Murder in Pearce

By S.M. Ballard

Intrigue, mystery, murder, 1905, Pearce, Arizona Territory.

Micah Rogers is summoned to the gold rush boomtown of Pearce by a friend in desperate need of help. Indeed, the situation is one of life or death and involves a mysterious object men have killed to possess. This object found its way from Cuba to Arizona Territory among the belongings of a former member of the United States Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish-American War, and by possessing it, the soldier has placed a bull's-eye firmly on his back.

No sooner does Rogers set foot on the bustling Pearce streets than he is ambushed by men unknown and left to perish in the unforgiving desert. His discovery of a corpse tossed down a coyote hole is only the beginning of what lies ahead for the former Rough Rider/lawman.

Rogers' dangerous quest to prevent the murder of a friend while ferreting out what power lies behind the hunt to capture the unknown prize forces him to trust again in his own judgment, and in the judgment of another on the same quest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.M. Ballard
• Release date: Jan 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465857484

S.M. Ballard

I reside in Pearce, a historic ghost town, in Cochise County, Arizona, with my husband, Brian, two Nokota horses, a pair of miniature donkeys and various other farm animals and pets. I am member in good standing in the Old Pearce Preservation Association, the Cochise County Historical Society, the Society of Southwestern Authors, the Sulphur Springs Valley Historical Society and the Western Writers of America. My works, both fiction and non-fiction, have appeared in the following publications: Chronicle of the Old West, Ghost Town Trail News, Out West, Voice in the Desert, War Journal and Wild West. I contribute regularly to The Tombstone Times. "Kate," a romance, is my fourth novel of western historical fiction. "Borrowed Time," "Holliday in Tombstone" and "Death Takes a Holliday" make up my John Henry "Doc" Holliday trilogy. "The Raider" is my first teen/young adult novel and is historical fiction, heavy on the history aspect. It is based on a true incident - the northernmost Confederate raid of the Civil War on the Vermont town of St. Albans. Now available is "Murder in Pearce," a western/mystery and my first in that genre.

Book preview

Murder in Pearce

S.M. Ballard

Published by S. M. Ballard at Smashwords.

Copyright 2012 S.M. Ballard

Discover other titles by S.M. Ballard at Smashwords.com:

Borrowed Time

Holliday in Tombstone

Death Takes a Holliday

Kate

The Raider

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Chapter 1

The prize came to Cuba aboard the ill-fated treasure ship, the SS Central America which lay anchor in Havana Harbor for a brief stay in September of 1857. With the ship so anchored supplies were restocked; men came and went, a few unnoticed. Those unnoticed few crept aboard in search of the riches they knew the ship held locked away below its oaken decks. Some well-placed and hefty bribes and the thieves were left alone to pilfer the stores. But time ran out and the men were forced to flee for their lives. Pockets bulging with the weight of heavy gold coin sent two of the pirates to early sea graves, but the other…

It was this other, the only survivor, who took his ill-gotten booty and escaped into the Cuban jungle. Within the cache of double eagles he found a curious item, a reliquary wrought of the purest gold, inscribed with words he could not read in a language long dead. What he did not know was that this reliquary possessed a hollow space, its contents the most sought after prize in the known world. Locked within a golden shell, protected and sealed, was the most precious of wonders, the rarest of the rare, that which men for centuries had died to obtain or to protect.

xxxx

June, 1905

Micah Rogers woke to a blinding headache and an ominous sense of foreboding. He neither remembered what had happened previous nor did he have the slightest inkling where he was – a sinister combination at best.

He lay on the rocky ground, afraid to move lest he discover he couldn’t. He opened one eye and quickly closed it. The overhead sun, a desert sun, obscenely white in the clear Arizona sky, sent shards of agonizing pain through the eye and into Micah’s brain. The eyelid snapped shut. He brought an arm up to block light that seemed even to penetrate the lid.

Rogers searched his jumbled thoughts attempting to recall what had occurred the night before, but to no avail. The throbbing headache blotted out all memories. He hoped time might cure that, if this agony was the result of a hangover. If not?

He wasn’t a drinker, not like some, a bout of malaria courtesy of his stint in Cuba during the Spanish-American War cured him of a tendency to overindulge. Liquor exacerbated the malarial symptoms and in the end the bit of relief he got from a glass of good Irish whiskey from day to day concerns wasn’t worth the return of the pernicious illness.

Since thinking got him nowhere Micah decided to attempt movement. He already knew his right arm worked so he flexed his left and wiggled his fingers. No problems there. Next he tried his legs. To his relief both limbs moved without difficulty or pain.

He felt no discomfort in his back or chest and figured this was the moment of truth. He sat up. A wave of dizziness washed over him and still he had yet to open his eyes. He waited for the dizziness and accompanying nausea to pass. Time crept by. Sweat dampened his collar and stuck his shirt to his body. The dizziness lessened. Micah opened his eyes, just slits as first, then fully. He waited for the vertigo to reassert, but so far so good.

His head throbbed and the sun caused him to blink painfully. In slow increments he turned his head about, searching for his hat. No sane man goes out into the desert without a hat, but then who said he had been in his right mind the night before?

He spotted the wide-brimmed Bailey some yards distant. Rather than attempt to gain his feet Rogers got on all fours and crawled to his destination. The rocky ground hurt his knees and scraped his hands, but crawling beat falling. Crawl first, then walk.

The hat did not fit. Micah checked the inside. Sure enough, there just above the sweatband were his initials, scrawled in his own less than precise hand. This was his hat. He tried again, this time pulling the brim down low – a mistake. Pain of the sorest nature rewarded his efforts. Gently lifting the Bailey, Micah felt the spot above his left ear. A swelling the size of a large hen’s egg and sticky with drying blood rose beneath his probing fingers.

I’ll be damned. I’ll just be damned.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, hat resting on top of his head like a chamber pot, and he didn’t care. He would wait until his thoughts cleared enough for him to at least attempt to think straight. Impatience out here could cost a man his life, impatience and foolish behavior. He would wait.

The more his head cleared, the more his senses did also. First his sense of smell returned and for that he was less than grateful. A stench wafted in on the hot breeze, the cloying smell of death, easily recognized by the war veteran. Where there was something dead so there must be scavengers.

Micah glanced around. Floating in on warm drafts approached the vultures, circling low and lower, harbingers of death and indicators of the careless or just unlucky. He watched them draw near, lower and lower, closer. The sense of foreboding he experienced upon waking intensified. He wasn’t alone out here. Of that he was certain.

Chapter 2

Rogers got to his feet and stood for a moment, reeling. He denied the urge to shake his head to clear the thoughts knowing that would be the worst of all tacts.

Patience. Patience, he growled.

The vertigo diminished enough for Micah to release the breath he held. Another few moments gave him the courage to take his first faltering steps. He headed unerringly toward the vultures and the prize they sought. The birds landed some hundred or so yards distant and if he was not mistaken at or near one of several exploratory pits, dubbed coyote holes, dug by aspiring miners in their search for an elusive pot of gold.

Pearce, Arizona Territory in 1905 was nothing if not a Mecca attracting men to the rich gold fields. Eleven years earlier John James Jimmie Pearce, some say while out looking for stray cattle, located the richest gold strike in Arizona history. Within months a town sprang up at the foot of the Common-Wealth Mine. Pilgrims ventured into the boomtown from far flung regions and from areas as close as Tombstone, twenty-five miles distant. With Tombstone’s once lucrative silver mines flooded or played out, those searching for the next strike traveled the hazardous route through the Dragoon Mountains to Pearce, sometimes dismantling their businesses in Tombstone board by board and reassembling them in their new home.

A scant thirty years earlier no man in his right mind would have thought to settle in this valley at the base of the Dragoons, in the area known as Cochise’s Stronghold. Men tried and failed, felled by the fierce Apache warriors who called this place home. Now the Apache were no more – driven off their land, scattered as a people, to the four winds.

That was decades past and men and women settled this land with impunity and no fear for their lives, at least not from the original inhabitants. If