To Kill A Dead Man: The Adventures of Grey O'Donnell, #2

By Icy Sedgwick

Grey O'Donnell is back to normality after the events in Retribution six months before. He and partner Billy Cole are hunting down a fugitive with a large price on his head, and what should have been a routine job takes a turn for the weird when they follow the trail to an abandoned mining encampment.

Something unnatural lurks in the trees near Bentley, and when the living dead pay a visit to the town, Grey enlists the help of a Ute medicine man to fight them off. Trouble is, the love of Grey's life has gone missing, and he's not about to lose Peggy a second time.

Pick up this weird Western adventure today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Icy Sedgwick
• Release date: Apr 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386164241

Icy Sedgwick

ICY SEDGWICK is part film academic, part writer and part trainee supervillain. Icy dreams of Dickensian London and the Old West. She writes primarily gothic fiction, although she does love a good Western. Find her ebooks, free weekly fiction and other shenanigans at Icy’s Cabinet of Curiosities.

Book preview

Dedication

For Grey, who decided to work with me a second time!

Chapter 1

Folk often ask me why I chose to be a bounty hunter and not a legitimate lawman. I guess you could say I like being my own boss, and jurisdiction never sat too well with me. I’d spent the last six years of my life hunting the lowest of the low, and they ain’t the type of folk I’d want to let go because they crossed state lines. Sure, a marshal can go pretty much wherever he pleases, but they still got boundaries of one kind or another. When the day came for them to chisel out my tombstone, it would say that Grey O’Donnell was free from boundaries.

Besides, there were plenty of other benefits to a life lived under the stars—fresh air, the open road, and enough freedom for any man. I got to pick and choose what I did, and when I did it. When you spent your day under a clear sky, breathing clean air, you appreciated it. I was thinking about that on the day we rode into Bentley, the Colorado sky poking bright blue through the trees. The air smelled alive, and damn near made me feel like bursting into song, if my singing didn’t sound like a half-dead coyote. The sunlight flickered across the trail as we passed a large boulder, the name of the town spelled out in weathered letters.

Look, boss, we’ve reached town limits, said Billy.

That we have. I guess a rock makes a change from a rotting sign. Heck, we’d passed through one town that had a horse carcass instead of a post. I didn’t want to think about that hole too much. That one job saw us outnumbered by an inbred family with a taste for humans. A passing marshal got us out of that one.

D’ya think Guthrie’s still here? Billy dug the wanted poster out of his pocket. The artist sure did a good job with Guthrie’s twisted scar and broken nose.

I do. Remember what Jackie said? ‘He ain’t got nowhere else to go.’ He’ll be in Bentley sure as night follows day.

Billy nodded and I tried to swallow my doubts. How far could you trust the word of a dying man, especially when his dying was the fault of the man he just betrayed? I thought of Jackie Bainbridge, the final member of the Guthrie Gang to be murdered by its ringleader, Cyrus Guthrie. We found him stashed behind the land office in Clarkston, belly full of more lead than blood. He gave up Guthrie’s last hiding place just afore he breathed his last. Painful way to go—Jackie was by no means a better a man than Guthrie but I wouldn’t wish that kind of end on most men.

Up ahead, a tree divided the trail in two. The left hand path curved away into the woods, and the right hand path disappeared up an incline. But the fork wasn’t what caught my eye. I tugged on Bess’ reins and leapt down from the horse. She whinnied and tried to back away.

Somethin’ wrong, boss? asked Billy. He stopped his own mare, Quick Draw, and leaned forward in the saddle. I bent down to pick up the grey leather boot lying on its side among the grass. Deep indentations ruined the hand-tooled pattern, and a dark red crust clung to the leather.

This look familiar to you? I held it up for Billy’s inspection.

That’s awful fancy for out here. Didn’t you say Bentley’s a mining town? What kind of miner wears tooled leather? Heck, even I don’t.

That’s not the only thing too fancy for these parts. I handed the boot to him, pointing out the engraved silver spur. Billy peered at the curved ‘CG’ insignia, his eyes growing wide. Guthrie might not have been a remarkable fella but his taste in footwear got him noticed. It made him a whole lot easier to track. What do they say about walking a mile in a man’s shoes before you can really know him? You just try following those shoes instead.

Is that blood? Billy pointed at the patches of crimson.

I think so. I leaned over and picked at the crust. It flaked away from the leather, and a sharp tang, like the smell of wet rust, hung in the air. Guthrie must be around here someplace.

Billy stared at the boot, his nose inches away from the leather. A couple of minutes later, he finally held the boot out toward me.

I hate to say it, boss, but these look like teeth marks. Billy pointed to the indentations, filled with thick dark red clots. I took the boot back from Billy and ran my fingers across the marks. In a couple of places they ran clean through the leather. More dried blood clung to the holes on the inside of the boot.

They certainly do, Billy.

Attacked by a bear, maybe? Or a coyote?

I don’t think so. They’ve got pointed teeth but these look ... well they look like something else. See how they’re more like slices than punctures?

That ain’t a big mouth, either. Heck, that looks like I could’ve done it. Billy scowled as he measured the distance across the half crescent with his palm. I looked closer at the marks and saw spaces between them.

Look at those gaps, Billy. Whatever it was has lost some teeth at some point.

So something must have happened to him. Should we search the woods? Billy stared into the trees, his right hand straying towards his holster. I stashed the boot in the pack strapped to Bess’ saddle and climbed back onto the mare. I hauled on her reins to stop her dancing from side to side. She didn’t want that boot anywhere near her—and I can’t say I was too pleased to have it with us either.

We’ll need to do a search at some point but I reckon we go into town first, see if anyone’s seen a man in one boot.

But it looks like something got him, boss. Billy’s hand wavered over his pistol. His nerves were wound so tight I could almost hear them humming.

That’s one option. For all we know, he was set on by bandits, lost his boots, and limped into town. There’s no blood on the ground, so that boot could’ve been dropped.

Boss, I really think we should take a look in the woods.

Billy had a point but we didn’t know the area, and I didn’t take too kindly to the idea of following trails into the woods without some kind of guide. We’ve tracked killers and thieves into all kinds of territory but they’ve always left some kind of trail. This time, all we had was a discarded boot on the outskirts of town.

We know Guthrie’s been in the area—we got proof. But he could have gone into town as easily as he could be lost in the woods. We can ask the folk in town if there have been any other animal attacks of late, and we have to find that lil’ lady at the whorehouse. Jackie said she’d know where Cyrus would be. For all we know, he’s got a hideout somewhere.

Shouldn’t we go look for that then?

No, we should go ask questions in town, and try to find out where his hideout is. I want a guide if we’re gonna be tracking up there.

But—

Just why are you so damned keen to go haring off into the woods?

I don’t like it up here, boss. The quicker we go check ‘em out, the quicker we can leave.

I’m not comfortable here too but we gotta do this properly. We need information, and we won’t find that riding around in circles in woods we don’t know. We need the money we’ll get from Guthrie, alive or dead, okay?

Billy pouted and sat back in his saddle, his hand moving away from his gun. We set off up the incline and I watched the other path disappear into the trees. What was lurking in there? Was Billy right, or was his trigger finger getting the better of him again?

Chapter 2

The trail curved away from us on the other side of the incline. I stared the length of the street in amazement. Last time I was in Bentley, it was a collection of tents and a whorehouse. Of course, where there’s silver there’s soon a whole bunch of people ready to live off the profits. That’s why wooden buildings lined the street instead of tents, and painted advertisements for luxury goods adorned any spare walls. This was no mere mining camp—this was an honest to God town .

Seems like a big town, boss. I thought you said this was a small place.

I guess times have changed, Billy. People must have settled here for the silver to save themselves the trek across the Rockies for Californian gold.

How come your folks stopped in Arizona instead of here?

My momma got sick from all the travelling just after they crossed the Rockies. Things would have sure been different if they’d holed up here.

Women promenaded along the wooden verandas, their menfolk either deep in conversation in the middle of the street, or hurrying to and fro running errands. I couldn’t help noticing how many of them wore the trappings of mining. Just how many miners lived in Bentley, and why weren’t they up at the mine? Guess it was more of an idle curiosity—I had a cold-blooded murderer to catch.

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