Blood Bounty: Wanted Dead but Alive

By Owen Atkinson

Bounty hunter. Bank robber. Corpse. What should have been the end for Garrett Adams is only the beginning. Betrayed and murdered by those he trusted, he rises from the dead to exact bloody vengeance. Aided by the local mortician, Garrett must overcome a crooked marshal, a pitiless enforcer, and darker forces still if he is to set things right. But is all truly as it seems? "Blood Bounty" by Owen Atkinson is a horror western novella published by Mannison Press, LLC.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mannison Press, LLC
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005108342

Owen Atkinson

Owen Atkinson is an Australian author who grew up watching westerns, firing cap guns, and reading spooky stories. He used to write marketing copy before he realised it's a lot more fun to just make things up. After a few years of writing, editing, and even podcasting for UK video games website "Power Up Gaming," he decided to return to his old friend/enemy, fiction. He currently divides his time between writing stories, creating content for a "Dungeons and Dragons" sourcebook, and eliciting cuddles from his criminally adorable cats.

Book preview

Blood Bounty

Wanted Dead but Alive

By Owen Atkinson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2021 Owen Atkinson

Published by Mannison Press, LLC at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Contents

Prologue

1 – Good Intentions

2 – The Fall and Rise

3 – Boom Goes the Dynamite

4 – Riding High

5 – Needs

6 – Dead Woman's Hand

7 – Fly in the Ointment

8 – Leverage

9 – Mount Up

10 – The Calm Before

11 – Slap Leather

12 – Reap What You Sow

13 – Blood from a Stone

14 – A Crisis of Faith

15 – Hatchet Man

16 – Die in Your Boots

17 – No Way Out

Epilogue

About the Author

For Nessie and Indie,

the fluffy queens of the house who only sometimes sit on my keyboard.

Prologue

Six in the gun, six in the gang.

What the hell did that mean, thought Garrett Adams, his back to the rest of the gang as he kept his gun trained on the bank tellers. He didn't know it yet, but these were the last words he would ever hear as a mortal man. Words that would haunt him long after his dying breath. He didn't even have time to feel betrayed by these men and women he'd called comrades, if not friends. He'd known robbing the Darksoil bank might end his life, even by a shot in the back, but nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to endure. Everyone knew there was no honor among thieves, but this…this went beyond.

The robbery had gone like clockwork. With bandanas covering their faces, their fledgling gang of seven had flowed through the bank as effortlessly and inevitably as the tide. Without firing a shot, they had detained the tellers, blown the safe, and fled out the door before the law could catch wind. Garrett's job was to keep the witnesses' heads down with the threat of hot lead, keeping anyone from raising an alarm until they were gone. This meant he was last out the door, though he only had his back turned to the others for a few seconds. That, however, was all they needed.

The sneering voice of Boyd, their self-appointed leader, speaking those cryptic words was his first clue. The chilling sound of six hammers cocking in unison was his second. He would not get a third. Turning to face them, he saw their half-dozen revolvers aimed steadily at his body, the hands wielding them running with fresh blood. In the deathly silence, Garrett could hear droplets hitting the floor at their feet, drawn from the knives each held in their off hand.

He swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. Well, if they were going to put him down, he would make it cost them. In a flash, Garrett raised the gun in his hand, figuring to take at least one of them down with him. But quick as he was, he never even got a shot off. Their six-guns exploded in unison, bullets ripping through his body, tearing out chunks of flesh, bone, and organ as they went. Though this took but a moment, for Garrett it seemed like an eternity.

He felt everything.

He knew who had fired which bullet, and where each had hit him. He felt the crunch and tear as little Eugene's stray shot mangled his knee, and a vain sense of loss as Beth Lucky Langford's hip-shot shredded his trigger finger. Gutshot Jones, true to form, pulverized his kidney, while Josephine's grimly aimed bullet cracked his spine like a tree branch. Even as one bullet gouged his eye and another punched into his skull—courtesy of Boyd and Rufus, respectively—he still saw the scene before him with perfect clarity, like some macabre play put on solely for his benefit. Those six faces, some uncertain, some sneering, burned into his mind with an intensity that eclipsed even the agony of his wounds.

Then suddenly everything went blank. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Chapter One: Good Intentions

The pan sifted endlessly before him, hour after hour. His hands, normally hard and calloused, were going soft in the cold running water. The icy stream burned at the fingers that could still feel, and his back ached from crouching down for hours at a time. Garrett's stomach groaned, threatening to collapse in on itself as it pined for the one piece of jerky left in his pack. The unforgiving summer sun beat relentlessly down on him from dawn to dusk, drenching his back with sweat and cooking his skin like a plate of beans. He stretched and straightened up a little, and his calves stabbed at him like someone had run them through with an iron bar.

Sucking in a breath, Garrett tore his eyes from the pan and looked wearily around the collapsed mountain pass where he'd chosen to stake his claim. The terrain was more rocks than dirt, the stream cleaving a wayward path through it to the valley below. Uphill, near where the pass had caved in, stood the only structure for miles: a tiny shack that he'd found abandoned on his first visit. All in all, this claim wasn't much to look at, but once the gold started to flow, it'd spruce up right quick, he thought. If the gold started to flow.

Though he was new to the area, he'd heard the locals fearfully refer to the place as Songdog's Den. He'd hiked up here expecting to be set upon by coyotes at every turn, but it seemed instead that the pass got its name from the eerie winds that whistled through it like a coyote's whine. He scoffed bitterly. Songdog's Den was just like the valley's tales of rich gold veins: half lies, half exaggeration, and causing people grief for no good reason.

Garrett had arrived at a coach stop just outside Abel Valley with nothing but his gun and his horse, and was low enough on supplies that he immediately had to choose one to sell. The old brown nag had served him well on the journey there, but as he'd be spending most of his days in the one spot, she wasn't a whole lot of use to him anymore. Besides, she'd gotten some wolfish glances from some enterprising locals, so if he'd sold his gun, he doubted he'd have had a horse for much longer either. Knowing this hadn't made the day-long treks to and from the stream any easier, however.

Like everyone else who came to this valley for wealth and glory, Garrett had chosen to take a stagecoach through the treacherous, bandit-filled passes rather than risk them on foot. There was nothing like a few heavily-armed bodyguards to give outlaws pause, and Garrett considered it money well spent. However, the price to get back out of the valley was downright extortionate, the drivers spinning some line about greater risk due to their passengers being weighed down with all that gold and cash. How they said this with a straight face, Garrett would never know.

On every one of the walks between his claim and Darksoil, the largest town in Abel Valley, he'd passed at least a dozen prospectors, all hunting for the same windfall as he was, and he didn't think he'd seen the same face twice. He would've been naive to think he was the only one lured out to these parts by the gold rumors, but he hadn't expected it to be this competitive.

Garrett had hoped to supplement his finds with some honest labor as needed, but the influx of poor, able-bodied men and women in the valley meant that anyone hiring was already employing all the hands they could afford to pay. Darksoil might have been the next American boom town if there was any actual wealth to back all this up. As it was, down-and-out prospectors couldn't even afford a stagecoach back to where they came from, so they just collected in the streams, hands working feverishly in the silt. Rumor had it the mayor actually paid the coach drivers to keep their prices high to corral all the cheap labor in town. What he needed it for was anyone's guess.

A snapping twig jolted Garrett alert like a coiled snake. He whirled around to face the source, ready to draw on whatever coyote or worse was out there. But instead of a hungry animal, he found a man with hungry eyes. The stranger smiled and showed his palms in a placating gesture, but Garrett wasn't in a trusting mood.

Easy now, the stranger said, let's keep it neighborly.

You're a day's walk from the closest thing to civilization, 'neighbor,' said Garrett, his eyes narrowed. What do you want?

Name's Boyd, the stranger said with a touch of an Irish accent. Heard there was gold up in these hills, and nobody else dumb enough to risk crossing the wildlife. Seems I was at least half wrong, he added with a smirk.

Garrett straightened up to his full height and put on as intimidating a face as he could muster, fixing to drive the man off. In truth, however, he must have looked a sight, more feral bandicoot than proud wolf. His lean body was rank with sweat, rivulets of moisture carving their way through the dust caking on his sun-darkened skin. The thick mustache that bristled under his wide nose was so stiff with dirt he bet he could tear it off and throw it like a dart. If any part of him would scare the stranger off, it would be his intense brown eyes, locked into a piercing, searching gaze from endless hours of prospecting.

You always creep up on folks you meet? he asked.

The stranger shrugged. Well, I had to be sure there weren't a gang of renegades behind you before I made myself known.

Garrett considered this but remained unswayed. Boyd was six feet of pure gristle, with both a gun and a hunting knife on his hip. His efforts to charm Garrett revealed a saw-toothed grin, dog-legged by a deep cleft in his cheek. The scar curved viciously from ear to chin, puckering the skin inward where it had healed badly. In short, Boyd looked like trouble's granddaddy.

This claim is mine, Garrett replied, jerking his head for Boyd to leave. Head about a thousand paces downstream and we'll get along just fine.

Instead, Boyd took a step forward.

Now hear me out. How much of your day do you spend looking over your shoulder for coyotes, rattlers, or unsavory types like me? he asked, flashing that canine grin. While you're watching for trouble, your bounty might be flowin' on right by you. He took another step closer. I propose we work together, one keeping watch and tending camp while the other pans. Whatever one of us finds, we split down the middle.

Boyd prepared to take another step but waited for Garrett's answer before moving. Mustache twitching as he thought it over, Garrett slowly took his hand from his revolver. Truth be told, if he didn't take a break, his hands were likely to turn black and drop off into that darned stream. Boyd smiled broadly and rubbed his hands together, pulling a pan from his pack and taking up position in a low point slightly downstream from Garrett's spot.

Silently grateful for the break, Garrett swept off his hat to wipe his forehead, letting his lank brown hair drop below his ears. Trying to flex some warmth into his fingers, he set about making a fire. Darkness would fall soon, and the nights up there got mighty cold. Once his mound of dried twigs and branches started crackling in earnest, he lit himself a cigarillo and sat back to watch Boyd work.

Good thinking, partner, Boyd commented, looking over his shoulder. Usually the only people this far out are hunters, so critters should know to keep clear of a fire. Unless we get a bear; they don't give a shit, he added with a laugh.

You know a lot about animals? Garrett asked, puffing thoughtfully on his cigarillo.

This and that. Mostly ways to kill 'em. But I can spit roast a raccoon so nice you'd swear it was beef.

Garrett's stomach growled loudly enough to reach even Boyd's ears. I may have to take you up on that, Garrett conceded.

Boyd laughed like a sawmill. A more grating, abrasive sound Garrett had never heard, giving him a brief chill despite the campfire.

I know what I said, Boyd called to him, fingers already shivering in the icy water, but with that smoke hopefully keeping critters at bay, why don't you jump in over here while there's still daylight?

With a nod, Garrett warily returned to his spot, a dozen paces or so to Boyd's right. For a while they panned in