SCAVENGERS: A Porter Rockwell Adventure (Dark Trails Saga Book 1) Read online

  SCAVENGERS

  A PORTER ROCKWELL ADVENTURE

  DAVID J. WEST

  SCAVENGERS Copyright 2017 David J. West

  Cover typography/design/art by: Nathan Shumate and TheChunkyDesigner_26690

  Digital formatting by: Hershel Burnside

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  LOSTREALMS PRESS

  Chapters

  1. Death Song

  2. The Bone Map

  3. Partners

  4. Stretched

  5. Rapture

  6. Horse Trading

  7. Root Of All Evil

  8. Sacrifice

  9. The Pit

  10. Revelations

  11. Voices on the Wind

  12. Clumsy Lovers

  13. Tangled

  14. Serpentine

  15. Valley of Goblins

  16. Leviathan’s Walk

  17. Blood Brothers

  18. Shave and A Haircut

  19. Two Bits

  20. Blood & Gunpowder

  21. Water Trap

  22. Revenant

  23. Port’s Leap

  24. Cold Vengeance

  25. Deadly Precession

  26. A Tale of the Tongue

  27. Hornets’ Nest

  28. Hell Fires

  29. Dead Reckoning

  30. Six Ways to Sunday

  Epilogue

  About the Author:

  No matter how hungry, the vulture will never eat grass. — African Proverb

  1. Death Song

  Porter tapped the last few drops of his canteen into his dry mouth, then took off his hat to wipe away the beading sweat on his dirty brow. His long dark hair fell about his shoulders, and he sat up in his stirrups a moment to stretch. The wind suddenly carried a mournful piano tune with mystifying vigor.

  “Wheat! Am I hearing things?”

  His horse, Hoss, snorted in answer.

  Porter was hot on the trail of a horse thief who had robbed a nice old widow. She had seemed more upset about the stolen elder berry pie than the horse and gun, but Porter was deputy marshal and had a job to do. He would find the man known as Dirty Ferdie McCurdie and bring the rascal to justice. Porter hadn’t wanted to go traipsing out into the badlands but it had been his own bad luck to be the nearest lawman, so he had to go after Dirty McCurdie. Luckily, he had picked up the trail and guessed that the thief couldn’t be more than two or so days ahead.

  “Time to get moving again, Hoss,” Porter said, patting the animals neck.

  The steady trot of Hoss on hard-packed earth kept a rhythmic beat making Porter think he was hearing a demon’s drum. The whipping wind in turn carried sound and dust across the wastelands in strange barrages like a cat o’ nine tails delivering their sting.

  Filtering through all of that was an eerie tinkling as if from the great beyond. Porter could swear that out here in this high lonesome desert he was listening to a jaunty piano tune. Was he going crazy from the heat? The music of keys raced up and down the scales. Was it “Oh! Susannah”? His gaze was directed to a black-winged vulture circling high above, patient as a chopping block.

  He paused, letting the gasps of wind relay the jovial dance of ebony and ivory. Taking his bearing against the sun, Porter deemed he was less than halfway between the Book Cliffs and the Green River ferry. It shouldn’t be too much farther. Porter thought he would have found the river by now, but so far there was no sign of it or any other water for that matter.

  “Gotta be my imagination. Let’s get on with this, Hoss,” he said to the appaloosa stallion.

  Hoss snorted and flared his nostrils. He caught the hint of moisture and perked his ears at the melancholy song still drifting across the wind like the scent of a lost love.

  They trotted briskly up and over a hill that was bald as an egg. Below them was the wide twisting Green River. The sound of the piano however was richer now but coming from around the side of the draw and twisting along with the river just out of sight. Porter kicked into Hoss’s flanks and raced in that unknown and inviting direction.

  As he rounded the bend, Porter spied the source of the eerie music. A trio of wagons were dashed along the rocks at edge of the river like ships cast from the maelstrom. Two were knocked on their sides halfway underwater but the last one was upright, albeit missing its wheels, with the player piano in the back. The instrument was splashed with green waters and not more than a few inches were submerged. It played a ghostly melody for a dead audience. Some few bodies were bloating under the sun despite the cool waters. A pair of dead oxen had been used for target practice along with four mules and three horses. Someone had been awful cruel and non-discriminating in their bloodlust. Bodies were cast about the scene, leaking gunshot wounds or jutting arrows marking their gruesome demise. A couple looked like someone had broken them in half.

  The piano abruptly stopped. Porter drew his Navy Colt, ready for anything. Only the river, the wind, and the lone vulture wheeling high above gave any sign of life. The piano coughed, sputtered, and started over, it wasn’t “Oh! Susannah” but some other song. Porter couldn’t quite place it; a sad song from his youth.

  Looking over the ruin, Porter dismounted and examined one of the striped arrow shafts. Near as he could tell they were not from any tribe he was aware of, Ute, Paiute, or Shoshone. Maybe Apache, but here? He wondered what other tribe could have been in this area. The most likely of explanations was what he called White Indians, bandits pretending to be Indians to better hide their crimes. Any other actual tribe would have been a long way from their tribal territories, of course anything was possible.

  He looked for more signs of trouble and found several tequila bottles and the barest end of a cigar butt. Any valuables save the piano, which was too heavy for bandits to move, were gone. A flour keg was dumped over and soaking in water and some few women’s clothes had been cast aside too.

  Porter gauged the attack couldn’t have been more than a day or so old. It was a practiced skill that he could tell the time by the condition of the dead. It wasn’t a talent he liked telling people he had. That lone vulture was still circling overhead. Had the piano kept it at bay?

  He let Hoss graze on the vegetation beside the river and began to do the proper thing for the dead. They deserved rest. Terrible work as it was, he dragged the few bodies into a pile where he could try and cover them with stones rather than attempt to dig into the hard-packed ground. He didn’t have a shovel but figured head-sized boulders would keep the coyotes and vultures off of them.

  The vulture high overhead gave an ominous cry. It was midday and he had nearly finished his task when something bony white caught the corner of his eye. He looked closer to see what begged for his attentions.

  A cracked, grinni
ng skull beside a red sandstone boulder leered as if it was privy to a joke at his expense. “We’re all born the same and end the same,” mused Porter, guessing that the eerie music made him more introspective than usual.

  If Porter could have found himself somewhere else, anywhere else, he sure as Hell would have. Even excluding the present grim company, this bleached desert gave no quarter. There had been no reprieve from the burning sun, freezing moon, and biting sands carried aloft on the wings of invisible ghouls. This was Purgatory if ever there was one, where the skeletons of the dead knew only eternal torment and damnation. Especially when you thought you were alone, voices would seem to whisper on the ever-present wind, beckoning, taunting, promising sweet relief if you would but join them in the stretching fingers of that vast darkness.

  The Utes said that it was the spirits of those who came before, the Anasazi or some such primordial vanished peoples. ‘Anasazi’ meant something like ‘the ancient enemy’. Porter didn’t have to worry about no ancient enemies, he had plenty shooting at him right now.

  The whining ricochet of a bullet suddenly brought him crashing back to the present. Cursing, he dove and rolled behind a tipped flour barrel in the wheel-less buckboard wagon. The piano was just a few feet to his left, still playing that sorrowful dirge. Peering around the side only invited a few more shots his way. One bullet hit the piano, skewing the keys off kilter and the sad song became truly twisted.

  Near as Porter could tell, a dozen men were converging on the rocky hillside across from him. He was stuck between them and the river. It was time to get the Hell out of here. Then it got worse.

  Hoss neighed and Porter saw that a spindly kid had hold of his reins and was leading him away behind the jagged hillock. There would be no riding out of this mess.

  “Come on out of there, Porter! We’re gonna fill you full of holes sooner or later!” shouted someone, with a hyena’s laugh. It was followed by a cacophony of thundering lead. It had to be Wilson Cotterell.

  “Give up the damn map!” echoed the gruff voice of another. That would be the middle brother, Andy.

  “What map?” Porter challenged. He had no idea what they were talking about, but if he could get them talking more, they’d be distracted and open to his own leaden argument.

  “Don’t play dumb. You’ch got it from Dirty McCurdie didn’t cha?” And that had to be Jed, the eldest brother. He had the strangest speech impediment.

  “I did not.” drawled Porter, hoping his relaxed tone would give them confidence to expose themselves. “Let’s talk this out.”

  Porter figured the main voices were Andy Cotterell, Andy’s brother Wilson, by the sound of his cackle, and the meanest of the bunch, Jed. Porter could tell it was him by his lack of humor and ‘S’s’. Not that it mattered. All three brothers led a gang of cutthroats but were otherwise as different as anything.

  Jed, the eldest, was stern and humorless with a backward lisp. Wilson, the youngest, would laugh at anything—especially someone else’s pain. Andy, the forgotten middle child, with curly blond locks he was ashamed of, almost looked like a dandy but with a deadly hair-trigger temper. Porter decided he would play upon that temper and vanity if possible. But how had they heard he was after Dirty McCurdie? He figured he was a day behind the horse thief. No one should even know he was on the trail. And what was this about a map? Too many questions for getting shot at.

  “He thaid he don’t got it,” whispered another urgently. Porter didn’t know who that was.

  “He do!” argued another unfamiliar voice. And a cyclone of lead filled the air, all zeroed in on Porter’s general direction.

  “What say you boys stop shooting and we talk this out?” Porter shouted, as he reloaded a cylinder.

  “More’n like we’ll see you’s in Hell!” came the slurred retort from one of the gang members. The speaker shot haphazardly in Porter’s direction and laughed.

  It was enough that Porter could tell where the man was hiding behind the rocks. The bandits were clustered together only about fifty feet away in the jumbled hoodoo’s. They had elevation on their side along with superior numbers, but Porter was a crack shot.

  “I’ll oblige you, then,” said Porter, as he shot the speaker in chest.

  The slack-jawed bandido ran a dirty hand along his chest, smearing the river of blood that suddenly poured forth. The wounded man looked stunned, then collapsed. This brought another chaotic volley from his compadres.

  The overturned buckboard Porter took cover behind was rapidly getting chewed to matchsticks by the ravenous barrage of bullets. The dumped supplies were the only things granting cover anymore. Porter mused that there was probably so much lead in that bucket of flour he stood behind that he could sell it to a blacksmith rather than a baker. Much as it pained him, the dead horses were solid cover too, but like everything else, they would soon give way to an inevitable tide of decay.

  “You gots nowhere to run, Porter!” cried one of the bandits.

  Porter was grateful for the river behind him and the broken-down wagon in which he was placed. That was the only reason he hadn’t been outflanked or shot yet. But another word for his position could also be “trapped.”

  Porter figured he was outgunned at least twelve to one. His ammunition was low. He had maybe twenty-five rounds on his belt for his Navy Colt and a pocketful of new cylinders. That would be enough to shoot all of them at least twice. No matter the adversity, Porter tried to find a way to laugh.

  Of course, it could’a been a lot easier to laugh if he hadn’t stopped to investigate that haunted sounding player piano in the first place.

  The shooting paused a moment. Porter heard the hushed whispers between the stern older brother, Jed, and the manic Wilson. Their other brother, Andy, was likely as not looking down the end of a barrel just waiting to get a bead on Porter.

  Jed called out, “Hey Porter, we know we ain’t kilt you yet. How about you call it quit’ch and get up. Let look if that legend ‘bout you true once and for all, eh?”

  It’s a hard thing to be a living legend. To be told by a prophet of God that if you never cut your hair no bullet nor blade can harm you. True enough, in some twenty-five years since the night that he had received that unusual blessing it had been absolutely correct. Blessed like Samson of old, Porter was promised incredible things and so far, they had proved one hundred percent correct. Porter bore no scars on his rangy body at all. And it wasn’t like he didn’t spend his life in the thick of things. He had been a scout, frontiersman, bodyguard and now lawman all without a single wound. But he still found himself ducking and dodging and fighting his way out of scraps. He didn’t stand around and let himself get hit, no sir. That’d be like tempting fate, and Porter wasn’t about to do that.

  “Come on out, Porter. We ain’t seen any of that magic underwear yet,” taunted Andy Cotterell.

  “What say I stand up if you will, Cornbread,” answered Porter with a pointed jab at Andy’s curly yellow hair.

  The Cotterell gang was close enough that Porter could hear several men laughing as Andy snarled at them to hush. “Sure, you—you cricket cruncher!”

  Porter chuckled. He knew he had gotten a sliver into Andy’s sore thumb. “Cricket cruncher? You cut me to the quick, Andy. Don’t know if I can recover from that verbal thrashing.”

  “Why you long-haired, lily-livered son of a bitch!”

  “Ha! That the best you got? Come on, you buzzards. Let’s make this interesting. How about it? Let’s all stand up and throw down!”

  “All right. We’ll both stand and throw down at the same time! Just you and me!” shouted Andy ignoring that Porter had called them all out.

  “No,” called Porter. He knew damn well it wouldn’t only be Andy or Jed or Wilson. He might as well call them all out on it and have everyone join in and make themselves a target if he could help it. He’d sure try and hit them all. “Not just you and me. Everyone!”

  Andy called back, “All right. We’ll all stand up and face y
ou. On three!”

  “One,” said Porter.

  “Two,” responded Andy.

  “Three,” shouted Porter as he stood up from behind the barrel of lead-soaked flour. He blasted his guns and ducked back down in an instant.

  The gang’s guns blazed, and the shots echoed loud enough along the river to wake the dead. The player piano soon had so many lead fingers trying to play the keys that it was splintered in a discordant final dirge.

  Far overhead, the vultures gently wheeled like a black ring in the sky, drifting ever downward, ever closer.

  In the exchange, Porter got a rough count of how many bandits there were. He figured that he had shot at least two of them. That was still too many left for his trapped position. How could he get out of this fix and fast? He needed his horse, Hoss. But even if he had Hoss, his back was still up against the river; he was trapped by that swift flowing torrent—that was the answer! Risky as it was.

  One thing the bandits didn’t know was that Hoss was a biter. Porter had trained him for just such an occasion by whistling. Hopefully that spindly kid would still be nearby when Porter whistled and Hoss could escape these pukes and help Porter cross the torrent.

  “You ain’t getting out of this alive, Porter!” called Wilson. “We got you surrounded. Might as well give up the map and we’ll make it quick and painless.”

  “Tempting,” said Porter. “But I think I’ve still got an Ace in the hole.”

  “He ain’t got nothing,” said Andy. “He’s stalling.”

  He whistled to Hoss, who was just a short distance away behind that jagged bend in the hillock. Porter waited until he heard the spindly kid cry out from what was probably a significant and painful horse bite. Porter threw down a full load of six at the bandits from each of his Navy Colts. Without looking to survey the damage done, he dove into the river. He trusted Hoss would follow, so long as he didn’t get shot either. Hoss was a smart horse.

  Porter was in the river, barely keeping his breath as he dogpaddled farther out into the current. Bullets splashed all about him as the bandits swarmed down out of the rocks. Porter was not a great swimmer but it was a necessary evil. His possibly drowning in the murky deluge was just the price he had to pay to retain the right of life. An undertow tugged at his heavy boots and he kicked hard to escape it.