Lassiter Tough Read online

  Tevis had to pause for breath as Lassiter fumbled for buttons on the front of the blood-soaked shirt. “He’s been trackin’ us from the start,” Tevis gasped. “The bastard. He … he stole her… .”

  “Give me a name, Vince. A name. Who stole her?”

  “Sanlee,” Tevis whispered.

  Because the man’s voice had sunk so low, Lassiter wasn’t sure if he had heard the name correctly. “Sam Lee? You say his name is Sam Lee?”

  Tevis continued to stare up into Lassiter’s face, the light in his eyes fading fast. His fingers suddenly fell away from Lassiter’s arm and his head dropped back.

  “Hang on, Vince!” Lassiter urged. But the man was past the point of clinging to life. Lassiter felt for a pulse, but it was useless. Mingled sadness and anger toward the perpetrators of this lethal act turned him cold.

  All he had to go on was a name—Sam Lee.

  By now it was almost fully dark. The wind continued to whip through the open door, causing the lamp on the floor to flicker.

  Just as Lassiter sank back on his heels, preparing to rise, he heard rapid footsteps above the howl of wind. From the sounds, it seemed two men were approaching the house from the side where the window was boarded up. There were no sounds of heels striking the hard ground, however, only the soft forepart of boots. Men running lightly on tiptoe to minimize the sound of their approach.

  Just as Lassiter slapped a hand to his holstered .44, a gun crashed. The lamp exploded. In that moment, Lassiter noticed two shadowy figures crouched just beyond the doorway.

  Instinctively, in the flash of gunfire, he rolled away from the shattered lamp and across the hard-packed floor. He was lifting his gun, preparing to sit up, when two more shots winked orange-red in the thickening darkness. Bullets cut long grooves into the dirt floor next to Lassiter’s cheek. A gout of blinding dirt struck his eyes. But even gripped by blindness, he still had the images and positions of the crouched gunmen locked in his mind. When he snapped off two quick shots, he heard a muffled groan of pain from one man, then a scream from the second.

  As Lassiter rubbed at his stinging eyes, he heard one of them getting away, at a lurching run from the sounds he made. Low moans at each labored step began to rapidly diminish. In a few moments there were hoofbeats, heading in an easterly direction. They were fading fast.

  Although one of them was making a break for it, there was no sound from the other man. Desperately, Lassiter pulled a bandanna from his hip pocket and tried to wipe dirt from his eyes. It restored only partial vision, so that he was forced to hold his head far back to even see at all through slitted lids. Gripping his gun, he slowly got to his feet. He had a distorted view of a huddled figure, wind whipping at the clothes, which lay just beyond the doorway. Sounds of the horse ridden by the fleeing second man were almost inaudible by then above the whistling wind.

  Still barely able to see, and with his eyes smarting, Lassiter thumbed a match alight in order to see the face of the man he had shot. He lay on his side, a brutal nature revealed in pale eyes and the cruel twist of lips in a high-cheekboned face. Although the bullet had made only a small indentation just above the bridge of his nose, it had taken out a good portion of the rear skull in its exit. Some three feet away, a small puddle of blood was rapidly sinking into the dry ground, no doubt from the second man. And beyond it were footprints and traces of blood. The second man was apparently badly wounded.

  Lassiter, so gripped by the pain of his eyes and knowing he was vulnerable in the doorway, allowed the still-burning match to sear his fingertips. He dropped it, swearing an oath. Then, with blurred vision, he saw about a half-dozen men watching him in the last of the twilight. One of them was Sampson, who held a bottle of whiskey and a small package.

  “I … I got what you wanted, Lassiter,” he called in a weak and frightened voice. “But what happened?”

  “One of ’em is getting away,” Lassiter shouted in his frustration. “Isn’t there an ounce of guts in this town so some of you would get after him?”

  The men shifted their feet but didn’t answer. With his eyes still burning and open to mere slits, Lassiter groped his way toward the lighted window of the cantina.

  Two Mexicans were drinking beer at the bar. They turned to stare at Lassiter, kicking his way through sawdust on the floor. The barkeep was also Mexican, with big arms and a scowling face. A dark-eyed girl in a dress trimmed in red was strumming a guitar. But she broke off on a discordant note. No one spoke.

  “I need water to wash out my eyes,” Lassiter said, squinting. “And a drink.” When they only stared at him, he repeated it in Spanish.

  The barkeep nodded his head and told the girl to get water. Then he set out a bottle and glass. “It shows you have been around my people much,” he said to Lassiter. “You speak my language well.”

  Lassiter realized then that he still held his gun. No wonder they had been silent and apprehensive. He let the weapon slide into its oiled holster. Then, his eyes watering, he poured himself a drink. It was liquid fire that seared throat and belly, but most welcome.

  The girl brought a pitcher of water, a pan and clean cloths. Gingerly, he went about washing out his eyes. Within ten minutes, sips of whiskey in between, his vision had been nearly restored.

  The bartender, whose name was Miguel Sandoval, answered his question. No, he had never heard of anyone named Sam Lee.

  Sandoval said the man and the young woman had come into town on the stagecoach that ran only once a week since the mines had closed down and the town was practically deserted. He said the girl seemed to be either ill or frightened. She had done a lot of screaming. Sandoval had seen her only from a distance. She and Tevis had barely gotten settled in the old Ortiz adobe when there was a gunshot. And Sandoval saw one of the three men ride off with the girl. Two of them stayed behind, probably intending to finish off the man Tevis in the adobe when it got dark.

  “Isn’t there any law in this town?” Lassiter asked bitterly. “A man is shot and nobody does a damn thing about it.”

  Sandoval gave him a patient smile. “There is no law. And here, amigo, we have had too many years of guns and blood. We mind our own business.”

  An old story in the West, Lassiter well knew. Never had he felt more frustrated. His eyes still burned. But that was not the only reason he was out of sorts. It was because his old friend Vince Tevis was dead. And there had been the later attempt on his own life. Besides that, a young girl had been kidnapped. And no one in this wart on the face of God’s green earth had tried to avenge either Tevis or the girl.

  A thin smile touched Miguel Sandoval’s lips. “My guess is her husband, he come to take home his runaway wife.”

  The possibility had also occurred to Lassiter. “One of the men who stayed behind was big and tough-looking,” Lassiter said, mentioning the one he had killed. “What’d the other two look like?”

  “The one who took the girl was big also. That’s all I see because he ride away fast. The other one was tall as you. Tejanos.”

  “How do you know they’re Texans?”

  “Them two, the one you kill an’ the other one, they come in for drinks after the shooting.”

  Lassiter drew a deep breath. “Then this Sam Lee is probably the same Texas breed,” he mused aloud.

  “Texas not too far,” the Mexican said, waving a hand toward the east and south—the direction taken by the horse of the wounded man.

  Lassiter left five dollars with Miguel Sandoval to pay for a gravedigger for Vince Tevis, then started out. By moonlight, he picked up the bloodied trail without too much trouble and followed it most of the night. But the following day the blood on the trail was gone. However, the tracks he had been following continued. The fleeing man had evidently taken time during the night to bind up his wound, Lassiter reasoned, hence the lack of blood. The tracks were fairly easy to follow because the shoe on the right forefoot was an odd shape, slightly different from the other three and made a deeper indentation whenever there was
loose ground.

  He gave the rising sun a hard smile and made a vow to continue the hunt.

  No matter how far the unknown, wounded Tejano might ride, Lassiter would eventually run him to ground, him and the mysterious Sam Lee. He owed it to Vince Tevis, who had been his friend, and to the memory of the kindly father. Even though Vince had been a free spender and usually broke, Lassiter liked him. A ladies’ man and evidently still retaining his touch clear to the end.

  Yes, he owed it to Vince Tevis, but also to the unknown young woman, fleeing wife or not, who quite possibly had been trying to escape a brutal husband, basing his evaluation on the two remaining Texans, the wounded one and Sam Lee. They were undoubtedly of the same stripe as the man he had killed; never had he seen a more arrogant and brutal face even in death.

  In the passing days, Lassiter followed the trail until his luck ran out. A heavy rainstorm in this early spring obliterated the tracks he was following. And although he failed to pick them up again, he pressed onward. For now he was in the Texas brasada, the thorny brush country that was hell on man and beast. It was from here that Vince Tevis had written him last, over a year ago, the letter finally catching up to him. Instinctively, he sensed that here in this brush country he would be settling the score for Tevis and the unknown girl. And here he would find Sam Lee.

  And one day, as he rode deeper into the brush, the name of the outfit Tevis had worked for suddenly came to him. The Box C, owned by a man named Chandler.

  Since the shooting back in New Mexico, the brand and owner’s name had been blanked out of his mind. But it was as if thick storm clouds had rolled aside and there, in blinding sunlight, he saw it plainly in letters of fire.

  He smiled grimly to himself.

  3

  *

  He located Chandler, a lean, stooped man with a thick mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. A splinted-and-bandaged right leg rested on the seat of a straight-backed chair. He was sitting on the veranda of a rambling adobe ranch house.

  When Lassiter introduced himself, Chandler looked at him more closely. “Be damned. Vince talked a lot about you.”

  “Vince worked for you, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. An’ he run out on me right when I busted my leg. Never said a word. Only a note sayin’ somethin’ come up an’ he had to leave. Was figurin’ on him for roundup, me bein’ outta it on account of my leg. You know what happened to him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Chandler was silent for several moments while staring off across the brushy flats that seemed to stretch to infinity. “Dead. Well, I’ll be damned.” He turned to stare at Lassiter, who leaned back against the porch rail. “Maybe it’s the Lord slippin’ Tevis a bad hand from the deck for runnin’ out on me. Where’d he get killed?”

  “Over north and west.” Lassiter nodded in that direction. He wasn’t inclined at this point to give details, not until he learned a few facts. “You know a man named Lee?”

  “Lee what?” Chandler asked, looking up.

  “It’s his last name. First name’s Sam.”

  “Sam Lee?” Chandler mused. Then his face changed and he added carefully, “Don’t reckon I do.”

  Was there a sudden wariness in Chandler’s light brown eyes? Lassiter wondered. Or was it his imagination? Some of Chandler’s vaqueros were riding in, laughing among themselves. They dismounted down by the corral and started to unsaddle.

  Chandler seemed deep in thought. Then he said, “Tevis said you was a good man, Lassiter. A good roper an’ mighty handy with a gun. I could sure use you. Roundup starts in three days… .”

  “I’ve got things to do before I can make up my mind about anything,” Lassiter put in quickly.

  But Chandler seemed desperate to have Lassiter accept the job of bossing his roundup crew. He asked Lassiter to stay and they’d discuss it over whiskey, even told him where a bottle and glasses could be found in the parlor. It would save him limping into the house on the bad leg, Chandler explained. Chandler became almost tearful in his entreaties as Lassiter kept backing off. Chandler said he’d prayed to the good Lord to send him somebody and then out of nowhere Lassiter had appeared.

  “Do it in memory of Vince Tevis,” Chandler urged, “if it ain’t for the money. ’Cause I’ll pay you damn good.”

  “We’ll see,” Lassiter said at last. The job Chandler outlined was tempting. He had nothing to tie him down at present. Once before, some years ago, he had worked a roundup in the Texas brush. It was an ultimate challenge for sure, because in all the West there was no more hazardous stretch of country than the brasada.

  But first he had to hunt down the mysterious Sam Lee and make him pay up for complicity in the murder of Vince Tevis and the possible kidnapping of a girl.

  He thought again about Chandler’s reaction when he had mentioned Sam Lee. The rancher’s eyes had lowered quickly. An involuntary show of surprise? It seemed so to Lassiter.

  Somewhere he had lost the trail of the wounded man. But he had found the rancher who had hired Tevis as foreman. And it stood to reason that Sam Lee would be in the vicinity if Tevis had quit his job suddenly to run off with a girl. A girl that Sam Lee had trailed and finally captured.

  Weary after the long ride from New Mexico, he needed a drink—alone—not with Chandler or anyone else. He needed time to start putting loose ends together.

  So he rode a few miles to the town of Santos and entered O’Leary’s Saloon… .

  Doug Krinkle nodded at Lassiter riding fifty yards ahead on the brush-lined road. “There he is. Seems like we’re s’posed to talk him outta workin’ for Chandler,” Krinkle said with a laugh.

  “Yeah,” Shorty Doane grunted. At six feet four and weighing two hundred and thirty-five pounds, his nickname, applied in jest some years before, had stuck. “Let’s go get him.”

  Lassiter heard the two horses. He turned in the saddle and recognized the riders as having been in O’Leary’s Saloon.

  At first he thought they might be going to ride right on past him. But when they were abreast, they pulled up to match the stride of his horse. The slender, freckle-faced one was grinning on his right, the giant on the left.

  Lassiter suddenly reined in his black horse. The pair, caught by surprise, rode on a few feet before halting. They looked back.

  “If you hombres figure to keep me company,” Lassiter said coldly, “I don’t want any. Move along.”

  Shorty Doane laughed and rubbed the knuckles of a clenched right fist along the seam of his Levis. “Tough talk,” he said to his companion.

  “Brad Sanlee don’t want you takin’ that job with Rep Chandler,” Krinkle said and lazily reached for his gun.

  So that was it!

  Hardly had the last word slipped through Krinkle’s lips in his surprised face before Lassiter was ramming in the spurs. His black horse leaped before Krinkle finished speaking. It sideswiped Krinkle’s dun with such force that the rider lost his seat. He went sailing off the horse, arms and legs beating the air.

  So quickly had Lassiter moved that Shorty Doane wasted the time it took in forming a startled “O” with thick lips. Then he sent a hand streaking for his gun. But Lassiter had drawn his own weapon. He was turning the lunging black horse so as to enable him to reach the left side of Shorty Doane’s broad skull with the barrel of his .44. Doane went backwards off the rump of his horse. He lay flat on his back in the Texas mud, arms and legs wide from his oversized body, a startled look on his scarred face. A few feet away, Krinkle, in fetal position, was beginning to stir.

  Lassiter disarmed both men before they could fully recover consciousness. Krinkle was staring up at him out of dazed eyes. Doane had an ugly gash on the left side of his skull. Blood trickled into his ear and to the muddy road, making a small puddle.

  Angrily, Lassiter unloaded rifles and revolvers belonging to the pair. He hurled cartridges into the thick brush on one side of the road and the weapons, one by one, far out into the thorny Texas jungle.

&nbs
p; “Tell Brad Sanlee,” he said to the dazed Krinkle, “that I’ll be seeing him.”

  It was the name the arrogant bastard in the saloon had uttered to impress him. Not Sam Lee. Vince Tevis, who had been in great pain at the time, had mumbled a name that Lassiter had simply misunderstood. Sanlee.

  Just as Lassiter mounted up, something made him look over his shoulder. A beautiful blonde on a bay mare, unnoticed till now, was watching him forty feet or so down the road. She wore a green silk blouse that fit snugly across full breasts, and a leather-divided riding skirt. Her red lips were parted in surprise.

  Lassiter tensed as she urged her bay forward a few feet. She sat in her saddle, looking down at Krinkle, who was sitting up, holding his head, and at Doane, now blinking his eyes.

  “So Sanlee sent his skullbusters after you,” she said in a deeply sensuous voice. Her eyes, a startling green, settled on his face. She wore a faint smile. “It seems they lost.”

  Then she sank in the spurs and rode quickly in the direction of town. She was laughing so hard that tears came to her lovely eyes… .

  4

  *

  At a bend in the road, the beautiful woman looked back and saw the dark stranger heading east. Why hadn’t she at least asked his name? There had been something fascinating about him. The penetrating blue eyes when he stared at her had put a hollow feeling in her stomach. Who was he? She had never seen him before.

  She continued on to Santos, aware that her heart was acting strangely. She was Isobel Hartney and owned the Hartney Store in Santos, which had been started by her grandfather. She had been East, attending an academy for young ladies, when news reached her that Jonas Hartney, her father, had died suddenly. It gave her an excuse to cut short her education and hurry back to Texas to run the store.

  Witnessing the stranger manhandle Krinkle and Doane had been a delight. Maybe Brad wouldn’t be quite so cocky as he’d become these last months since the passing of the autocratic Sanlee senior. Two weeks ago, or thereabouts, Brad Sanlee had gone riding off without a word to her. He had taken Ad Deverax and Rupe Bolin along. It was rumored that Brad had been in a rage that no one at his Diamond Eight seemed willing to discuss. One morning he had simply gone pounding off to the north with his two hardcases. Only Brad had returned. No one seemed to know what had happened to Deverax and Bolin… .