Leslie - The Killing Breed

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Table of Contents

Praise for Frank Leslie and The Lonely Breed

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 Camp Ford

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 Lawdog

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!

E. K. Recknor, author of The Brothers of Junior Doyle

Also by Frank Leslie

The Lonely Breed
The Thunder Riders
The Wild Breed

SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, September 2008

Copyright Peter Brandvold, 2008

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Bob King,
teacher and friend

Chapter 1

The gnarled, bony hand grabbed the bottle around its neck and raised it to the dying light slanting through the dusty, west-facing window. The hand tipped the bottle back, and the man raised his headan unshaven deaths-head of pale, gaunt, drunken miseryfrom the pillow.

About three inches of whiskey remained. Good.

Neither he nor the girl would have to go downstairs for more. Not for another hour or two, anyway. It was too cold for the man to go, and he didnt want the girl to go and take with her the warmth of her young, supple body. Hours ago, hed let the fire in the main saloon hall die. Too much work to split wood and haul it in from outside to feed the flames that, like the flame inside the man, seemed to be eternally dying.

Got enough? the girl asked, curled up against him, running a slender brown finger through the coarse gray hair on his chest.

She luxuriated in the feather mattress and the sheets that had been shipped from Denver when the saloon was still making money, and when there were more girls than only her, Ruby, a half-breed orphan from Montana Territory. Shed come from mining camps in Montana and Dakota where shed plied her trade in drafty plank shacks with little more than straw pallets to work and sleep on, making so little that when shed come here riding a stolen mule to the gold camps farther up the mountains, she hadnt weighed a hundred pounds.

Bill Thornton nodded and lifted the bottle to his lips, his eyes rolling back at the soothing fire of the whiskey that plunged down his throat and into his belly.

Ruby smiled and lifted her head slightly, her coffee brown eyes peering into his. She slid her hand down his chest and belly, found him beneath the quilts, and gently squeezed. Again?

Anything to please him, so hed have no thoughts against keeping her here in this run-down saloon on an abandoned freight trail on the eastern slopes of the Colorado Rockies. Here, where hed get maybe thirty customers a month. He used to get more than that in a single weeknight, when the trail outside the saloon was still a main thoroughfare for miners, freighters, drummers, and stagecoaches. Then hed easily make a hundred dollars on the whores alone, three or four times that on hooch and his deftly weighted roulette wheel.

Thornton chuckled and set the bottle beside him, running his free hand through the long black hair falling down the girls curving back. You flatter me. Im lucky to get it up once a week.

For some reason, she found this funny, chuckling as she rested her head once more on the pillow, showing the gap where shed lost an eyetooth. Thornton wasnt offended. She wasnt mocking him. Ruby was a little touched, and who wouldnt be after the life shed had? Besides, she took care of him, tending the saloon when his side ached too much for him to do anything but lie in bed or sit downstairs by the fire and kill the near-constant pain of the unhealed wound with rye.

Killing the pain and the memory of the girl whod shot him. Trying to kill it, rather. Enough whiskey would soothe the raw ache in his sidea festering, stinging burn that he often imagined to be that of a rat trying to chew its way out from inside him. But it never took away the image of the girl whod given it to him.

Faith...

The memory of the derringer slug drilling his side made him wince as though hed been slappedthe wound had nearly healed once, then reopened when hed taken a drunken fall. It had formed a couple of thin scabs but had never fully healed. Now it looked like raw meat greened by too much time in the sun, and it wept a thick yellow puss liberally laced with blood.

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