Carmody 6: Screaming on the Wire

By Peter McCurtin

Riding north from Sonora to hire out his gun, Carmody didn’t quite know what the trouble was about—and didn’t give a damn. The money was good and it looked like it was going to be a nice dirty old-fashioned range war. That’s what Carmody thought, but that was before he saved the runty kid’s life. After that things began to get complicated—and murderous. Tex McCarty was the little killer’s name, and he was a whole mess of trouble in one small man. He brought death to everything he touched, and the more Carmody thought about it, the more he knew there was only one cure for a man like that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Apr 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311474094

Peter McCurtin

Peter J. McCurtin was born in Ireland on 15 October 1929, and immigrated to America when he was in his early twenties. Records also confirm that, in 1958, McCurtin co-edited the short-lived (one issue) New York Review with William Atkins. By the early 1960s, he was co-owner of a bookstore in Ogunquit, Maine, and often spent his summers there.McCurtin's first book, Mafioso (1970) was nominated for the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and filmed in 1973 as The Boss, with Henry Silva. More books in the same vein quickly followed, including Cosa Nostra (1971), Omerta (1972), The Syndicate (1972) and Escape From Devil's Island (1972). 1970 also saw the publication of his first "Carmody" western, Hangtown.Peter McCurtin died in New York on 27 January 1997. His westerns in particular are distinguished by unusual plots with neatly resolved conclusions, well-drawn secondary characters, regular bursts of action and tight, smooth writing. If you haven't already checked him out, you have quite a treat in store.McCurtin also wrote under the name of Jack Slade and Gene Curry.

Book preview

Riding north from Sonora to hire out his gun, Carmody didn’t quite know what the trouble was about—and didn’t give a damn. The money was good and it looked like it was going to be a nice dirty old-fashioned range war. That’s what Carmody thought, but that was before he saved the runty kid’s life. After that things began to get complicated—and murderous. Tex McCarty was the little killer’s name, and he was a whole mess of trouble in one small man. He brought death to everything he touched, and the more Carmody thought about it, the more he knew there was only one cure for a man like that.

SCREAMING ON THE WIRE

CARMODY 6

By Peter McCurtin

First Published by Belmont Tower Books in 1972

Copyright © 1972, 2016 by Peter McCurtin

First Smashword Edition: May 2016

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin

Series Editor: Ben Bridges ~*~Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

Chapter One

Now it was none of my damn business why those three fellers were trading bullets out there in the New Mexico desert. The two rifle shooters were waiting out the other feller, counting on the white glare of the sun to fry his brains, figuring he’d try something desperate when he was down to his last few shells.

A long way back, I heard a scatter of shots, then nothing after that. Maybe an hour later, taking it easy in the early afternoon heat, I topped a ridge and saw the little man lying behind the dead cow pony, the sun flashing on the nickeled revolver in his left hand.

Trouble is my business when I get paid for it, or have some pressing and personal interest, and if those two rifle shooters out there in the rocks had any sense they might have given me the opportunity to turn my animal and ride away from there. Of course, I could see their point: I could be a friend of the little man with the shiny gun. That was how they saw it, because both rifles cut loose from cover, and for one or two seconds I thought I’d never get to know who killed me.

They should have cut me down with the first bullets, since it’s no weighty thing for two riflemen to drill a rider outlined against the top of a ridge. But they were in too much of a hurry—all that waiting in the sun had made them edgy—and by the time they took more care with their shooting I was afoot and pushing my animal down the safe side of the ridge.

Then I was on my belly, sliding the Winchester over the rim, looking for something to shoot at. From behind the dead pony the little man was returning the fire. You could tell by the sound that he was using a small caliber pistol; no matter, a .45 Colt with a Buntline barrel wouldn’t have worked any better at that distance. I pegged a shot at a face under a hat, but if I hit him, he didn’t holler. A bullet from the other shooter kicked sand in my face.

I yelled and pulled back out of sight. Even so, there was nothing to keep me there—and I wasn’t even mad—but you can’t let people shoot at you and think they can get away with it. They had better cover than I did, and my head was likely to get a third eye if I showed it often enough. Pulling back, keeping low, I ran along the safe side of the slope. There was more shooting—the crack-crack of the pistol, the heavier crash of the rifles.

About fifty yards along the back of the ridge, I shucked my hat and came up easy, holding the Winchester short, the butt against my hip. That part of the ridge was studded with small rocks, and from where I was I could see the rifleman on the right; not all of him—just the top of his high-crowned Texas hat, a wedge of shoulder behind a rock.

The little man they were trying so hard to kill was more a kid than a man. I saw that when he fired the last bullet in the cylinder and rolled over on his back to reload. Even from that distance I swear the little runt was grinning.

The two rifle shooters were yelling again, trying to decide how it was with me. The one in the Texas hat sounded confident, and having his shooting eye doubted by his partner made him mad. That—and the kid opening up with another hail of bullets, none of which did a God damned bit of good. I had to make it quick. The dangerous side of the ridge was as bare as Monday breakfast on the poor farm—not a bit of cover. It ran down bare and hard to where the kid was, and if not for that dead pony he would have been long dead himself.

That wild, grinning kid had the dirtiest mouth I ever heard on a man. The voice was a high-pitched snarling yell, and some of the things he said about those fellers’ mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, were new even to me. He had a way of doing it. First, a bullet, then some dirty-mouth stuff. And so on. A man with sense doesn’t yell like that; in the desert when he’s pinned down and short of water he doesn’t yell at all. And what in hell was this runt doing without a rifle in hard country? A double-barreled sawed-off was propped against the dead pony’s belly. But he made no move to use it, and I guess he thought the scattergun was his ace in the hole.

The chances wouldn’t come in bundles; shooting at a wedge of shoulder wasn’t sure enough. If I fired and missed, the mully-grubbing stand-off could drag on till it got dark. Long before that, a bunch of their friends could ride up, and I’d find myself dying for nothing at all.

I guess Texas Hat convinced the other feller I was dead or done-for. They got brave and fired together, throwing bullets but staying low, waiting to see if they got any answering fire from the ridge. They didn’t—not right away. Blazing away like a fool, the kid took a bullet in the arm and rolled behind the mound of dead horseflesh. Move—finish him! Texas Hat was yelling.

He broke cover first, running at the wounded kid in a fast zigzag Apache scramble. His partner was older, bulkier, not so light on his feet. He ran like he’d rather be running the other way. He could wait; his fast-moving partner was the one to get.

The fast one saw the flash of the Winchester as I jerked it to my shoulder and fired. That first bullet winged him but didn’t bring him down. I swung the Winchester, following his run, and then he dived away from where he thought the next bullet would hit. He was wrong. It was like shooting a bird on the wing. The .44-40 slug ripped through his side and knocked him over in a tangle of arms and legs, and when he got through waving he hit the ground and lay still.

The other runner wasn’t graceful at all, but he did what I would have done; and he was down on one knee firing back at me when I swung the Winchester and put two bullets through his chest. He was a heavy man and the bullets didn’t knock him back. All he did was sag, then sag some more, and he was good and dead before his bulk settled to the ground like a sack of spuds.

Damn it, that kid was full of surprises. Both men were dead, but he was still cursing, still trying to raise the sawed-off. From the way it flopped, his right arm was broken or wrenched, and the other was shot through. Thinking he meant to use the sawed-off on me for reasons of his own, I levered a shell and told him the war was over. Though I had just saved his life, he’d get a bullet in the head if he even pointed that thing my way. But you’d think I wasn’t even there. Wobbling on runty legs, he struggled to his feet, yelled in pain or rage or both—and loosed one barrel of buckshot at the dead man closer than the other. The blast tore off the dead man’s right arm and made mulligan stew of his head. Then the kid fired the second cartridge.

I got up and told him to let the shotgun slide. He turned, the mean toothy grin getting tighter, and for a minute he looked like a bad kid coming out of the woodshed with a sore behind. A closer look said this kid would cut his Daddy’s throat once the old man went to sleep. The rifle in