Vengeance Creek

  Vengeance Creek

  Robert J. Randisi

  Having lost a wife to violence and a son to retribution, onetime Texas sheriff Daniel Shaye has brought what remains of his shattered family -- two grown boys fiercely devoted to their father and justice -- to Vengeance Creek, Arizona. In a lawless town, they become the law, grieving for their slain loved ones while looking to start a new life free of further bloodshed. But destiny has other plans for the Shayes.

  Eight men ride into town with designs on the bank's money -- and when they ride out, a dozen innocent people are dead and Dan Shaye is down with a gunshot wound. Now it's up to his boys to settle one more score, riding hell for leather toward a final reckoning ... and a mystery.

  And if Death comes again for the sons of Daniel Shaye, so be it, because any man who won't lay down his life for what is right is no man at all.

  To Ford Fargo,

  in appreciation of his good humor

  and cooperative spirit.

  PROLOGUE

  Three dead sons.

  Just the thought caused Dan Shaye more pain than he felt he could endure—if it turned out to be true.

  He’d already lost one son, and his wife, and it had only been a year. He’d barely survived the deaths of Matthew and Mary. If he lost Thomas and James as well, there’d be nothing left for him to live for.

  He’d crossed into Colorado several days ago. The trail he was following was barely there. Luckily, he was as good a reader of sign as he had ever met. As long as there was a ghost of a trail, he’d be able to follow it. As long as there was a ghost of a trail, there was a chance he’d find his sons, alive and well.

  He filled his canteen from the waterhole he’d camped next to and walked back to his horse. He’d already stomped out his campfire and stored his supplies back in his saddlebags. Traveling light, all he’d had for dinner and for breakfast had been coffee and beef jerky. He didn’t figure he deserved much more than that.

  He never should have let them go. They weren’t experienced enough. He mounted up and sat there for a moment, head bowed. He was almost glad their mother was dead, just so he wouldn’t have to tell her how he had gotten their sons killed—all three sons.

  1

  Daniel Shaye wasn’t all that sure how he and his sons had come to settle in Vengeance Creek, Arizona. Maybe the name had appealed to them. After the Langer gang had robbed the bank in Epitaph, Texas—killing Shaye’s wife, the boys’ mother, during their escape—they had hunted them down and extracted their vengeance at a heavy cost. The man who had ridden his wife down with a horse had paid with his life, but not before he’d killed another member of the family, Shaye’s middle son, Matthew. Vengeance had cost them dearly, so maybe it made sense that they settled some months later in Vengeance Creek.

  That had been over a year ago, and now Shaye was the sheriff of Vengeance and his two sons were his deputies. Odd how things happened. Shaye had left his job as sheriff of Epitaph behind, feeling that it had, in part, contributed to the deaths of his wife and son. Arriving in Vengeance Creek penniless and looking for work, he found that the lawman job was open. There had been no election because no one else wanted to run for the office. No one wanted the job. Vengeance Creek had a rowdy populace, and most of them liked the idea of having no lawman.

  Shaye recalled discussing the situation with his sons.

  “You want to pin on a badge again, Pa?” Thomas had asked. At twenty-six, he was the older of the two remaining sons.

  “The way I see it,” Shaye had said, “we’ve got three options, given the skills we have to work with. We can hunt bounty, take up the owl-hoot trail…or pin on badges again.”

  “Badges?” James, nineteen, asked. “You mean us too?”

  “Well,” Shaye said, “if I’m the sheriff, you two will be my deputies. We’ll present ourselves to the town council as a package deal. Whataya say, boys?”

  Thomas and James exchanged a glance, and then Thomas said, “Why not? What have we got to lose?”

  Shaye made his presentation to the town council, and they went for it. He became sheriff, and his two sons became his deputies.

  Now, roughly nine months after pinning on the badges for the first time, there was some law and order in town. The “rowdy” element had either straightened up or left. It seemed Shaye’s Texas reputation had preceded him, and after he and his boys had handled the first few altercations, the people got the message: You don’t step over the line in Dan Shaye’s town.

  Shaye wondered what the people would think if they knew that in his youth he’d been a gunman named Shaye Daniels, with a reputation in Missouri, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. It was more than likely they wouldn’t even recognize the name. But his rep as a lawman—well, that had spread since the word got out that he hunted down not one, but both Langer brothers, and their whole gang.

  Shaye got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He looked out at Vengeance Creek’s main street. His boys were out there, making their rounds. Had it been the right thing to do, making them pin badges on again? It had actually been Thomas who killed Ethan Langer, taking revenge for his mother’s and brother’s deaths. Shaye could see the changes in Thomas, changes that killing another man couldn’t help but make. James had changed too.

  In fact, they’d all changed since leaving Epitaph to hunt down the Langers, and then leaving again, for good. Maybe, he thought, he should have allowed the boys to make up their own minds about what they wanted to do. Oh, he’d given them a choice, but they knew he wanted them to take this job with him, and they would have died before disappointing him. Perhaps it was time, now, to give them the push to make their own choices about their lives.

  Then again, as a young man he’d made his own choice, and it had been the wrong one. Maybe if he’d had the strong hand of a father in his life, it would have been different. But both of his parents had died of a fever, leaving him to make his own way. His boys had lost their mother, but they still had a father around to help them.

  It was coming up on a year since their mother and brother had been killed. Maybe it was time to sit down and have a family meeting. They were, after all, men, and men deserved the leeway to make up their own minds….

  In another part of town, Thomas and James Shaye were peering into the bank through the front window. Well, James was looking inside. Thomas’s eyes were sweeping the street, watching for trouble.

  “There she is,” James said suddenly.

  “James, if you like this girl so much why don’t you go in and talk to her?”

  “I have talked to her.”

  “When?”

  “Just yesterday.”

  “You mean when you made a deposit?” Thomas asked. “What did you say, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’?”

  James turned to look at his big brother. “I don’t want to rush into anything, Thomas.”

  “Because you’re scared?”

  “No,” James said patiently, “because I don’t want to scare her.”

  Thomas took a moment to lean down and look into the bank through the window. “Which one is she?”

  “The blonde.”

  “The skinny one?”

  “She’s not skinny,” James said defensively. “She’s just…kind of slender.”

  Thomas straightened and looked at his brother. “Well, she’s a little too skinny for me. Come on, we’ve got to finish our rounds.”

  Thomas started walking away, while James took one more peek through the window at Jenny Miller, his favorite bank teller, and then hurried to catch up.

  Vengeance Creek had appealed to both of them because it was roughly the same size as Epitaph. During the hunt for the Langers, they’d been through small towns and larger places, like Oklahoma
City, but both Thomas and James preferred something in between, a place not very small, with some growing left to do.

  Lately, however, Thomas had been growing restless. He knew he’d changed since killing Ethan Langer, but he wasn’t all that sure how. He only knew that of late he’d been thinking of those nights on the trail with his father and his brothers. He’d learned a lot from his father during the months they’d been hunting the Langers. They all had. But it seemed to him it was all going to waste just being a deputy in a town like Vengeance Creek.

  James was not quite as restless as his brother. He’d settled in a bit more, had made a few friends, and had spotted a girl he liked. But he was young—barely twenty—and none of those things appealed to Thomas very much.

  “It’s a year, you know,” James said.

  “What?”

  “A year,” the younger brother said, “since Ma and Matthew…you know.”

  “Yes,” Thomas said, “I know.”

  “I miss them both.”

  “I do too.”

  James looked at Thomas quickly. “You do? Really?”

  “Of course,” Thomas said, “whataya think, James?”

  “Well…you never say anything,” James replied. “You never mention them.”

  “Just because I never mention them doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.”

  “Think Pa knows?” James asked. “That it’s been a year, I mean?”

  “He knows, James,” Thomas said, putting his arm around his brother’s shoulder. “He always knows exactly how long it’s been.”

  2

  Thomas and James finished their rounds in time for supper, and Shaye took them over to the Carver House Café for steaks and conversation.

  It was dinnertime, but the Carver House kept a table open for Shaye and his deputies at all times. On the way to their table they exchanged nods with the mayor and several members of the town council and their families.

  “You know what I notice?” James asked as they sat down.

  “What, James?” Shaye asked.

  “Nobody ever asks you to eat with them, Pa,” the younger Shaye said. “Not since we first came to this town.”

  “Why should they do that, son?” Shaye asked. “We aren’t friends with these people, we just work for them.”

  “You had a lot of friends in Epitaph, Pa,” James argued.

  “A lot of good that did your mother a year ago in the street,” Shaye said. “I know you boys haven’t forgotten what today is.”

  “No, Pa,” Thomas said, giving his brother a hard look. “We remember.”

  “Stop looking at your brother that way, Thomas.”

  “I’m sorry for bringin’ it up, Pa,” James said, putting his head down.

  “Nothing to be sorry for, son,” Shaye said. “You boys have got minds of your own. That’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about tonight.”

  At that point the waiter came and Shaye ordered steak dinners for the three of them.

  “Burn ’em,” he told the waiter, who already knew that.

  “Pa,” Thomas said, “if we got minds of our own, I’d kinda like to have mine rare…if that’s okay?”

  “That’s fine, Thomas,” Shaye said. To the waiter, he added, “Burn two of ’em and make one rare…unless…” He paused to look at James.

  “Burnt is fine with me, Pa,” he said.

  Shaye looked at the waiter and nodded.

  “Comin’ up, Sheriff.”

  “Thomas,” Shaye asked as the waiter moved off, “how long you been eating your steaks rare?”

  “Uh, whenever I’m not with you, Pa.”

  “Boy,” Shaye said, “you eat your steaks however you please, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that goes for you too, James.”

  “Yes, Pa.”

  The waiter came back with three mugs of beer, which the three men hadn’t even had to ask for.

  “Beer okay, Thomas?” Shaye asked, picking his up. “You haven’t gone and acquired a taste for whiskey, have you?”

  “No, Pa,” Thomas said. “Beer’s fine.”

  “Me too, Pa.”

  “You better not be drinking whiskey, young man,” Shaye said to James. “You’re barely twenty.”

  “I’m a man full growed, Pa.”

  Shaye hesitated, then took a gulp of beer before speaking.

  “That you are, James,” he said. “You both proved that to me last year. So, James, I guess if you want to drink whiskey—”

  “I don’t, Pa,” James said. “It burns too much going down.”

  Shaye laughed. “You get a little older, son, you’re gonna learn to like that burn.”

  “What was it you wanted to talk to us about, Pa?” Thomas asked.

  “You boys have been good sons, and good deputies,” Shaye said, “but I think it’s time for you to choose for yourselves.”

  “I really do like my steak rare, Pa,” James insisted.

  “I’m talking about your lives, James,” Shaye said, “not your steaks.”

  “Whataya mean, Pa?” Thomas asked.

  “I mean you don’t have to be law men if you don’t wanna be,” Shaye said. “If you boys want to take off your badges, or even move on, I’ll understand.”

  “Move on?” Thomas repeated.

  “You—You want us to leave, Pa?” James asked.

  “Only if you want to,” Shaye said hurriedly. “I’m not trying to chase you boys away. I just want you to know that I realize that you’re men, and that you have your own lives.”

  “I don’t know about James, Pa,” Thomas said, “but I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here and be your deputy. And maybe, someday, when I’ve learned all that you can teach me, I can become a sheriff myself.”

  Shaye reached out and touched his son’s arm. “You’ll make a fine sheriff some day, Thomas, or even a federal marshal. I’m glad you want to stay.”

  Both Shaye and Thomas looked at James.

  “Well, don’t look at me,” the younger man said. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Maybe I don’t wanna be a sheriff someday, but right now I’m happy to be your deputy, Pa.”

  “I appreciate that, James,” Shaye said, touching his youngest son’s arm as well. One thing Mary had tried to instill in Shaye early on was that they ought to treat all three boys the same way and not show favorites.

  “What do you want to do, James?” Thomas asked. “Be a banker, maybe?”

  “Thomas…” James said warningly.

  “A banker?” Shaye asked, smiling. “Is there something I should know?”

  “Well…” Thomas said.

  “Thomas!”

  3

  It was dusk when Ben Cardwell and Sean Davis rode into Vengeance Creek. Cardwell was shorter and stockier, but both men were in their thirties, wearing trail-worn clothes and well-used guns. The streets were just about empty, which suited them just fine.

  “What do we know about this town?” Davis asked.

  “Easy pickin’s,” Cardwell said.

  “What about the law?”

  “Name’s Shaye, Dan Shaye,” Cardwell said.

  “Do we know him?”

  “Supposed to be some hotshot lawman from Texas.”

  “So what makes this place so easy if he’s a hotshot lawman from Texas?”

  “Don’t worry,” Cardwell said. “Even if we run into him, we’ll have enough men backing us up.”

  “You keep tellin’ me about these other men,” Davis said. “How many? Are they any good?”

  “They have guns and they’ll know how to use them,” Cardwell said.

  “But are they any good?”

  “It don’t matter,” Cardwell said. “We just have to put them between the law and us.”

  “Are they in for full shares?”

  “There’s only gonna be two full shares, Sean,” Cardwell said, “and they’re ours.”

  The Shayes had worked out a system they thought worked well—especially for Da
n. Thomas was an early riser, so he opened the office in the morning. Dan came along later in the morning, and James in the afternoon. It was James who was in the office late, and who made late rounds. Sometimes Dan changed his schedule—he’d either show up early to help Thomas out or stay late to help James.

  As they left the Carver House, Shaye announced he’d be staying late with James.

  “Checkin’ up on little brother, huh?” Thomas asked. “That’s good, he needs some lookin’ after.”

  They all knew that wasn’t the reason, though. Shaye didn’t want to go home to the house they shared just on the outskirts north of town. Alone with his thoughts, he’d just start thinking about his dead wife. Once that started, it would lead him to thinking about his deceased son. No, tonight he preferred to stay at work.

  Thomas wasn’t particularly anxious to go home alone either, but he kept that information to himself. He separated from his brother and father, saying he’d see them later at home. As soon as they were out of sight, he removed his badge and headed for the side of town that was across the dead line.

  Cardwell and Davis were walking from the livery to the nearest hotel when they saw three men come out of the Carver House Café. There was still enough light for them to see the badges on the men’s chests.

  “Wait a minute,” Cardwell said. “In here.” He pushed Davis into a doorway.

  “What are you doin’?”

  “I just want to watch the local law for a minute.”

  They watched as the three men talked, then parted ways, one going off in one direction, the remaining two another way.

  “Whataya think?” Davis asked.

  “The sheriff’s got some years on ’im,” Cardwell said, “and one of the deputies looks like a green kid. It doesn’t look like they’ll be much trouble.”

  “What about the third one?”

  “He looks capable enough,” Cardwell said, stepping out of the doorway, “but one man’s not gonna be a problem either. Come on, let’s get that hotel room. In the morning we can take a look at the town.”