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Praise for Frank Leslie and His Yakima Henry 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, with characters as explosive as forty-rod whiskey, and a plot that slams readers with the impact of a Winchester slug. The Lonely Breed is edgy, raw, and irresistible.
Johnny D. Boggs, Spur Award-winning author of Northfield
Explodes off the page in an enormously entertaining burst of stay-up-late, read-into-the-night, fast-moving flurry of page-turning action. Leslie spins a yarn that rivals the very best on Western shelves today.
J. Lee Butts, author of Hell to Pay
Hooks you instantly with sympathetic characters and sin-soaked villains. Yakima has a heart of gold and an Arkansas toothpick. If you prefer Peckinpah to Ang Lee, this ones for you.
Mike Baron, creator of Nexus, The Badger, and Detonator comic book series
Big, burly, brawling, and action-packed, The Lonely Breed is a testosterone-laced winner from the word go, and Frank Leslie is an author to watch!
Ellen Recknor, author of Bad Company
Also by Frank Leslie
The Savage Breed
The Killing Breed
The Wild Breed
The Lonely Breed
The Thunder Riders
For my cousin Coleen, with love and fond memories of the hills above Bottineau
Chapter 1
The raptor did not know whether the man was dead or alive, and the man wasnt sure himself.
The man knew only darkness and burning misery and tooth-splintering pain that worsened occasionally, like the sudden raucous upbeat of a drunken four-piece Mexican band on a Saturday night in some smoky border-country cantina.
The raptor, a turkey buzzard, hovered low over the wagon being drawn by two burly mules across the sun-hammered sage flats toward cool blue mountains rolling back against the northern horizon.
The man lay spread-eagle on his back in the wagon box.
He wore a beaded buckskin vest over a brown wool shirt, red-and-white-checked neckerchief, patched dungarees, and worn black boots without spurs. His wide, seamed face was drawn taut with torment. Thick auburn hair flopped across his forehead with the wagons pitch and sway. His bushy soup-strainer mustache was the same color as his hair, and his eyelids were squeezed shut, carving deep lines up into his temples.
His cracked and swollen lips were stretched so that his large white teeth peeked out from beneath his mustache.
Blood leaked from low on his right sidea large, matted mess of it staining his shirt and vest. It was this that the raptor sensed, as well as the blood leaking out around the mans hands and ankles, which had been nailed into the wagons scarred oak bed so that the man resembled nothing so much as a frontier Christ crucified not on a hilltop but on a wagon bed and sent, lurching and squawking and clattering, across southwestern Colorado.
The land around was pocked with sage and cedars and ringed with craggy mountain peaks, some still tipped with snow.
The hungry raptor decided to take its chances.
Lifting its dusty black wings, it dropped down over the bouncing wagon. It lowered its spidery legs and lighted atop the mans broad, sweat-soaked chest, keeping its wings half spread to balance itself as the mules continued doggedly pulling the wagon across the meandering desert trail.
It cocked its bald head and stared with pelletlike copper-colored eyes up into the mans face as though waiting to see if the man would react to its presence.
He did.
One eye opened, showing the frosty blue iris and red-veined white around it. Both eyes bunched. The man said through gritted teeth, just loud enough for the bird to hear above the wagons din, Get off me, you filthy bastard!
The man winced at the pain in his nailed palms and ankles as he tried, with minimal success, to arch his back and shake the bird from his chest. The bird only spread its wings slightly farther apart and canted its head to one side as it continued staring into the mans eyes.
I said, the man raked out, tears of misery rolling down his sun-blistered cheeks, get the hell off me, vermin!
As if in mocking defiance, the bird skittered down to the mans flat belly, dug its three-pronged feet into his shirt and vest, and lowered its long, hooked beak toward the half-jelled blood on the mans right side, just above his cartridge belt and empty holster.
The man dropped his chin to watch the bird, horror showing in his eyes and dimpling his cheeks. Dont yougoddamn it! Dont you
As the bird ground its sharp beak into the jellied wound, the mans angry, desperate rasp broke off, and a shrill scream rose from the wagon to careen across the sun-seared valley.
The echoing cry startled the mules into a lope.
Two line riders from the Blackbird Canyon Ranch spied the wagon an hour later as it wound into the rocky, pion-studded foothills of the Lunatic Mountains. By this time the wagon was nearly filled with the flapping wings and bobbing bald heads of turkey buzzards. Their squawks and barks could be heard from a mile away. A half dozen of the raptors hovered over the wagon like a cloud of giant mosquitoes.
The line riders rode down a steep slope and onto the switchbacking wagon trail in the shade of a sprawling boulder, stopping the mules and driving the enraged raptors away. The birds lighted on the ground or a lightning-topped cottonwood nearby, squealing and moaning with proprietary anger.
As the mules snorted and stomped, twitching their ears suspiciously and occasionally lifting a shrill, anxious bray, the riders approached on either side of the wagon and stared down at its grisly contents.
Ill be damned, said Billy Roach. Aint that... ?
Trace Cassidy, said the other rider, a potbellied, sombrero-hatted man named Ralph Appleyard. It sure as hell is. The old gunslinger his ownself. What the buzzards left of him. The middle-aged drover grimaced as he regarded the bloody, pecked remains of Cassidyfrom his nailed wrists to his nailed ankles. Someone sure gave him his due.
For what, you spose? asked the younger Roach, whose black-and-white-checked neckerchief fluttered in the dry breeze lifting from Sapinero Valley.
For whatever he did. Had to be a while ago. Trace hung up his guns when he moved out here to take up ranchin with his womana childhood sweetheart from Tennessee, I heard tell, though I never met her. Appleyard nodded toward the higher, fir-covered slopes of the northern mountains. Has him a ranch up high in the Lunatics, another two hours from here.
Key-riist, Hoochsomeone sure had it in for him bad. I dont know I ever seen a man treated this ugly, and I punched cows two years in Apache country!
Appleyard stared grimly toward the northern peaks, which were now obscured by late-afternoon clouds from which a couple of thin, gauzy rain curtains danced. They sure as hell must have. And they must have some mighty big cajones, toosendin ol Trace back into them mountains like that.
