Howard Hopkins: The Lone Ranger: Vendetta

THE LONE RANGER: VENDETTA

by Howard Hopkins

THE LONE RANGER: VENDETTA Copyright © 2012 published by Moonstone Entertainment, Inc., 1128 S. State Street, Lockport, II 60441. The Lone Ranger created by George W Trendle and Fran Striker. All rights reserved. With the exception of review purposes, this book may not be reprinted in part or in whole without the express written permission of Moonstone. Printed in the USA

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1

Two weeks ago…

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The shovel plunging into the hardpack made a sound like a Bowie knife grating against bone. The figure wielding the implement grunted, stamped a booted heel atop the shovel’s edge, driving it deeper into the ground. The first thrust was always the most difficult, the earth baked damn near as hard as rock in the small canyon. The next came easier, the ground below already having been disturbed long ago when the grave was dug.

The figure continued to dig, thrusting the shovel into the earth again and again; muscles weary after five previous exhumations, but will unrelenting. For vengeance, once poisoning the mind and coursing through the veins, was a powerful drug.

The copper sun beat down on the figure, who wore a grime-coated duster, worn boots and denim trousers, with unmerciful intensity. Heavy cattleman’s gloves protected smallish hands from blisters, and the figure appeared built along the lines of a teenaged boy, with straight hips and a loose denim shirt. Sweat soaked great patches of the shirt beneath the arms and chest. A low-pulled battered hat shadowed the figure’s face, and errant strands of dirty blonde hair, cut short, protruded around the ears.

The figure continued digging as the sun rose higher, burning from a sapphire sky; long shadows within the canyon dissolved and waves of heat rippled from the dusty ground, distorting the scrub-peppered hills making up the horizon. Pausing, the figure’s gaze swung to the walls of the canyon, a place called Bryant’s Gap, a place of infamy, a place of violent death. For an instant, it was as if the figure could hear the thundering echoes of hoof beats and gunshots, the gasps of dying men and laughter and whoops of outlaws cascading in demonic rhythm from the past.

A whispered laugh trickled from the figure’s parched throat. With renewed effort, the figure returned to the task at hand.

The deeper the hole became, the more hate swelled within the figure’s heart. For only dirt and more dirt came from the grave, the last of six the figure had exhumed. When at last the hole was deep enough, the figure stepped back and hurled the shovel into a small patch of brush that grew from the rock-strewn canyon floor at the base of a precarious trail leading up to the left ridge.

“Christ on a crutch…” the figure whispered, voice lacking enough tone to identify it clearly as male or female, young or old.

The figure stepped back, surveying the six opened graves, fury running like quicksilver through its veins. Beside each the first five graves lay the rotting corpse of a man, remains now little more than skeletons with dried pieces of flesh and scraps of clothing clinging to gray bone. Five men. Five Texas Rangers. Murdered under a hail of lead from an outlaw named Butch Cavendish and his gang, who had waited in ambush that day long ago.

“Jim Bates…” the figure whispered, the words dissolving on a scorching breeze hushing through the canyon. “Sam Cooper…” The figure stepped sideways to the next graves, hidden ice-green eyes intent on the dirt-caked, decomposed Rangers. “Jack Stacy… Joe Brandt…”

The figure paused again; tongue running over dry chapped lips. “Captain Dan Reid…”

A moment drifted by. A buzzard circled high above. The ghosts of the past seemed to cry on the stifling breeze.

The figure returned to the last grave, stood for dragging heartbeats peering into its empty maw.

“And you… where are you, young Reid?” The figure’s voice climbed with rising anger. Husky and deep, it sounded almost boyish, despite the figure’s 32 years. As the figure knelt before the grave, the folds of its denim shirt parted where a button had popped off during the digging and sunlight penetrated the opening to reveal a dirt-smudged glimpse of breast beneath.

A laugh trickled from shadowed lips, the tone higher now, echoing through the canyon, the sound more distinct, feminine.

“You should have died that day with the rest, Masked Man.” The figure stood, head lifting, sunlight striking a woman’s boyish, dust-dirtied features. “I reckon I’ll see about remedying that.”

She turned, walked toward a horse tethered to the branch of a scrub brush ten feet distant. She would let the prairie wolves attend to the Rangers’ bones, while she attended to those of the living.

The empty grave, she vowed… would not remain empty for long.

2

The nightmare came in blood and amber. The sun, like enflamed topaz, blazed down on the six riders holding a steady gait as they entered Bryant’s Gap. Rangers. Texas Rangers. Men with muscles as hardened as gun-metal and nerves as strong as iron. Men with wills as shining as silver.

Yet apprehension prickled through the hairs on the back of the young Ranger’s neck who held to the front beside a man a few years older than he, a sixth sense that warned him something was wrong, dead wrong, though he could not determine what.

His six-foot-one frame stiffened in the saddle and his square chin came forward a hair, as if in defiance of the unease swarming through his being. His gaze lifted, blue eyes searching the ridge above the gnarled canyon walls to either side of the Rangers who rode single-file, with the exception of himself and his brother, for any signs of an ambush: sunlight glinting off the metal of a rifle or Smith & Wesson hand gun, the stirring of brush that grew in sporadic patches along the ridge, a glimpse of a bushwhacker slipping from boulder to boulder.

Nothing.

And yet…

Their mission belied the calm, but strengthened the vague dread in his nerves. Capture or kill the Blood Creek Gang, a gang led by a man with no compassion, and no trace of mercy when it came to the victims who’d perished under his lead. Robbery, murder, rape. This man was responsible for all of those, and more. If ever the Devil walked in the form of man… this outlaw was it.

An easy laugh came from the man wearing the black vest beside him, his brother, Dan, a man a few years his senior, a hundred his experience. At least as far as he saw it. He worshiped Captain Dan Reid, as did many of the Rangers under his command. Wished he could someday grow into half the man his brother had become. For if Dan Reid was gold, the younger Reid would settle for silver.

“What’s got your gizzard, kid?” Dan Reid asked, glancing his way, the glint of ever-present humor and compassion strong in his gray eyes. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The younger Reid gazed his brother’s away. For a moment, his brother’s face vanished, flesh melting away and leaving a weathered grinning death’s head. A gasp caught in his throat and his gloved hands tightened on the big chestnut’s reins until his fingers pained and his forearms ached. As blood began steaming down the skull, every muscle in his body tightened. He swore his heart stopped beating.

“What is it, son?” Dan Reid asked, concern gripping his voice.

“I…” The younger Ranger shook his head, and the bleeding skull disappeared, replaced by the worried features of his kin.

“Speak up, boy! You ill? For the last couple hours you’ve been looking as pale as a bar gal who just discovered all the fellas moved out of town.”