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  A life or death choice . . .

  The man’s eyes opened wide, and he clawed for his gun. It was just clearing the holster when he looked up at the business end of Joshua’s Colt Peacemaker, and he saw flame stab out from it twice in an instant and immediately felt two bullets slam into his chest and pass through his body. He could not breathe, and he felt his body roll backward over his horse’s rump as he fell face-first onto the ground behind his dun. He was dead before he hit the dirt with a loud thud.

  Joshua swung the gun toward the leader and held it on his chest. It was cocked.

  “Now,” Strongheart said, “if you boys decide to kill me, it will be with bullets and not a rope, but I am shooting, too, and it starts with you, partner. You die with me no matter what. Now, I have done nothing wrong and am not going to be strung up by a bunch of vigilantes just because you do not like half-breeds. So, mister, it’s your turn to make a decision . . .”

  Titles by Don Bendell

  BLOOD FEATHER

  STRONGHEART

  CROSSBOW

  The Criminal Investigation Detachment Series

  CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DETACHMENT

  BROKEN BORDERS

  BAMBOO BATTLEGROUND

  DETACHMENT DELTA

  BLOOD FEATHER

  A Sequel to Strongheart

  A Tale of the Old West

  Don Bendell

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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

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

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  BLOOD FEATHER

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Don Bendell Inc.

  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.

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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

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

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN: 978-1-101-58511-5

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley mass-market edition / August 2013

  Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  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.

  Contents

  Also by Don Bendell

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  DEDICATION

  My sister Bette Ann (Bendell) Lunn is eleven years older than me, so became like a number-two mom to me. Bette was loving, protective, nurturing, and although I am now in my sixties, she tries hard not to baby me still. What I appreciate most about my sister is the love of music she passed on to me. Now retired, she studied and then taught music her whole life and is an inductee into the Colorado Music Educators Hall of Fame. Besides rock and roll, I was exposed to piano and organ concertos by her when I was small, and she took me to concerts where I developed a love for symphony, opera, and all music.

  My brother Bruce Bendell passed away several years ago and was nine years older than me. We were always close, but when I was a boy he made sure I would not grow up a sissy. For one birthday, he gave me two pairs of boxing gloves, an army fatigue uniform, an M1 cap rifle, and a pair of six-shooter cap guns. He and I did American Indian fancy dancing starting when I was barely out of kindergarten, and he was a tremendous artist, singer, and hilariously funny.

  I had several stepbrothers and stepsisters, but I had just one who was very close to me and close to my age. She became like a sister to me and still is. Kathy, known as Roberta Kathleen (Magenau) Schmitt was one of the hottest girls at Coventry and Kenmore High Schools. We shared secrets, and she taught me how to fast and slow dance and told me that knowing how to dance would always get me women. She was right. She has been through a very rough life, but like me, she is a survivor who is determined to always land on her feet and never give up. Kathy always has had a sharp wit, a ready laugh, a twinkle in her eye, a love of God, and a sensitivity which will bring a tear if I just say something slightly sentimental.

  My wife’s aunt, Joyce Ann (Kittenger) Edwards, is a retired art professor, but more importantly, she introduced my wife to me more than three decades ago. Joyce is like another older sister and shares my love of art. She was a professor at the University of Akron (Ohio) and was my art director and still photographer when I made the feature film The Instructor. We became like siblings even before she introduced me to Shirley. Like Shirley and me, Joyce loves God, and is a consummate drama queen, and I say that with a loving smile on my face.

  Last but not least, my younger sister is actually my sister-in-law Jan. Janice Lee (Ebert) Guy is so much like my wife, her big sister, in so many ways, I could not help but love her. A beautiful blonde, she is a successful small business owner partnering with her husband Jerry, to whom she is totally devoted. Like Shirley, she can outwork (or outdance) anybody and everybody and has to be told to slow down, turn out the lights, and go to bed.

  This book is dedicated to these five siblings. I love each of you very much, and each of you has positively touched and helped form my life in different ways.

  Thank you,

  Don Bendell, 2013

  To be feared is to fear: No one has been able to strike terror into others and at the same time enjoy peace of mind.

  Seneca

  FOREWORD

  Strongheart was my first new Western for Berkley Books, and I am very happy to be back in the saddle again. In fact, my ranch south of Florence, Colorado, is named the Strongheart Ranch, and I am a real cowboy with a real horse. My own horse is named Eagle, although I have another horse, Gabriel, who looks identical to Strongheart’s horse Gabriel, but I found him and bought him after Strongheart was released. I hope you will enjoy this sequel to Strongheart and escape with me back to a time when a man’s word was his bond, women were ladies, and men were men, and you survived only if you were hardy. These were the people who made America.

  I hope you like Joshua Strongheart’s further adventures as much as I do and come with me on an escape from computers, television, news stories, traffic, and our fast-paced society, to a time when our country was simpler, tougher, and more natural. Let’s take a journey back
to the Old West, to the real America.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No author has influenced my writing more than the late great Louis L’Amour. Louis L’Amour was born March 22, 1905, and grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. To me, he has always been the premier storyteller of the American West. Many of Mr. L’Amour’s Westerns were made into very popular motion pictures. For example, Hondo and Apache Territory. Sadly, he passed away from cancer in June 1988, and a great light was extinguished in the halls of Western literature. Shortly before his death, he was told he had sold more than 200 million books worldwide.

  Like the late Louis L’Amour, I ride on every piece of ground I write about as much as I possibly can, and now also do so with Gabriel (Gabe), who is as I said identical to the mount of Joshua Strongheart but was found and bought after Strongheart came out. In that way, you, the reader, get a truer vision of the mountains and valleys, the countryside, the smell of the sagebrush, the heat from the sun baking a rocky canyon, and you hopefully will almost hear the clicking of horses’ hooves on rocks and can escape into my world for a little bit. Enjoy the ride, partner.

  Don Bendell

  1

  The Predator

  The eyes were intelligent but lifeless and were very dark brown, almost black. They carefully followed the movements of the small tribe of Minniconjou Lakota moving far below the large cottonwood where the predator remained motionless. He had taken one of their band and carried the body high up in the branches of the majestic tree. A single drop of blood dripped off his chin and landed on the branch below him. His eyes went down in response to an imperceptible sound then refocused on the band of Sioux. He had just eaten the last bite of the prey’s heart and wanted to close his eyes and nap.

  His appetite sated for now, the predator would awaken in a few hours with his mind wondering about a new hunger to kill again, another two-legged animal that would challenge his predatory instincts so much better.

  The mutilated body of the young Sioux woman lay across a branch nearby. She was no longer a challenge and therefore of little further interest to this muscular predator. She could not run or thrash around, but now just lay still, unmoving, her ears not attuned to the whistling of the meadowlark, her eyes not seeing the super-busy wings of the ruby-throated hummingbird, air-balancing in front of the bright crimson area of her left breast, where her heart had been torn from her body.

  The band of Lakota had missed Sings Loud Woman, but nobody was really alarmed yet, as she was wont to wander off while gathering firewood if something tickled her fancy. Considered a dreamer, she was not a hard worker but was exceptionally beautiful. Many men in the circle of lodges had watched her walk, a natural movement of curves and symmetry that stirred the imaginings of all men, the young and the elders. But not anymore. Now she was a bloody, lifeless mass high in the branches of a cottonwood tree along the banks of the Greasy Grass.

  In just two years, members of this tribe would take part here in the Battle of the Greasy Grass, which the wasicun would be calling the Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer’s Last Stand. Now though, it was a shallow, glacial water–clear, rock– and sand-bottomed, small river with little brook trout streaking to and fro and, when the sun was just right, giving it the look of occasional energy in an otherwise lazy summer afternoon. The thick green foliage of the surrounding cottonwoods and hardwoods made the twists and turns along the waterway obvious to any traveler at a distance, as the rest of its surroundings were large rolling ridges covered with long green prairie grass.

  The predator had slept high in his perch, and the red-skinned creatures below were gone. Satisfied for now, he climbed down to the ground and drank deeply from the clear waters of the Little Big Horn River. The trees, the river and its small grass-walled canyon would provide good cover as he began his migration. He started on his slow lope, always heading south, toward his southern hunting grounds, many weeks’ travel away. His hunting area was much larger than that of any grizzly or male cougar. As he had so many times before, he’d struck and fed in his northern hunting grounds and now would move hundreds of miles to the south, from the Montana Territory to southern Colorado Territory. Keeping to the shadows and draws, he was seldom if ever seen. When he was seen, it was usually a fleeting glance, often a shadow. The thought of his next stalk and kill, this time of a white-skinned two-legged creature, kept him moving, kept him alert.

  The big Concord stagecoach headed east on Road Gulch Stage Road. The road had many years of use as a trail before becoming an offshoot stage route in southern Colorado. The rules for travel on the leather-strap suspension stage came directly from Wells Fargo and were posted inside most Wells Fargo coaches:

  • Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink share the bottle. To do otherwise makes you appear selfish and un-neighborly.

  • If ladies are present, gentlemen are urged to forego smoking cigars and pipes as the odor of same is repugnant to the gentler sex. Chewing tobacco is permitted, but spit with the wind, not against it.

  • Gentlemen must refrain from the use of rough language in the presence of ladies and children.

  • Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort in cold weather. Hogging robes will not be tolerated and the offender will be made to ride with the driver.

  • Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result.

  • Firearms may be kept on your person for use in emergencies. Do not fire them for pleasure or shoot at wild animals as the sound riles the horses.

  • In the event of runaway horses remain calm. Leaping from the coach in panic will leave you injured, at the mercy of the elements, hostile Indians, and hungry coyotes.

  • Forbidden topics of conversation are: stagecoach robberies and Indian uprisings.

  The coach was crowded, and the passengers were all anxious to get to Cañon City, several days’ travel to the east. This coach had left Poncha Springs near the Arkansas River, which ran through a long, winding, high-walled canyon for forty-some miles to Cañon City, where the white-water river poured out onto the prairie and headed through mainly flatlands on its winding journey to the mighty Big Muddy.

  The passengers saw a small herd of white Rocky Mountain goats high up on the ridge on the north side of the river shortly after leaving the Poncha Springs area. Then they ran into several large herds of bighorn sheep on the rocky cliffs north of Cotopaxi, named for a mountain in South America.

  After a night there, in which the passengers were entertained by the dry humor and colorful stories of white-haired, pipe-smoking Zachariah Banta, the stage had turned south, and within a mile, all six passengers had to get out and walk, as it was a long, winding stagecoach road heading uphill and the driver wanted to take it easy on the horses. Sarah Louise Rudd, visiting relatives in Cañon City, was breathing heavily, struggling against the altitude and her arthritic hips, and felt relieved when the tall Pinkerton agent took a gentle hold of her left arm and helped her up the inclined grade. Finally back in the confines of the relatively roomy stage, they eventually turned east on Road Gulch Stage Road and crossed the north end of the big, beautiful Wet Mountain Valley.

  It was on this winding stage road with piñon-covered ridges and outcroppings where the predator came down from his lair on Lookout Mountain. It was the ideal hideout and observation point for both mountain lions and outlaws. To the west lay the beautiful Sangre de Cristo and Collegiate mountain ranges, thirteen– and fourteen-thousand-foot snowcapped peaks stretching skyward from northern horizon to southern horizon. To the south the Sangre de Cristos stretched deep into New Mexico. Lookout Mountain was not that tall, but it stood as a lone rocky sentinel on this, the southeastern end of the Wet Mountain Valley. It overlooked piñon– and stunted-cedar-covered sandy ridges going off in every direction and was a natural vantage point from which to observe all that moved for miles.
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  This predator had a hunger for human flesh, and more importantly, it had been many days since he had made the kill on Sings Loud Woman. He knew where to make another stalk, testing his skills, moving quietly and unseen among the two-legged creatures.

  The stage went slowly through the twisting narrows as it climbed uphill five miles toward Copper Gulch Stage Road. The road wound its way like a granite-scaled serpent, and the predator moved quietly and swiftly over the rocks toward a rendezvous with the upcoming Concord. His eyes seemed empty as his gaze swept back and forth in wide arcs, looking for unseen potential enemies under rocks, behind bushes, and in the shadow of every tree and rocky overhang.

  He had watched the stage from his rocky lair and knew that it stopped at this spring to let the passengers fill their canteens or soak their kerchiefs in the cold springwater, to wrap around their necks to help in the sweltering summer heat. It would be here that he would take down his prey, and he could already taste the blood. Like always, he would select one prey out of the herd of passengers. It would be one that stood out as strong, almost worthy of being killed. He would soon carry the body up into the rocks to feast on this hot day.

  The predator found his hiding place under a rock and between two thick bushes right near the spring. Passengers would walk within a few steps of him, and like before, he would patiently wait for the prey he picked out of the herd.

  Jack “Blackjack” Colvin was an outstanding Pinkerton detective and was riding the stage to courier a message to fellow Pinkerton Joshua Strongheart. Blackjack was a tall, slender man with wiry muscles and a leathery face from many years in the saddle, the sun beating on his face, the wind chapping his rugged countenance.

  Someone had dubbed him Blackjack because of his black handlebar mustache and because he was an outstanding cardplayer. Actually though, he was great at five-card-stud poker not blackjack. He thought about becoming a dealer and dreamed about owning his own gambling house in one of the big western towns. However, his father was a trapper, a mountain man, and Blackjack had a penchant for the high lonesome. He loved the wilderness and everything about being out in the mountains, desert, or prairie. His ideal roof at night was the Milky Way.