Texas Born - Softcover

Newcomb, Kerry; Reno, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312977174 ISBN 13: 9780312977177

Verlag: St Martins Pr, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

John Anthem's dreams of a Texas dynasty crumble when his one son disappears during the Civil War and the other is kidnapped by his arch-enemy, the Mexican bandit-general Valera. Reprint.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kerry Newcomb was born in Milford, Connecticut, but had the good fortune to be raised in Texas. He has served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and taught at the St. Labre Mission School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. Mr. Newcomb has written plays, film scripts, commercials, liturgical dramas, and over thirty novels under both his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. He lives with his family in Ft. Worth, Texas.

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1

1874
Big John Anthem had laid claim to his land in the wild west Texas mountain country back in 1850. He had fought Indians and Mexican raiders, petty thieves and jealous cattlemen, to keep his claim.
He called his kingdom Luminaria and took a wife who bore him two sons and two daughters. And in all this golden, lonely, lovely range his word was law; his judgment, justice.
In the fall of 1874, eleven years after the blooding of his son, Cole, John Anthem rode out of a thicket of scrub oak and mesquite and down into a washed-out arroyo where two raggedly dressed hide-hunters were busily skinning a fresh-killed steer whose hide wore the Slash A brand, John Anthem’s mark.
Slash A was the only brand worn on cattle that grazed over four hundred thousand acres of range. If there were any cattle to be killed, John Anthem or one of his men would do the killing and there would be a good reason: for food or to cull a sick steer from the herd.
Anthem had no use for hide-hunters. And his thoughts were of retribution as he walked his sorrel gelding past a high-sided wagon half full of skins. Flies were thick as grit in a sandstorm around the campsite where carcasses rotted in the sun. Anthem studied the two men in the morning light and sensed the tension rise in their gullets. A third hide-hunter emerged on horse-back from behind a cover of mesquite and monks-hood.
The skinner on horseback—a young man, no more than eighteen years old—sat astride a brown mare and cradled a Spancer carbine in the crook of his arm. The youth’s features were hidden beneath the brim of his battered hat.
Anthem shifted his attention to the men by the campfire. One was a hard case nearing forty, sporting a scraggly beard and deep-set eyes. His lips peeled back to reveal a row of crooked teeth. Stringy blond hair hung to his shoulders. His partner looked a few years younger, a lifetime hungrier. There didn’t seem enough meat on the man to cover his bony frame. He was tall and bearded, wearing a rancid-smelling woolen coat despite the warm autumn air. All three of the hide-hunters wore homespun shirts and buckskin britches.
The older of the threesome glanced at his companion and took a step forward, angling himself so that the revolver holstered on his right was hidden from view. The bearded man started to move to get himself in a better position.
“That’s far enough, Stringbean,” John Anthem said, walking his range horse up the arroyo and reining the sorrel to a halt about thirty feet from the hide-hunters’ campfire. The bearded man halted in his tracks as Anthem’s cold blue eyes bore into him, for Anthem’s tightlipped, weather-scarred face showed the mercy of a cornered cougar.
John Anthem was a big man, six feet tall and at forty-four years, a touch thick in the waist, but slabs of work-hardened muscle crowded the shoulders and sleeves of his faded red shirt. He held the reins of his mount in his left hand, his right already resting on the grip of his Colt Dragoon. The percussion pistol had been converted and bored out to handle a big .45-caliber cartridge. The gun was heavy and hard to handle, and packed a wallop as mean as the man who wore it.
“Reckon you be Big John Anthem hisself,” the older of the three remarked. He seemed to be the leader of the disputable-looking trio. “Well, folks call me—”
“I know who you are,” Anthem growled, in obvious bad temper. “You’re the three sons of bitches who have been butchering my cattle and leaving them to rot. I’d rather Apaches steal ’em. At least they do it to fill their bellies. But you three scum . . . The hell with your names, I don’t intend to erect any markers over you. I’ll leave you where you fall, like you’ve done my stock for the past month.”
There was silence then, for the three men needed to weigh their chances or find the courage, to grow wings perhaps and fly like all hell away from Anthem’s land. It was morning—late, though—and the sun was crawling toward noon.
The smell of blood was in the air. If there had been a breeze, the fragrance of chino grass and sage and the faint scent of pines would have favored the arroyo, for mountains loomed behind the campsite. But there was no breeze and the stench of blood clung to the clearing like a gloomy portent of trouble to come.
“You talk mighty bold.” The stringy hair hide-hunter grinned.
“I’ve talked enough,” Anthem replied with an air of casualness that belied his actions. He yanked the Colt Dragoon from its holster as the two hide-hunters afoot reached for their own weapons. The Dragoon spat flame and followed with a deafening boom. The leader of the three flew backward into the flames of his own campfire.
The hungry-looking man in the coat levelled a Confederate-issue cap-and-ball and loosed a wild shot that blew away a clump of trumpet flowers and sent a hummingbird winging to safety.
Anthem fired once more and the bearded man screamed, clutched at his chest, and dropped to his knees. He seemed to shrink into his coat as he doubled over and died.
The young rider broke for cover, dropping his rifle and lashing his horse unmercifully. He gained the cover of the trees as Anthem brought his Dragoon to bear.
John Anthem held his fire, cursed, and dug his heels into the sorrel, and the range-bred gelding broke toward the camp. The leader of the thieves rolled out of the fire and sat upright, smoke rising from the back of his shirt and the charred wisps of his matted hair. His eyes widened as he looked at the crimson stain spreading over his shirt. He raised a Navy Colt at Anthem on his charging sorrel. It took an eternity to cock the damn gun, and an eternity was too long. The hide-hunter shrieked and tried to cover his face, but fell back as Anthem rode him down, leaving the hide-hunter’s trampled corpse in the settling dust, the dead man’s blood mingling with that of the freshly skinned steers.
In the glare of the sun-washed walls of the arroyo, upon the hard packed earth, treacherous with the residue of flash flood and the wind’s erosion, Lendel Bass rode for his life. He raked his rusted spurs along the mare’s flanks and chanced a glance over his shoulder just in time to see John Anthem on his sorrel burst from the thicket and leap a cache of deadwood left by a now-vanished flood. Young Lendel Bass felt his heart shoot into his throat and he turned his attention to the trail ahead. But there, too, he found the winding escape route blocked.
Where the walls fell away and the arroyo widened into an open meadow, another horseman waited astride a hammerhead Appaloosa. The rider was a slight man in his mid-thirties. His hair was long and raven-black. He wore a sombrero, a nut-colored short coat, and flared pants. His blousy shirt was open to the waist, revealing the smooth coffee-colored expanse of his chest. A gun belt circled his narrow hips and a bandolier hung from his right shoulder, its loops crammed with shells for the sawed-off scatter gun he gripped in his left fist.
Lendel knew that horeman by description, and if his spirits sagged at the sight of John Anthem, they plummeted now. The vaquero could only be JoaquÍm Almendáriz, called Chapo for the wild horses of the barrancas.
Like his father before him, Chapo Almendáriz was segundo of Luminaria. It was rummored he had once been a cutthroat and bandit who had roamed the Sierra del Hueso to the south. Whatever his past, Almendáriz was no man to ride the wrong side of, but what choice was there.
Lendel Bass whipped his horse and rode straight on toward the Appaloosa as it pawed the air.
Chapo fired the shotgun into the ground a few feet ahead of the oncoming hide-hunter. Both barrels spat fire and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martins Pr
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312977174
• ISBN 13: 9780312977177
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 301
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar