Howard Hopkins - The Lone Ranger - Vendetta

She spat, then ground the saliva into the floorboard beneath her boot toe.

Early morning sunlight arced through the grime-coated front window, dust pirouetting within the shaft. Shadows still stretched from shelves and the counter flanking the north wall and fell in jagged slices across the floor, but would soon vanish as the day brightened. Too bad. She liked shadows. Her soul was bathed in them.

She stepped deeper into the store, selected a hard-backed chair opposite the counter and sat. It was Tom Sanders’ habit to come in the back way, go straight to that counter. She knew his routine as well as she knew the marshal’s.

With a humorless whispered laugh she edged the Smith & Wesson at her waist from its holster and sighted down the barrel at the counter. Not that it was necessary; she rarely missed. But the motion pleased her. She checked the chambers, made sure they were full, then shoved the weapon back into its holster.

Threads, she thought. Threads to a dead man who wasn’t really a dead man. No one had put it together, as far as she knew, but she was far smarter than the ordinary owl hoot.

Butch had always told her that.

He was right.

She was smarter. Deadlier, too, and more vicious. Facts the Masked Man would soon discover.

The whispered laugh came again and the imagined scent of blood grew stronger in her senses. She’d planned; she’d waited. And now it was time.

“Reid…” Her voice came low, laced with spite. “You fooled them all… but not me.”

A sound from the back of the store captured her attention. Her gazed shifted back to the counter. More sounds came, noises of someone rummaging around in the back. One minute passed. Two. Impatience began to crawl through her nerves like fire ants.

An older man with iron hair and side-whiskers came from the doorway behind the counter leading to the back room, carrying a metal cashbox. That pleased her. Killing was always better when there was money involved.

She watched the man as he placed the box beneath the counter, then scribbled something with a stub of a pencil on a scrap of paper. That he didn’t see her was obvious. That pleased her as well.

“Your name’s Sanders…” she said and the older man started, letting out a small gasp. He looked like a spider, she thought. His limbs were bony and long, yet his belly strained the lower buttons of his heavy shirt.

He peered at her through wire-rimmed spectacles that made his watery eyes look unnaturally large, squinting to see into the shadows engulfing the chair that was angled just beyond the shaft of light from the window.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice unsteady, unsure of the threat. “What are you doing in here? I’m not open for business yet.” He fought to control his voice by speaking a little too loud, but failed.

My, how the mighty had fallen. That results of a life without zest, she thought. Once the hunter, now the hunted.

“I’m aware of that,” she said, standing, then stepping into the light so he could see her. The hat brim cast a shadow over her features, but her sex was plain. “The kind of business I got for you ain’t for regular hours.”

His eyes narrowed further. “You’re a girl…”

“Aware of that, too.”

“What do you want? How did you get in here?” His blue-veined hands with parchmentlike skin flattened on the countertop, and he leaned forward slightly, as if that were supposed to intimidate her into telling him what he wanted to know. That was more like it. A spark of the man he used to be. But a pitiful spark, one easily snuffed. This man had been strong, once, used to getting answers to his questions. He had been a Ranger. But the years and his dreary life had not been kind to him. If she had even a lick of compassion, she might have felt sorry for him. But she did not. No compassion, no mercy. Some even claimed, no soul.

“You knew the Reids?” she said, ignoring his questions, showing him his days of intimidation were past.

“The Reids?” His face softened and she could see the name brought fond memories. Good. That was exactly what she’d hoped for.

“They were Rangers,” she said, taking a step closer to the counter—but not too close.

“I know they were. Worked with Captain Dan a short spell. He was like a son to me and Martha, him and his younger brother. Shared many a meal together. But the Reids are all gone now.”

“Are they?” She paused, a thin smile coming to her lips.

The man nodded. “Killed over to Bryant’s Gap, long time ago.”

“Martha?” she said, ignoring his words. Was there another close to Reid she could use?

“My wife.” The older man’s voice dropped to nearly a whisper and pain bled into his tone. “She’s gone, too, near five years.”

She peered at him, expressionless. “You must be very lonely without her…”

He nodded. “I am. Miss her everyday.”

“I know loneliness,” she said. “Had someone taken from me…”

The older man scratched his head. “Sorry to hear that, miss. But you ain’t told me what you’re doin’ in my store. And what do the Reids have to do with it? They’re gone even longer than Martha. You a friend of theirs?”

“Yes… gone.” She smiled, a snake of a thing. “Would you like to see her again? Your wife, I mean. Would you like to be with her?”

His brow furrowed. He peered at her as if she were insane, and she reckoned she couldn’t hold that against him.

“Give anything. But it ain’t possible.”

“It’s possible…” Thunder punctuated her words. For in a blur, her hand swept to the Smith & Wesson and drew it from the holster. The gun came up in a fraction of a heartbeat and flame and blue smoke erupted from its barrel.

The older man flew backward as lead punched into his chest. He slammed into the wall beside the door, seemed suspended there for dragging moments. He looked down at the blood orchid now on his shirt, disbelief on his face. Then his legs buckled and his eyelids fluttered, and he slid downward, leaving a streak of blood on the wall from where the bullet had exited his back.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

She holstered the gun, the crash of the shot still ringing in her ears. Her hand went to a pocket of her duster, came back out.

She peered at the object in her hand; light from the window glinted from it. A bullet. A copper bullet. Copper reminded her of blood.

With a satisfied laugh, she tossed the bullet over the counter, near the body. It made a hollow sound clattering on the floorboards.

“And so it begins…”

The shot would draw attention soon. She needed to leave. Going around the counter, she stepped over the dead man and grabbed the cashbox. Tucking it beneath her arm, she glanced at the shop owner, then slipped out the back.

4

The ranch house on the outskirts of Coopersville was a sprawling Hacienda style adobe with walls two feet thick, swiped with jaspe tinted red. The heavy front door would have been suitable for a fortress and deep set windows were framed with wood painted blue. Hand-peeled cedar beams overhung the roof and a veranda ran the length of the front. Trimmed grounds gave way to gently rolling hills and grassy swales.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto approached the structure from the east, and the Masked Man drew his great white horse to a halt a hundred yards from the place.

“This belongs to young Cooper?” Tonto asked after reining up beside the Ranger.

The Masked Man nodded, his gaze sweeping the grounds for any signs of life. He noticed a number of outbuildings: an icehouse and storage shed, bunkhouse and barn, smokehouse and springhouse. It was a small spread as far as Texas ranches went, but there should have been activity, and he saw no movement whatsoever. At the very least, smoke should have been drifting from one of the three chimneys on the structure, since it was nearly the dinner hour. The corral was empty, too, its gate hanging open.