Table of Contents
BULLS-EYE
Yakima tugged on his hair again, and then he had the man out the station houses front door. Yakima swung him around in front of him, and the man pinwheeled again, dropping to the ground on his hands and knees, wailing.
No! the outlaw cried, his chest bloody, his thick hair dancing about his shoulders. Someone, make this Indian stop!
Yakima stopped ten feet away from the man and just as the man began to lift up off his knees, snugged the butt of his Yellowboy against his right shoulder and aimed carefully.
The rifle leaped and roared.
There was a sharp whunk as the bullet plowed through the dead center of the outlaws tan forehead, jerking the mans head violently back and painting the ground behind him, between the man and the waiting coach, with red blood and white bone and brain matter. The outlaw flew straight back and lay with his arms and legs spread, mouth forming a startled O, his sightless eyes staring skyward.
His right foot, with the hole in its sock, twitched.
Praise for the Novels
of Frank Leslie
Frank Leslie weaves Bullet for a Half-Breed out of barbed wire. If youre fainthearted, forget this story. Its tough. And its gritty.
Dusty Richards, Spur and Wrangler Award-winning
author of the Herschel Baker series
Frank Leslie kicks his story into a gallop right out of the gate ... raw and gritty as the West itself.
Mark Henry, author of The Hell Riders
Frank Leslie writes with leathery prose honed sharper than a buffalo skinners knife.
Johnny D. Boggs, Spur Award-winning author
of The Killing Shot
Explodes off the page in an enormously entertaining burst of stay-up-late, read-into-the-night, fast-moving flurry of page-turning action ... rivals the very best on Western shelves today.
J. Lee Butts, author of And Kill Them All
Hooks you instantly with sympathetic characters and sin-soaked villains. Yakima has a heart of gold and an Arkansas toothpick.
Mike Baron, creator of Nexus and
The Badger comic book series
Big, burly, brawling, and action-packed ... a testosterone-laced winner from the word go, and Frank Leslie is an author to watch!
E. K. Recknor, author of The Legendary
Kid Donovan
Also by Frank Leslie
The Killers of Cimarron
The Dangerous Dawn
The Guns of Sapinero
The Savage Breed
The Wild Breed
The Lonely Breed
The Thunder Riders
For Tom and Tonya
Chapter 1
Yakima Henry ran an oiled rag down the stock of his prized Winchester Yellowboy repeater, then, shoving the rag back behind his cartridge belt, racked a shell into the rifles chamber. He eased the hammer down to half cock but kept his thumb on it. Ready.
The stagecoach, bound for Red Hill, Arizona Territory, rocked and swayed beneath him. He kept his high-topped, beaded moccasins wedged against the dashboard as he sat in the shotgun messengers position beside the driver, and stared at the storied and dangerous nest of rocks rising ahead and on the trails right side.
In the corner of his eye, he saw the driver turn toward him.
He glanced back at the man, Avril Derks, whose cataract-milky, molasses brown eyes stared out from deep in their leathery sockets, out from above the red bandanna with white polka dots that the oldster had wrapped around the lower half of his face to keep the ubiquitous red desert dust out of his mouth and nose. His skin was black, and it owned the texture of cracked bull hide. Deep lines cut across his forehead, beneath the brim of his weathered, high crowned, snuff brown Stetson.
Yakima saw little point in the bandanna. The oldsters breathing was already pinched from all his many years smoking hand-rolled cigarettes from wheat paper and the harsh Lobo Negro tobacco he bought in gallon-sized kegs on his whoring forays across the border in Agua Prieta.
Demon Rock comin up! Derks barked out above the thunder of the stage wheels and the pounding hooves of the six-horse hitch.
I see it.
Derks nodded. The former slaves eyes were serious, cautionary above the bandanna, the tops of his cheekbones spotted with ginger freckles. Some folks eyes aint as good as other folks eyes.
You worry about the team, Yakima said. Ill worry about the rocks.
The driver, whose woolly black-and-gray sideburns ran down into the bandanna, shrugged and turned forward. Bad place in there, he muttered just loudly enough for Yakima to hear. His voice was dark, brooding, worried.
How many times were you hit here, Avril?
Three times over the past year. The Romans didnt like it one bit. No, sah. Not one bit. And neither did the businessmen that turn their hard-earned money over to us to transport. The Romans, father and daughter, were the chief owners in the Coronado Transport Company, based at the end of the line in Red Hill.
The strongbox on the coach often carried payroll coins for the two big ranches west of Red Hill, as the Red Hill Bank & Trust rarely kept more than a few thousand dollars in its vault at any one time. The reasoning was that even with a fairly effective sheriff and two good deputies, it was easier to rob the bank, a stationary target, than the stage. Sometimes the stage carried no money at all, and it was impossible for would-be thieves to know when it was heavy and when it was light. Unless they were being informed by someone who knew the workings of the line or the banks it serviced, that is. So far, that didnt appear the case.
Derks glanced over his shoulder at the chained and padlocked strongbox riding the stages roof, then turned forward again. He shook his head slowly as a fresh wave of sand-colored dust wafted over him and Yakima, who preferred his Winchester to a shotgun though a double-barreled Greener was stowed beneath his seat. Im surprised ol Roman hasnt fired me by now. Surprised, indeed.
Ah, shit, Yakima said, nudging the old jehu with his elbow. Where they gonna find another driver fool enough to haul this crate between Apache Gap and Red Hill?
Derks gave Yakima a penetrating look, both woolly gray eyebrows arched.
Not a chance, Yakima growled, keeping his eyes on the stony escarpment growing before him. Hell, Im a damn fool for takin the shotgunners job. Walked right into that one. That help wanted sign in the German Caf just looked so innocent.
He shook his head again and squinted against the dust. There were few jobs worse than riding the drivers boot of a southwestern stage. Even one that wasnt plagued by holdups. Hot, sweaty, dusty. When you werent being fried by the sun, coated in grit, and shaken around like dice in a cup, you were hammered by the sudden rain squalls of a desert monsoon. And there were the dry washes that got wet fast in such a squall, and you either waited for the flood to clear, which could take hours, or you risked getting swept awayteam, lockbox, passengers, and all....
As the stage followed the long, gradual bend around the front of the volcanic dyke that had been named Demon Rock by the Mescalero, Yakima removed his moccasin-clad feet from the dashboard and sat up straight in his seat.
Fifty yards ... forty ... thirty.
