The Adventures of Holly Amos

By Clint Westgard

Holly Amos is on the run from a payroll heist gone south. With Morris Danforth at her side, trouble has always been what she’s looking for. But lately Morris has been more trouble than he’s worth, and Holly is thinking it’s time for a change. Now with the law after them, things are about to take a turn for the worse.

Clive Hestin is the lawman on her trail. He is a Northwest Mounted Police constable, banished to a lawless frontier town for refusing to look the other way on the crimes of his fellow officers. He has to track down Holly and Morris or risk being drummed out of the force forever. Nothing will stop him from seeing justice done. Nothing, except, perhaps, Holly Amos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Quarter Books
• Release date: Oct 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781928035350

Clint Westgard

Clint Westgard is the author of The Shadow Men Trilogy and the science fiction epic The Sojourner Cycle, the first volume of which, The Forgotten, was published in 2015. In addition, he has published a work of historical fantasy set in colonial Peru, The Masks of Honor, and a retelling of the Minotaur legend, The Trials of the Minotaur. Clint Westgard lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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THE ADVENTURES OF HOLLY AMOS

CLINT WESTGARD

The Adventures of Holly Amos

Published by Lost Quarter Books

October, 2017

The Adventures of Holly Amos by Clint Westgard is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.  

ISBN: 978-1-928035-35-0

Cover image:  © Bruno1998 | Dreamstime.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE ADVENTURES OF HOLLY AMOS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE

1—Morris and Holly

2—Constable Hestin

3—Plans and Decisions

4—Crimes and Punishment

5—Dorothy

6—Finnegan Ferry

7—Cypress Hills

8—Sergeant Weathers

9—The Dress

10—The Public Room

11—Last Chance

12—Holly

13—Matters, Settled or Otherwise

14—A Parting

PART TWO

15—Old Acquaintances Met

16—The Hanged Man

17—Gene Archibald

18—Mortimer McCauley

19—Days Filled

20—Other Matters

21—A Conversation Overheard

22—A Silent Confrontation

23—A Problematic Kiss

24—At Twilight

PART THREE

25—Jeremiah James

26—Rescue

27—The Morning After

28—Consequences

29—If It’s Blood They Want

30—An Encounter

31—Questions Asked and Answers Given

32—A New Hire

33—At The McCauley House

34—In the Cellar

35—Borders

36—A Bloody Discovery

37—Cat and Mouse

38—Picking Up The Trail

39—Into the Hills

40—The Badlands

41—Sure Shot

42—In The Stables

43—A Missing Body

44—Parting Ways

EXCERPT: THE DEVIOUS KIND

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY CLINT WESTGARD

PART ONE

1—Morris and Holly

They hit the payroll, catching them in a crossfire as they came into Horseshoe Canyon on their way to pay the miners at the Atlas Coal Mine in Wayne. There were only two guns protecting it, and Morris Danforth and Holly Amos picked one off each from their perches high across the canyon. Clean shots both, right through the chest. The gunfire reverberated around the canyon, sounding almost as though it were coming up behind them.

The two men leading the packhorses tried to flee, but they shot the horses out from under them. If the Atlas Coal men survived their falls, Holly and Morris did not see. They were too busy scrambling to their own mounts to catch up with the fleeing payroll. That they did, intercepting the stampeding horses before they could scamper up the narrow and winding trail that led from the canyon to the plains above.

When they had calmed the panicked animals, they left the canyon behind, heading up into the hills to the north, where they had a camp set up. There were no trees there, just wild prairie, but the hills hid them well enough from anyone passing through on the way to Wayne. The road was little traveled, except by the Atlas Coal Company men, and it would be a day or two—if they were lucky—before anyone chanced upon the ambushed payroll. Time enough for them to rest and be gone from here.

Holly saw to the animals, taking them to a nearby slough for water and putting them in hobbles so they could rest and eat. Morris paid no mind to the animals or to her. He was in a frenzy of delight as he counted out the well-creased bills and coins—over two hundred fifty dollars’ worth.

If we get a good price on the packhorses, we should have nearly three hundred when it’s all said and done. No more worries for a while, Holly dear.

He let out a whoop and pulled her in for a kiss. No more worries, Morris honey, Holly said, as she slipped away from his grasp.

Holly set about to making some dinner for them both, opening tins of beans and divvying up the pemmican they had. They had the beans cold, not wanting to risk a fire, and washed them down with what remained of the rotgut they had exchanged with the Indians by Fort Macleod for the pemmican and some rancid buffalo meat. Morris had spent the following week muttering about that, promising to return south and find those bastards and see that they got theirs.

Holly had learned long ago not to say anything when Morris got some damned foolish idea in his head, for it would turn his ire toward her. Just as when he drained the bottle of whiskey and found himself in an amorous mood, she knew enough not to point out that they needed to be going and putting some distance between them and the dead Atlas Coal men.

Morris was trouble when he drank. He was trouble all around. She had known that from the first. It was why she had left home to go with him.

2—Constable Hestin

Constable Clive Hestin of the Northwest Mounted Police had just started down the trail into Horseshoe Canyon when he heard the shots in the distance. Two rifles, he thought. Five shots in all.

He paused a good long while to consider his options before starting his horse forward again. Two against one, with him at the bottom of a canyon, seemed a situation that was likely to end poorly for him. Best to proceed with caution and hope that whoever was shooting was out of the canyon and up onto the prairie by the time he arrived.

One of Gordon Eaton’s sons had been the one to bring word of a stranger lurking in the hills north and west of the Horseshoe. That had been the day before yesterday, but Hestin had only now managed to head out to investigate. A cardsharp had been killed in a brawl at the Last Chance Saloon in Wayne the night before, and he had spent the last two days interviewing those present to determine which coal miner had killed him. It was tedious, aggravating work, everyone’s memories rendered opaque by alcohol, and he was glad for the opportunity to see who the lurking stranger was.

Now that shots had been fired, new questions came with them. Was the stranger involved in some way? As one of the shooters or one of the shot? Or was he a witness? No matter the answers, Hestin felt in his bones that it would be a long bloody day.

His intuition was proven correct when, an hour later, he came upon the bodies of the two guns hired to guard the Atlas Coal Mine payroll. Flies had already begun to gather on the corpses as the heat of this summer day reached its full bloom. There were four sets of tracks heading east, and when he followed the two that had turned course back west out of the canyon, he came across the two Atlas Coal Mine employees and their horses. He recognized them both, for they came every month from Calgary with pay for the miners. One man was dead, his neck snapped in his tumble from his horse, while the other breathed shallowly beside his fallen horse.

Hestin looked him over carefully and saw that an arm and leg were both broken, and got to work at setting them both. There were no trees in the canyon, it being in the badlands that stretched along this part of the Red Deer River, so he used bits and pieces from the men’s possessions and from the saddles of their horses to fashion splints. The man stirred to consciousness as Hestin moved his broken limbs and gave him some water. With that done, he lifted the man up onto his horse and lashed him to the saddle as best he could.

He started walking west, leading the horse out of the canyon, hoping that he came across one of the dead guns’ horses. If not, he would be hard-pressed to make it to Gordon Eaton’s ranch before nightfall. He kept his free hand ready near his gun, scanning the bare hillsides of the badlands that surrounded him in the canyon, though he knew it was unlikely the two shooters remained anywhere near. They had come for the payroll, it seemed clear, and had set an ambush. Given he hadn’t met them on the way here, they had obviously left the canyon and would be on their way to parts unknown.

Hestin thought it likely that one of the shooters was the stranger Gordon Eaton’s son had seen two days before. The question now was, where would the shooters flee? The answer to that would have to wait until Hestin saw to the Atlas Coal man.

3—Plans and Decisions

The plan had been to go south, skirting between the western edge of the badlands and Calgary, before heading into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to make their way to Lethbridge. There they would sell the two packhorses and continue further south, across that amorphous 49th Parallel, and into the United States of America. What happened once they reached Montana was not discussed, but Holly knew exactly what would take place. Morris would gamble and drink and their newfound fortune would not last out the year. The next summer, they would return north again to deal in whiskey and petty thievery.

For a time, Holly had been satisfied with following these, the unchanging seasons of her life, once she had cast her lot with Morris Danforth. But lately her thinking on the matter had changed. The same restlessness that had led her from her family’s homestead and into Morris Danforth’s arms had returned. She tried to ignore it as best she could, telling herself that Morris treated her decently enough and the adventuring he had promised had materialized, more or less. Her life did not lack for excitement, even if she had not imagined it would be quite so filled with dreary nights spent out on the prairie, trying to keep warm without a fire amid swarms of insects as the coyotes and foxes provided their mournful chorus.

It did not help that Morris was something of a fool, as she had slowly come to realize. At first she had believed he was clever, but that, she now understood, was simply because he had known more of the ways of this world than she. Now she saw him for what he truly was. Never more so than today, when his drinking and amorous advances had led them to leave the hills far later than they should have. They descended to the plains below at the same time the mounted policeman emerged from the canyon with the surviving Atlas Coal man.

At the first sight of the constable, Morris turned and fled back up into the hills. Holly waited a moment, eyeing the man from across the prairie, debating whether she was close enough for a shot with the rifle, before deciding that was foolish in the extreme. Best not to bring the whole mounted police down upon them in a search. She turned her horse about and followed Morris back into the hills, the two packhorses trailing behind her.

She found Morris back by their camp, looking around as though he was lost. How good a look do you think he got of us?

How good a look did you get at him? Holly said, with an impatient shake of her head.

He’s a mounted policeman, Morris said, his eyes flashing with anger.

I couldn’t pick him out of a firing squad, Holly said, clicking her tongue to start her horse forward. There was no sense lingering any longer. The mounted policeman would, in all likelihood, continue on to whatever ranch or homestead was nearest to see to the injured man lashed to his saddle. But, in the event that he didn’t, it seemed prudent to make themselves scarce.

Morris rode up beside her. Where the hell you going, girl?

You want to stick around and wait for the law, you be my guest. I’m leaving.

Don’t you forget who’s got the payroll, Holly dear. I’m the one who makes the decisions here.

Surely you are, Morris, Holly said sweetly, neither stopping, nor glancing in his direction. Where do you reckon we should head now? Can’t go south. Not with the law waiting for us.

Morris was silent for a time, chewing his cud as he mulled the possibilities.

I’ve an idea, Holly said. We could head east a spell. Avoid the badlands, mind. And then head south around Finnegan country. Sell the horses at the first town we come to. Stay to the wild country all the way to Montana.

Morris did not reply, still working over his lip, and Holly knew that he had agreed to her plan. It was the best available, given their circumstances. And once they reached the safety of Montana, she resolved, it would be time to bring their partnership to an end. The next time she and Morris encountered the law, she knew, it would not end so peacefully, and she had every intention of seeing that did not come to pass.

4—Crimes and Punishment

Constable Hestin did not linger at the Eaton Ranch, though it was well into the evening by the time he arrived. He left the Atlas Coal man in Emma’s capable hands and took advantage of the long summer day, where the light lasted until nearly eleven in the evening, to head north to where he had encountered the two men