Lassiter Tough Read online

  LASSITER SAW SANLEE’S MAN CROSS THE STREET, AND WENT TO HIM …

  Lassiter said, “I want my gun.”

  “Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he snarled. He started to step away, but Lassiter blocked him.

  “You took my gun. I want it.”

  Drinkers had come out of the saloon to stare at them.

  “You’re crazy as hell,” the man blustered. “I never took no gun.”

  Lassiter’s eyes finally lowered to the man’s holster. He saw a familiar gun butt with black grips protruding from the leather.

  “It’s a good gun,” Lassiter went on. “You must think it is too. You’re wearing it.”

  The man looked at him for a moment, then his thick lips stretched tight in a grin. “Try an’ take it …”

  That was as far as he got. The .45 Lassiter borrowed appeared in his hand, the hammer eared back. The man came to his toes, a look of surprise on the brutal face.

  “Don’t bother to hand it over,” Lassiter said softly. “I’ll just take it… .”

  Other Leisure books by Loren Zane Grey:

  LASSITER GOLD

  A GRAVE FOR LASSITER

  AMBUSH FOR LASSITER

  LASSITER

  LASSITER

  TOUGH

  *

  LOREN ZANE GREY

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 1986 by Loren Grey

  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: 978-1-4285-1859-9

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0298-7

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: August 2007

  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.

  LASSITER

  TOUGH

  1

  *

  Twice in one week Lassiter had been recognized in unlikely places. Once in New Mexico, with tragic results. And now here, deep in the Texas brush country, the brasada, a bearded stranger was calling out his name. The man had just entered O’Leary’s Saloon, where Lassiter stood alone at the far end of the long and nearly deserted bar. Lassiter had been sipping whiskey while reflecting on the end of his search for a killer, which he felt was near. He was bone-weary, thinned down from the long, fast ride from New Mexico.

  Upon entering the saloon, the big stranger had started toward a small group of men at the other end of the bar. Then he saw Lassiter standing alone.

  “You’re Lassiter,” the man said in a low voice. The barkeep was reading a newspaper near the five other drinkers. A spring rain had been falling and the windows of the saloon that overlooked the business district of Santos were streaked.

  “Yeah, I’m Lassiter.” His nerves were tight because, so far as he was concerned, this was enemy territory.

  “I seen you in action once. The day you stood up to Doc Kelmmer.”

  “That day.”

  “You got to admit Kelmmer was damn good. But you outdrew him.”

  “He called me. I had no choice.”

  “But you got him. That’s the main thing. I never seen anything so fast in my life.”

  “Another minute and you’ll turn my head with flattery,” Lassiter said with a hard smile. He wondered where this was leading, but decided to keep his mouth shut and wait. There were too many loose ends here in the brasada for a mistake to be made.

  “The minute I seen you standin’ there, I says to myself, now there’s the man for me.”

  Lassiter watched the man fetch paper and pencil from a pocket of his brush jacket and write on it. The man pushed the small piece of paper across the bar under Lassiter’s nose. “Here’s three names,” he said.

  “What about ’em?” Lassiter looked into the man’s eyes, a peculiar shade of gray. They were fringed with reddish lashes. His eyebrows were the same color, coarse and tangled. What could be seen of his mouth through his reddish beard was thinned down, as if it had tasted mostly bitterness.

  “I want ’em dead,” the stranger said softly, pointing at the three names.

  “I’m not a murderer.” Unlighted brass lamps dangled from rough-cut ceiling beams on rusted chains. Yesterday the town had been full, the rotund barkeep had confided when Lassiter ordered his whiskey. But roundup was getting closer by the hour and men had left to prepare for it—a fact Lassiter well knew. He had been offered a job as ramrod here in the brasada, a job that had formerly been held by his late friend, his murdered friend.

  “I want you to meet these three hombres like you done Kelmmer,” the stranger said quietly, indicating the names he had written, Kilhaven, Rooney and Tate. “But meet ’em one at a time, of course.” The man gave a hard laugh. “Don’t reckon even Lassiter is good enough to face down three men at one time. Or maybe you are.”

  Lassiter tossed down the last of his drink and turned to go. But the man laid a strong hand on his arm. It caused Lassiter’s eyes to suddenly turn cold as blue ice in a face that was long, darkened from years of sun. He had a wide mouth below a strong nose. He was one inch under six feet, with strong shoulders and long, powerful legs. Gently, he reached out and removed the stranger’s hand from his arm.

  “I’m willin’ to pay for what I want done,” the man went on in a low voice. “Three thousand. More’n you can make most weeks.”

  “No,” Lassiter said.

  The stranger’s gray eyes showed displeasure. “I want you to meet ’em in a fair fight,” he persisted, “before witnesses. A man like you can figure out some excuse to get ’em to face up to you.”

  “I’m not your man.”

  The stranger’s large teeth showed through his beard. “I know, you’re waitin’ for me to up the ante. An’ I guess maybe you’re right. A job like I want done don’t come cheap. I’ll pay four thousand. Not a nickel more. What do you say to that, Lassiter?”

  “I’m not interested.” And if I did agree, Lassiter thought, you’d figure some way to get your money back.

  “Damn it, a man like you? Hell, I heard you’ll do anything for money.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  Again Lassiter
started away. The stranger put out a restraining hand. But this time there was pressure in the fingers that gripped Lassiter’s upper arm.

  “Take your hand off,” Lassiter warned coldly. Or they’ll be sweeping your teeth off the floor, he thought, but he didn’t say it. His eyes spoke for him.

  The man straightened up, releasing Lassiter’s arm. He was taller, heavier through the shoulders. At the far end of the big room a giant of a man stepped away from the other four drinkers. He stood with his thumbs hooked in a shell belt, a hat on the back of his round skull.

  “Everything all right up there, Brad?” he called.

  “Yeah,” Brad said with a harsh laugh. “For now.” Then he leaned close to Lassiter. “I ask you once more. Take my deal.”

  “Sorry.” Lassiter wasn’t sorry. It was just a handy word. But the man wasn’t through. He tried twice more, then gave up.

  “If you figure to tell anybody about the proposition I made you, I’ll deny everything,” the man said through his teeth. “Who you reckon they’ll believe around here? You or me?”

  At which point the man gave his full name, as if to impress Lassiter. It did, but not in the way the man thought.

  Lassiter’s shoulders stiffened under a black wool shirt and for just a moment anger altered his features. He smoothed them out. The man gave him a hard stare.

  “You acted like you got somethin’ against me all of a sudden!”

  I heard your name. That was enough.

  “I hadn’t made up my mind about Rep Chandler’s job as his ramrod,” Lassiter said, hardly able to contain his rage. “Now I think I’ll take it.”

  He threw a coin on the bar that rattled in the stillness. He took his time walking out of the saloon.

  Lassiter felt the eyes of the seven men, including the barkeep, drilling his back. He got his horse from the hitching post, mounted, and turned east in the direction of Rep Chandler’s Box C Ranch. It was a street lined with adobe and frame buildings, all showing age, some from a time when Texas had been ruled by Mexico.

  His heart pounded with cold excitement as he repeated the name of the stranger through his mind again and again. Although he had been debating whether or not to take the job Chandler offered, now his mind was made up. He looked forward to settling the score for his dead friend, a very good friend.

  It had stopped raining and the sun was out. He thought back on the proposition that had been put to him in O’Leary’s Saloon. The arrogant bastard wanted to eliminate three men whose names were written in pencil on a scrap of paper, wanting someone to blame, once the job was done. Who else but Lassiter? No thanks.

  Dogs sought spring noonday shade under wagons, the pups springing to chase occasional bits of paper blowing along the rutted street. In a blacksmith shop smelling of charcoal and hot metal, a smithy sang in a rich baritone as he hammered a muleshoe into shape. He paused to wipe his face as Lassiter rode past. The perspiring man stared at the lean figure astride a black horse, noting aquiline features somewhat spoiled by a beaklike nose. The man rode with the grace of a Comanche warrior. When he saw the gun in the low-cut holster, a little shiver ran down his back.

  As Lassiter rode out, two men were summoned from the group of five drinking at the end of the bar in O’Leary’s. One of them was the big man, Shorty Doane, the other Doug Krinkle, with a narrow, heavily freckled face.

  “Doug, you an’ Shorty teach that bastard a good lesson,” said the bearded man. “Says he aims to work for Chandler. I say no.”

  “They’ll have to ship that hombre outta Texas on a stretcher, Brad,” Doane said with a grin and clenched oversized fists.

  “Or in a pine box,” Krinkle laughed and took a hitch at his gun belt.

  When the two men left the saloon, Lassiter was already far down the road that threaded its way through walls of brush high as a rider.

  2

  *

  Exactly one week prior to his arrival in Texas, Lassiter was ending a long ride, all the way down from the Mogollons. That day he had been ready for a bottle, a meal and whatever delights the border town of Ardon, New Mexico, might offer. But from the looks of it, huddled at the foot of bleak hills in the last light of what had been a trying day, he didn’t have much hope.

  He was just instructing a stable hand in the care of his weary black horse when a man came running across a weed-grown lot, shouting his name.

  Lassiter turned to stare at the man through the wide stable doorway. The stranger was possibly fifty and lank as a ridge pole, his beard and hat brim blowing in a brisk wind.

  “Lassiter, Lassiter …” He came up, panting, to stare into Lassiter’s dark face. “You are Lassiter, ain’t you?”

  Ever on guard for tricks, Lassiter glanced at the far edge of the weedy lot where the man had first appeared. But he saw nothing suspicious in a few scraggly cottonwoods between the stable and an adobe house. Tree limbs stirred in the wind.

  “Why you want to know about Lassiter?” he demanded.

  “Fella … young fella over yonder …” The stranger, so out of breath he could hardly speak, jerked a bony thumb in the direction of the adobe house that could barely be seen through the screen of trees. “Bad shot, he is. He seen you ride in an’ he asked me to fetch you. If you really are Lassiter, that is. He only had a glimpse of you… .”

  Lassiter sniffed for a possible trap. Over the years he had accumulated a fair share of enemies and was taking no chances. “What young fella you talking about?” he asked sharply, wondering who could know him in this forlorn end of nowhere.

  “Name of Tevis. I think that’s what he said. Vince Tevis. Him an’ the gal just got in town about an hour ago… .”

  “I know a Vince Tevis.” Lassiter remembered an amiable drifter. Vince, son of Ralph Tevis, had befriended a lonely Lassiter when he was a boy. A strong tie had endured over the years, even after the elder Tevis had died. The last letter Lassiter had received from Vince said he was working in the Texas brush country. It was over a year ago and at the moment Lassiter couldn’t recall the name of the outfit.

  “You say he’s been shot?” Lassiter demanded.

  “Bad.” The man, who said he was Ben Sampson, was recovering his breath. But Lassiter still wasn’t sure. Sampson was saying, “I’d just showed him an’ the gal where they could sleep in the old Ortiz ’dobe an’ right after that them fellas come along an’ kicked the door in. They shot Tevis an’ run off with the gal… .”

  “Didn’t anybody go after ’em?”

  “Nobody left in this town who’ll try an’ run down tough hombres like them three.”

  Lassiter made up his mind. He wheeled to the wide-eyed hostler who was standing a few feet away in the cavernous stable that had only three filled stalls. He was holding the reins of Lassiter’s black horse. “I heard the gunshot, I did,” the man said.

  “Hold up on doing anything for my horse till I get back!” Lassiter snapped. Then, taking Sampson by the shoulder, he pushed him toward the doorway. “You go ahead of me,” he ordered.

  “Hell, it ain’t no trick, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

  “One way I’ve lived this long is because I always make sure.”

  Sampson was at a stumbling run across the vacant lot, a tense Lassiter at his heels. With their clothes flapping in the wind, Lassiter pounded through the cottonwoods and reached the adobe. Seen up close, it was little more than a shack. Boards had replaced glass at one of the windows. The front door was splintered. If Sampson could be believed, heavy boots had kicked it in.

  When Sampson hesitated at the doorway, Lassiter gave him a shove. “Go on in. I’ll follow.”

  “Them fellas might come back,” Sampson said fearfully, glancing up and down the deserted street. A block away, a window glowed with early lamplight that touched a sign: CANTINA. “You still in there, Tevis?” Sampson called nervously into the shadowed house.

  “Did … did you get … get Lassiter?”

  Lassiter recognized the voice, weak as it was. In t
he shadows he saw a man lying on a pallet that rested on a floor of tamped-down earth. Across the room a bed with rumpled blankets held some articles of feminine apparel. He could barely make out a camisole, petticoat and gray dress.

  Lassiter dropped to one knee beside the pallet on the dirt floor. The pallet was deeply stained with blood. He had a vague impression of Vince’s face in the shadows. He asked Sampson to fetch a lamp, which he did. Tevis was speaking haltingly.

  “You an’ me … last time we worked together … XK outfit. Arizona.”

  “I remember, Vince.” A match scratched. Lamplight flooded the small room. Lassiter took the lamp from Sampson and set it on the floor. Despite his obvious agony, Tevis was still rather handsome, not having aged much in the three years since Lassiter had last seen him. He was holding one hand to the front of a bloodied shirt.

  “She’s a nice kid,” Tevis gasped, reaching out to grip Lassiter’s arm. He was rambling. “I … I tried to help her … been tryin’ to find her aunt, we was. But … but the bastards finally caught up with us here… .”

  Lassiter barked orders to Sampson who was looking on with a worried expression on his wrinkled face. “Go fetch some arnica and laudanum and clean cloths. And a bottle of whiskey!”

  Sampson scampered away, starting at a run across vacant lots toward the cantina in the next block.

  Tevis increased the pressure of his fingers on Lassiter’s arm. His amber eyes were wide, staring. A droplet of blood appeared at a corner of his mouth, then rolled down his chin.

  “Let me have a look at your chest,” Lassiter said with concern.

  “Find her, Lassiter … she’s a good kid an’ she don’t deserve …” The voice trailed away.

  “Who is she, Vince?” Lassiter was remembering that his old friend’s amorous pursuits had sometimes led to difficulties. Was this one of the same? To end tragically? Lassiter’s breath caught at the thought.