A Flash Of Gunfire: Wild West Story: Wild West Series

By Pat Garrett Jr

Freighter Dave Mohawk was trading flour—for lives! And suddenly the entire upper part of the Joyland seemed to shake with a flash of gunfire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildwest Press Co
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781502292148

Book preview

A Flash Of Gunfire: Wild West Story

By Pat Garrett Jr

Copyright © by Wildwest Press Co

All right reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Hell Dive Pass

Chapter 2: Wellcome to Hell

Chapter 3: Underdogs uprising

Chapter 4: Dance of Death

Chapter 5: Bitter Medicine

Chapter 1: Hell Dive Pass

IT was hotter than the hubs of fury that late-August afternoon when Young Dave Mohawk pulled rein on the south lip of Hell Dive Pass.

Behind him the uncertain old gold trail had led upward, from the start an almost obliterated streak devil-bent on losing itself in buck-brush, manzanita thickets, scrub-oak and aspen clouding the east rim of the river. That was four days ago, Tuesday morning at dawn. In scores of places the rock-walled east bank had been covered with yards-thick layers of longdry mud, the bends choked with driftwood matted with vines and creepers brought down by roaring spring floods and unpredictable cloudbursts had made Yellow Devil Canyon one of the most treacherous and dangerous hell-holes in the high California Sierras.

Many men in Indian Valley — still only thirty-odd miles behind to southward — had said that any outfit trying to reopen Yellow Devil Trail would be tackling the impossible. Mohawk had been called a fool, but Hell Dive Pass was at hand, two towering peaks against the sky. Below him the river appeared to drop completely away, the narrowing and twisting walls of the canyon, overhanging giant shelves, and ragged crags hiding it, making it appear as a great gushing of white-whipped water tearing from the mouth of an immense dark cavern.

Men with a dozen yokes of powerful oxen still labored behind him with scrapers, plows, crow-bars and axes, clearing the last barrier at the foot of an upward curving shelf, the final steep rise to the top. Behind those men, creeping up as the trail was cleared, was a train of huge old freighter wagons loaded with tons and tons of supplies for Yellow Devil Basin, the once-dead and nearly-forgotten old Chinese ghost town that had set the country afire in the early spring with another big gold strike that had brought people pouring in from everywhere.

Expecting trail that would yet have to be cleared on the north slopes, he turned to ride on, reaching the level floor of the pass, shelves and ledges in the sides of the peaks above him. The air changed now, a cool wind striking him. Suddenly he was pulling up, surprise filling his face under the wide brim of a black hat, right hand dropped close to the butt of a long Colt.

Howdy, pardner. The speaker was an enormously fat, red-jowled man in ill-fitting gray, face covered with a week-old sandy beard, his eyes two pale blue buttons. He sat on a nail keg at the right side of the trail, behind. an upended whiskey barrel, a six-foot umbrella of ragged brown canvas over him. Six shooters were at his hips. Across the top of the barrel lay two double-barreled shotguns, each a short, sawed-down thing.

Kinda warm, ain’t it! the man said.

Hot is a better word, nodded Mohawk, wondering what was coming next.