Helldorado Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  CLEANING UP

  Louisa emptied her Colts into the men until they’d both been punched out the door, leaving only lazily drifting gun smoke and spilled blood. Water gurgled from the several bullet holes pumped into the washtub, turning the carpet around it dark and soggy.

  Tossing away the empty Colts, Louisa sprang to her bare feet and grabbed her Winchester carbine off the bed. She strode into the hall, seeing nothing but more wafting powder smoke. Blood was smeared across the balcony’s scrolled rail.

  Louisa racked a cartridge into the carbine’s breech and, holding the rifle up high across her jostling breasts, peered over the rail and into the lobby below.

  She saw the desk clerk standing about ten feet away from her bushwhackers, in front of a potted palm, looking down at them while holding his hands in the air as though in beseeching to a higher power.

  His lips moved as he tried to speak, but he could only make incomprehensible sounds that were soon drowned by the thumps of boots on the boardwalk in front of the hotel. When Louisa saw several men with badges, including Sheriff Hiram Severin, bolt into the lobby with their pistols drawn, Louisa remembered she was standing there in nothing but her birthday suit.

  “The furnishings are right splendid,” she told the desk clerk, who was staring up at her in awe. She held the rifle across her soapy breasts. “But the clientele leaves much to be desired.”

  PRAISE FOR PETER BRANDVOLD

  “Takes off like a shot, never giving the reader a chance to set the book down.”

  —Douglas Hirt

  Berkley titles by Peter Brandvold

  The Bounty Hunter Lou Prophet Series

  HELLDORADO

  THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS

  THE DEVIL’S LAIR

  STARING DOWN THE DEVIL

  THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE

  RIDING WITH THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS

  DEALT THE DEVIL’S HAND

  THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET

  The Rogue Lawman Series

  BORDER SNAKES

  BULLETS OVER BEDLAM

  COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL

  DEADLY PREY

  ROGUE LAWMAN

  The Sheriff Ben Stillman Series

  HELL ON WHEELS

  ONCE LATE WITH A .38

  ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN

  ONCE A RENEGADE

  ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER

  ONCE A LAWMAN

  ONCE MORE WITH A .44

  ONCE A MARSHAL

  The .45-Caliber Series

  .45-CALIBER FIREBRAND

  .45-CALIBER WIDOW MAKER

  .45-CALIBER DEATHTRAP

  .45-CALIBER MANHUNT

  .45-CALIBER FURY

  .45-CALIBER REVENGE

  Other titles

  BLOOD MOUNTAIN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  HELLDORADO

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / August 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Peter Brandvold.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18903-0

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Diane Nygren, though she deserves a hell of a lot more.

  1

  “LOOKS LIKE WE have a visitor heading to our humble casa,” said Rurale Sergeant Rafael Santangelo, pointing across the sunblasted rocks and cactus toward a boulder-strewn ridge. “A tall hombre on a sway-backed mule.”

  Corporal Hermano Alvarez squinted his good eye while holding a hand over the one that a Nogales whore had ruined with a razor-edged stiletto. “Si, si! Should I shoot him off his mule?”

  “Shoot him? From here?” Sergeant Santangelo gave a mocking laugh. “You can’t even see him from here, you one-eyed, whore-mongering idiot! How do you expect to shoot him?”

  “I can see him fine,” insisted Alvarez, who stood half a head shorter than the tall, gangly, and mustached Santangelo. Closing the ruined eye through which he could see only a perpetual blizzard even in the bowels of a hot Mexican summer, the corporal raised his Springfield Trapdoor rifle to his shoulder and aimed it out from the guard tower where both he and Santangelo had been posted since sunrise.

  He racked a live round into the rifle’s breech and grinned. “Watch this, Rafael, and prepare to kiss my ass.”

  Santangelo, who had been made a sergeant less than a month before and who kept his dove gray, gold-buttoned tunic well laundered and freshly brushed even here in the dusty Mexican desert, angrily doffed his leather-brimmed hat and swiped it three times against Alvarez’s head and shoulder, knocking the corporal’s stra
w sombrero down his back. “I told you, pig of a bastard peon, to never call me by my first name again! I am ‘Sergeant Santangelo’ or simply ‘Sergeant,’ but never again shall I be addressed by you as Rafael! Do I make myself clear, you half-blind cur of a two-peso puta?”

  “Si, si! I apologize, Raf . . . I mean, Sergeant Santangelo!”

  “Besides, if you could see farther than your ugly hawk’s beak of a nose, you would see that the big bastard on the mule is a man of the cloth, you fool.”

  Alvarez squinted into the distance. “Really?”

  “If you shot God’s servant there, the Devil would reach up and tickle your toes.”

  “I am not afraid of the Devil.”

  “Oh?” Santangelo smiled cunningly. “Go ahead, then. See if you can shoot the padre’s hat from his head. Let’s see what you can do, eagle eye.”

  Alvarez looked up at the taller man and gave a devilish chuckle. Licking his chapped lips, he drew a deep breath, raised the Springfield to his shoulder, and sighted down the barrel.

  The rider was about a hundred and fifty yards out from the Rurale fort, which had once been a mission school before being taken over and used for a prison by a northern Sonora contingent of the Mexican rural police force. The sprawling adobe structure, surrounded by a stone stockade bristling with a brush-roofed wooden guard tower at each corner, had been built on a rolling bench between two craggy sierras. The man moving toward the fort now had one ridge behind him, and his long, chocolate-brown robes were clearly defined against the ridge’s sunbaked, adobe-colored wall.

  A large, straw sombrero shaded the padre’s face, and his rope-soled sandals jostled down beneath the mule’s ribs. He rode lazily on the mule’s bare back, swaying easily, keeping his chin dipped low against the merciless Sonoran sun that winked off the silver crucifix hanging from his neck on a braided rawhide thong.

  Alvarez brushed a buzzing fly away from his nose, then pressed the Springfield’s stock tight against his cheek, lining up the rifle’s sights on the padre’s high sombrero crown. He chuckled to himself, then frowned, getting serious, and squeezed his bad eye closed. Keeping the sights steady on the bobbing sombrero that was a hundred yards out and closing, he held his breath and took the slack out of his trigger finger.

  The rifle leaped and roared.

  The echoes flatted out between the ridges.

  The slug blew up a dogget of sand and gravel just right of the mule’s right rear hoof, causing the beast to hump its back and leap, braying, as high as any mustang stallion with its tail on fire.

  The padre’s head snapped up, tossing his sombrero down his back, and his free hand flew high as the mule reached the apex of its leap, dropped, and hit the ground on all four hooves. The padre threw himself forward, clinging for dear life to the animal’s bridle reins and its shaggy mane as the frightened, angry beast took its God-fearing benefactor on a wild, crow-hopping, sunfishing ride around the bench fronting the fort.

  Santangelo, Alvarez, and the two guards in the other west-facing tower whooped and hollered uproariously, thoroughly enjoying the mule-and-padre rodeo.

  As the mule headed toward the fort in the most roundabout way possible, several times the brown-robed gent was nearly tossed from the squealing, braying mount’s hurricane deck only to save himself at the last second by grabbing the flying reins or buffeting mane. He slipped down the mule’s right side, then its left side, half-dragged across the sand and cactus. Then he was hugging the beast’s neck before another violent buck and lurch would have sent him flying ass-over-teakettle off the hysterical mount’s pitching ass if not for his last-second grab of the reins.

  Santangelo roared, forgetting his rank and slapping his thighs like a drunken peon.

  “A hundred centavos in gold dust he doesn’t make it to the gate!” shouted one of the guards from the other tower, his white teeth flashing in the sunlight.

  “You’re on!” roared Santangelo. “I think he’s going to make it!”

  More laughter as the mule brayed and thumped its hooves wildly and thrashed the poor man on its back like a wicked child shaking a rag doll in a dirty clenched fist.

  “Here he comes!” Alvarez squealed as the mule and its thrashing rider drew within twenty yards of the fort’s open front gate. “I think he’s going to make it. . . . Ohh . . . ohhhhh, noooooooh—and here he came so cloooose!” the corporal lamented just after the mule had deposited the padre in a sand patch a few feet in front of the fort’s gaping doors, dust wafting around the poor man who lay writhing on his back, mashing his sombrero into the ground beneath him.

  “The poor bastard,” said Santangelo, gaping down from the guard tower. “Look there, Hermano, you old heathen. Look what you’ve done! To a man of the cloth, no less.”

  “I guess you’re right, Raf . . . I mean, Sergeant Santangelo. I guess my aim isn’t as good as it was before I visited Nogales.” Alvarez chuckled deep in his throat, showing his cracked, tobacco-stained teeth.

  “Come on, you hell-bent son of a demon lobo.” Santangelo slapped his partner’s chest before looping his own rifle around the handle of the Gatling gun that each of the four towers was armed with and dropped down the rickety wooden ladder. “We’d better see how badly you’ve injured the padre. I have a feeling forgiveness isn’t in the cards for you, my friend!”

  Santangelo leaped from the ladder’s third rung to the ground. As Alvarez followed close behind, the sergeant pushed through the half dozen Rurale guards who’d gathered inside and outside the open front gates to enjoy the show. The heretics were laughing amongst themselves, slapping each other’s chests or pounding shoulders, while the faithful, of which there were far fewer, stood around in hushed awe, crossing themselves and lifting forgiveness-beseeching gazes skyward.

  “Back, swine, get back!” Santangelo ordered, shoving a couple of the gaping men back away from the padre—a big, rawboned, unshaven man with sandy hair and light blue eyes. He was flat on his back, groaning and grunting painfully, but as Santangelo approached him, the big padre pushed up on his elbows and shook his head as if to clear it.

  “I apologize for Corporal Alvarez, Father. He has been stationed so long out here in these rocks that he’s gone a little off his nut.” Santangelo glanced up at Alvarez, who was standing behind him and staring sheepishly down at the disheveled stranger.

  The big man grunted, stretching his lips back from his teeth.

  “Hey, Father, you speak English?” Santangelo squatted beside the man, wrinkling his brows suspiciously. “You know—you don’t look like a Mexican priest to me. You look like a gringo. You speak Spanish? Uh? Let me hear you say something in Spanish.”

  The big man’s bleary eyes rolled up toward Santangelo. As though suddenly understanding what the sergeant was saying, he held up the finger of one hand while reaching into a pocket of his robe with the other. He pulled out a wad of small, scribbled notes. He peeled the top note from the wad, and offered it to Santangelo, who took the note brusquely and held it up to his face.

  “‘I apologize for not speaking, but the Yaquis cut out my tongue.’”

  A couple of the men standing around behind Santangelo and Alvarez clucked or muttered regretfully.

  “So you have no tongue, uh?” Santangelo chewed his lower lip. “Really? That’s true?” He shoved his head down closer to that of the padre. “Let me see.”

  The padre tipped his head back and opened his mouth about halfway. Santangelo lowered his head still farther and sort of cocked it to one side to see inside the stranger’s mouth. Alvarez did the same, peering over the sergeant’s shoulder while holding one hand over his bad eye and squinting his good one.

  “Open wider,” Santangelo ordered the priest. “I can’t see a damn thing in there.”

  The priest muttered something. It was like a gargle.

  “Huh?” Santangelo said.

  Another gargle as the padre’s lips moved slightly while he held his mouth half open.

  “What’s that? I can’t hea
r you, damnit!”

  The priest’s blue eyes flickered devilishly. They acquired a cool, bemused cast as he cleared his throat and said in perfectly enunciated English, “Open yours, you smelly son of a bitch!”

  Santangelo’s heart leaped into his throat when he saw that the padre had opened his robes and was aiming a sawed-off, double-barreled, ten-gauge shotgun up and out from his broad chest clad in skin-tight, wash-worn red longhandles, at Santangelo’s suddenly gaping mouth. The sergeant had only seen the brief flash of the gut shredder’s left barrel when, on the heels of the cannon-like blast, his head was ripped from his shoulders to fly up and over the still-staring Alvarez, spraying blood and brain goo in every direction before hitting the dirt behind the corporal and rolling up over one of the stunned onlooker’s high-topped black boots.

  Alvarez lowered his hand from his milky brown eye, screaming and fumbling with his Springfield Trapdoor. Lou Prophet snarled like an enraged bobcat as he slid his sawed-off ten-gauge slightly left and tripped the second trigger.

  Booommmm!

  The melon-sized spread of double-ought buck blasted through the scrawny corporal’s filthy tunic, lifting the man three feet off the ground and punching him straight back into three others, laying one out flat before Alvarez hit the ground in a bloody, lifeless, quivering heap just inside the fort’s broad double doors.

  He leaped to his bare feet—he’d lost both sandals during the joyride that he’d managed to prolong by grinding his heels into the mule’s flanks, wanting to keep the Rurales as entertained for as long as he could. Now he swept both sides of his billowing robe back to allow access to the two Colt .45s bristling from holsters and a third one wedged behind the two cartridge belts crisscrossed on his waist. The Rurales standing around him were just now recovering from the shock of seeing the sergeant’s head whipping through the air like a Cinco de Mayo rocket and were fumbling pistols from their holsters or raising old-model rifles to their shoulders.