A Grave for Lassiter Read online

  STALKING HIS PREY

  Behind the dance hall there were few windows. As he began to stroll, he heard a soft sound at his back. Suddenly he ducked into the shadows of the shrubbery.

  Vanderson came into view, peering into the darkness. He gave a grunt of surprise as Lassiter stepped out. Faint lamplight shone on the barrel of the gun Vanderson held in his right hand.

  “Stalking your prey?” Lassiter said softly. He tore the weapon from Vanderson’s fingers, but as he did, the gun discharged. The shot sent echoes booming into the night air. The music died with a discordant squeal as people came pouring from the dance hall.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on, Lassiter?” the sheriff demanded.

  Vanderson tried to run, but Lassiter grabbed him, twisting his arm up behind his back.

  Lantern glow fell over Vanderson’s stricken face as Lassiter held out the revolver for the sheriff to see. Lassiter spun Vanderson around to face him. “How much is Farrell paying you to bring me down?”

  Other Leisure books by Loren Zane Grey:

  AMBUSH FOR LASSITER

  LASSITER

  LOREN ZANE GREY

  * * *

  A GRAVE FOR

  LASSITER

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 1987 by Loren Gray

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. 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 author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1793-6

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-1815-5

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: December 2005

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  A GRAVE FOR

  LASSITER

  Chapter One

  The gunshot came shockingly clear on the twilight, as startling as a bugler blowing “charge” in a quiet church. Everyone in downtown Rimrock looked startled.

  Lassiter had gone to dicker for a replacement of their pack animal. Herm Falconer stayed at a blacksmith shop where a loose shoe on his roan needed to be nailed tight.

  Herm, a large, fleshy man with coarse brown hair and a ruddy complexion, had been drinking from a bottle that was now half gone. Usually he was amiable. But last night was a full moon and he was edgy. To make it worse, the pack horse on their desperate journey had gone lame. Herm knew it was his fault. Lassiter had wanted to split the heavy load on the backs of two animals instead of one. But Herm’s boy, Vance, had argued that he wanted to bring along his big bay and Herm, as was his custom, had given in.

  Herm was just tipping the bottle again when he heard Vance arguing with a runt with a hard face and stained clothing. The man wanted the smithy to put aside Herm’s horse and tend to his own.

  The little man’s molasses drawl pried up the lid of Herm’s temper even further. “You talk like you got a mouthful of grits,” Herm said. It struck Vance so funny that he hahooed loudly and slapped his thigh.

  “Ah’s Southern an’ damn proud of it,” the little man announced, and something in his eyes made the big smithy step back and make silencing motions to Herm and Vance. Herm failed to notice.

  “Ah was one of Jackson’s boys,” the little man snarled. He came up to stand in front of Herm, who was slightly taller sitting down on an upended keg.

  “Jackson who?” Herm asked with a tight grin.

  “Stonewall Jackson!”

  “Mudwall Jackson, you mean. . . .”

  And that produced the gunshot from a big Remington pistol that had the roar of a Napoleon howitzer. Herm fell off the keg and rolled in the straw, clutching his right leg. Blood poured through his fingers. His large face was twisted in pain and graying fast. His mouth hung open.

  The little man sheathed his big, smoking revolver and went roaring south out of Rimrock, heading in the direction of the Mexican border.

  Like everyone else, Lassiter had turned in the direction of the revolver shot. The twisting in his gut intensified when he saw Vance coming at a wild run.

  “Herm’s been shot!” Vance never called him Dad or Pa.

  Had Vance Vanderson been the one to invite a bullet wound, Lassiter would not have been surprised in the least. Although the “kid,” as Herm usually referred to him, had just celebrated his twenty-first birthday, he wasn’t grown up enough to sidestep trouble.

  Lassiter hurried back to the blacksmith shop.

  “Shoulda kept my mouth shut,” Herm was babbling.

  The men made a litter of an old blanket and Lassiter helped carry Herm two blocks to the Rimrock Hospital.

  A doctor named Ferguson, tall and spare, with a beak nose upon which his eyeglasses rested, made a hasty examination. Then he came to the room where Lassiter and Vance waited.

  “You’re the son?” Ferguson asked Vance.

  “Stepson,” Vance winced.

  “The bullet splintered the femur. I’ll try and save the leg, but I don’t know. . . .” He spread his scrubbed hands apologetically, and allowed the men to go see Herm, who was barely conscious.

  “Lassiter, you an’ the kid git movin’. Leave me be. My brother Josh needs help. It was why we was ridin’ hellbent in the first place. . . .”

  Lassiter told the older man to save his breath. “We’re not moving till we see about that leg.”

  “Herm’s right,” Vance cut in. Lassiter could have kicked him. The “kid” had clear hazel eyes in a rather handsome face. A bushy brown mustache not only made him look more mature, but fascinated the ladies, so he claimed.

  “I’ll be fine right here,” Herm gasped. “Lassiter, you do what I’m askin’. We been friends a long time. You an’me an’ my brother Josh. Do it for us.”

  Before Lassiter could reply, a deputy sheriff entered the room to discuss the shooting. The big, slow-moving man with a mean eye let it be known that he had been in Beauregard’s command during the war and
hadn’t much sympathy for a man who’d malign Stonewall Jackson by calling him Mudwall. The deputy had evidently gotten his information from the smithy.

  Lassiter didn’t argue the matter; the war had been over for some years but wounds were still raw. He knew it would take little effort to run down the runt who had put the bullet in Herm Falconer.

  Before the day was out, Lassiter agreed to continue the fast trip north to rescue Herm’s older brother from financial quicksand.

  “You got the money,” Herm said in a feeble voice, clinging to Lassiter’s hand. “Eleven thousand from me an’ seven of your own. Eighteen thousand will see Josh clear.”

  Lassiter looked across the bed and saw Vance Vanderson watching him closely. Being reminded of the gold coins they were carrying had put a contemplative look in the hazel eyes. Lassiter told himself to sleep lightly until they reached Josh.

  Lassiter chanced the suggestion that Vance stay behind. “He’ll be company for you, Herm. I’ll get the money to Josh and give him a hand with his freight line till you show up. . . .”

  But Herm wouldn’t hear of it. “Purely my fault I got in this mess. Shoulda listened to you about bringin’ two pack horses ’stead of one.” Herm turned his head on the pillow and looked up at his stepson. “Meanin’ nothin’ against you, but Lassiter’s smart,” which made the younger man’s lips twitch. “An’ if that goddamn hoss,” Herm continued, “hadn’t gone lame, I wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

  When they started riding again, Vance said, “Sure glad I didn’t have to stay behind. That hospital’s got a stink that turns my stomach.”

  “Herm’ll have to live with it for a spell,” Lassiter reminded crisply. He was an inch under six feet and rode his black horse with all the grace of a Comanche warrior. What could be seen of his hair under a flat-crowned black hat was very dark. He had a strong nose and chin, and a pair of blue eyes that could be amiable or cold as winter rock.

  “Reckon it was me laughin’ so hard that made the runt mad,” Vanderson said. They were pushing north through country with house-sized boulders in a sea of chapparal.

  “You shouldn’t have laughed.”

  “No reason to get uppity. Hell, I’m sorry as you that Herm had to go and open his big mouth to that runty little Reb.”

  “Herm was half-drunk and you should have known better than to throw coal oil on the fire by your howling.”

  “Maybe. But it was a full moon, for one thing. The pack hoss giving out on us was another. I’ve lived with Herm since I was eleven so I can smell a drunk coming on just like sniffing a barrel of dirty clothes.”

  “You haven’t shown a sliver of sympathy for Herm getting shot.”

  “I am sorry, hell.” Vanderson was silent for a mile or so. Then he said musingly, “Be somethin’ if Herm didn’t come out of it. I’d own Northguard Freight Company along with Josh, now wouldn’t I?”

  Lassiter was too disgusted with the way things had turned out to say anything. It had started out as one brother going to the financial rescue of another. And because Lassiter knew them both and had some ready cash for a change, he had wanted to be a part of it. But when Herm insisted on including his stepson, Lassiter had almost backed out. It was like that pack horse that had gone lame; too late to do anything about it now.

  That night he lay in his blankets with the two money sacks under his legs, Henry rifle and .44 revolver at hand. Vanderson seemed impressed and made no attempt to appropriate the gold coins. The “kid” wasn’t one to take a chance when the odds were not favorable. Lassiter smiled to himself and rubbed a hand over his new lucky silver belt buckle.

  Toward the end of the week, Lassiter and Vanderson pushed their jaded horses toward Bluegate, their destination. Thankfully they reached the twin columns of bluish stone that had given the town its name.

  After all else that had gone wrong on the fast, desperate trip, learning that an old enemy was a resident of Bluegate was the last straw.

  On the late fall day on the main street in front of Dixie’s Saloon, Lassiter spotted the tall, arrogant figure of Kane Farrell. At the sight of Lassiter, Farrell’s jaw dropped and he nearly lost the cheroot he was smoking. Quickly recovering, he challenged, “I thought by now you’d be in your grave.”

  “Not quite, Farrell,” Lassiter said, halting his horse and pack animal on the busy street.

  Farrell pointed at Lassiter’s belt. “I hear a sheriff down south wasted county funds buying you that silver belt buckle.”

  “In appreciation for helping him rid the county of scum,” was Lassiter’s rejoinder. “I see some of it’s drifted up this way.”

  Their voices crackled in the late afternoon. Men and women on the crowded walk looked at them in surprise.

  Lassiter, his face darkened from years of sun and wind, grew taut. “You living here, Farrell, or just passing through?”

  “I’m establishing myself.” A light brown hat was set at a jaunty angle on Farrell’s thick dark red hair. “How about you? Passing through, I trust.”

  “Not quite.” Lassiter could see the heelplates of a revolver under Farrell’s well-tailored light brown coat. He could read hatred in the cold green eyes. “Let’s go, Vance,” he said, giving Vanderson a nod of the head.

  They moved off down the street. Vanderson swung alongside Lassiter’s weary black horse; his own chestnut was in worse shape.

  “You were downright insulting to that gentleman,” Vanderson said with lifted brows.

  “That gentleman and I go back a few years.”

  “Obviously you hate each other.”

  “I’ve put my bootheels down on a few of his schemes. He hasn’t forgotten.”

  They rode past a bank, a milinery shop, a large building that was the Bluegate Mercantile. To the north, a notch in a purple barrier of mountains was Northguard Pass.

  The town was larger than Lassiter remembered from some years before. That time he had ridden with Herm Falconer, who had just sold a cattle ranch and wanted to visit his brother Josh. They stayed around for a spell, helping Josh try to locate an elusive vein of silver in a mine tunnel. In addition to mining, Josh Falconer also ran the Northguard Freight Company, the first building of which Lassiter was now passing. He whistled at the magnificence of the stable, more than triple the size of the former one where the company mules were kept. Beyond that was a huge building of new and unpainted pine. Northguard Warehouse, so a sign proclaimed.

  “Josh must’ve stumbled over a pot of gold,” Lassiter said to Vance Vanderson.

  “Josh was always rich, so Herm claimed. Just stingy.”

  Lassiter noticed that whenever Vanderson spoke of his step relatives, father or uncle, there always seemed to be a note of resentment in his voice. He was the son of Herm’s second wife, who had died some years back. Lassiter had first seen Vanderson when the kid was twelve. Even then he had thought that Herm’s wife had made a career out of spoiling her offspring. When Herm took over, he tried to straighten the boy out and sometimes almost seemed to succeed.

  Passing through town most recently, Lassiter had stopped by to see Herm. The stepson had given him the usual surly greeting, but Herm was overjoyed to see Lassiter. He had just received a letter from his brother Josh up at Bluegate. Josh needed financial help with his freight line.

  “It’ll give me somethin’ to sink my teeth in, Lassiter,” Herm had said, his eyes shining. “Why don’t you come in with me?”

  Lassiter hesitated but when he learned that Josh was in very bad shape, he agreed. Lassiter had just quit a ramrod job he hated, but he had cash and decided it might be a challenge to help get a freight line back on a sound basis.

  The first hitch developed when Herm said, “I want Vance to come along. Workin’ with us’ll put starch in his backbone.”

  “But I thought he had a job as segundo out at XY?”

  “He quit.”

  As Lassiter debated whether to back out or go ahead with it, a tearful second letter arrived from Josh, saying that he was about
to go under. Josh, the old reprobate, needed a hand with his freight company. Lassiter couldn’t refuse.

  There was more to Josh’s letter that Herm discussed with Lassiter. “The girl’s come out to live with Josh. Alice died last July.”

  “Who’s the girl?” Lassiter asked.

  “Our sister Alice’s offspring.”

  Then Lassiter remembered.

  “Our sister got treated shameful by me an’ Josh,” Herm went on dolefully. “On account of her runnin’ off an’marryin’ with that fella Ralph. We told her not to but she went ahead an’ done it anyway. Reckon Alice was as pigheaded as me an’ Josh.”

  Lassiter recalled meeting Alice one time when she came south from Denver and stopped in to say howdy to Josh. Alice had brought her daughter with her on the visit. A shy child, built like a trimmed cottonwood pole, he remembered somebody saying about the girl.

  A sign at the end of the warehouse said OFFICE.

  There were two bookkeepers, their pens scratching away in ledgers. Through the windows Lassiter could see two men rolling barrels onto a loading platform.

  A pale-haired girl sat beside a large table that was being used as a desk. It was piled high with papers. Faint shadows were visible beneath her light gray eyes. She smoothed out a frown so that her delicate features seemed to relax.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?”

  Lassiter had heard that a few females had moved into the male province of secretary but he hadn’t expected it of Josh, the traditionalist.

  “I’m Lassiter. . . .”

  “Oh, yes, there’s a letter around here someplace from Uncle Herm. He mentioned you. . . .”

  “Then you must be their niece.”

  “I am.”

  “I took you for a secretary.”

  “I’m that and more. I . . . I am trying to operate this freight line.” She peered around Lassiter who was standing so he could keep one eye on the pack horse that carried the precious gold. “Where is Uncle Herm?”

  Lassiter told her.

  She slumped back in her chair and murmured, “My God, what next?”