Revenger by Frank Leslie

Author:Frank Leslie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

REVENGER #2

DEATH AND THE SALOON GIRL

CHAPTER 1

* * *

Mike Sartain, the Revenger, reined his big buckskin to a halt on the trail he’d been following for the past two days, and squinted his cobalt-blue eyes against the howling wind and blowing nettles.

Before him lay a town that didn’t appear much more than a handful of shabby, mud brick and wood frame buildings doing their humble best to keep from being overrun by the high-desert sage, cedars, piñons, rocks, cactus, and jouncing tumbleweeds.

The Wells Fargo office and San Juan Valley Stage Company building sat on the trace’s left side, about halfway down the street. It was by far the largest building in the settlement, and its signs were the brightest, the rest having been badly faded by the sun and blasted to gray splinters by the wind that often howled either over the San Juan Range to the west or the Sangre de Cristos to the northeast.

Sartain knew about the wind in these parts. When he wasn’t hunting men who needed killing, he often holed up in an old mountain prospector’s shack in the nearby Sawatch Range. It was one of several “hidey holes” The Revenger maintained on the frontier and to which he repaired when he was tired of hunting and being hunted.

The big buckskin shook its head and blew, shifted its weight beneath Sartain.

The big, blue-eyed man clad in denims and a pinto vest leaned forward and ran his left hand down the stallion’s long, sleek neck. “I see it, Boss.” His right hand slid to the big, silver-chased, pearl-gripped LeMat residing in a holster thonged to his right thigh and released the keeper thong from over the hammer.

What both horse and rider had seen was the man who’d been standing under a porch awning on the street’s right side, across from a mercantile. The man had just turned away from the awning support post he’d been leaning against, his brown hat tipped against the wind, and disappeared down an alley mouth. He’d moved with his chin dipped as though to hide his face beneath his hat, and his shoulders were furtively hunched.

If he’d had a tail, he would have tucked it between his legs, like a wildcat slipping into cover.

Just before he’d ducked into the alley on the far side of Logan’s Tonsorial Parlor, he’d cast a quick, over-shoulder glance toward Sartain, ringing warning bells not only in The Revenger’s ears but obviously in Boss’s ears, as well. The buckskin and Sartain had ridden the vengeance trail for some time now, and they themselves had been hunted for long enough that they were most often in perfect harmony with one another.

“Yeah, I see him,” Sartain said, giving the horse’s neck another pat and quickly scanning the rest of the street, looking for more trouble signs.

Where there was one man gunning for Sartain, there were usually two or more, for The Revenger’s reputation generally preceded him.

But the street, save for the occasional bouncing tumbleweed and a ranch supply wagon sitting in front of the mercantile, was deserted.

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