It’s Western Wednesday so pull up yer pantaloons and let out a few yippi yi ki yays!This week, a sneak peek of my 2011 Lance Howard release, The Killing Kind. First the blurb:
Jim Bartlett thought he could put his former life behind him and forge a new one as small Texas ranch owner, but he was wrong—dead wrong.
Because someone from his past has followed him and is systematically and permanently trying to destroy that new life piece by piece.
And now with his friends and the woman he loves threatened by a man who knows no remorse and no boundaries, he finds himself in a desperate struggle not only to escape his past but hold onto his very life.
CHAPTER ONE:
When the man in the gray duster stepped into the general store, it seemed as if all light vanished within. Although morning sunlight blazed through the front window, flies and dust waltzing within its glowing shafts, the store interior appeared to darken. It was as if darkness gathered about the man.
He wore a battered hat, which had a chip missing on its brim and was pulled low to shadow the features of its wearer. Two years back, many a man in Colorado Territory would have testified as to how the man blackened a room just by his entry, but that was now the stuff of tall tales in cheap magazines that sold a legend that never was. Or, at least, was not yet ended.
The bell above the door chimed at his entrance. That was strangely ironic, he thought, because its cheerful ring foretold death. He was one for irony, and this mission, this task for which he had strived over the past two years, was as ironic an undertaking as any could get. The Dead bringing death.
Folks in Colorado made mistakes in their perceptions of outlaws, much the way those pulp writers did. They claimed them ignorant, the product of bad upbringings or loose brains.
But he was no such man. He was intelligent, crafty, and his parents, up until the time he put them in their graves, had seen fit to raise him properly. Bless them. It made plans easier to think through, and men easier to control, to frighten. Stupid men gave no thought to the game, to the satisfaction of drawing blood in a thin steady stream, instead of splattering it everywhere, though he had been accused of his share of splattering, and rightly so.
Yet, still, while he was a damn sight smarter than the average owlhoot and considerably deadlier, no one here in the Texas Panhandle knew him, no one in Wendell, except for two men who would never be expecting him. The notion brought a whispered laugh to his lips.
With his rearing, he had no excuse for the man he had become, other than he had just been born defective, corrupt; that suited him right fine. He needed no excuses for his actions. Never had, and never would. He was what he was. A mean-spirited bastard.
After closing the door behind him, the bell chiming again, he stepped deeper into the general store, the fall of his boots hollow, akin to thunder.
Two women, old, gray-hair pulled high and tight beneath little round hats, turned their gazes toward him. Their wrinkled faces pinched at the sight of him as if, backlit by the light from the window, he was some sort of demon who’d simply materialized within the store. Their faded gingham dresses hung like rags on their bony frames, and they gave him an up and down appraisal that brought disgust and a measure of fear to their red-seamed eyes. Blue-veined hands with skin like onion paper tightened on handbags and he might have chuckled had the irritation of finding them in the store not been prickling his hide. He had watched the entryway long enough, had judged the store empty, save for the man he had come to see. The two old women presented a problem, but fortunately one for which he had a solution. The same solution that solved all his ills: death.
They started to scuttle along a row of stacked canned goods and his head lifted slightly, signaling them to a stop without a word. One of them let out a small sound, like that of a mouse ground beneath a bootheel. It pleased him.
His gray eyes swept over the small place, scanning its aisles of shelves stocked with colored bottles of various elixirs and canned goods, sacks of oats and flour piled high on the floor, barrels standing near a low counter flanking the right wall.
“Where is he?” the man asked, his gaze shifting to the counter. “Where’s Jess Henley?”
“W-who?” one of the women said, almost a chirp.
“Calls himself Billy Fredericks now…” he said, forgetting for a moment the stupid bastard had changed his name to prevent just what was about to happen.
“In…in the back,” the other old woman said, her voice worn, as frail as her appearance.
“He went to fetch us something…” the first one said, voice quivering.
“Your cooperation won’t save you…” he said.
He realized it wasn’t only his presence and the evil they might have felt emanating from him that brought about their nervousness. Something else was making them antsy. He surmised the storekeep had gone to fetch them liquor of some kind; that’s why they had likely snuck in here through the back and he hadn’t seen them enter. For some reason unknown to him, these ladies were hiding their vice. Everyone had their secrets, didn’t they? From the prissiest church goer to the orneriest outlaw. But they all had one thing in common: they rarely died with them. Secrets had a way of spilling out.
A sound from the back caught his attention. His head lifted a fraction and strands of brown straggly hair shown in the arc of sunlight that sliced through the store window. Momentarily, a small portion of his lower face was revealed and one of the old women let out a startled yelp.
“You damn well best shut it,” he said, cocking his head back to her. He couldn’t blame her for her reaction. She’d likely never seen a man with scars such as his. A dead man’s scars.
Coming from the back, clutching two bottles of amber liquor, the storekeep pulled up short. The bleat from the old woman had halted his entry and he peered at the stranger in the duster as if the Devil himself had stepped into his parlor.
Indeed, that was damn near the truth of the matter, thought the man. “Everyone loves a surprise, don’t they, Henley?” he said, his voice low, raspy.
“No…” the storekeep said, barely audible. “It ain’t possible.”
“Anything’s possible, Henley, you should know that. Except for maybe killing a ghost.”
The storekeeper’s fear delighted him much more than even he had anticipated. The little runt of a man with a shock of blond-brown hair quivered like a kitten.
The women started moving towards the door again.
“We’ll just come back later for our…medicine…” one said, pushing the other ahead of her a step.
A whiff of a flowery odor assailed his nostrils. It came from the women, sickening, like lilies at a funeral. He detested that stench, detested old people in general and the way they stank of death’s approaching corruption.
“You aren’t going anywhere…” he said, head tilting back to them, and the women stopped again.
“Please…” the ‘keep said. “Let them go…”
“Beg your God, Henley, though I doubt He’ll listen any better than I would. Or care a lick more.”
“We got a new life now…” the store owner said, still quaking. His eyes had widened and sweat trickled down his face.
“You reckon? You reckon you can run far enough from your old one…” The man paused, the flowery scent annoying him further, making his hand itch to go for the Smith & Wesson at his hip to add the acrid scent of gunpowder to the mix.
The storekeeper shook his head. “We wasn’t runnin’. We was just tryin’ to start over, make amends.” The owner swallowed hard, his prominent Adam’s apple doing a dance.
“You were always just a follower, Henley, but Bartlett, he was a trouble-maker. Reckon it was all his idea?”
The ‘keep nodded like a rabbit, though it was plain it was simply a nervous reaction and not a betrayal. “Please just go. We won’t never tell anyone…”
The man laughed, an unpleasant sound that brought another squeak from one of the old women.
“I told you to shut it…” the man said, looking back to them, and suddenly the gun was in his hand. The old women’s eyes widened and their trembling increased.
“No!” the ‘keep said. “Please don’t…just leave…”
“Oh, I’m leaving, Henley. Don’t you worry any about that. For you…it’ll be quick…but for Bartlett…he’s gonna learn there’s no escaping who…what you are.”
The ‘keep started to back up, but the man’s Smith & Wesson swung to aim and thunder filled the store. The thunder was followed by the sound of bottles shattering as they hit the floorboards and the screams of the two old women.
Those screams ended a heartbeat later, but the thunder did not.
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