The Loner 10, page 1
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It was said that a fortune in outlaw gold lay buried under the hill. Leastways, that’s what Torp Berry and his gang of cutthroats believed. But they were damned if they’d clear that hill and shift all the rocks themselves. No – it was easier for them to waylay any passing strangers and set them to work instead … at gunpoint.
Into this situation rode Blake Durant. He’d come to deliver a message from a dead man. Next thing he knew, he was disarmed, half-starved, chained to a wall every freezing night and forced into hard labor or face Will Hapgood’s deadly whip.
So Blake bided his time. Right now he and the others were damned to a short, hard life of slavery. But when the day of the damned was over there would come another day … one of reckoning!
THE LONER 10: DAY OF THE DAMNED
By Sheldon B. Cole
First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
© 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing
First Edition: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.
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
Chapter One – West of Everything
It was mid-afternoon when the rain stopped and Blake Durant drew rein on Sundown, his blue-black stallion, on the crest of a lonely, wind-swept hill. The rain-washed air was so clear that he had no difficulty making out the town a mile or so in the distance. It was a welcome sight after the past week’s trail-blazing across desolate distances, and Durant felt a new lease of life surging through him.
From where he had drawn up on the sagebrush-studded crest, the town of Maple looked smaller than he had been led to expect it to be. Despite the wide streets and some double-storied buildings, it was mostly just a cluster of rundown houses and stores thrown together haphazardly on the prairie, with cattle yards at the end of one street towards the west, and two adobe huts standing opposite each other at the eastern end to form a kind of gateway.
There was little activity in the streets, but Blake put this down to the fact that the town had probably been as badly buffeted by the day’s storms as he had. He pulled his range coat tighter about his wide-shouldered body and, giving Sundown his head, let the horse pick its own way down the hillside and across the prairie where rain still lay in puddles.
Sundown was into a canter by the time they reached the edge of town and as Durant rode into the main street he pulled the horse down to a walk and let his gaze sweep the place. A bunch of cowhands brushing rain off their shoulders were dismounting from tired-looking range ponies outside a batwinged doorway. Most of them looked Durant over, then disregarded him, apparently accepting him as one of their kind who had come out of the range and was in need of a drink and a feed and some rest.
Blake rode the stallion to the rack and dropped to the ground. He hitched the horse and stood a moment letting the sensation of weight shift down his legs. The cramp in his limbs slowly dissolved as he opened his coat, gave Sundown a pat on the head and moved towards the batwings.
The bunch of cowboys had already gone on into the saloon and when Blake drew up at the counter, he saw them grouped at the end of the room, talking with the barkeeper. Blake waited for the barkeeper to serve the cowhands before he indicated with a gesture that he wanted a drink. The barkeeper, a barrel-chested, sullen looking man, eyed him coolly, picked up a bottle and a glass in one hand. After giving the counter between Blake and himself a wipe with his sleeve, he put the glass down and filled it. He mumbled the price and moved away after Blake paid him.
Blake leaned his tall, rangy body against the counter and stared somberly into his drink, letting his thoughts drift to other times and other places. Maple was in the mid-west on the direct trail to his own home and he wondered if it was time he headed that way, to see how things were going, and how his brother was coping with the ranch. There were a few people he would like to see again, but only a few.
Maybe, he told himself, as he often did, that if he saw again the country he and Louise had ridden over, it would erase his painful sense of loss and wipe away the memories he had drifted to forget. Perhaps time had done its work, and he could once again pick up the threads of a life he had forsaken for the loneliness of strange places and stranger people.
Perhaps ... he could never be sure.
A hoarse voice broke into his distant thoughts.
“Something wrong with the whisky, stranger?”
Blake looked up from the drink and saw the barkeeper holding a bottle tipped towards the rim of his glass.
Blake shook his head. “No.”
“You havin’ a refill then?” the man muttered. “I ain’t got the time to keep comin’ up this way, mister. You fill up now or wait till I’m ready next time.”
Blake shrugged, then tossed the drink down and slid some more money forward. The barkeeper smiled in a self-satisfied manner as he poured the drink, then, looking pleased with himself, went off.
Blake heard talk rising about him, but none of it interested him. His mind went back a month to when he had left the Damiani ranch and the picture of Len Damiani was as clear now as it was then, the old man crippled with arthritis, standing at the head of his wife’s grave, the winter closing in fast.
He remembered, too, a pretty schoolteacher who had paid frequent visits to the ranch during his stay there. He had wanted to say goodbye to her, but had not. He knew he had in a way taken the coward’s way out, preferring to ride off rather than test his own feelings towards her. They had enjoyed each other’s company and perhaps, if he had given their friendship a chance, it might have turned out to be something deeper and more rewarding. Perhaps ...
The barkeeper was back again with the bottle poised. Blake finished his second drink and pushed more change forward. The man muttered something under his breath and was on the point of moving away when Blake asked him, “You know a man named Danny Damiani?”
The barkeeper stopped on the spot and swung back, brow creased into a frown. “Yeah, I know Damiani.”
“He about?”
The man looked uneasily down the counter. Blake noticed that the cowhands had stopped talking.
“Ain’t in yet,” the barkeeper said. “But he will be. You ... you a friend of his?”
“Nope.”
The barkeeper’s self-assurance seemed to have deserted him. He licked his lips and wiped a grubby hand down his shirt front, leaving a wide sweat stain on it.
Then he nodded towards the cowhands. “They ride with Danny. Maybe they can help you more’n I can.”
Blake looked disinterestedly at the bunch. “No, it’s private business.”
The barkeeper studied Blake more intently and his sudden increase in nervousness seemed to indicate that in Blake Durant he saw a man he would do better not knowing. Blake ignored his probing look and went back to his drinking. But he had only got halfway through his third drink when heavy footsteps sounded on his left. He did not look up even when the smell of stale whisky and tobacco reached across to him.
“Looks like you come a ways in a hurry, stranger,” a voice said a moment later.
Blake looked sideways to find a big, heavily built cowhand standing there. The man wore no hat and thick red hair fell in heavy curls down his creased brow. His eyes were clear blue and cold in their appraisal of Durant.
“I came a ways, yes,” Blake told him. “But not in a hurry.”
The redhead straightened, brow tightening into a deeper frown. Then he brushed past Blake and walked to the batwings. He took a moment studying Sundown before he came back nodding his head as if he had suddenly decided something for himself.
“The black’s not been pushed,” he said.
“I told you that.”
The redhead’s lips drew back over his teeth. He could have been smiling, except that his eyes stayed as cold as the winter wind. He was a massively built man, yet when he had walked to the door he had shown himself light on his feet. His face was marked a little but not much, which Blake took as a sign that he could possibly look after himself, and liked to test himself out from time to time.
“Yeah, you told me that, stranger,” he said finally. “Now tell me your name and what you want with Danny.”
Blake straightened, put down his glass. He noticed a closer bunching of the other cowhands. The only other men in the bar were a knot of businessmen right down the far end. They seemed to want no part of this discussion, and in fact seemed to be showing a deep interest in their drinks.
“You know Damiani?” Blake asked.
The redhead’s face darkened under a rise of anger. “Yeah, Danny’s a friend of mine, mister. Now out with your name and where’d you come from and why.”
Blake allowed a smile to touch the corners of his mouth. Len Damiani had told him that his son, Danny, was a wild one. So Blake knew that this was a wild bunch. But he remained unworried, mainly because he didn’t expect to have to tangle with them to any real degree.
“For what it’s worth, mister,” he said, “the name is Blake Durant. Where I come from is none of your business and what I want with Damiani is none of your business, either. Your friends are waiting for you.”
The redhead straightened fully upright now and his fists came together at his gun belt buckle. His face was a mottled patchwork of angry red and livid white and there were lines of tension at the corners of his mouth.
“Durant, eh,” he growled. “Maybe you’re on the hunt, eh?”
“Nope.”
“Damn you, you ain’t the first and you likely won’t be the last! But, by hell, if you got a mind to come hunting a man, you say it straight and we’ll get to the core of it real quick, here and now.”
“What do they call you, mister?” Blake asked him calmly.
“Name’s Bromage ... Curly Bromage.” Bromage’s shoulders went back and he planted his feet wide, as if in defiance of what else Blake might say to him.
“Okay, now we know each other, Bromage,” Blake said flatly. “For what it’s worth, that’s as far as I want our association to go. I rode in to have a talk to Damiani if he was about. There’s no more to it and I don’t want anybody reading any more into it than that. Got it?”
Bromage looked slightly unsure of himself, but before he could make any reply, the batwings creaked. Bromage’s look swung to the doorway and his anger seemed to soften a little.
Blake turned slightly to find a tall, lean man in carefully tailored clothes standing in the doorway. A gold watch chain decorated his sky blue vest. He wore no hat and no gun belt.
“Bromage, you and the boys ready?” said the man. “We’re ready to start. Damiani’s outside waiting.”
Blake finished his drink as the cowhands clattered their glasses on the counter. When they came up to Curly Bromage, the big man growled, “Well, Durant, here’s your chance. Come meet Danny.”
“Sure,” Blake said. He put down his glass, eyed the bunch of cowhands casually and led the way to the batwings. The tall, lean man stepped out onto the boardwalk and Blake followed him to see two wagons in the street with horses hitched behind, two drivers already up, and three riders circling at the front of the lead wagon.
It was immediately plain to Blake that Danny Damiani, whichever one he was, was on the way out of town. Not wanting to let him go without passing on Len Damiani’s information, Blake called, “Which one of you is Damiani?”
Even as Blake spoke, Curly Bromage came hurrying out through the batwings and called out, “Danny, stranger name of Durant just came a long way to see you. Actin’ just like them others.”
Blake saw a dark-haired, good-looking young man step out from behind the second of the two wagons. His black eyes swept up and down Blake and his mouth curled in a sneer.
“That so, Durant?” he said. “Where from? Who sent you?”
Bromage and the other cowhands had quickly formed a circle off from Blake Durant. Blake scowled at Bromage who gave him a crooked grin.
Danny Damiani quickly gestured with his left hand and said, “Easy now, Curly. I can handle this. Let Durant have his say.”
Blake looked from one to the other, seeing the arrogance and conceit in Damiani’s eyes. The youngster’s sneer had switched to a smile and he looked very cool and assured, though Blake noted that the fingers of his right hand curled very close to his gun butt.
“From the Platte, Damiani,” said Blake, “with word from your father.”
Damiani’s self-assurance vanished. His dark eyes took on a brooding depth and his mouth curled again into a sneer, ruining the regular handsomeness of his features, showing the mean temper locked inside him.
“Pa?” he asked. “What does he want with me?”
“I’ve a message for you,” said Blake. “It’s private enough for me to tell you on your own.”
When Damiani just stood there in silence, frowning, Curly Bromage called, “Don’t take his word for that, Danny. Hell, he likely ain’t dumb enough that he can’t see the way things stand here. But on your own, he could trick you.”
“Shut down, Curly,” was Damiani’s quick response to that. Then he nodded at Blake, adding, “Get it out, Durant.”
Blake pulled his rain-dampened bandanna from about his neck and shrugged. “Okay, Damiani, if that’s the way you want it. Your ma’s dead. I guess, at that, there’s no way to make it sound any easier.”
The color drained from Danny Damiani’s face and his mouth opened and a pained groan came from him. But then he was quickly in control of his emotions again. He bit his bottom lip and waved towards the wagons. “Get the boys up, Curly,” he said in a strained voice. “Everything’s settled.” He then came across to Blake, eyeing him intently. His lips were trembling as if he was trying to get some control into his thoughts.
“It’s the truth?” he asked Blake.
“Sure. I worked for your father for three months. Your mother died during my stay there.”
“What from, Durant?”
Blake was not sure if there were tears in Damiani’s eyes, or whether the gleam was caused by a trick of the late afternoon light after the storm.
“Natural causes,” said Blake. “She went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Your pa buried her on the place, behind the house. I stayed on another month but with the winter closing in, headed on my way. Your pa asked me if I came up this way to look you up, and tell you to come on home.”
Damiani straightened, his face suddenly twisted with rage. “Come home?” he barked. “What in hell to? My old man hasn’t ever been anything to me. The stinkin’, mean-bellied polecat, half-starvin’ ma all the time—”
Blake cut him off, saying curtly, “I’ve brought you the message.”
He was turning away when Damiani grabbed his shoulder and roughly wheeled him back. “Damn you, Durant, I’m telling you that—”
“It’s no business of mine, Damiani,” said Blake. He prised the young gun hand’s fingers open and stepped back.
But Danny Damiani yelled, “My pa is a saddlebum, Durant. He never done nothin’ in his whole life for anybody but himself. From the time I was ten years old he had me workin’ from sunup till sundown, and for no reward apart from enough grub to keep me fit enough to work. Go home! He’d have to be loco to expect that.”
Blake had begun to walk away. The other hands who had been with Bromage in the saloon had already grouped about the back of the wagons, and the three riders were sitting their horses, watching them very closely. In fact so closely that Blake thought they looked more like guards than men paid to play escort to a wagon train moving out.
Then, as Damiani’s shouting died away and he began to curse, a rider came charging into town. Blake looked round to see an old man, with a mane of white hair flowing down to his shoulders, and a thick white beard covering the whole bottom part of his face, charging down on them.
The old man had a rifle flattened against the side of his horse and as soon as he cleared the front of the first wagon, he sent his horse racing towards the well-dressed man still waiting on the boardwalk outside the saloon.
Blake turned, aware that tension flickered along the whole length of the street, like the feeling of thunder in the air before a storm. And then the tension climaxed in a booming roll of gunfire as the old man released his grip on the reins and brought the rifle to his shoulder. He pumped off two wild shots which tore into the saloon batwings. By then the well-dressed man had sought the cover of an overhang post and the three riders had closed in, guns barking.
Caught in the middle of all this, Blake Durant threw himself sideways and rolled out of the vicious crossfire. Sundown, on a loose tie-rope at the hitchrack, reared and pawed the air with his front legs as bullets whipped about him. Then the old man let out a scream of pain just as his horse slammed into Sundown. In the wild melee that followed, Sundown and the old-timer’s horse went down in a tangle of kicking legs.
The old man was thrown clear of both horses. He landed on his back on the boardwalk and rolled onto his side, still clutching the rifle. As he did so more bullets slammed into him, punching him over onto his knees.
A further bullet missed him and smashed into his rifle stock, knocking the weapon from his grasp. He rocked back on his haunches and sat there, blood streaming down the side of his face and filling the folds of his grubby shirt. Then he fell forward onto his knees again, cursing wildly, and finally pointing a grubby hand at the well-dressed man.
