The Brave Ride Tall (A Sam Spur Western Book 9) Read online

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  A crazy killer loose in an Arizona cow town. A man drunk with ambition tries to blast his way to power. A sheriff, a freighter and a girl all horribly killed. So they call in Sam Spur, ex-gunslinger, now Deputy US Marshal. Spur rides the death-trail again, sided by Cusie Ben and the Cimarron Kid, all cursing hell out of each other as they challenge a dozen lawless men.

  Sam Spur Westerns spell fast-shooting, tough action and blazing excitement.

  SPUR 9: THE BRAVE RIDE TALL

  By Cy James

  First published by Mayflower Books in 1971

  Copyright © 1971, 2016 by P. C. Watts

  First Smashwords Edition: September 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  Chapter One

  Crewsville, Arizona

  The town has slept through the heat of the day. It was close enough to Mexico to have Mexican habits and the heat demanded that a man did not kill himself in the sun through too much activity.

  Sheriff William Furbee, was an old Arizona hand and be didn’t try to fight the country. When it said ‘sleep’, he slept. That way he had kept his sanity and his sense of proportion. He enjoyed his afternoon doze and he always enjoyed it in the same way.

  First he took a generous swallow of whiskey. He was no slave to the bottle, but he liked a drink as well as the next man. Besides, he always said, a little whiskey kept off the fever. He never said what fever. When the whiskey had settled his stomach, he would sit at his desk, put his booted feet on the desktop and tilt his hat over his eyes. Then sleep came swiftly and smoothly, through force of habit and he did not wake until the killing heat of the day had passed.

  Furbee was a good sheriff. He wasn’t officious and he was well liked. He had the knack of looking the other way when a small crime had been committed, one that shouldn’t trouble the conscience of man overly. He had shown himself also to be a skilled and remorseless man-hunter.

  No longer young, he was still strong in the saddle; he could go without sleep when needed with younger men and shame them with his alertness; he could ride any horse living into the ground and go into action when he stepped down. He was an excellent shot with a rifle, no slouch with a belt-gun and could hold his own with a first-class tracker. He knew the country and he knew its people—Anglos, Mexicans and Indians. He was the right man for the job mid he knew it.

  He woke, as he always woke, when the shadows cut blue across the street, stretched, yawned luxuriously and stamped his feet on the floor. Then he rolled himself a smoke, lit up and drew the smoke into his lungs with slow satisfaction.

  He had passed forty, he was lean, weather-beaten and physically hard. His face was tanned leather and his eyes the dearest gray. He did nothing to excess—a drink, an occasional woman, a little flutter with the cards, he indulged himself enough to make life bearable, hut never too much. A widower, he roomed in a hotel in town and took his meals at the Greek restaurant His wife had died some ten years hack. He had missed her, hut had not been inconsolable when she died. He was a self-contained man who did not allow himself to he touched too deeply by the sadness of life. He was simple, intelligent and, though usually direct, was capable of a gentle deviousness when deviousness was called for.

  When he finished his smoke, he flicked the butt through the open door into the dust of the street, strapped on his gun and stepped out. His back straight, he angled through the dust and took in the town.

  It wasn’t much of a town, but he liked it well enough, mostly because he had friends here and it was friends that made a place for a man.

  He downed a cup of coffee at Nick the Greek’s place, passed the time of day with the few men in there and then walked on through the town. It was half-Anglo and half-Mexican. The old Mexican village with its ancient baroque church and peeling plaster was much as it had been a hundred years ago. The Anglo part had been added to the east of it, to be near the silver; diggings that had petered out some five years back. A few men still hunted the precious metal, but mostly the miners had moved on. Crewsville was now the trading and ranching center for the area.

  Furbee knew that it was also the smuggling center for the area, but he didn’t do too much about it. So long as men were discreet, he was willing to mind his own business. Last year he had been offered a bribe by a smuggler to look the other way and had promptly arrested the man. It hurt the sheriff’s pride to be bribed. If men brought in goods and cows quietly and didn’t resort to violence, Furbee didn’t see any harm in it. He was a man inclined to make his own rules. Crewsville was well-aware of them. They liked the way he went about his job. He was their sheriff. He looked after their interests.

  As he walked down into the Mexican quarter greeting the men and women and even the small children solemnly in his cow-pen Spanish, he thought. He invariably did his thinking on his evening promenade of the town.

  He had Martin Walker on his mind.

  Walker had been killed the day before.

  Now killing was nothing new to Crewsville. It was situated near the border, all sorts of riff-raff found its way there. Drink and the climate were inclined to make men’s tempers short and in a country where every other man wore a gun on his hip, short tempers could lead to shooting. Until Martin Walker was killed, Furbee thought he’d met every kind of killing that was possible. Now he knew different.

  Walker had been found the day before in a dry wash outside town. The discovery had been made by two small Mexican boys, Manuel and Pepe Gomez. The vultures had already got to work on the dead man, but they had not had time to erase completely the manner of the killing.

  Furbee could be a hard man, but the sight of the victim had turned his guts.

  Walker had been shot through the back of his head at close range. Which made it cold-blooded murder. But had it been so cold-blooded, he thought as he paced slowly along. Why did one always refer to it as cold-blooded. Most murder was done in hot blood on the spur of the moment.

  Walker’s brains had been blown out through the front of his head, but there was no sign of the brains around. The vultures may have accounted for that. Just the same, Furbee had the feeling that Walker had not been killed on the spot. There was plenty of sign around, but the kids who found him had mussed that up a good deal. They had brought their father out to look at the grisly remains and he had brought several of his friends. They had mussed the sign up further.

  That didn’t leave Furbee much to go on.

  Except …

  Ah, he thought, except the state of the body.

  Had the terrible marks on the corpse been the result of the vultures working him over or had they come there by other means? He had an uneasy feeling that what was needed here was a skilled city detective, not a cow-country sheriff.

  He was inclined to believe that the marks on the body were the result of an insane assault on the body after the shot had been fired through its head. Which could mean that he had a maniac on his hands.

  The possibility troubled him. He was used to crime and violence, but it was always straight-fo
rward. However, he added to himself, this was a small place and if there was a homicidal maniac around he would be bound to be noticed. All he could do was ask around and keep his eyes open.

  On the other hand, did a homicidal maniac have the sense to tote his victim away from the scene of crime? His experience with maniacs was pretty small, but he thought it possible that even a crazy killer could possess cunning of a sort.

  One point really troubled him. Was this an isolated killing or could there be more?

  He shuddered as he thought about it.

  The Mexican padre was in front of him, smiling. The question came. Had the sheriff got any further with solving the terrible crime? No, the sheriff wasn’t any further forward, but he was working on it. Never fear, father, he’d have the culprit in irons before long.

  Furbee paced on.

  What did he know about Walker? What did anybody know about the man?

  He had lived south of town on the edge of the Mexican quarter, alone in a small adobe, fending for himself and when he wanted company, which wasn’t too often, he had found it among the Mexicans. Age:- thirty-five or thereabouts. Worked for a small freighting company that plied between Crewsville and the capital, Crewsville and Tucson. A morose, silent man who went on a monthly drunk and minded his own business. Furbee hadn’t liked or disliked him.

  He had questioned the Mexicans who had been seen in his company from time to time. They knew nothing about the man having any enemies. He never gave offense. He spoke pretty good Spanish and the kids liked him. He seemed to get on better with kids than he did with adults. Was that any sort of clue? Had Walker any special relationship with a child? Had an enraged parent killed him? Furbee probed further. Walker had not shown any liking for any particular child.

  He spoke with Clance Damyon, Walker’s boss. Damyon didn’t know that Walker had any enemies. A good worker. Sure, he drank a little at times, but he always turned up sober for work. He had no complaints. He’d worked for Damyon two years. A simple honest man. No, he never wore a gun, though he carried a rifle on the wagon when he was freighting.

  He found himself at Walker’s adobe. It was as though he had arrived there by accident, but he knew different. He was following his nose.

  He eased the door open and sniffed at the dry closeness of the place. Somehow the aroma of death seemed to be here. It brought back the picture of the dead man to him again.

  It was dim in there, for the single-roomed structure was lit by no more than the light from the door and from a small window. Gradually, as he stood within the doorway, his eyes grew accustomed to the poor light. He took in the disheveled bed in the corner, the table with the unwashed utensils on its top.

  His mind stopped.

  He gazed at the table and wondered why he had not noticed it before.

  Two people had sat there and eaten. Two plates, two cups. Somebody knew Walker well enough to come here to eat with him.

  He walked around the interior, trying to picture the life of the man who had lived here. It told him something about the man.

  There were desert flowers in a vase, dead now. The fact started him a little. Somehow he didn’t see Walker picking flowers. But you never knew.

  A mail order calendar on the wall, years out-of-date. A few canned goods on shelves, an old Remington single-shot carbine leaning in a corner, a hat.

  Furbee stopped again. Walker had owned only one hat, a gray Mexican felt, battered and sweat-stained. Never seen without it. It lay in a corner, crushed.

  Now Furbee started to see more. Suddenly, he knew that there had been a fight in here. Somebody had straightened the place up a little, but there had been a fight here. Two plates had been broken and crushed almost to powder.

  A little excitement started to well up in the sheriff.

  He walked to the bed. There were two blankets on it and they lay as they had been thrown back as he rose from his sleep. Dust had gathered on them now.

  He turned away, then turned back again, lifting the blankets with forefinger and thumb, gingerly. A small flash of color caught his eye. Stooping, he picked up a woman’s garter.

  He couldn’t believe it.

  Walker had had a woman here.

  Or had he? Had he just collected a garter? Some men did things like that. Womanless men did strange things. He turned the article over in his hand. It was pink and was decorated by a small red rose. It was clean. It hadn’t been in this place for long.

  So what did a pink silk garter mean?

  A white woman, he reckoned. He asked himself if Mexican women wore garters and he thought not. Not in this town, any road, though he could be wrong.

  He stuffed the garter in his pocket and looked around again. He gave the hard dirt floor close scrutiny. There wasn’t much chance of there being any tell-tale mark being left on its hard surface.

  Suddenly, he stooped and stared closely at a small patch of the floor where the smooth surface was broken. He knew he was looking at the small mark made by the heel of a woman’s shoe. He straightened up. He was sure now. A woman had been here. And that woman didn’t want to be known or she would have come forward. The neighbors didn’t know of her. Maybe if he found the woman he would find the killer. Maybe not. He didn’t think that she had done the killing. No woman could have done to that body what he had seen. But if he could find her, he didn’t doubt that she could tell him much that he didn’t know.

  He paced slowly back to his office, deep in thought.

  Chapter Two

  It was dark when he reached his office and he lit the lamp on his desk. He had the strange sensation that the town was drawing in on him. For the first time since he had taken office, he felt a sense of danger. There was something about this affair that he found repulsive and disturbing.

  He sat behind his desk and rolled a smoke, thinking.

  Whoever the woman was who had been in Walker’s adobe had been in his bed. Who was there in town who would share a bed with a man like Walker?

  For the time being, he would rule out the respectable women. He’d already ruled out the Mexicans. So that left the saloon girls. It was going to be one hell of a chore finding out who owned that garter.

  Then he thought of Lily Minden.

  She worked at the Lucky Strike for Mort Gaines. Maybe she could help. Furbee liked Lily as much as he liked any saloon girl. She was brighter than average for a start and saloon girls didn’t come too bright.

  He reckoned he would go buy himself a whiskey and see what he could learn. He left his office, walked down the street, turned left at the intersection and saw the lights of the saloon across the street from him. There were a few people about, a blackboard passed him, two riders went by and halted outside the Lucky Strike. They dismounted, tied their horses and went inside. He registered them as cowhands from out of town.

  When he entered the saloon, he saw them at the bar ordering drinks. Mort Gaines came forward to greet him and they shook hands. Gaines was a big man, a Texan, hard in mind, soft in body. He ran an orderly house and he kept on the right side of the law. Furbee ran his eye over the big room. Beyond the two cowhands at the bar, there were a few men scattered around the room at the tables, drinking and playing cards, a couple of girls were drinking with men. Lily Minden wasn’t there.

  Mort said: ‘You learn anythin’ more about that killin’?’

  ‘Workin’ on it,’ the sheriff said.

  ‘You think you’ll ever find who done it?’

  Furbee looked at the other man, screwing up one eye in a way he had.

  ‘I’ll find him,’ he said, ‘don’t you have any doubt about that.’

  ‘Drink?’

  The sheriff nodded. They stepped to the bar and Furbee leaned on it. The two cowhands nodded. The whiskey came and the sheriff poured. Gaines drank with him. They lifted their glasses to each other and swallowed.

  ‘Lily around?’ Furbee asked.

  Gaines gave him a look of curiosity. It wasn’t like the sheriff to ask for a girl was his
first reaction. Then he saw other possibilities in the question.

  ‘Upstairs,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have a word with her,’ the sheriff said. ‘Mind if I go up?’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  Furbee finished his drink.

  ‘Which room?’

  Gaines said: ‘I’ll show you,’ and started around the bar.

  They headed for the stairs, Gaines leading. One or two heads turned to watch them go. A man couldn’t breathe in this town without somebody wanting to know why he did it.

  At the head of the stairs, Gaines turned right. In front of them was the window overlooking the street. To their right was a door, to the left two more. Games approached the second door on the left and tapped on it with his knuckles,

  ‘Lil,’ he said, ‘sheriff here wants a word with you.’

  Silence.

  Games knocked again,

  ‘Lil, you in there?’

  The saloon man turned to Furbee: ‘She was here five minutes back.’

  He opened the door and looked inside.

  Standing to one side, Furbee could not see past him into the room. He was watching the man, idly speculating, no more than half-aware. That, suddenly, he was fully aware. Something subtle but violent happened to Gaines.

  ‘My God,’ he whispered.

  One hand clutched at the jamb of the door. Furbee saw the knuckles go white from the effort he put into the grip. The sheriff went forward, but Gaines’ bulk blocked his way.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  Gaines stayed rooted to the spot. He turned his head and stared at Furbee and his face was slack and white with horror. The sweat started from it.

  Suddenly impatient, Furbee gripped his arm and hauled him aside.

  The sight in the room hit him.

  Gaines was saying something incoherent. Furbee stepped into the room gazing at the thing on the floor.

  It had been Lily Minden, but the only reason he knew that was the fact that it was clad in the violet silk dress he knew so well. Violet had been her favorite color. There wasn’t much of it left now. His mind at once told him that he had never seen a human body treated like it. But that was wrong. He had. The body of Mart Walker.