Hard Trail to Socorro (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 1) Read online

  In that sliver's worth of distraction, Veronica saw the only opening she was likely to get. With desperate suddenness, she yanked the Greener free. Whirling, thumbing back the hammers as she dropped into a slight crouch, she braced the stock solidly against her right hip and pulled both triggers at once. The barrels roared a ground-shaking report and the twin ten-gauge loads hit Tully square in the chest, nearly tearing him in half, lifting him two feet out of his saddle and depositing him like a shredded, leaking bundle of rags on the ground three full yards away.

  The kick of the sawed-off knocked Veronica to the ground also, dumping her unceremoniously on her rump, legs splayed wide in front of her, her head and shoulders threatened by the nervously shifting legs of the chestnut Kendrick was suddenly fighting to keep under control.

  Stung by stray buckshot, Tully's now riderless horse was screaming in alarm and rearing high on its back legs. Mort's and Butch's horses were reacting wildly as well, bucking and wheeling away even as the two men tried to aim shots at Kendrick and the woman. Guns cracked, bullets whined harmlessly wide and high. Mort and Butch cursed.

  From where she sat in the dirt, Veronica frantically reached to draw Kendrick's Colt from the holster of the gun belt she’d stripped away only moments ago. Twisting at the waist, shouting "Kendrick!,” she tossed the revolver up and back in a flat arc. The bounty hunter's big hand flashed out and closed solidly around it.

  Mort and Butch were still trying to get their horses settled down and shoot at the same time.

  Kendrick's first bullet hit Mort in the right hip; his second one, a split second later, hit higher, just under the right armpit, and knocked the Circle G man out of his saddle.

  Butch, in the meantime, got off two more wild shots.

  Kendrick's aim shifted. His third bullet caught Butch in the pad of muscle just above his left collarbone. Butch toppled away with a loud grunt of pain.

  It was over. A matter of seconds.

  Hard Trail To Socorro

  Bodie Kendrick – Bounty Hunter

  Wayne D. Dundee

  Hard Trail To Socorro

  Bodie Kendrick – Bounty Hunter

  © 2014 Wayne D. Dundee.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information and permissions please contact

  Bil-Em-Ri Media

  908 West 7th Street

  Ogallala, NE 69153

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or deceased, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to my grandchildren—William Wayne Mau, Emily Sue Mau, and Riley Wayne Thompson—in the hope they grow to discover and appreciate the kind of "cowboy heroes” who made a lasting impression on me as a child, and whose values I find to be increasingly important the older I get.

  - WD -

  Chapter 1: The Fugitive

  The dusky cantina girl stirred, came awake.

  Her sleep-puffed eyes blinked once, twice, then shot open wide as she became fully aware of the presence that had roused her—the tall, broad-shouldered man looming at the foot of the bed. The girl gave a loud gasp and frantically tugged a corner of tangled blanket to her chin. Her eyes remained huge, her mouth agape. She looked ready to cry out.

  Calmly, the man raised his left forefinger to his lips and made a soft yet stern shushing sound, the way a parent might do to quiet an unruly child in a public place. The gleaming, sawed off twin barrels of the shotgun balanced in his right hand seemed to threaten a more permanent silence.

  The girl's mouth clamped shut and she swallowed visibly. She stayed quiet.

  The man held her eyes for a long count before his dusty, flat-crowned Stetson dipped once in a curt nod. Voice low, he said, "Leave now, child. Softly. You don't want any part of the trouble here."

  The girl's eyes slid briefly to the snoring lump under the blanket next to her. Then she scooted obediently off the bed, disregarding her nudity, bare feet scuffing on the floor. She stooped to sweep up her shoes and spangled cantina dress, hugging the bundle close as she brushed with eyes averted past the big man and hurried out the door.

  When she was gone, the man stood listening attentively to hear if she tried to raise any kind of alarm out in the hallway. Nothing. The double row of cramped sleeping rooms over the cantina remained as still as the dormant establishment below at this early hour, the sun only a few minutes old.

  The man returned his attention to the bed and its remaining occupant. A bare foot with a reddish, calloused big toe jutted out from under the blanket and hung over the edge of the mattress.

  With the business end of his shotgun, the man tapped the exposed toe. The toe's owner grunted, shifted slightly under his covering, resumed snoring.

  The demanding barrels prodded again. The response this time was another grunt and the emergence of a pale, wiry arm that made a brushing away motion. A muffled voice said, "Give it a rest, darlin'. Ain't no bonus in it for you no matter how much friendliness you got left ... I'm purely tapped out, moneywise and elsewise."

  A third swat with the barrels, harder, metal clunking against toenail and bone.

  The lump on the bed surged up, arm flailing, and the blanket fell away to reveal a rumple-haired, bleary-eyed yet handsome man of thirty or so, his mouth twisted into a snarl and spitting curses. "Damn it, girl, what's the matter with you? How the hell many times I have to tell you—"

  The words stopped short as the bleary eyes came into focus and found themselves staring into the bottomless side-by-side bores of the shotgun muzzle.

  "Mornin', Jory," the man on the other end of the gun said.

  Jory Ludek licked his lips. He knew all about waking parched after a night of hard drinking, but finding yourself face to face with a shotgun on top of those conditions gave new meaning to the term cotton-mouthed.

  Ludek licked his lips again and said, "Seems you know me. Who the hell might you be?"

  The man's thick shoulders rolled in a kind of shrug, but the shotgun never wavered. "If it matters, the name's Kendrick. Bodie Kendrick."

  Ludek's eyes traveled back and forth between the man's face and his weapon. "So what's your beef with me, mister? I say or do something out of line last night when I was liquored up?"

  A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Kendrick's mouth. "I expect you probably did, yeah. But not to me." His free hand dipped into his vest pocket and came out with a folded piece of paper that looked somewhat the worse for wear. He shook open the paper, revealing through the crisscross pattern of fold marks a man's likeness centered under the word WANTED in large letters and above the words DEAD OR ALIVE. Below were several more lines of smaller-print lettering. The sketched likeness was the handsome face of Jory Ludek. "My business with you," Kendrick continued, "has to do with some out-of-line things you did up Socorro way a while back. This handbill gives the details, but I figure you know them as well as anybody."

  "Hell," Ludek grunted. "That Socorro trouble was months ago—a year and more, maybe two."

  "All the same to me. Handbill says they want you back bad enough to pay a reward. Long as that holds true, I got interest."

  Ludek's mouth curled into a sneer. "So that's your game, uh? A stinking lowdown bounty hunter!"


  "Kettle calling the pot black, son. According to the charges on this piece of paper, you're a robber and a killer. I'd say that makes you considerably lower down than me."

  "Those are all lies! I didn't have nothing to do with those Socorro killings."

  "Uh-huh. Every man I've ever brought in—leastways the ones who've been in any shape to talk— has been plumb innocent. Can you beat that?"

  "I'm telling you I am innocent of those charges."

  "There'll be a judge up north you need to convince of that."

  "You ain't got me there yet," Ludek muttered.

  "No. But I will. Only question is, whether you're sitting up in a saddle or laying across one. Answer's up to you."

  "You're a real hardcase, ain't you?"

  "Hard enough for the likes of you, sonny. Enough talk. You make nice slow movements and keep your hands in sight at all times, I'm willing to let you get dressed before I slap a pair of wrist irons on you."

  "Mighty big of you."

  "We'll be spending a few days together, you'll get the chance to find out what a kind and generous disposition I truly can have. But if you don’t haul your sorry hide out of that bed, you'll quick see the other side of it. I don't aim to make a habit of telling you everything twice."

  * * * * *

  Half a dozen minutes later, the two men had quit the room and were making their way along the upstairs hallway, heavy boots clumping on worn wood flooring, spurs chiming softly. The corridor smelled of dust and sweat, of soured spilled liquor wafting up from below, and of cheap perfume. The dozen or so rooms branching off the hallway, Kendrick knew, were frequented by cantina girls like the one he had chased, sometimes spending a few minutes with cowpokes they lured to partake of their charms, sometimes staying the night if enough money exchanged hands. The rooms were also available to solitary guests unable to afford more standard hotel accommodations and who were willing to tolerate the cantina racket and related goings-on that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

  The two men went down the back stairs that exited onto a side alley. From there they strode out to the street. El Paso sprawled before them, coming to life in the new day under a climbing white-hot Texas sun that promised to be brutal by midday.

  Ludek stepped up onto the dusty planks of the boardwalk and paused, squinting sharply, hitching his arms, trying to comfortably adjust to the tug of the wrist irons that held his hands behind his back. Kendrick drew up behind him, shotgun at the ready in his right fist, Ludek's gunbelt and saddlebags draped over his left shoulder.

  "Man oh man," Ludek groaned, "I sure ain't ready for all this sunshine. My head's already busting and I got a throat as dry as the middle of that street. I don't need the sun frying my eyes, too."

  "Should have thought of that last night," Kendrick drawled, "when you were so hell bent on drinking and whoring. Next day's always there, and it seldom looks any better through a hangover."

  "You ever think maybe I didn't figure on sobering up quite so damn sudden?" Ludek replied. "And I can guarantee I didn't figure on doing it in the likes of your company."

  "Into each life a little disappointment must fall. Builds character."

  "My character's already been built and wrecked. If you'd give me a couple pulls off one of the bottles I got in those saddle bags, like I asked you polite as can be, you'd be doing your piece to revive my body and soul."

  "Later maybe, when we're ready to hit the trail. In the meantime, I spotted a real nice well down by the town marshal's office. Since that's where we're headed, I'm willing to stop and let you wet your gullet all you need."

  "I'm telling you, what I need ain't water, mister."

  "It's what you'll settle for. That or nothing. You can think about it while we’re walking over to see the marshal. Let's get a move on."

  "Out for a walk at the crack of dawn. On our way to visit the marshal and get a drink of water. I can see right off that spending time with you is going to be one big hoot after another."

  "Shut up and keep walking. You didn't complain so much, you wouldn't be so dry."

  * * * * * *

  Men packing guns were hardly an uncommon sight on the streets of El Paso; or, for that matter, on the streets of any west Texas town in the early 1880s. Neither the Colt .44/40 revolver Kendrick wore low on his right hip nor the wicked length of Bowie knife sheathed at his left rated a second glance. Even Ludek's twin-holster style of gunbelt that was now slung over Kendrick’s shoulder warranted little or no special interest. But the sawed-off Greener shotgun the bounty hunter so openly brandished as he herded his prisoner down the sidewalk in broad daylight, that amounted to a decidedly bolder display than most considered normal. Enough so that the pair drew double-takes from various deliverymen rolling by on horse-drawn wagons and anxious gazes from a number of shopkeepers who happened to glance out their windows while preparing to open their businesses.

  By the time Kendrick and Ludek reached the adobe building with the barred windows that sat just off the curve of Front Street, Marshal Curly Hutchins had already been made aware of their approach and was waiting for them. He stood on the front porch of his jail/office, leaning against a post and casually sucking his teeth to work loose some of the coffee grounds stuck there from the three strong cups he’d already consumed that morning. While his posture may have looked relaxed, even lazy, his right hand, thumb hooked over belt, hung purposefully close to the Peacemaker on his hip and his eyes were totally alert and busy taking stock of the two strangers as they drew near.

  "Howdy, gents," he offered by way of greeting. "What sort of trouble we got here?"

  "In case you ain't noticed," Ludek answered sarcastically, "the trouble I got is that this big galoot is holding a scatter-gun rammed up my backside."

  "No trouble, Marshal. Not really," Kendrick said. He once again took the wanted poster from his vest pocket, handed it over to Hutchins. "This should explain everything."

  Hutchins took the paper. Reading in short spurts, his eyes frequently lifting, never staying off his visitors for very long, he gave it a thorough examination.

  When he'd finished, he lowered the handbill and scowled at the handcuffed man standing before him. "No denying the resemblance to both the drawing and the description given here. You go by the name of Ludek?"

  Ludek's eyes flashed momentarily with thoughts of trying a lie. Deciding against it, however, his mouth pulled into a tight, straight line. "Yeah, that's my name," he admitted. "But the face and the name are the only things on that damn rag that are the truth. The rest is a pack of lies!"

  "I've tried explaining to him," Kendrick told the marshal, "that the truth of those charges has to be decided elsewhere. Only fact I'm dealing with here is that it's him the handbill was issued against."

  Hutchins grunted. "Right enough, I reckon." He turned his scowl to Kendrick. "What's your stake in this?"

  "The reward, what else?" Ludek sneered. "He's nothing but a stinking bounty hunter."

  Kendrick shrugged. "This fella's got a real problem with my line of work. Doesn't seem to recognize that people like him are what make people like me necessary."

  Hutchins grunted again. "Guess you could say the same about me and my line of work. So how came you to track him to El Paso? Can't say I remember that handbill circulating through here."

  "Maybe it didn't," Kendrick allowed. "I find it pays to keep a fistful of these sheets with me as I travel about. Never can tell when one might come in handy, like in this case. Spotting Ludek here in your town was plain coincidence. I was just passing through, heading back north after delivering a prisoner down Presidio way. Stopped in one of your local cantinas last night to dampen the trail dust in my throat and there was our boy Jory. Couldn't hardly miss him—he was plenty liquored up, spending big and talking loud."

  Hutchins said, "If you spotted him last night, why didn't you make your move on him then?"

  "Shape he was in, I could see he wasn't going far. Besides, been my experience it's a
hell of a lot simpler bracing a man when he’s hung over and in the company of mostly misery than when he's unpredictable drunk and surrounded by a saloonful of hombres he's been buying drinks for."

  "In other words," Ludek said, "when you didn't have to brace me fair and square."

  "That scattergun he's carrying would cut you in half just as sure, no fair or unfair about it," Hutchins pointed out.

  "Exactly why I'm carrying it," Kendrick said. "Been another experience of mine that a man who might be desperate enough to try and make a break for it under the muzzle of a handgun—or even a rifle—will be a whole lot more reluctant to try anything in front of a sawed-off that can throw a pattern

  as wide as a kitchen wall."

  Hutchins chuckled. "Can't fault your reasoning there, even though I've got to say I’m less than crazy about you parading the streets of my town with that thing the way you are."

  "I reckon I can put it away if it bothers you too much."

  "Bothers the hell out of me," Ludek muttered.

  Ignoring him, Hutchins went on speaking to Kendrick, "So now that you've got your man in handcuffs and you've satisfied me with your bona fides, what's your aim? How soon you figure on lighting out for Socorro with him?"

  "Right away," Kendrick answered. "That is, as soon as I get proper provisions put together. Like I said, it was late when I hit town last night—things were mostly closed. And now that I've taken on a prisoner, I'll need to take on some extra supplies. To be honest, I had more'n one reason for swinging by to see you this morning. In addition to advising you I was serving a wanted paper, I was hoping maybe you'd be willing to accommodate my prisoner behind your bars for a spell while I saw to the rest of my preparations. Make things easier for me and keep some tension off you streets, me not dragging him in irons everywhere I have to go."