Table of Contents
Praise for Frank Leslie and His Yakima Henry Series
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
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
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 Written in Blood
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 and The Badger 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 The Legendary Kid Donovan
Also by Frank Leslie
The Guns of Sapinero
The Savage Breed
The Killing Breed
The Wild Breed
The Lonely Breed
The Thunder Riders
To George and Sandy Loner,
for keeping this stray dog and his three curs
off the grubline,
Taylor Park, Colorado,
Summer of 09
Chapter 1
Yakima Henry sat up slowly and reached for the horn-gripped .44 hanging from a bedpost.
He slid his other hand across the naked whore sleeping curled beneath the quilts to his left, as though to shield her from a bullet, and gentled the .44 from its holster with a soft snick of iron against leather.
Raising the gun, he stared at the figure silhouetted in the window, against the glowing snowy night. The man, clad in a bulky blanket coat and broad-brimmed hat, slid one long leg over the window ledge, into the room.
There was a faint spur ching. His breath smoked in the rooms darkness. The twinkling starlight glistened on the long barrel of the revolver in the mans gloved right fist.
Yakimas low growl sounded loud in the rooms brittle, wintery silence. Thats far enough, Cisco.
The intruder grunted with a start, and swung his gun toward Yakima. Before the man could trigger a shot, possibly pinking the whore beside Yakima, Yakima squeezed the trigger of his Colt .44. The gun roared like a cannon, causing the whore to lift her head, screaming, and for the man called Cisco to give another, shriller grunt, and fall straight back out the window behind him.
Easy, senorita, Yakima said in the dense silence following the pistols roar. That was just Cisco.
The girl sat up, holding the several layers of quilts up to her neck, her own breath frosting in the air between her and Yakima. Her chest rose and fell quickly as she breathed. Damn you, gringo! You nearly gave me a heart stroke! Whos Cisco?
Feller I fleeced at stud earlier. I just had a strange crawlin feelin he was gonna come lookin for his money. And I had a feelin he wasnt gonna ask polite for it, neither....
Yakima cursed and threw the quilts back from his long, brawny frame that, after his and the Mexican whores prolonged frolic several hours ago, hed covered with his wool winter balbriggans and socks. It got damn cold of a night this high in the December Rockies. What he was doing here when he should have been in Arizona or New Mexico or southern Texas, he had no idea. Just an especially bad episode of saddle fever had struck him too late in the year, and here he was, caught between storms on his way to Wyoming for a rumored job guarding gold shipments.
Yakima got up, sucking his breath sharply against the brittle night air, and stomped over to the window. Cisco was bent backwards over the sill, hanging by his knees, his head and shoulders outside, his spurred boots raking the inside wall as he spasmed.
Yakima peered over the mans bent knees clad in coarse checked trousers. His head hung nearly to the drifted snow that was dark with the blood that was gushing out the hole in the center of his chest. His high-crowned hat lay nearby, near the gun-shaped hole marking the spot his gun had fallen into the drift and which likely wouldnt be seen again until spring.
Ciscos teeth clattered. He groaned, panted, and fell suddenly silent. His body slacked down the outside wall, and his spurs ceased their raucous chatter inside the room. All Yakima could see in the shadowy, snowy night was the mans black hair capping the pale oval of his mustached face.
Damn fool.
Yakima heard the patter of bare feet and strained breaths. He turned to see the whorewhose name he couldnt remember though hed found himself liking the girl for vague reasons beyond her man-pleasing talentsrun up behind him, holding a quilt around her shoulders. Her long hair fell in thick cascades down her arms.
Is he dead?
Deadern last years Christmas goose. Ciscos got no one but himself to thank. Yakima narrowed a wary eye at the girl. Is there a lawman in town? A half-breed whom trouble followed like a hungry mutt, Yakima tried to steer as wide as possible from lawmen. Even when he didnt start trouble, he seemed to always be the one paying for it.
Not till spring. He gets the chilblains. The whore continued to peer over the windowsill at the dead mans face. I havent seen that hombre.
You werent about to, neither, Yakima said with a humorous chuff. Not the way I turned his pockets inside out. Never seen a worse poker player. I could read the number on each card in his eyeballs, and he couldnt bluff any better than a Baptist preacher caught with his pants down in a Nevada whorehouse.
The whore snorted and rubbed her cheek against Yakimas shoulder. Youre a funny gringo-Indio. Im going back to bedits cold!
Yeah. Yakima looked around outside, seeing nothing but the dark cabins huddled in the snowdrifts, smoke rising darkly from stone hearths and tin chimney pipes. Beyond the mountain-ensconced village, steep, black ridges shouldered against the vast sky dusted with twinkling starlight. Whats a nice Mexican girl doin in a cold place like this?
Its a long story, and its too cold to talk, the girl said, crawling shivering back into the bed. Suffice it to say, I fell in love with the wrong gringo who took me north and left me here to fend for myself.
She watched in horror as Yakima lifted the dead mans boots above the windowsill, and shoved the mans legs outside where the body hit the ground with a rustle of packed snow. Sucking a shocked breath, she said, You have no respect for the dead?
Not the dead that tried to kill me.
Yakima looked out at the carcass lying piled up and half-buried in the deep, dry snow. There was only one set of purple boot tracks in the glittering snow leading to the window. Satisfied that Cisco had been working alone, Yakima drew both shutters closed with a raspy, wooden bark, then made sure the locking nail was in place.