in. Then he turned. “Here I thought you might have forgotten me,” he said with a sneer.
“Forget the worthless son of a bitch who took my daughter from me?” Festerman responded. “I’ve dreamt of this day! But I never really believed you would dare show your miserable face, Vaughn!”
Lou saw the man raise a smoking derringer. “I changed my name years ago. It’s Tyler now. Adam Tyler.”
“The gambler I’ve heard so much about?” Festerman said in surprise. “You’ve been in St. Louis all this time and you’ve never looked me up?”
“I was waiting for a formal invitation,” Tyler taunted. “Go ahead, then! Shoot, since you’re not man enough to confront me without a gun.”
“It’s empty.” Tyler pocketed the derringer and moved forward. “It will be you and me. Man to man. More fitting that way, don’t you agree?”
Lon Festerman moved to meet the man in black halfway. “I hope Mary is watching from on high. I want her to see me send you to hell.”
Zach snapped off a shot that caught one of the guards in the chest and twirled him around. As the man keeled over, the second cutthroat let loose with his shotgun. At that range it would have blown Zach in half, only Zach flattened. Lethal hornets buzzed overhead as he fired the other pistol. The second guard lost part of his head in a shower of gore and hair.
Pushing onto his knees, Zach turned to the pair Tyler had shot. He appropriated Horace’s flintlock and the short-barreled pistol.
On the other side of the door someone was yelling. “Lou!” Zach tried again. “Let me in!” He rose to renew his assault on the panel, but just then heavy feet pounded on a flight of stairs midway down the hall. Two more of Festerman’s thugs were descending, one with a pistol, the other with a rifle. Zach saw them before they saw him. Taking deliberate aim, he felled the first man. The second got off a shot, the slug digging into the wall beside Zach’s ear. Zach returned fire, the short-barreled pistol booming loud. The would-be killer grabbed at his shattered face and pitched forward.
Zach couldn’t reload. He had no ammunition. Running to the fallen duo by the front door, he retrieved a shotgun. No sooner had he done so than another guard filled the entrance. The man was a shade slow in reacting and paid for it with his life.
Out front more of Festerman’s hardcases were yelling back and forth. Zach peered out and saw half a dozen converging from different directions. Helping himself to another shotgun, he stayed by the door, determined to make a stand and drive them off or die in the attempt.
Lou heard someone shout, out in the hallway. She was aware of a thud on the door and a series of shots. But she was too mesmerized by the fight unfolding in front of her to pay much attention.
Adam Tyler had met Lon Festerman in the center of the study. From out of thin air the tall man in black pulled a dagger, which he wielded with exceptional skill, parrying the poker again and again, slashing when an opening presented itself. Lon Festerman thrust, swung, stabbed, and clubbed, growing more and more frantic as the seconds ticked by.
The dagger opened two wounds, a cut high on Festerman’s right shoulder and another low across his ribs. Neither was serious, but blood was flowing and they had to hurt. Festerman didn’t seem to care. He drove the poker at Tyler’s throat, and when the tall man countered, Festerman shifted and sheared the tip at his foe’s thigh.
Tyler sidestepped, but not quite quickly enough. The poker tore through his pants and dug a deep furrow. Wincing, Tyler skipped back.
Festerman slowly circled, wagging the poker’s bloody point in small circles. “That’s just for starters. I want you to suffer for the torment you caused me. To suffer as no one has ever suffered before.”
“Don’t you dare preach to me about torment,” Adam Tyler said. “There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t feel like ending it, just to be with her again. She was everything to me. Everything! And your assassins murdered her.”
“You blame me?” Festerman said bitterly. “Mary would still be alive today if you had done as I wanted and left her alone. But no! You snuck around behind my back. You schemed to elope.” Festerman feinted, and when the man in black dodged, he continued to circle. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone.”
“And you couldn’t bear the idea of Mary having a life of her own. You had to control her, just like you control everyone else.”
“I loved her!” Festerman roared, then flailed the poker as if it were a club.
Lou saw Tyler withstand a flurry that would have brought most men to their knees. Suddenly the dagger streaked out and in. Festerman, slashed across the back of his right wrist, danced out of harm’s way.
More shots in the hall heightened the tension. Festerman cocked his head. “So you brought help? Not that anyone can save you. You’re not leaving this room alive.”
Tyler glanced at Lou. “Your fiancée is out there. Go to him.”
“Zach?” Lou dashed toward the door, but Lon Festerman was in her way and he renewed his fierce attempt to batter the tall man into the floor. Swinging without letup, he unleashed his most devastating attack yet.
Lou darted to the left so she wouldn’t be hit. Suddenly a tremendous blast at the front of the mansion made her think a score of cannons had discharged a ragged volley. Lou’s hand rose to her throat. Her beloved was in a battle for his life!
The half-dozen guards were crossing the grass strip when Zach stepped into the entrance and triggered a shotgun blast that bowled one over. He ducked behind the jamb as five shotguns thundered in kind.
Out on the lawn a man groaned. Another hollered for everyone to rush the mansion at once.
Zach had used the last of the available guns. The cutthroats would overwhelm him and slay Adam Tyler and Lou unless he thought of something—and thought of it right away. Cupping a hand to his mouth, Zach called out, “Get killed for nothing if that’s what you want! The man who hired you is dead!”
Silence ensued for all of thirty seconds. “How do we know you’re not lying?” someone finally replied.
“Didn’t you hear all the shots in here?” Zach rejoined. As a Shoshone warrior, it went against his grain to resort to trickery rather than to defeat an adversary in combat. But he excused his ruse with the thought that Lou was worth more than his honor. “Festerman was the first to fall.”
“We want to see his body!” a different thug demanded.
“Come right on in, then!” Zach said. “We’ll be more than happy to have you join him! All of you!”
They commenced talking among themselves, shouting back and forth.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” one asked.
“There was an awful lot of shooting,” someone else noted. “How’d they get past us and reach the mansion?” was another’s main concern.
“Who the hell cares? They did, and now we’re likely out of work. Hell, we knew something like this would happen one day. The boss had more enemies than I have hairs on my head.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not dying for a dead man.”
Zach waited in breathless anticipation, but no one else spoke. After a bit he risked taking a peek and spotted a knot of men fleeing down the drive toward the gate. They had decided living was the better part of valor. Spinning, he ran down the hall. This time the door wouldn’t keep him out!
Adam Tyler had retreated as far as he could go. His back was to the wall. Lon Festerman had him trapped, and they both knew it. Beaming, Festerman bent at the knees and stabbed at his stomach, but the poker missed, sinking into the wood instead.
“This is for Mary,” Tyler said, cleaving the double-edged dagger upward. It sliced into Festerman’s jaw, splitting flesh like an overripe fruit.
Swearing luridly, pumping scarlet, Festerman jumped backward. Stumbling, he sank onto a knee.
“This is for the family Mary and I never had.” Adam Tyler hewed the dagger into Lon’s upper arm. Festerman sought to retaliate, but his muscles had been severed.
“This is for the happiness you deprived us of.”
Lou had started toward the door, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the tall man’s vengeance. It was awful to behold. “This is for all the other lives you’ve ruined.”
Lon Festerman was covered with blood and swaying as if drunk, his arms limp at his sides. “Damn you,” he said weakly.
The man in black raised the dagger one last time. “And this is what I should have done the night Mary died. What I’ve wanted to do every night ever since. What you deserve.” Bending, Tyler buried the dagger in Festerman’s groin. Then, gripping the hilt with both hands, he sheared upward.
Lou had to turn away or be ill. She jumped when the door abruptly crashed inward and into the study spilled a young dark-haired man in fine city-bought clothes. It took a moment for her to recognize who it was. “Zach?” Lou cried, flinging herself at him.
“Lou?” Zachary King embraced his sweetheart, hugging her trembling form close. He never wanted to let her go. “I thought I’d lost you.” Zach would have been perfectly happy to stand there forever, but his gaze drifted to what was left of the scourge of St. Louis, reminding him they weren’t out of danger yet. “We have to light a shuck,” he said. “More of Festerman’s men might show up.”
Adam Tyler had risen. “We’ll go over the back wall. You can stay at my place tonight, with Milhouse. Tomorrow we’ll pay Sylvia Banner a visit and persuade her there are healthier climates elsewhere.”
Zach verified that the hallway was empty. From the study he led them to the dark room and out the window. He’d never seen Lou in a dress before and couldn’t get over how lovely she was. It made him all the more eager to be alone with her, to show exactly how much he had missed her.
“Is it really over?” Louisa marveled as they plunged into a maple grove.
“In more ways than one,” the man in black said.
No one challenged them. No one opened fire. Ten minutes later, they had scaled the wall and were searching for an empty carriage to hail.
Louisa May Clark nestled her cheek against Zach’s shoulder and smiled. Now they could hunt up her relatives. In a month or so they would head back to the Rockies, and shortly after that they would be united as man and wife. Her dream was coming true.
Zach glanced at Tyler. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough. What will you do now that Festerman is dead?”
The gambler thought a moment. “I think I’ll learn how to live again.”
About the Author
David L. Robbins was born on Independence Day 1950. He has written more than three hundred books under his own name and many pen names, among them: David Thompson, Jake McMasters, Jon Sharpe, Don Pendleton, Franklin W. Dixon, Ralph Compton, Dean L. McElwain, J.D. Cameron and John Killdeer.
Robbins was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was seventeen he enlisted in the United States Air Force and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant. After his honorable discharge he attended college and went into broadcasting, working as an announcer and engineer (and later as a program director) at various radio stations. Later still he entered law enforcement and then took to writing full-time.
At one time or another Robbins has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year and a half in Europe, traveling through France, Italy, Greece and Germany. He lived for more than a year in Turkey.
Today he is best known for two current long-running series - Wilderness, the generational saga of a Mountain Man and his Shoshone wife - and Endworld is a science fiction series under his own name started in 1986. Among his many other books, Piccadilly Publishing is pleased to be reissuing ebook editions of Wilderness, Davy Crockett and, of course, White Apache.
You’ve reached the last page.
But the adventure doesn’t end here …
Join us for more first-class, action-packed books.
Regular updates feature on our website and blog
The Adventures continue…
Issuing new and classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
More on David Robbins
David Robbins, Wilderness Double Edition 15
