Desperado's Gold

By Pro Se Press

Buck Horton’s brother was an outlaw. The only thing he left Buck of any value was a secret, the hiding place of stolen gold. Buck vowed to find the gold or die trying. And on the latter, men on both sides of the law are more than willing to oblige him.

Desperado’s Gold is a double-barreled, two-fisted tale of pure Western Pulp! Buck and his partner, Ron Ogo forge a friendship akin to brotherhood as they ride across the West in search of treasure. From desperate attempts to raise money for the hunt to staying one step ahead of anyone with a gun, the two men lay their lives on the line for the only thing that matters to them. Desperado’s Gold! By Jackie R. Kays and Teel James Glenn. From Pro Se Productions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311236029

Pro Se Press

Based in Batesville, Arkansas, Pro Se Productions has become a leader on the cutting edge of New Pulp Fiction in a very short time.Pulp Fiction, known by many names and identified as being action/adventure, fast paced, hero versus villain, over the top characters and tight, yet extravagant plots, is experiencing a resurgence like never before. And Pro Se Press is a major part of the revival, one of the reasons that New Pulp is growing by leaps and bounds.

Book preview

Prologue

A hot wind blew across a desolate plain in the Indian Territory, a torrid wind from the southwest that blew frothy foam from the chest and neck of a hard-ridden horse and into its rider’s face.

It was the year 1867. The War Between the States was over yet the emotional wounds lingered. Marauding gangs of ex-Confederate soldiers, bank robbers, cattle rustlers, horse thieves and bushwhackers left a trail of dead and poor anywhere they went. From outlaws whose names would barely be remembered to the infamous James and Younger gangs, the countryside bristled with death.

The rider of the flying horse was one of those prairie pirates, Jack Horton. His mount was exhausted from a long pursuit. Its master jerked back on the reins, bulldogged his mount to an abrupt stop, and yelled, Whoa boy… whoa! The tired animal neighed, whinnied, and pawed at the ground, sweat flying from its muscular haunches.

Three other riders pulled up next to the man who led them. All were drenched in sweat. The sun’s broiling heat radiated off the large boulders that reflected the heat back into the wayward wind.

Horton yelled, Ed, you and Dooley hightail it up the pass and make some noise to see if you can get that damn posse to follow you! Billy Joe and I will cross the river at the ferry and find a safe place to hide these saddle bags!

Jack, one of the men, his cheeks red like apples, yelled, you make damn sure you hide them there bags in a safe place and mark the spot good. We’ve all risked our hides for that damn gold!

The man on the horse beside Ed, a rail of an owlhoot, Dooley by name, joined in. Hey Jack, who appointed you the caretaker of those bags, anyhow?

Dooley, do you wanta fool around here and argue about it until that damn posse catches up with us? Jack said.

Dooley glared bullets at Jack and conceded, Okay, okay… but we wouldn’t be running so damn hard if that stupid kid, he wagged a dirty finger at the youngest of the group, sitting atop his horse on the other side of Jack, hadn’t killed that military shotgun rider! Now the whole army is gonna’ be huntin’ our asses.

The young man, looking more like he should be on the porch of a school somewhere than riding for his life in such scruffy company, snapped, Hell, he pulled down on me! Watcha’ want me to do?

Easy, Billy Joe, Jack cautioned, watching Dooley’s right hand edge toward his holstered hogleg.

A tattletale plume of dust caught Jack’s eye as he looked back the way they’d come. Swirling in the dingy sky like a dust devil spoiling to be a cyclone, the cloud could be seen for miles. And as the others all turned to follow Jack’s gaze, every man knew what it meant. Ten men on horseback riding hard for Hell and leather, hunting the four men. The posse!

Ed yelled, Let’s get the hell out of here!

Jack agreed. We’ll meet you all at Two Forks in a day or so. Let things cool a spell, then we’ll come back for the gold!

All the men nodded, Dooley’s face twisted into a mask of suspicion. But the logic of Jack’s plan was barreling at them from behind, only miles away. As the outlaws turned their separate ways, Jack and Billy Joe scooped their hats off their heads and waved them in the air, yelling their horses forward, toward the river and a waiting ferry.

* * *

Jack Horton and Billy Joe rode through the Indian Territory, riding along the rim of one of the hills in the Ouachita Mountain range. The ground shifted from rock and sand to rock and dirt until they reached the end of the tree line. The nearly impenetrable stands of trees gave way to giant boulders and cliffs, dotted sparsely with the occasional scrub oak.

Jack slowed his horse and said in a weary voice, As soon as we get these saddle bags hidden, we’ll ride across the mountains to Two Forks. He had his eyes on the horizon, but kept glancing back behind them, just to be sure.

Jack, Billy Joe questioned, just where do you reckon to stash the gold?

Jack did not answer.

Instead, he climbed off his exhausted horse and stretched his stiff back. Billy Joe followed suit, his face wrinkling into an ugly mask at his question being ignored.

Jack stepped away from his mount and walked around the area for a few minutes, studying the ground and the terrain with squinted eyes, looking for the best place to stash his future. After a long time he wiped the sweat from his brow with his worn out cowhide riding gloves and nodded.

Jack glanced over his shoulder and yelled, Billy, bring me that slicker off my bed roll!

Billy Joe grumbled something but stepped over to Jack’s sweat stained horse. He unstrapped the bright yellow raincoat from the tied down bedroll.

Jack walked up a slight hill and waved Billy Joe to follow him.

Jack stood before what appeared to be a disjointed wall of rock and pointed a thick finger in front of him. He said, We’re gonna wrap the bags in this slicker and stick them down in this big crack between these two boulders. He looked at Billy for any comment or argument. The cowhand turned outlaw gave neither, just grunted as he hauled the slicker up the hill.

The two men proceeded to do as Jack had suggested. They wrapped the two saddlebags in the raincoat, stuck them into the large crack and placed dirt and several smaller rocks on top, which completely buried the loot.

Jack stood up straight and looked around him to fix the location. An oak tree loomed over them a few feet away, the largest around them.

Jack stepped off the distance between that tree and the boulders he’d turned into the makeshift vault. He pulled the hunting knife its sheath on his left leg and carved his initials into the tree’s trunk.

He walked directly from where he stood back to the rock wall, counting as he went. He stopped just short of the boulder to the left and chiseled his initials into the rock face. He then stepped to the other rock and did the same.

How will you be able to tell where it is, Jack? Billy Joe said as he watched Jack’s strange machinations. I’m not certain I could go to it right now if I turned my back.

Jack’s only reply this time was a chuckle as he sheathed his knife and mounted. Not waiting on his partner to follow suit, he urged the horse into a canter back the way they’d come, pulling rein in front of a tree about fifty feet from the treasure trove, right next to a gnarled and twisted finger of an oak tree.

Jack slid out of the saddle again, pulled a hatchet from beneath his secured bedroll and hacked a wedge out of the bark in the curve of the tree facing the two boulders. Then he pulled his knife once more and carved his initials into the bottom half of the wedge.

When he was done he pulled his hat off. With deft fingers, he snatched something from the hatband, a folded piece of brown paper. He unrolled it, dug two fingers into his pocket, and produced a thin shaft of graphite lead. Using the makeshift pencil, he drew a rough map showing how to get to the area and wrote down the description of the markers that he had created. Jack folded the small map and returned it in his hatband. Saddling up again, he took a moment, his eyes lingering back up the hill to the two boulders where his entire future world lay buried.

The bandit leader looked out across the horizon and thought for a long moment about his mother and kid brother back home. It had been over two years since he had seen them, and then only briefly, after he came home from the war. He thought about what the money he had buried in those saddlebags could do to make their lives better. At last, a real stake, he whispered.

Billy Joe watched him with lidded eyes, following Jack’s glance to stare at the same treasure trove where all his hopes also lie.

Finally, Jack said, Billy Joe, let’s get to Two Forks.

* * *

Sheriff Bill Hadley always figured his mothered only raised one fool, and it hadn’t been him. Neither were the men that he was after, but they were desperate, which made them careless. When he and his posse rode up on Garrett’s Clearing, Sheriff Hadley read the trail before him plainly and knew his quarry had hightailed it on two separate trails.

Hadley sent five men toward the river while he and the remainder of the posse followed the other line of tracks.

Quick answers from a ferryman to the deputized hunters and a little trail sense told Hadley’s men that the two riders they pursued could only be headed to one town. And the closest settlement on this particular trail was Two Forks.

Regardless of what road, path, or pig trail they took, the payroll robbers would never make it to Two Forks without winding through Cayuck Pass. And that is how five men of the posse came to be waiting on a cliff overhead Cayuck Pass when Jack and Billy Joe rode into the last fight of their lives.

The hot winds scorched the faces of the Missouri-born outlaws as they charged into the pass. As the two men rode below, a member of the posse had a .44 caliber ‘Henry’ Rifle equipped with a scope. The sharpshooter sighted through the scope, took a deep breath and fixed his eye on his target. When he was sure of his aim, he slowly squeezed off the first deadly round.

Jack Horton, with no chance to even regret the fate that brought him to such an end, toppled from the saddle, his head slashed open like a watermelon, the echo of the shot less than a second behind.

Billy Joe tried to bolt but another .44 round found him in the back. The boy tumbled from his horse, his right boot catching in the stirrup. Billy’s frightened mount spooked and ran, dragging him several hundred yards, becoming frantic at the dead weight. It ran a zig-zag trying to shake the burden.

The sixteen year old’s body bounced about on the rocky ground, his foot finally coming loose from its boot as the horse darted off.

Billy Joe, who had dreams of treasure and his own spread would never live any of those dreams. He lay dead in a pool of his blood on the floor of Cayuck Pass.

* * *

Sheriff Hadley and the rest of the posse caught up with Ed and Dooley at Two Forks. The bandits tried to shoot it out but badges beat out bandanas that day. The two thieves suffered the same swift justice as their partners in the crime had.

Sheriff Hadley had little trouble identifying the four dead men. Jack Horton and his band of ne’er-do-wells had been burrs in the saddle of every sheriff from Missouri to Texas for the last year and had a nasty habit of drinking far too often from troughs in Hadley’s jurisdiction. Although it wasn’t always common practice, Hadley made the effort to wire the sheriff back in Missouri in the town where Horton had first been run out.

The Sheriff got all he needed to know about the deceased bandits as well as the most recent—and fatal—crime they’d committed: the theft of one thousand brand new ten dollar gold coins from the Fort Towson Stage, a stage containing the Fort’s payroll.

The secret of where that gold was followed the four owlhoots to their graves.

The whereabouts of the lost gold was the subject of many cracker barrel conversations for a long time afterward.

* * *

Three weeks after the robbery and shootout, a frail old woman dressed all in black and a boy a few years shy of manhood entered Sheriff Hadley’s office.

How can I help you ma’am? Hadley asked, rising from his chair.

The woman looked around at the dusty office as if it were a scene from some dream, her watery blue eyes wide beneath the dark veil she wore. I am John Horton’s mother, she weakly announced.

Jack Horton?

She nodded. I’ve come all the way from Noel, Missouri to retrieve my oldest boy’s belongings and see he had a Christian burial. The young boy at her side looked around the jail, looking for the world like a cornered animal, his eyes full of fear.

Sheriff Hadley went to the back of the jail, retrieved Jack’s gear and returned to the office. He placed all of the meager possessions on the table; a blood stained saddle and an old thirty-six-caliber Colt pistol. He made a second trip and this time returned with a pair of worn-out boots, spurs, a pair of ragged leather chaps and an old buckskin-colored felt cowboy hat.

The wrinkled wisp of a woman looked over the sad legacy of her son and stifled a sob. Her younger son stepped to steady her arm. She composed herself and then asked to see her son’s grave.

Sure, ma’am, the Sheriff said and grabbed his hat, moving toward the door. The old woman mumbled thanks and then, wrapping razor thin fingers around the boy’s arm, followed the officer.

He led the old woman and boy to the end of the town’s hard packed dirt main street. It seemed a long walk with the frail woman tottering behind him.

A small plot of mismatched markers and stone punctuated the south end of the street.

Sheriff Hadley brought the bereaved woman and the boy to the four fresh graves at the edge of the poorly constructed cemetery. The first wooden marker in the line seemed to vibrate from the hot, stiff South wind. A wind that almost sounded like the wailing of a lost soul. There were black poorly scribbled letters, scrawled across the board: Here lies Jack Horton, he rode hard, died hard-1868.

Well, Buck, the woman wheezed to the boy at her side, at least someone hereabouts knew your brother. He had a Christian place to rest.

The boy said nothing, even though he felt turbulent emotions welling up within him for his dead brother. He felt he should cry but somehow there were no tears within him. There was no sadness, only anger at his brother for leaving him and his mother to fend for themselves.

His thoughts became centered on the marker quivering in the wind before him and the telegraph message his mother had read to him back home about how Jack had died. And he thought, as well, about what Jack had stolen. He knew the money had not been found. Everyone was mad for looking for it but there were no clues, no trail to backtrack. The winds across the prairie had taken care of that.

Buck Horton vowed then and there, atop the freshly turned earth of his brother’s grave, to one day finish what Jack had started. He swore silently to find Jack’s gold.

— I —

Buck Horton was fifteen when his brother Jack was killed. He had short blond hair and a few freckles across his nose. He had a strawberry-shaped mole on his right cheek that his ma always said would make the girls’ hearts flutter, but he never paid that no mind.

His mother, Eva Horton, was unable to do much more than weep for Jack and all the years of loss her life had been. When she stepped off the one-horse buggy and walked into the two-room hovel they called home, she did not come out again. Not until Buck carried her corpse out to bury it two weeks later.

He had not been able to cry even then for her, though, if truth be told, he would have cried for himself. His father had left his mother and the boys alone with when he died defending a pair of deuces in a card game.

Jack had always, despite his wild ways, found a way to help. And even when he hadn’t been home, Buck always knew his big brother was ‘out there’—somewhere—and would come home.

Now Buck was truly alone.

For the next two years, Buck did three things. He worked the poor excuse for a farm, a scant plot where he planted beans and such which, along with a handful of scrawny laying hens and a milk cow, gave the boy enough to survive. Selling eggs keep him with a few coins for clothes.

He also made a ritual of reviewing his brother’s belongings, the trappings they’d hauled back when Jack had died. The meager collection lay spread out on the table in the front room like a shrine. Buck never moved any of it, sometimes standing to study it in the morning light before he went out to work the field, imagining his brother in that saddle riding for his life. He could still see a spot of blood on the saddle. It all sat untouched but always visible.

The one exception was Jack’s six shooter and gun rig. They were often missing from Buck’s shrine to his brother, worn on Buck’s hip, because the third thing that Buck did every day was practice.

Buck grew up with that pistol in his hand. At first he could barely lift it with both hands, let alone cock and fire it. But as the farm work built his muscles and his body filled out, it became second nature.

By the time he was sixteen, at six foot two, he could not only hold