Blood Money (A Hawk Western #2) by William S. Brady

Author:William S. Brady [Brady, William S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: John Harvey, Angus Wells, Edge, George G. Gilman, Spaghetti westerns, Western ebook, Western series, Wild West
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 2022-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

It had been winter in Nebraska. The sky so low and leaden that the weight of it seemed to press right down on top of your head. Hawk had been in the territory a month and he couldn’t recall seeing the sun or a trace of blue sky in all that time.

A month of eating greasy stews and chewing on hardtack biscuits; often sleeping out at nights with a couple of blankets and four or five furs wrapped round you and still waking in the morning with what seemed as near as damnation to frostbite in your toes and fingers.

Hawk had come east and then south from the Dakotas where he’d been hired on by the Army—first as a teamster and after that as a scout against the Sioux. Youngest scout they’d had for close on fifteen years, they’d told him at the post.

Now he was riding guard on a mess of fur shipments, furs and buffalo hides and the way those hides stank it made everyone who wasn’t in the same business walk a half mile round you just to keep their nose clear of the smell.

As winter had come in so had the robbers and thieves and the wagon had been stopped near enough every second trip until they’d begun employing guards. Now it was down to every fourth trip-if your luck held out.

Anyway, this particular day it had begun to snow; just the occasional flurry at first but then it had fallen like a curtain of white drawn across in front of Hawk’s eyes. The wind messed with it and drove it hard into their faces. Hawk pulled up the collar of his coat and pulled down the brim of his hat and shoved his hands deep into his sleeves, letting the shotgun rest on his knees and freeze. Snow settled on the backs of the mules and on their harness; on the edges of the wagon, on the barrels of the gun and on Hawk’s legs and boots. It wasn’t possible to see more than ten yards ahead at most.

The driver alongside Hawk cussed and swore all the time, using every word Hawk had ever heard and then making up a few multiple ones that would have made the youngster laugh if the weather hadn’t set his jaw in the one position.

Then they materialized out of the storm. Four men, huge with furs tied about their bodies and fur hats low to their eyes. They sat two on horses, two on mules, blocking the wagon’s path. The pair on mules were holding guns in their gloved hands, old Navy Colts and one of the others had a rifle, a long-barreled Sharps.

The driver pulled the team to a standstill and the men were so close Hawk could have reached out and touched them. One of them grabbed at him instead. A hand seized the end of the shotgun before Hawk could even pull his hands from his sleeves. Then an arm wound about his neck and the next thing he knew he was lying on his side in the snow.

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