Blaze! Bad Medicine Read online

  BLAZE!

  BAD MEDICINE

  Michael Newton

  Blaze! Bad Medicine by Michael Newton

  Text Copyright 2017 by Michael Newton

  Series Concept and Characters Copyright 2015 by Stephen Mertz

  Cover Design by Livia Reasoner

  A Rough Edges Press Book

  www.roughedgespress.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Dedicated to Steve Mertz, who created this series and—not for the first time—invited me aboard. It's been a great ride.

  Chapter 1

  There was something off about the lone coyote's howl. Not that the sound was rare, per se. Quite the reverse, in fact. The hills and desert flats of Arizona Territory were alive with predators who dodged the broiling sun by day and did their hunting after nightfall, often signaling their packs or baying for a lost mate in the middle of godforsaken nowhere.

  But this was different, at least to Wash Dressler's experienced ear.

  "You hear that, Papa?" daughter Jossie asked, around a mouthful of pot roast.

  "I'm not deaf, child," Wash replied.

  "It sounds funny," daughter Celestine chimed in, not smiling, much less laughing.

  "I believe you're right," Wash said.

  That drew a troubled glance and one raised eyebrow from his wife, Leora, but she didn't voice the worry that was plainly on her mind. Still, Wash could tell what she was thinking. A coyote sounding "funny" might not be a damned coyote, after all.

  It could be something much, much worse.

  "I'd better have a look around," Wash told his family. "Check on the stock and all."

  "Wash—"

  But he cut her off with, "Now, Leora. Just a price of living well away from town. You wouldn't want a mangy stray coyote worrying the chickens, would you? Looking for a way inside the barn?"

  She understood, glanced at their girls, and answered, "No. I'll keep your pot roast warm."

  "Appreciate it, Love."

  Wash rose and crossed the room that served as kitchen, dining room, and parlor of their small farmhouse, circling by the hearth to lift his Henry rifle down from where it hung on pegs above the mantelpiece. He didn't have to check the rifle's load. Wash kept a live round in the chamber and another sixteen in the magazine that stretched beneath the weapon's twenty-four-inch barrel. All he'd have to do, if there was shooting, would be thumbing back the rifle's hammer, aiming if he had the time, and squeezing off.

  Wash gave his wife a quick peck as she took his plate of vittles to the stove, then had to kiss the girls as well, in order by their age, before he left the house. Leora knew enough to bolt the door behind him without asking, while he stalked the desert night.

  You couldn't rightly call the spread a farm, since it had never grown a crop that Wash could sell, but as a ranch it did all right. They had a garden, tended lovingly to spare it from relentless sun, horses, a milk cow, and a mob of chickens that provided eggs and meat while reproducing at a rate that had initially surprised him. Wash was fairly certain they could make a go of it.

  If only they were left in peace.

  But that goddamned coyote...

  As he stepped down off the porch, scanning the moonlit property with narrowed eyes, Wash hoped that it would only be a sick coyote after all, maybe a loner who had strained his vocal cords somehow or other.

  If it wasn't...well, they had big trouble in that case, and might not make it through the night.

  The last Apache rising had been several years ago, before he'd bought the land and settled down to build a dream amidst the sun-baked wilderness. Skirmishes with units of the U.S. Cavalry had gone on through the 1860s, costing many lives before 500 warriors under Eskiminzin finally surrendered at Camp Grant in the spring of 1871. Before that lot was rightly settled, in late April of the year, rogue whites from Tucson had attacked a peaceful, sleeping camp and killed more than 140 innocent Apaches, nearly all of them women and children. That naturally led to further violence, and all-out war ensued, ending at last in April 1873, when some two thousand Indians laid down their arms and occupied government reservations.

  So far, so good.

  It was the holdouts Wash Dressler worried about, as he crossed the farmyard toward his barn.

  * * *

  "The white man's coming," Cougar told his hand-picked raiders.

  "We are ready," Wolf replied, his voice cold as a stone at midnight in the desert.

  "I strike first," Cougar reminded them unnecessarily. "We take him quietly and give no warning to the house."

  "A woman and two little ones," said Wolf. "Both girls."

  "The woman certainly can shoot," hissed Cougar. "If you wish to sacrifice yourself, do not include the rest of us."

  "I know my part," Wolf answered, almost sullenly.

  Cougar decided he would have to deal with Wolf before much longer. Every day, it seemed, Wolf pushed the limits of his role within the tribe, seeking advancement and a greater glory for himself, instead of honoring their shaman and the gods who spoke through him.

  The trick was how and when to deal with Wolf. The timing had to be precisely right.

  Tonight, the raiders had other important business.

  They were here to start a war.

  "Be ready!" Cougar barely whispered, trusting sharp ears in the dark barn to pick out his words.

  Their enemy had reached the barn, juggling a rifle tucked beneath one arm as he released the outer latch to come inside.

  Waiting beside that door, Cougar offered a silent prayer up to Tobadzistsini, the Apache God of War, and clutched his tomahawk.

  * * *

  Wash Dressler hadn't heard a peep out of the damned coyote since he'd left his dinner and his family inside the house. If the peculiar cry meant Indians, wouldn't they still be yapping back and forth, communicating or just trying to unnerve him?

  Maybe. But Wash couldn't swear to it.

  No one had ever figured out all of the sly Apaches' tricks. If that were true, Wash wouldn't have to worry, wouldn't be out prowling in the darkness with a rifle in his hands.

  Or underneath his arm, as it was now, while he unhooked the simple latch and started opening his barn's main door. It dragged the dirt a little, scraping, telling Wash the hinges needed readjustment.

  Later.

  Now, he needed just a quick look through the barn. Fire up the lamp he kept in there, to drive the shadows back, make sure that all his animals were safe and sound. It shouldn't take him long, then just a final walk around the place, and Wash could get back to his supper, to his family, with no harm done.

  Please, God. With no harm done to me or mine. Amen.

  One step inside the barn, Wash stopped to sniff the air. He knew the smell of horses and their dung, same for the cow, and who could possibly mistake the scent of roosting chickens? There was dust, too, in the barn, inevitable when the desert wind slipped through its cracks and crevices. Leora should find eggs tomorrow morning, when she checked their nests.

  But there was also something else.

  Wash Dressler hadn't sniffed a live coyote in the flesh, but he had seen and smelled dead ones, concluding that in life they must smell something like a dog gone desert wild. This scent was more like human sweat, Wash thought, exuded from a combination of the pent-up heat inside the barn and anxious nerves.

  Wash slipped the Henry from his armpit, gripping it in both
hands as he sidled slowly toward the wall hook where the kerosene lantern dangled. He would have to loose the rifle from one hand to palm a match, strike it, and get the lantern going, but he needed light, even if simple motions now made him more vulnerable.

  Cautiously, as quietly as possible, he thumbed the rifle's hammer back until he heard it click and knew the piece was cocked, ready to fire. If need be, he could shoot one-handed, but he hoped to light the lamp and drive some of the shadows back before it came to that extreme. Gripping the Henry with his right hand, index finger through the trigger guard, Wash raised the lamp's glass chimney just enough to let him feel inside and check the flat wick's length. Next, he dug into his checkered shirt's breast pocket with his left hand, found some wooden matches there, and drew one out.

  Wash was about to strike it on the barn's doorframe when he heard just the slightest whisper-scuff of footsteps closing in behind him. Half-turned toward the sound, he never saw the tomahawk descending on his skull, but felt its penetration as the inside of his head lit up with silent fireworks, swiftly fading into deepest black.

  * * *

  "What's keeping Papa out so long?" Celestine asked, not quite a whine.

  "I couldn't say," Leora answered back, too sharply. "Finish up your supper, now."

  "I should've gone out with him," said her son, young August, six years old.

  "Hush, now. If you were needed, he'd have taken you."

  "He does too need me, Mama!" Turning angry in a heartbeat.

  "August! Mind your manners now, or you can go to bed without dessert."

  "I'm sorry, Mama." Slipping from defiance to a kind of pout.

  "None of you need to worry," said Leora, to her three children. "Your Papa's watching over us."

  Jossie picked up on that, seeming confused. "Is Papa God?"

  "Of course not! What a thing to say."

  "Because he said God watches over us," the girl persisted.

  "And He does, Jossie. Over the whole world, always watching. But a husband and a father watches over his specific family."

  "Oh."

  "And we watch over him, as well," Leora added, wishing mightily that there was something she could do right now, to help her man and keep her precious children safe.

  Celestine started to reply. "But if he—"

  "Hush!" Leora snapped, too harshly. But she'd heard something that sounded like a footstep on the porch outside.

  And like the single cry of the supposed coyote earlier, it sounded wrong to her.

  Wash favored heavy boots. In fact, they were the only shoes he wore most days, saving his pair of lace-up shoes for Sunday services in town. The footstep that Leora Dressler heard, or thought she heard outside, was softer, no hard leather sole impacting wooden boards, and no slight creaking that the porch always emitted under Wash's weight.

  So, who on Earth...?

  "Children, it's time to play a game."

  "We haven't finished eating yet, Mama!" Jossie complained.

  "This is a special game," Leora answered back. "Like hide-and-seek."

  "But, Mama—"

  "No more arguments! Each of you find a hiding place right now. If I can't find you afterward, it means a second piece of apple pie."

  Celestine squealed at that, while August leaped out of his chair and started for the door.

  "August! I mean inside the house."

  "Oh, Ma—"

  "Get moving, all of you. I'll only count to twenty."

  As they scrambled out of sight, Leora rose, not counting, and retrieved her longest carving knife from where it hung beside the stove. Wash had instructed her in shooting when they planned the move out west, but now he had the Henry rifle with him and they didn't have a second gun.

  Clutching the knife in her right hand, Leora glanced around to see if any of her children could be seen from where she stood. When none were visible, she guessed where they were hiding: under beds, perhaps inside one of the freestanding bedroom chifforobes that passed for closets. A determined search would certainly reveal them all, but for the moment, this sliver of time, she reckoned they were safe.

  And where was Wash?

  Leora knew he wouldn't let an enemy approach the house if he were still in any shape to stop it. She couldn't afford to think about that now, much less to see him in her mind, injured or dead. Leora had a part to play right now, exactly where she was, and if it proved to be the last thing that she ever did, so be it.

  She was six feet from the door when someone slid a knife blade through a crack beside the frame, raising the latch. The door swung slowly inward to reveal her worst nightmare.

  Leora raised her knife and charged, lips drawn back from her teeth, determined not to scream.

  Chapter 2

  "Why do they call this town Inferno?" Kate Blaze asked.

  J.D., her husband, doffed his hat and sleeved a film of perspiration from his brow before replacing it. "It's just a guess," he answered, glancing toward the sun above them, "but I'd say the weather has a lot to do with it."

  "Hotter than Utah," Kate observed.

  "Except for Rebels on the prod, trying to kill us," he reminded her.

  "Okay, except for that."

  Utah had been unusual, to say the least. One minute, they were walking down a street in Denver, when they'd seen three thugs trying to rob a pair of well-dressed gentlemen. J.D. and Kate had tried to help, it turned into a shooting scrape, and next thing they knew, they were hired as bodyguards for one of the gents—no less a personage than President Ulysses Grant, embarking on a reelection campaign tour of the West. The Blazes planned to tag along as far as California, anyway, but in the wilds of Utah, ex-Confederates had staged an ambush, bent on killing Grant after they'd forced him to confess imaginary crimes during the recent Civil War.

  That story ended as they often did, gunsmoke and blood. The president was spared, won reelection, and was now immersed in scandal, economic turmoil spawned by greedy robber barons—was there any other kind?—and racist terrorism down below the Mason-Dixon Line, where other ex-Confederates couldn't remember that they'd lost the war.

  All that meant they'd be staying out of Dixie for a while, but things seemed safer in the Arizona Territory. That is, if you didn't mind a sunburn reaching almost to the bone.

  Inferno was supposed to be a stop-off on their way to Tucson, the territorial capital since 1867, when Prescott was demoted to the simpler status of another town with no authority. An outlaw band, the Grayson Boys—three brothers, plus some cousins—had been running wild around Tucson, defying all attempts by duly constituted law enforcement agents to corral them, and collective prices on their heads had topped five thousand dollars now.

  That kind of money drew the best—and worst—of bounty hunters, traveling from near and far. J.D. and Kate could only hope they'd find their quarry first and still be breathing to collect their money when the smoke cleared. Rumor had it that the Grayson Boys had vowed to never see the inside of a jail, and that was fine. Alive or dead, delivery still paid the same.

  "Imagine hiding out in all this nothing," Kate remarked. "Broiling all day, freezing at night."

  "Most likely," J.D. said, "after they make a score, they head on down to Mexico. The money stretches further there, and they've got all those señoritas."

  "Not that you'd know anything about the señoritas."

  J.D. thought that Kate was extra-pretty when she felt a little jealous, but he didn't like to push the game too far, in case it prompted her to let her mean side show.

  "Not me," he reassured her. "But you hear things on the trail."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Hey, Babe. What's that?"

  "What's what?"

  He pointed toward their left, a mile or more away, where dark smoke stained the azure sky.

  "That looks like trouble," Kate replied, no longer sounding jealous now.

  * * *

  And she was right. The homestead had been leveled, more or less: the main house, barn, some smal
ler outbuildings all torched and left to burn, collapsing inward on themselves and leaving only blackened timbers pointing toward the sky like rude, one-handed gestures. Underneath the smell of wood smoke, J.D. noted something more like cooking meat and didn't like to think about what it might be.

  "No sign that anyone survived," he said.

  "Or who it was tore through the place," Kate added. "You don't think that it could be the Grayson Boys?"

  "I'd say it's too far off their range."

  "So, Indians?"

  "The territory is supposed to be at peace," J.D. replied. "Of course, that doesn't mean it's true."

  "We ought to have a look around," Kate said, reluctantly.

  "Well..."

  "Check for signs of who's responsible," she added. "And report on what we've found this afternoon, when we get to Inferno."

  J.D. almost grimaced at the town's selected name, sitting this close to the remains of a real-life inferno. "All right, then," he said, reluctantly. "You want the house or barn?"

  "The barn."

  I figured that, he thought. Kate didn't have a squeamish bone in her svelte body, but if truth be told, she hated it when women or their children suffered. And this place had clearly been a home, whether the settlers had a brood of kids or not. Most likely, if the raid had happened overnight, J.D. would find them—what was left of them—inside the house.

  J.D. dismounted from his stallion, while Kate nudged her mare off toward the smoking barn. There was no need to say it, but he called out after her, regardless. "Watch those standing beams. If there's a wooden floor—"

  "I won't go falling through it," she replied, cutting him off.

  Alrighty, then.

  Although the house had burned, some of the wide front porch remained intact. J.D. mounted two wooden steps and stood before an empty doorframe, charred but still upright, minus the door it once supported. Peering through that gap into the tumbled-down remainder of the house, he saw a stove, a fireplace and its chimney, blackened furniture that might have been handmade, and heaps of ash that drifted over all.