The Warhunter 3, page 1
The Home of Great Western Fiction!
Hunter, the gunslinger, was always trying to keep one step ahead of his deadly reputation. That’s why he traveled alone. And when he let lovely Ella Phillips accompany him, he knew he was asking for trouble.
It came quick enough—in the shape of a man who recognized Ella from her shady past. One carefully aimed rifle did the stranger in, only now they were forced to make a getaway—fast.
They joined a wagon train heading west, but instead of avoiding danger they ran right into it. Did Hunter, the killer, stand a chance against a rampaging band of hotheaded Utes? It would take more than bullets and brawn to survive … The Great Salt Lake Massacre!
THE WARHUNTER 3: THE GREAT SALT LAKE MASSACRE
By Scott Siegel
First published by Zebra Books in 1981
Copyright © 1981, 2021 by Scott Siegel
First Electronic Edition: September 2021
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
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author.
For Minerva, as always, my favorite aunt.
Chapter One
A CUP OF coffee sat untouched on Thomas Fugate’s desk. He was engrossed in the reading of an eight-month-old newspaper called The Kimble Clarion. It didn’t matter to Fugate that the news was old. What mattered was that Fugate was the managing editor of one of New York’s leading newspapers, and that he was looking for something to help his paper’s sagging circulation.
This was the story he read:
WAR HUNTER HELPS SAVE KIMBLE
With the town under surprise attack by Major Jack Farrel and his renegade band of outlaws, the renowned frontiersman, Warfield (War) Hunter joined with Sheriff Hank Mason and other members of the citizenry to defend the town. i
Much of the business district of Kimble was burnt, and sixteen men, women, and children were shot, trampled, or lost in the fires.
But at the height of the battle, War Hunter, wounded and bleeding, stood his ground in the middle of Main Street as Major Farrel charged him on horseback. With one clean shot, Hunter blew Farrel out of his saddle, killing him dead.
All told, as best as can be figured, Hunter killed at least six of Farrel’s men in addition to Farrel himself.
Though The Clarion has endeavored to learn more about the famous exploits of Mr. Hunter—his deadly showdown last year in Missouri with Jim Ritt, his single-handed raid on an Apache village that rescued two women and a little boy, and the rumored shootout with Carl Bishop in the Nation last spring—this reporter has been constantly rebuffed in his efforts to get past Sheriff Mason to interview the recuperating plainsman.
Hunter was mentioned in every single story in the Clarion. One was an eyewitness account of Major Farrel’s last charge. Another was an interview with Nick Kestler, who described how Hunter had saved his life by pulling him out of a burning building. And then there was yet another about Hunter’s clever plan to rig the bank with dynamite and blow it up the moment Farrel’s men rushed inside.
After reading The Kimble Clarion twice, Fugate sat back in his chair to think and reflect. The late afternoon light was streaming into his office through a large western window. From this lofty perch on the third floor of The New York Herald American, Fugate could look out his window and see halfway across the island of Manhattan to the Hudson River. Across that river lay the farms of New Jersey. Beyond New Jersey were the forests of Pennsylvania, the rolling hills of Ohio, and then the faraway edges of civilization, Indiana and Illinois. Beyond lay a seemingly endless frontier, checked only by a distant, mysterious ocean. Between the Atlantic and the Pacific was a continent almost too immense to imagine. So much land. So much wilderness. And yet, despite the huge empty spaces and the terrible unknown, an endless stream of people continued moving west.
There was a hunger to know more about the West. Those desperate for a fresh start yearned to learn more about the new land before risking their lives in a wild adventure. And among those whose friends or families had already ventured westward, there was an anxious desire to know what kind of a world it was their friends and relatives had traveled to.
Yet how to write it? That was Fugate’s concern. For months now the Herald American had run all sorts of stories about people heading to the great open West, yet none of them seemed to catch the imagination of the Herald’s readers.
But this War Hunter, thought Fugate, this was a special man, a breed apart, yet the breed itself. Here was a man who personified the best qualities of the westward moving pioneers. And most importantly, thought Fugate with a smile, this was a man who could sell newspapers.
Not a man to waste any time once his mind was made up, Thomas Fugate ordered a copy boy to the second floor with instructions to tell Eric Bryce that the managing editor wanted to see him.
This was just the kind of story for Bryce, Fugate decided. The young reporter had a wild, almost undisciplined style that nearly jumped off the page. That’s what Fugate wanted for the War Hunter series—vibrant, exuberant writing.
Minutes later, Bryce knocked loudly on Fugate’s office door.
“Come in,” called the editor.
Bryce, a thin black cigar dangling from his lips, strode into the room and straight to the foot of Fugate’s desk.
Fugate gestured to his young reporter, indicating a chair. Bryce remained standing. “I’m in a hurry,” said the young man, without a hint in his voice that he was speaking to his superior. “I’m not finished with the latest Crawford story yet, and it’s almost time to go to press. What do you want?”
“I want you to sit down, Bryce,” Fugate said with annoyance, “and I want you to take that cigar out of your mouth when you’re talking to me. Just because your father and I are friends, and just because you think you’re the best reporter on this paper, doesn’t give you the right to be insolent.”
Bryce allowed himself a sly grin. “Don’t you think I’m the best reporter on the Herald American, Mr. Fugate?” he asked as he took the black cigar out of his mouth.
Fugate grinned in return. “Yes, you’re my best reporter, and you’re also my biggest pain in the ass. I only hired you because your father was afraid you’d run off to sea or do something equally foolish if you didn’t find some kind of sufficiently exciting career. Clearly your father’s banking and real estate ventures weren’t going to satisfy you.”
“So he sent me to you as soon as I was thrown out of Yale,” laughed Bryce. “I suppose Dad is waiting for me to finish ‘sowing my wild oats,’ as he so quaintly puts it, before taking me into the business.”
“I wouldn’t know, Eric,” Fugate said gruffly. “Are you going to sit down?”
Bryce shrugged and sat. “I still have the latest installment of the Crawford story to finish,” he complained again.
“Mrs. Crawford isn’t going anyplace,” said Fugate. “‘With her throat sliced clear through to the back of her neck, the once beautiful young woman’s nearly decapitated head lay there in a pool of crimson that contrasted most starkly with her now strikingly pale and ghostly face.’ Isn’t that the way you wrote it?”
Bryce smiled. “That’s the way I wrote it,” he agreed. “Nice of you to remember.”
“I remembered it because you painted a picture with your words. And that’s why half of New York remembers it too. But the Crawford case is stale now. We’ve milked it about as much as we can. I’ve got something else for you to cover.”
“The waterfront?” Bryce asked eagerly. “You know that’s the beat I want. There’s an untapped source of stories there. I’m sure of it!”
“I know, you’ve been pressing for that assignment for over a month, but I’ve decided to give the waterfront to Teasdale.”
“What?” declared the reporter. “Teasdale? He’s a pretty fair reporter. I’ll give him that. But he can’t write worth a damn. With all due respect, Mr. Fugate,” he added, struggling to hold back his anger, “I deserve the waterfront. I’ve earned it with this Crawford case!”
Fugate was amused. “You’ve worked for the Herald American for sixteen months and you think you’ve earned the right to whatever you want. It doesn’t work like that. Teasdale’s been with this paper for fourteen years.”
Bryce stood up in a rush. His six-foot frame, thin though it was, had a wiry power to it. With eyes blazing, he cried out, “I want the waterfront!” Then he angrily threatened, “If I can’t have it with the Herald American, maybe the New York Globe will give it to me!”
“Sit down!” demanded Fugate. “You’re spoiled and arrogant. If you were my son, I’d let you run off to sea and ruin your life, in the hope that it would teach you something. But you’re not my son, you’re my best reporter, so, irritate me as you do sometimes, I’m going to give you this story!” So saying, he thrust The Kimble Clarion up at the standing reporter.
Bryce, with as much curiosity as anger, seized the two-page newspaper from his editor’s hand and began to read. When he finished it, he was surprised to find himself sitting again.
When the young reporter looked up, Fugate announced, “You’re going to take the information from that newspaper, Mr. Bryce, and you’re going to rewrite it into a story about this man Hunter. Then, Mr. Bryce, you’re going to pack your things and go west and find him. And when you find him, you’re to stick to him like glue, and send me stories about his past, about his character, about the way he lives and the way he thinks. In other words, Mr. Bryce, I want an ongoing series of exclusive feature stories about this western hero, War Hunter. It will be your job, Mr. Bryce, to make Hunter the talk of New York.”
The young reporter was excited but troubled. “That paper is eight months old. It could take me as much as a month to get out to Kimble. If Hunter isn’t there, how in God’s name will I find him?”
“That’s why you’re a reporter, Mr. Bryce. You ask questions. You follow leads. You leave no stone unturned. Don’t worry, Mr. Bryce, you’ll find him. Hunter, it would seem from The Kimble Clarion, is too well known on the frontier to be difficult to find. And as soon as you have anything to report on this man, send it to me. We’ll publish your rewrite of this Kimble episode first, and then we’ll follow it with your initial dispatch from the West. From there on in, it will be your responsibility to send us stories as regularly as circumstances allow. It’s my guess that once we get this started, New York will be crazy for news of this plainsman known as War Hunter.”
“I’ll do the rewrite and prepare to leave as quickly as possible,” Bryce said earnestly. He then mustered the little humility he was capable of, and added, “I’m sorry I blew up at you before, Mr. Fugate. I apologize.”
“Yelling at an old man is one thing,” Fugate said calmly, “but from what I understand about the frontier, you’d better be able to back up your bluster, or somebody is liable to do to you the same thing that somebody did to the late Mrs. Crawford.”
Chapter Two
EVEN IN THE middle of July, the mornings are crisp and cold underneath the shadows of the Colorado Rockies. Ella Phillips snuggled closer to Hunter for warmth. She kissed him on the chest in her half-sleep and Hunter wrapped his long, muscular arm around her smooth shoulders till he could cup her breast in his hand. Ella sighed her contentment and drifted off to sleep again.
Hunter, too, was content. But he didn’t go back to sleep. He wasn’t the kind of man to ever sleep past the rising of the sun. Still, he had no wish to get up. He looked at this woman who lay so naturally in his arms, and he wished for her that she could always sleep with such contentment.
With Horse Creek bubbling along twenty feet from their camp, with the sun sending streams of light low across the eastern horizon, and with the mountains looming majestically to the west, Hunter, for the first time in many years, felt at peace with himself.
It didn’t particularly bother him that Ella had worked the second floor above Dekker’s Saloon. He had no right to think ill of her because of that. After all, he was a man who had killed scores of men. Mostly they were men who needed killing, but, in the balance of right and wrong, taking a life seemed to Hunter to be a good deal more serious than taking money in exchange for giving an hour’s worth of love to some lonely cowboy.
What was remarkable about Ella was that somehow she had managed to keep herself separate from the tawdry life she’d been living, and Hunter admired her for that. Still, she was no fragile bit of fluff, either. Ella was as tough as the tempered steel of a tinker-made knife. She was a woman with a mind of her own and a will to match Hunter’s. Though he hated to admit it, Hunter loved her because she was, in her own way, his equal. And then, of course, she had eyes a man could lose himself in, and a body that belonged in a painting by one of the masters.
Hunter, however, was no starry-eyed romantic. He was thirty-two years old and had seen and lived more of life’s experiences than any ten men you could name. He had been in love before and knew the pain of it very well. He knew how it felt to tell a woman he no longer loved her, and he knew how it felt to be told by a woman that she loved some other man. He also knew the grief of losing a lover to the hands of death.
What would happen between himself and Ella he could not guess. When they left Turnersville back in April, Hunter hardly knew her. She had carried on an affair with a man named Taffler, who had saved his life. As it happened, Steve Taffler was a married man. It also happened that Hunter had felt some attraction to Steve Taffler’s wife, Laura. Somehow or other they had all managed to come out of that mess in pretty good shape. In a way, if not for the terrible bloodshed brought on by the Great Western Mineral Company and their hired guns, the Tafflers might never have gotten back together again. And he and Ella might never have had the good fortune to find themselves in each other’s arms this cool dawn near the foot of the Colorado Rockies. ii
Yes, back in April he hardly knew her. Now it was the middle of summer and they’d been together, just the two of them, all that time. How well did he know her now? He’d told her countless stories about his own past, and she had listened in wide-eyed fascination. She, however, had been guarded, careful about sharing the events of her life. She would answer anything Hunter asked, but aware of her reluctance, he never pressed her. Ultimately, Hunter realized, he didn’t know much more about her now than he did back in April. With that thought in mind, he absently shifted his weight and Ella stirred beside him.
“I ought to get up,” she murmured softly.
“You can sleep a little longer if you like,” he whispered. “I’ll get up and get the fire going.”
She smiled and turned over.
Hunter rolled easily out of their bedding, which was spread out over a cushion of pine needles, and decided to take a dip in Horse Creek before putting on his clothes.
The water was cold, numbingly cold. But Hunter splashed into it anyway. With legs and arms flailing, he whooped and hollered as the white water washed over him.
A few minutes later he glanced over to the shore and saw Ella standing at the bank of the creek with a blanket wrapped around her. He laughed out loud and waved for her to join him. That was all the encouragement she needed. A broad smile crossed Ella’s face as she flung the blanket off her shoulders.
In that bright early-morning sunshine, her smooth, naked skin seemed to glow. She felt no shame in exposing her body to him in this way, and Hunter felt no shame in letting his eyes take in the full beauty of her wondrously female form.
Her light brown hair flying behind her, Ella rushed into the creek and screamed at the first shock of the icy water. And then she screamed again, this time with fierce delight. They splashed each other and played in the water like children. But it wasn’t long before both of them suffered from chattering teeth. The water was just too cold, and they reluctantly made a hasty retreat to the shore.
Hunter wrapped a blanket tight around her shoulders. “Dry your hair,” he advised her, “or you’ll get the grippe.”
“Never mind about my hair,” she retorted. “Get a fire going.”
“It’ll take a couple of minutes.”
“If you were the smart plainsman, Warfield Hunter, I’ve heard so much about,” she said through lips that were slowly turning blue, “you’d have built a fire before jumping into the creek.”
Hunter, despite his own shivering, had to laugh. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I must be an impostor.”
“Never mind the jokes,” she said, fighting back a grin. “Just make the fire. I’m freezing!”
When the kindling caught, Hunter placed some thicker pieces of wood into the slowly burgeoning flames.
“Come here,” he said to Ella. Dutifully, she went to his side. “How about sharing that blanket? I’m cold too.”
Beside the fire, huddled together under the blanket, they felt the warmth of the flames, plus the warmth of something more.
While every so often Hunter and Ella would travel the twenty miles or so to Kutch’s Trading Post for supplies, for the most part they just stayed put.
