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  LONNIE GENTRY

  LONNIE GENTRY

  PETER BRANDVOLD

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2014 by Peter Brandvold.

  Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Brandvold, Peter.

  Lonnie Gentry / Peter Brandvold. First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4328-2917-9 (hardcover) — ISBN 1-4328-2917-3

  (hardcover)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2924-7 eISBN-10: 1-4328-2924-6

  1. Cowboys—Fiction. 2. Outlaws—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.R3236L68 2014

  813′.54—dc23 2014011459

  First Edition. First Printing: August 2014

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2924-7 ISBN-10: 1-4328-2924-6

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  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 18 17 16 15 14

  This book is for my friend

  Jason Bruner—

  Wild Man of Mount Milner!

  CHAPTER 1

  Something screeched through the air about six inches in front of Lonnie Gentry’s face. Lonnie felt the warm curl of air against his nose.

  The fast-moving object made a loud whunk! as it crashed into a tree ahead and left of the thirteen-year-old. The shrill crack of a rifle cut through the afternoon silence of this high mountain forest and flattened out over the valley below, chasing its echoes like a rabid dog trying to bite its own tail.

  Lonnie shouted a curse as he leaped back along the cattle trail he’d been following on his search for calves that might have gotten bogged in mud or entangled in brush. He stumbled back so quickly, his heart turning somersaults in his chest, that he got his boots and spurs tangled up and went down hard on his butt.

  His hat went flying.

  He cursed again. The pain of the fall felt like an ax handle slammed against his rear end. This time the curse was drowned by another bullet screeching in from his right to ricochet loudly off a mossy, gray boulder on the upslope to his left.

  “What the hell?” exclaimed the boy, who reserved his “barn talk,” as his mother called it, for when he was in the company of only his horse … or when someone was trying to drill a tunnel between his ears with a bullet!

  Lonnie grabbed his hat, scrambled off the trail’s downslope side. The rifle crashed again on the heels of a dull thud, which was the bullet plowing into the pine-needle-carpeted slope on the other side of the trail.

  That shot was well shy of Lonnie, which told the boy that the shooter had lost track of him. Holding his hat as he lay belly-down between two tall pines and staring along the slope in the direction he’d been heading, hot fury washed through Lonnie Gentry. His first thought had been some cork-headed fool had mistaken him for a deer or an elk, but the persistence with which they’d continued shooting had made him ponder other possibilities.

  Now a man’s voice yelled from the densely forested upslope, “You git him, Willie?”

  And another man’s voice answered, “Not sure! Seen him go down, but he might’ve hotfooted it!”

  The rage in Lonnie turned to fear.

  Nope, they hadn’t mistaken him for game. They’d known he was two-legged, and they were either after money, which he didn’t have, or his horse. Possibly the Winchester .44-40 repeating rifle riding in the scabbard attached to his saddle. Which, in turn, was attached to his horse, General Sherman, whom he’d left down trail a ways to forage for himself along Willow Run, a cold mountain stream cutting straight down out of the mountains.

  “Let’s move in slow-like and check it out,” called the man on the upslope. “Take care—the rest are prob’ly close!”

  The hair along the back of Lonnie’s neck pricked. They were heading toward him, and he hadn’t liked the sound of their voices. They were pinched voices. The voices of determined men. Likely, desperate men.

  Probably outlaws on the run from some posse. Maybe in need of guns, ammo, and horses.

  Lonnie lay frozen in fear, his mind and heart competing with each other like two horses running a Fourth of July race, for nearly a minute. Then he saw movement through the trees on the upslope. He heard the crunch of pine needles of someone moving along the trail he’d been on himself a few minutes ago. The trail angled down from a low ridge. Lonnie couldn’t see over the ridge, but his bushwhacker must be coming from the other side of it.

  Lonnie’s mind continued to churn. His hands were sweating and his toes felt like mud inside his boots. If he continued to lie here, shivering, he’d be wolf bait. No one would ever see him or hear from him again. He’d be one of those legends that streak these Never Summer Mountains of northern Colorado Territory—mysterious legends of those who’d simply disappeared.

  What happened to such lost souls, no one knew. But it sure was fun to speculate around lonely campfires on a cold mountain night during roundup, say, or on an elk-hunting trip. Lonnie had to admit he’d enjoyed such stories himself. They’d given him an odd thrill. This one, however, wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling. At least, not to him. Not to his mother, either. She’d likely spend the next several years bawling her eyes out and sobbing herself to sleep at night.

  Men were after him. Bad men. Men who’d likely kill him as soon as they saw him, and turn his pockets inside out. They’d find nothing in there but lint, but they’d eventually find General Sherman and the rifle …

  The rifle.

  Lonnie scrambled to his feet, turned, stuffed his hat down tight on his head, and ran at a crouch downslope through the columnar pines. He ran hard, his pointed-toe stockmen’s boots slipping and sliding on the thin, needle-strewn dirt. His spurs rang with every step. He leaped deadfalls and ducked under those that had fallen against other trees. He was angling down the slope, in the direction from which he’d come.

  Behind him, a man’s voice echoed eerily through the silent forest. “See him?”

  The reply was a little louder: “No, but I can hear him. He’s hotfooting it, all right! Git him!”

  CHAPTER 2

  A rifle barked loudly. Lonnie jumped with a start. He thought for a second he’d been shot, but then he realized that he’d just imagined the bullet.

  The sudden punch of cold terror had caused him to lose his footing again. He fell on the downslope, and rolled. Again, he lost his hat as he continued rolling down the steep slope and into a snag of willows lining a rocky spring. The willows stopped him.<
br />
  A weird, terrified energy was coursing through him. He had to get to his horse and his Winchester—his prized Winchester ’66 Yellowboy repeater that his father had left him when he’d died. Between imagined images of the devilishly grinning men stalking him, all he could see was General Sherman and his rifle.

  If he had the Winchester, he’d have a way to defend himself, possibly even discourage his stalkers.

  In a blur, he gained his feet, retrieved his hat, stuffed it down on his head again, ran through the willows and the little trickle of water gurgling out of the rocks, and continued running toward the pulsating rush of what he knew was the stream tumbling out of the mountains ahead of him, farther on down the slope.

  He scrambled up and over a low ridge. As he ran down the other side, he saw the rush of water tumbling down the slope from his right to his left. Willow Run was about thirty yards across, but even now in mid-summer the spring-fed stream was a rushing torrent as cold as hell was hot. It was sheathed in ferns and willows.

  On the other side of the white roil of spraying water, near a low stone escarpment, Lonnie’s buckskin stallion, General Sherman, stood tied to a root angling out of the scarp. The horse was staring toward Lonnie and twitching his ears curiously, probably wondering what the shooting had been about. Horses’ ears were keen. He would have heard the shots even above the roar of the stream.

  Lonnie glanced over his shoulder as he continued running toward a fir tree that had fallen across the stream, providing a natural bridge. He could see nothing behind him amidst the murky, dark-green forest, but when he was halfway across the stream, carefully negotiating the half-rotted pine, a bullet slammed off the escarpment near General Sherman. The rifle belched behind Lonnie. The horse whickered and backed away, his eyes growing large and round. He pulled at the reins that Lonnie had tied to the root.

  “No, wait, General!” Lonnie yelled, holding his arms out as he set one slippery boot down in front of the other, on the pine’s spongy trunk bristling with lance-and dagger-like broken branches.

  The water roiling over and between the boulders littering the stream sent mare’s tails of water splashing and spraying at Lonnie, filling the damp air with the wet smells of mud, stones, ferns, and cold mountain water.

  Another bullet screeched off a rock to Lonnie’s right, on the bank of the stream. The General whinnied and shook his head, gave the reins a hard tug, pulling them free of the root. Lonnie hadn’t tied the reins very tightly; he’d just looped them over the root.

  Lonnie had gentled and trained the stallion himself, and, like most western riders, he’d taught the General to remain with his bridle reins, even if they just hung to the ground. The looping over the root had only been a precaution. The General had not been trained to remain with his reins when he was being shot at, however, and now he began to turn away and to ready himself for a run to safety.

  Lonnie leaped off the end of the fir and made a mad, scrambling dash toward the horse. The twin bridle reins were two snakes twisting and sliding along the ground in front of him. They slithered away faster … too fast. He wasn’t going to catch them.

  Then the General’s hindquarters slid up hard and fast on Lonnie’s right. Lonnie glimpsed the walnut stock of his Winchester protruding from the old leather scabbard strapped to the saddle. The gold plate at the end of the stock glistened in the sunlight filtering through the forest canopy.

  Leaving the reins, Lonnie reached for the rifle. He wrapped his left hand around the stock and pulled. The rifle had just come free of the boot when the General’s left hip slammed into Lonnie like two barrels tumbling from a beer wagon.

  Lonnie left his feet and flew sideways. He saw the horse galloping down the slope, away from him. The General was shaking his head as though at a swarm of stinging yellow jackets. Lonnie momentarily had the wind knocked out of him, but when his senses returned, he found that he was holding his Winchester carbine across his sharply rising and falling belly with both his gloved hands.

  At least, he’d gotten the rifle.

  Dust and pine needles plumed in two places around him, blowing grit over his right boot. The rifles of his stalkers echoed softly above the thunder of the stream.

  Lonnie lifted his head from the dirt. Two men were running down the slope on the stream’s far side. They were both bearded and wearing Stetsons, bright neckerchiefs billowing down their chests. Leather chaps flapped against their denim-clad legs.

  The man on the right, shorter than the other one, and with long, dark-brown hair, stopped suddenly to pump another cartridge into his rifle’s chamber while the one on the left continued running toward the stream.

  Lonnie cursed, heaved himself to his feet, and ran downslope as fast as he could, squeezing the carbine in his hands.

  “There he is, Willie!” one of his pursuers shouted behind him. “Git him!”

  Another bullet nicked Lonnie’s right boot heel. It nudged his foot wide and sent him flying. He rolled toward the stream, felt the Winchester leave his hands. He heard the plop as the rifle hit the water.

  Mindless of his aches and pains, fear a living, panting beast inside him, Lonnie made a mad dash for the stream. The Winchester lay in a side eddy that was about two feet deep. The brass butt plate flashed.

  Glancing once upstream and seeing the two men running toward him, on the same side of the stream as Lonnie, he dipped his hands into the water, and pulled out the Winchester. His hands shaking from the hot blood of terror flowing inside him, he pumped a cartridge into the chamber, twisted around, and fired without aiming.

  He’d just wanted to slow his pursuers’ pursuit.

  He slowed it, all right. He stopped one man altogether.

  The one who’d stopped was a short hombre with longish brown hair and a thick mustache and goatee. His head snapped violently back on his shoulders as he continued running toward Lonnie. Then the man’s arms dropped. He released his rifle, which clattered to the ground in front of him. He kicked it.

  Then he fell to his knees. He had a funny, dull look on his face, which was pink with sunburn. His head wobbled until his dark-brown Stetson tumbled off his shoulder.

  As he knelt on the thick, green grass about six feet away from the stream and on the other side of a deadfall pine from Lonnie, Lonnie saw a red spot in the dead center of the man’s pale forehead, where his hat had shaded it from the sun. He also saw something bright and shiny on the man’s brown leather vest, beneath the green neckerchief that hung down over his heart.

  A badge. A five-pointed lawman’s star.

  As the man stared toward Lonnie, his eyes rolled back into his head, until all Lonnie could see was eggshell white. Then the man fell forward and hit the ground flat on his face.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Willie!” the other man yelled, running toward his partner.

  Lonnie looked at the smoking Winchester in his own hands. It was as though he were seeing the rifle for the first time. It was like suddenly realizing that what he’d been holding wasn’t a rifle at all but a deadly diamondback rattlesnake. But he did not drop the weapon. That diamondback might very well have saved his life.

  Lonnie rose stiffly, as though his joints had become fouled with mortar, and ran in a shambling gait on down the slope toward his horse. He didn’t see much of anything before him.

  All he really saw was the bearded face of the man with the red spot in the middle of his forehead.

  Lonnie didn’t know how far he’d run, for his head was swimming, when he dropped to his knees and the jerky and baking-powder biscuits that his mother had packed for his lunch came roaring up from his guts, and splattered onto the rocks before him.

  He vomited once more, and ran the sweaty, dusty sleeve of his shirt across his mouth. As he did, he squeezed his eyes closed, trying to wipe from his brain the memory of the man he’d shot. Of course, it did not leave but became even more vivid for his wanting to forget, tightening his guts in a knot that would have driven more food out of his stomach if ther
e had been more in there.

  There was nothing left but bile, and, swallowing hard, he managed to keep it down.

  His knees were weak and his hands were trembling.

  Killer. He was a killer. And he hadn’t killed just any man. He’d killed a lawman. He had not intended to, but he’d killed the man, just the same, and if he was caught he’d likely hang.

  Lonnie looked behind at the forested ridge he’d run down from several minutes ago. Now he was in Wolf Creek Valley, which, running north to south in the shape of a dogleg, was carpeted in short blond grass, mountain sage, and willows, with Wolf Creek running down its middle. The creek lay another hundred yards beyond, sheathed in dense, green willows.

  But Lonnie’s attention was on the steep, forested slope he’d just left.

  An ominous silence hung over the ridge. There was no movement amongst the trees that formed a gauzy, dark-green carpet shrouding that long hogback mountain. The only movement in the area was a bird of some kind, circling the ridge crest from high in the cobalt sky above, beneath a couple of thin, ragged-edged clouds that were as white as fresh linen against deep, dark blue.

  The dead lawman was still up there in those trees. And so was his partner, who was most likely also a lawman. So far, the dead man’s partner didn’t appear to be following Lonnie, but Lonnie wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t want to hang any more than he wanted to have his young hide perforated with lead.

  He got up, holding his carbine with one hand, ran a grimy sleeve across his mouth once more, and continued running. He figured that General Sherman had headed for the creek, and he was right. He spotted the horse’s back end sticking out of the willows, the buckskin’s black tail switching at blackflies.

  Lonnie slowed when he was fifty yards from the creek. The horse had heard Lonnie coming, and he’d turned his head sideways to look askance at his rider. Water dribbled from the horse’s leathery, black snout. The General twitched one ear and then the other in dubious greeting.