Latigo 3, page 1
The Home of Great
Western Fiction
Claudius Max could bring half the country to its knees ...
He was that rich ... and that ruthless. But with all the power the railroad had brought him, he still did not have the thing he wanted most. To see Latigo Cantrell dead.
Mrs. Amanda Cutler, on the other hand, wanted Latigo very much alive. He had given her the pleasure of seeing her husband’s murderers cut down. Now this, calculating beauty had other pleasures in mind for the handsome half breed.
But Cole Latigo Cantrell was only interested in justice. The kind you get with a gun or a knife or a rope ...
LATIGO 3: DEAD SHOT
By Dean Owen
Based on LATIGO, the cartoon strip by Stan Lynde.
First published by Fawcett Popular Library in 1981
Copyright © 1981, 2023 by Dean Owen
This electronic edition published December 2023
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.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Editor: Ben Bridges
Published by Arrangement with the Golden West Literary Agency.
Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.
Chapter One
IT WAS ONE of those moonless hours before midnight when Walter Cutler smelled danger. Next to him in the wagon bed his wife yawned.
Cutler lifted his head carefully to stare over the low sideboard of the ranch wagon. He thought he saw three shadows over by the lonely mountain road. He smiled to himself. This situation he would handle alone and show Ben how a fool enemy was confronted in the recent War Between the States; men who sneaked in the night were cowardly. Ben was so damned smart. He probably would not even wake up until it was over. Ben snored away in his blankets under the wagon. After Amanda had retired early, Walter and Ben had stayed up and talked cattle and finished the brandy at the fire that was now dead ash.
Amanda Cutler stirred and whispered, “Walter, what is it?”
“Be quiet,” he hissed, and as usual expected instant obedience. Her long body stiffened under furs and blankets as her husband added in a whisper, “There are some men out there.”
Taking his pistol, he dropped heavily from the wagon and eyed the three figures some thirty feet away, near the road. They stood stiff as boards, silhouetted against a snowy slope.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded imperiously in a Deep South voice. “I am Colonel Cutler and I demand that you clear out ...”
A man tittered, the sound shrill and childlike against the mountain stillness. Colonel Walter Cutler leveled his pistol. It was the final act of his life. Something darted blood-red behind his eyeballs.
From under the wagon Ben Knight was rolling out of his blankets, the gunshot beating against his eardrums. He clutched a double-barreled shotgun. His handsome face tensed as he darted a glance at Walter Cutler’s blood like a dark patch of oil against the snow. He prayed that Amanda would keep her mouth shut and not betray her presence in the wagon. He wanted the three men now staring in his direction to concentrate solely on him. And not risk Amanda’s beauty with some senseless stray shot.
Confident he could destroy those three pale faces with lethal buckshot from the twin barrels of the shotgun, Ben Knight cocked his weapon. But they didn’t give him time in those few seconds to touch the triggers.
A sudden jarring tore at him when the shotgun was smashed against his body by a sheet of lead.
His final thought was, Poor Amanda. Then his brain disintegrated.
A harsh nasal voice said, “Here’s the money sack. Let’s get the hell out before somebody comes along the road!”
Amanda Cutler, weak from terror, pushed aside the heavy furs and blankets of the bed she had shared with her husband. The retreating horses of the murderers, hooves crunching snow as they fled up the mountain, were the only sounds. Against the snow-covered slope the horse tracks looked like blobs of ink on white paper.
“What happened?” she cried in her shock. But what had happened was there before her eyes. Fighting nausea, she took a stumbling step and forced herself to look into the dead face of her husband, then at Ben Knight’s torn features. No one looking at Knight would ever have guessed that in life he had been quite dashing.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned. A faint breeze stirred the tight coils of her dark-red hair. A sound in the pines brought her hand to her mouth. She leaned down and picked up Walter’s heavy pistol, which he had dropped in the snow. Then she realized the sounds were made by the wagon team and Ben Knight’s saddle horse staked out on picket ropes in the trees.
She recalled Walter at supper mentioning a settlement a few miles north, known as Tracy Junction.
Earlier that night Cole Cantrell had filled the zinc tub in the small room he used as quarters whenever laying over at Tracy Junction, which wasn’t much of a town. Only the stage station, a combination store-saloon and a few shacks.
After falling asleep twice in the sudsy bath water, Cole had finally roused himself, dried his skin and put on clean underwear. Then he emptied the tub out the alley door. By morning the puddles would be frozen. Too many days without sleep, the constant pressure from outlaws and politicians, not to mention the railroads, were wearing him thin. He was in Tracy Junction for one purpose, to fire the driver who had brought the eastbound in earlier that evening. As superintendent of Intermountain Stage Lines, Cole had had enough of Al Grubb. The big man had beaten up another shotgun guard and insulted passengers. It was too much. Cole would have to take the stagecoach out himself in the morning, because Grubb would no longer be working for Intermountain.
It seemed Cole had barely closed his eyes when he heard a man shout hoarsely, “Latigo! Latigo Cantrell!”
A young woman with a slight suggestion of Southern belle in her voice was crying, “It was awful, awful!”
Someone shook the door, rattling the hinges. “Latigo, I seen you ride in earlier. It’s Jeff Peters! There’s been a turrible killin’ down the road a piece.”
“Be with you in a minute, Jeff!”
Cole pulled on his clothes because of the woman out in the alley with Peters. The killings must concern the stage line in some way, Cole thought fuzzily in his sleep-drugged mind, and wondered who among drivers or shotgun guards it might be. He had hired most of them. Some worthy of their pay; others, like Al Grubb, not worth a handful of dust. Grubb was sleeping it off in a lean-to adjoining the stable.
When Cole unbarred the alley door he saw Jeff Peters with a lantern that cut a yellow stripe across his excited eyes. He lived in a shack up the mountain and ran a few head of sheep and goats. During the war he had been horse breaker for the Union Army but had come out of it with a bad leg.
“Missus Cutler ... her an’ her husband an’ his partner was camped out,” Peters blurted, his tongue whipping behind a graying screen of whiskers, like a small and lively animal. “An’ three hombres killed ’em dead an’ took their money ...”
Cole pulled on his coat against the wintry bite of air coming through the open door. Obviously the killings did not concern the stage line, which ended Cole’s responsibility. He was somewhat relieved.
A handful of men milled in the alley now. Two held torches, filling the air with smoke and an odor of pine tar. Peters danced from one foot to the other because of the cold, favoring his bad leg. “I told the lady that nobody knows this country like you, Latigo!”
Four of the men, Cole noticed in the flare of night, were only slightly younger than the graying Jeff Peters. The fifth was a lanky youth who did odd jobs for the stage line.
Peters gripped Cole’s arm. “You got to help us hunt down them killers!”
Cole was about to say it was a job for the law, when a tall woman in a heavy fur coat thrust her way into the room. Peters and the others stared in awe at the handsome, agitated features.
She introduced herself to Cole and then in a shaking voice spoke of the killings. “We ... we were on our way to Scalplock when these men jumped my husband ... and Ben. Ben was a minor partner in Hayfork Ranch, which my husband owned ...” She broke off, eyes suddenly glazed with tears. “I want to see those murderers punished. I intend to see them punished. Even if I have to do it myself. While we stand here, they’re getting away!”
Cole met a fierceness in her deep-set gray eyes. Heat from the torches and lantern and the bodies pressed into the small room had warmed the air. She slipped the great coat off her shoulders. Then she removed a wide-brimmed hat tied on with a scarf knotted under the squarish chin. Her hair, a burnished dark red, was in thick braids, coiled about her head. Her nose was long and straight.
“Mr. Peters says that you are the man to lead a posse. So are you going to help me or not?” demanded the beautiful woman. Her imperious manner stung Cole. Then he took a closer look and recognized shock in her pale face.
“What’s all the yellin’ for?” a harsh voice demanded. It was Al Grubb, bear-size, broad face reddened from the cold. He smelled of whiskey and p
“Go back to bed and sleep it off,” Cole said gruffly. Then he turned to Mrs. Cutler and asked where the murders had taken place. The bodies would have to be retrieved before predators got to them, if it wasn’t happening already.
Peters answered for her. “I figger it’s four-five mile south of here. Took gumption for the lady to saddle a hoss an’ ride up here calm-like after her husband an’ that other fella was kilt ...”
Grubb leaned down from his height and said to the woman, “Purty widow lady.” He opened a heavy blanket coat to expose his great muscular chest. She ignored him. Grubb’s face reddened.
“If you were this close to town,” Cole said to the woman, “why didn’t your husband come on in to spend the night here? Safer. Especially with a woman along.”
“My husband decided that was where he would stay,” was her stiff-lipped reply. “He made all decisions. He was a colonel in the war. I ... I sometimes felt ...” There was a slight trembling of the strong chin. “Perhaps I’m making Walter look bad. I don’t mean to.”
“You’re mighty upset, is all, ma’am,” Cole said. He was buckling on his .44. Then he grabbed a dark-blue cavalry officer’s hat from an antler rack and picked up a Henry rifle. For the first time he noticed a gaunt, toothless woman and some other aging onlookers peering in the alley door. Cole had seen the woman before and knew she had some connection with one of the men, but didn’t know which one.
The woman was saying in a shrill voice, “Mebby she done them killin’s herself ...”
Mrs. Cutler whirled around, losing even more color. “A terrible thing for you to say!”
“Or mebby hired some killers if she didn’t do it her own self.”
“Shut your mouth, old woman!” Cole ordered. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cutler.”
“Never trust a purty female, I allus say,” the woman muttered, disappearing into the darkness.
Cole suggested Mrs. Cutler stay in the room. He gestured at a wood box near a small stove. “Plenty of kindling ...”
“I’ll look after the lady,” Grubb said, touching her arm. But she took one startled glance at the broad grin, the oversize yellowed teeth, and shuddered.
“I look after myself,” she said, pulling away from him.
“I don’t aim to fool with you, Grubb!” Cole’s .44 appeared so suddenly that Mrs. Cutler gasped. Some of the men were poised to scramble for the door.
Cole was a big man, but Grubb, who was known as the bare-knuckle champion of Basin City, towered over him by a head. Grubb looked at the gun a moment. “Hell, was just funnin’ with the lady ...”
“You’ve got ten seconds to move!”
Grubb muttered under his breath, then slouched to the alley, heavy shoulders brushing aside two onlookers.
Amanda Cutler drew a deep breath. “Thank you for getting rid of him, Mr. Latigo.”
Cole explained that Latigo was just a nickname. “I’m Cole Cantrell.”
“What will you do with those three killers when you run them to earth?”
“Ma’am, I haven’t said I’d run them to earth.”
“But I’m sure you will ...” She waited for him to respond, a tall woman, full-bodied and exuding strength. Her great pale-gray eyes, bright with fresh tears, were locked fiercely to Cole’s face. “I intend to see them punished.”
Cole knew he could not refuse to help her, but this wasn’t much of a posse. The two passengers who had come in on the stage with Grubb were drummers, not horsemen, and the only other males in the hamlet had already volunteered. He looked at the faces, five middle-aged and one beardless and eager, Eddie Prince. “Eddie, we’ll help load the bodies in the wagon,” Cole said, “then you drive it back here.”
“But I want to go along on the hunt,” Prince protested.
“You’re too young. Besides, I want you to stay in town and keep an eye on Mrs. Cutler.” He was thinking of Grubb.
At the barn adjoining the stage office Cole saddled Trooper, the black cavalry horse that had carried him through the war. By then the other posse men appeared with their mounts. Cole had told them to bring bedrolls, because it might be a long chase. Mrs. Cutler offered to let Cole have the supplies from her wagon.
When they were ready to ride, Amanda Cutler was mounted on a dun horse. “I want to go with you to the wagon, if I may,” she said to Cole. “To ... to pay my respects to the dead.” Although Cole didn’t like the idea, he couldn’t very well refuse her. Eddie Prince would see that she got safely back to town, he told himself.
It was a little over three miles to the murder scene. Cole’s breath steamed in the crisp air. Behind the crumpled bodies the mountain was like a yellowed platter slanted on a sideboard. Horse tracks of the killers’ horses looked like fly specks on the snowy slope.
“That one is my husband,” said the woman shakily when Cole leaned to peer at a man of about forty-five or so with florid features. A single shot had left a small wet hole between his startled eyes. The other dead one, the minor partner, had taken many. A younger man than Cutler.
Jeff Peters danced from one foot to the other in the crusty snow, his breath steaming past graying whiskers. “Ain’t it awful, Latigo? Awful. Reckon them killers is the same bunch been raisin’ hell hereabouts. They’ll likely be jumpin’ Intermountain next. One reason I figured you oughta know what happened.”
“You did right.” Then Cole looked again at the steep mountain they’d have to climb, and behind it were more mountains, on and on into deeper wilderness. “You sure you’re up to a chase like this?”
Peters bristled. “’Course I’m up to it.”
Cole was doubtful but decided it was no use arguing. The men were filling saddlebags with supplies from the Cutler wagon. Then they loaded the bodies into the wagon.
Cole walked over to speak to Mrs. Cutler. At that moment the moon slid into a cloud mass and the night was suddenly black. Mrs. Cutler stared in at the bodies covered with the furs that had made a bed for the husband and the wife, now a widow.
Cole touched her on the arm. Her shadowed face swung to his. “Mrs. Cutler, why don’t you ride in the wagon with the boy? I’ll have Eddie tie your saddler to the tailgate.”
She only shrugged. Eddie Prince was harnessing the nervous team. Despite his age, the boy was a steady hand and knew how to handle horses and use a rifle. Cole had no worries for Mrs. Cutler’s safety. He was anxious to be on the way.
“Wish us luck,” he said. She nodded, evidently too spent to speak. She had tied on the hat again, and under its wide brim he could barely see her face.
“All right, let’s go,” Cole sang out. As the men mounted up he thought of the war, when he as captain led his men on midnight patrol.
After a hundred yards or so Cole, in the lead, slowed to wait for Jeff Peters to catch up. The others were strung out behind, in shadows of trees and clouds. He and Peters started riding stirrup to stirrup, the horses laboring. It seemed that Cole could hear the older man’s chattering teeth above sounds made by the horses.
“You sure you’re up to it, Jeff?”
“Sure am, Latigo.” The old man’s laughter was tinged with a false heartiness. “You can’t get rid of me. Hell, you need ever’ one of us.”
How true, Cole well knew; he did need every man. He looked back toward the road, but everything was in deep shadow, and he could not see the wagon. By now Eddie was no doubt driving Mrs. Cutler back to Tracy Junction along with the dead.
Cole swung into the lead again, Trooper eager for the hunt, muscles under the black hide quivering with excitement. Even though the moon had slid behind a bank of clouds, tracks of the three fugitives were plain on the snowy slope.
“Easy, boy,” Cole cautioned, stroking Trooper’s sleek neck with a gloved hand. “We’ve got a long ways to go.”
The horses of the others made crunching sounds behind him as they toiled through the snow. Bit chains set up a faint jingling rhythm, and occasionally a shod hoof struck a rock. Cole glanced back through the dark trees and saw their moving shadows and jets of steam from horses and riders.
By the time they had covered several miles, almost straight up, it was obvious to Cole that the pursued were inexperienced. Perhaps not so when it came to murder, but certainly in making a getaway. Had they moved south along the road for a few miles, then cut into the mountains for the back country, they could have made pursuit more difficult. But to leave their calling cards at the scene of the crime, so to speak, showed they were new to the bloody business. They might as well have painted a sign on the side of the mountain to let pursuers save time by indicating the direction they had taken. Although the outlaws had a good lead, Cole knew the gap would gradually close.
