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Michael Spradlin: Blood Riders

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Michael Spradlin Blood Riders

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She remounted her horse, turning the great stallion west. The animal, named Demeter, was one of many that had been specially trained since birth not to fear her kind. He would not spook or shy away from her as most creatures would, and as a result the horse had saved her life on more than one occasion.

She could not ride for long in the sun and heat, even with the cloak, and would need to find a place to hide until the night came. Then she would think about Malachi again. Where he might be going next and what his plans were.

And more important: how to stop him.

Chapter Two

Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas

June 1880

“Where you goin’, Chee?” Sergeant McAfee asked as he poked a sausage-sized finger into the young man’s chest. Chee, thin and rangy, with dark eyes, said nothing, but Hollister saw his fists clench. There were seven of them on prison work detail, digging another well, and it was unseasonably hot for June, with the afternoon sun high in the sky moving the temperature just past hell. Hollister kept digging, not caring about their conflict, but watching from the corner of his eye just the same.

McAfee was a huge Irishman, nearly three hundred pounds and solid, his skin pale and ruddy from drink. The lines on his face were a map of booze, fights, and hard living. He was hot-tempered and foulmouthed; he smelled like a stable and was quite likely insane.

The officers who’d served on McAfee’s court-martial board had deliberated for less than three minutes at his trial. He had shot his commanding officer, a lieutenant, in the head. The lieutenant had taken issue with McAfee’s handling of a half dozen Sioux prisoners. According to rumors, he’d pulled his sidearm and put a round between the man’s eyes and left him on the ground. Then he’d shot his prisoners for good measure.

He had been a master sergeant, and had been incarcerated at Leavenworth since it opened. When Chee arrived two months ago, McAfee had chosen the kid as his personal punching bag. Hollister had a feeling someone was going to break, soon, one way or the other.

Whenever there was no other meaningless labor for them to perform, the warden decided the prison needed a new well. Hollister hated digging, but he had at least another six years of it. He didn’t know the length of Chee’s sentence; the kid never talked much. McAfee was in for life.

“I said, where you going, boy?” McAfee was in front of Chee, blocking the path to wherever.

“Let me pass, please, Sergeant,” the boy said quietly. Hollister guessed Chee was in his early twenties, just a boy compared to everyone else behind these walls.

McAfee laughed and his crew laughed with him. McAfee had a group of vultures following him around Leavenworth, watching and sometimes participating in his terrorization of the prison’s population. There was a moment of quiet. Hollister knew the sound of this silence. With every altercation-any fight, every battle he’d ever witnessed since he’d left West Point in 1864-there was always a calm before the storm. A brief moment of silence before the screams and grunts and dying began.

“Huh. Let you pass. I’m sorry. Why of course, you mongrel-breed, dog-shit-eatin’ son of a whore. I don’t know what I done with my manners. By all means, you little sack a’ shit, pass by.” McAfee made a show of stepping back, bowing at the waist and slowly throwing out his hand like a matador. Don’t do it kid, Hollister thought to himself. There were two guards, both armed with Springfields and blackjacks, talking in low tones to each other more than forty yards away, up by the barracks. Hollister knew the guards wouldn’t do much of anything. They were probably as terrified of McAfee as everyone else.

Chee stood still a moment. He closed his eyes and stepped past McAfee. The kid was a hard worker, and he’d dug up more ground this morning than anyone in the detail, Hollister included.

As he moved past the ex-sergeant, Hollister wanted to shout out a warning, but he knew better. Chee needed to deal with this, and if Hollister got involved he’d have to handle McAfee himself somehow, and so far the giant ape had left him alone.

As McAfee remained bowed, pretending to give Chee a pass, he flexed his arm, fist clenched behind his back. Hollister saw the big man’s arm swing forward and winced. He’d watched McAfee fight before and knew he was deceptively fast. This blow might just separate Chee from his head.

But it never landed. McAfee swung hard, but Chee was no longer standing where he should have been. The ex-sergeant’s momentum twisted him around and off-balance so fast that Hollister didn’t see how Chee got behind him. His foot shot out and connected with the back of McAfee’s knee, and the giant man crumpled. Chee’s left hand shot out like a sidewinder, grabbing a handful of McAfee’s hair and pulling his head back. With his other arm he drove his elbow into the bully’s nose. The crunch and crack of bone and tissue made McAfee bellow in pain. One of the other men moved on Chee, swinging his shovel like an axe. Chee released McAfee, who fell to his hands and knees, blood darkening the ground beneath him.

Chee easily ducked beneath the shovel and kicked the man solidly in the groin. He dropped the shovel, clutching his crotch with both hands. Chee took the man’s head in both hands and drove his knee into his face. He slumped to the ground, finished.

McAfee was standing, his mouth and nose a mass of twisted gore and blood, his eyes watering.

Three of McAfee’s men down in the hole with Hollister grabbed their shovels, thinking about climbing up to join the fray. Hollister moved in front of them and with a commanding look at the first one, an illiterate trooper named Smith, said quietly, “Don’t.”

The man looked at Hollister with hooded eyes. He tried to shrug past, and Jonas put his hand on the man’s chest. “I said, don’t.” The three of them saw something in Hollister they didn’t like and backed off.

Up above them, McAfee charged at Chee, trying to get his hands on the younger, faster man. His primitive brain told him if he could do that, he could rid himself of the pain he felt by pounding away at Chee until it was gone. What he didn’t realize was that the fight was already over. Hollister, with one eye on the three dregs in the hole with him, watched in quiet fascination as Chee leapt in the air, his foot flicking out and taking McAfee square on the chin. McAfee went down and didn’t move.

“The hell you doing, Chee?” said one of the screws, a blue-coated corporal named Larson. He and the other guard had finally arrived, waiting as usual until the two men had settled things before taking action. Chee said nothing and the corporal drove the butt of his Springfield into the young man’s gut. He groaned and doubled over, dropping to his knees.

What the corporal hadn’t noticed was the rifle butt had hardly hit Chee at all. He’d managed to bend his body away with it and take most of the force in his hands. He was acting. With Chee on the ground and Hollister in the hole, they were at eye level, and when the dark-skinned man winked mischievously at him, Hollister couldn’t help but smile.

“You’re going in the box, half-breed,” the corporal sneered as he and the other guard lifted Chee to his feet. “You men, drag this fat tub o’ lard to the surgeon.” McAfee’s followers scrambled out of the hole, pulling the sergeant and the other man to their feet, leading them away toward the administration buildings.

Hollister watched them for a while and returned to his digging.

Hollister dug on through the afternoon, then climbed out of the well, taking a break for water and hardtack with a piece of wormy bacon for lunch. The meat was inedible so he threw it over the wall of the fort. McAfee’s three varmints had never returned after hauling him to the infirmary. It was all the same to him; he preferred solitude.

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