Goldenbeard

By Percy Crow

Based upon a narrative poem penned by the author in 2005, Goldenbeard is the fictional tale of homeless loner, Lyle Lonnegan.
Left for dead by the infamous Hand of Doom, Lyle battles grief, guilt, the wilderness, and his crumbling sanity in his mission for righteous revenge.
All characters, events and towns are purely fictional so, history buffs, please hand over discernment with your sidearms at the door. ;- )

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780648339649

Book preview

Prologue

September 1888

Thunder explodes outside. Wind lunges at the windows, causing all loosely battened shutters to chatter in their frames, drowning out Candy’s theatrical cries of ecstasy from down the hall.

Madam Charlotte has heard hundreds of nymphs du prairies’ different routines over the last two decades, so she knows, tonight her youngest girl is really hamming it up.

Candy’s john is what Madam Charlotte calls an irregular regular. She knows he is no cowboy, as he sometimes comes during spring or fall, when any herder worth his salt is busy on the trails droving cattle southward to their mass slaughter.

Whatever this feller does for a dollar causes him to drift through her neck of the woods at random intervals, staying for random lengths of time.

The arrogant youth is her least favorite client. He loves noisy girls: the more they moan, the bigger his ugly smile, the broader his swagger, and the louder his smarmy farewells as the puny shit ambles out into the street.

Sometimes, when the girls’ manufactured moans weren’t enough, the disgusting pig got rough. Not just lost-in-the-pleasure-ass-spanking rough: punch-in-the-face rough. Two times he’d left Charlotte’s girls unable to work for days afterwards owing to facial bruising.

Her calico queens might not be the pink of perfection, but they work hard in this demanding trade, and deserve some god damn respect.

Despite two stern explanations that his behavior is unacceptable here –or anywhere else for that matter– the asshole kept roughhousing her women.

Charlotte bemoans the fact that in such a small town there isn’t enough work to afford a proper box-herder. Sheriff Powers does a great job keeping the locals in line, but this young cad went as quickly as he came, never staying long enough to be around for the talk that he so verily needed to hear from the lawman’s baton.

Outside, the wind renews its attack on the windows, hurling more rain, and lighting flares, brilliant as noon sunshine. Thunder again shakes the humble cedar-clad bordello, making Madam Charlotte jump out of her seat and drop her book to the floor. When she regathers it from beneath her chair and sits upright, her heart explodes in her chest.

A dangerous intruder is looming over the counter, staring intently into her soul.

Charlotte instantly knows that he is trouble. Serious-as-the-plague trouble. Tall, sinewy, with a hard intensity she has never seen before, his unforgiving face hadn’t seen a razor in roughly two years, judging from the dirty two-inch blonde whiskers framing it. His eyes are cold enough to chill a volcano; murder lurks in their eternal depths.

While the drifter scans the room, Charlotte wonders how he’d managed to traverse her reception area with its countless creaky boards, let alone get through the door, quiet as a ghost. She hadn’t heard a peep; as if he’d magically sprung from nowhere.

Disturbingly, the interloper also has a terrifying quietness about him, as if he’s detached from the cares of regular folk.

His hostile, otherworldly gaze is boring into her again, gluing Charlotte’s tongue to the suddenly dry roof of her mouth.

The experienced madam knows this intruder isn’t here tonight to fuck any of her girls. While he seems to be listening intently to Candy’s histrionics, his gaze doesn’t linger on any of the inspirational nudes hung on the walls behind her.

In an inexplicable fantasy of a normal date, most johns presented themselves respectably as possible for their paid concubine. But this man’s clothes are at least three weeks past their last brush with soap. And by the offence upon Charlotte’s nose, so was he!

His only concession to neatness is the ponytail keeping his wavy blonde ringlets off his dirty face and shock of beard. The only scrap of jewelry on the man is a small yellowed fang on a leather thong hung around his neck. Although the only tinge of red in his skin is from excess sun, it looks like something a Plains Indian Brave might adorn himself with.

For protection against such troublesome customers, Charlotte keeps an easy to reach Derringer holstered under the counter. Problem is that earlier she had slid her chair back four feet to sit under the wall-mounted lantern in order to better enjoy her penny dreadful. She could never reach the weapon in time. Unless she distracted the bastard.

Forcing herself to not look at her pistol she holds his icy gaze. Sir, we have only three girls on tonight. But as you can hear…  Charlotte tries a flirtatious joke to soften him a bit. It falls flat; his face remains stormy as the sky outside. …they’re all otherwise engaged and will be for the rest of the night. Our clients have paid in full until dawn, she lies, hoping to expedite his disappearance.

I ain’t here for any of yer ladies. I’m lookin’ for a man.

Not wanting to enrage a monster possessed of such distant, murderous eyes, Madam Charlotte chooses her next words as carefully as she does her tone. I’m very sorry sir, we don’t cater for… those needs. Perhaps you might try your luck elsewhere, at a large city estab–

Ma’am, my business here is purely platonic, he explains, opening his dusty brown trench coat to reveal side arms: shiny, top of the range Colt single action revolvers.

A man so shabbily dressed could only have stolen such fine irons.

He would’ve come in ‘bout a half-hour ago.

Madam Charlotte politely explains to the thieving liar, My fine sir, this is a quiet, respectable business. We don’t want no trouble here.

Well, ya should be more careful who ya conduct yer business with. Just point me toward the correct room. I promise ya ‘n’ the other ladies absolutely no harm.

Charlotte is too well-seasoned to believe promises from such a barbarian. Thinking that soon as he’s down the hall she’ll pull her pistol from under the counter, jam it to the back of his skull and march him straight out into the night, Charlotte hooks a thumb over her shoulder. He’s with Candy. Second door on the left.

Thank ya kindly, ma’am.

He glides like silent silk over the floor, as if there are no legs under his trench coat. Years ago, in her prime, Madam Charlotte had serviced many a wealthy client back east in Gotham City. On their dime she’d been privileged enough to watch several operas and ballet productions at the Academy of Music in Manhattan. No prima ballerina traversed the boards with any more grace than did this lanky panther.

Without turning he pauses long enough to warn, If ya know what’s good for ya lady, leave that little Derringer in its hidey hole ‘n’ make yerself scarce.

Wondering,

How in the hell could he know?

Charlotte obeys. Mindless with panic she flees out into the darkness, ignoring the blazing lighting show overhead.

*            *

From the accelerating rhythm and desperate edge in his moans Candy knows her last john for the night is about to topple over the abyss. Desperate to end it, she discards her mental to-do list, to better focus on the job at hand.

"Oh my god baby, you’re sooo gooood," she sighs in her breathiest voice, wiggling her hips in wider circles to hasten his climax.

From the creep’s sudden urgency, she knows he’s lapping it up like a cat at a fresh bowl of cream. Men being such simple creatures, always did.

But the door suddenly explodes inward, robbing the dirtbag of his happy ending. Candy screams in surprise, scrambling to cover herself with the sheets from the spidery-limbed stranger silhouetted in the doorway.

Her client reflexively shoots out an arm, reaching for the irons nestled in his pile of clothes. Before he’s even half-extended, the intruder’s snake-like arms whip out two pistols.

Thunder fills the room. With deadly accuracy four fingers from her young john’s left hand are vaporized, before a third missile thuds into the teenager’s stomach. Breathless, he tumbles to the floor with less grace than a sack of cow dung.

Screaming in horror at his bloody stump, gingerly touching his abdominal wound the young man moans, Awwww sshhiiit, as the first drops of blood trickle down his chin. A deep sense of loss in his trembling voice confirms what Candy already knows: the wound is fatal.

Trinidad is one of the roughest towns in the West, with all manner of lowlifes haunting her streets daily. In her nineteen years Candy had witnessed enough gunplay to know a crack shot. Yet she had never seen anybody as quick, smooth, or deadly as the menacing figure in her doorway, who’d incredibly also re-holstered, in the blink of an eye.

Two bullets had mangled her young client’s hand, and the gut shot would kill the boy before dawn.

Abdominal shots are a slow, cruel way to die. The accuracy of the first two slugs proves the third was no accident.

Trembling in terror, lowering her gaze to the sadistic villain’s worn, dusty mud pipes, Candy confesses, "My money is under the dresser… But please sir, don’t kill me."

The murderer ambles over, toppling the unit, collecting the thick bundle of tattered twenties. Candy sighs ruefully at the mountain of hours wasted in this room pretending to enjoy the company of all those nameless sweaty pigs.

That tiny wad of paper is all it amounts to, she sadly muses. And in one miserable heartbeat it’s all gone to this evil manic.

Is this all of it? he asks, his piercing gaze turning Candy’s legs to jelly.

Yessir. That’s all I got. Honest to Gawd!

At her last count Candy had squirreled away almost a thousand dollars. By the cheap rags he wore and his everyman accent, it is more cash than this man had seen in his entire lifetime. Still, the deadly villain doesn’t believe her. He rifles through her drawers, his dirty hands and mind sifting through all of her intimate apparel seeking more lucre.

When the intruder is done, he throws one of her dresses with the wad of notes onto Candy’s bed, barking at her, Put that on ‘n’ get’cha pretty little self the hell outta here, missy.

Suspecting a twisted trick, Candy eyes the grimy notes bound by a bowed red ribbon on the sweat-damp calico sheets in shock, too terrified to move.

Her john had meanwhile been inching toward his weapons. Spotting his intentions, the tall killing machine glides across the room, thrusts a remorseless boot into Jonesy’s guts, and smiles at the lightning crack of the young victim’s ribs snapping.

Screaming, her john curls into a fetal ball, clutching his ragged hand to the fresh trauma in his chest.

From his waistband the interloper produces a Bowie knife. Gazing at the blade with sinister infatuation, the psychopath absent-mindedly warns, Ya won’t wanna see this, girlie.

Observing the cruel, diamond-hard glint in the scruffy man’s eyes, she recognizes it as good advice; she does not want to see. Indeed, Candy’s instincts are screaming to get the hell out of here. Strangely though, she is rooted to the spot, her betraying eyes staring without a blink.

Terrified, the young john freely wets himself on her floor. From that plaintive whimper Candy can hear the boy he once was, not so long ago.

Looming over his bleeding victim, the intruder enquires in a harsh voice, Where are they, shitbag?

"Where’s who?" he asks in a tremulous whimper, then coughs blood spatter onto the floorboards.

I was hopin’ you’d say that.

Shocking Candy, the attacker viciously reefs back the teenager’s head by a fistful of hair, scalping him with one savage stroke. She doesn’t know what sickens her more: the horrid scrape of the knife across the victim’s skull, his screams, or the bloody, quivering mess that the arrogant young john has been reduced to on her aged, wooden floor.

His tormentor’s face is now aglow with savage glee.

"Please stop! Please!" begs the helpless boy.

Squatting on his haunches over Jonesy –if indeed that is the lad’s real name– the stranger pats his skinless pate affectionately, oblivious to, or sadistically enjoying, the boy’s winces of pain.

"I’ll gladly do this awl night long. Now make it easy on yerself, shitbag: tell me where they are."

Shitbag? What on God’s green Earth is this maniac talkin’ ‘bout? Candy wonders.

With the influx of immigrants laying down railroad over the years she’d heard all manner of expletives in numerous languages in this very room, but this word is a novel twist.

Even this odd stick’s cussin’ is strange.

Jonesy thrusts his shaky hands up defensively, trying to knock the sick, twisted bastard’s fists away.

Ya don’t know who…who yer messin’ with, pal. I’m with the… Hand of Doom. Ya just made… the biggest mistake of yer life… Ghost’ll kill ya… nice ‘n’ slow for this.

The big mistake was made on a cold dark night ‘bout two years back, by you ‘n’ four other walkin’ corpses.

The kid’s eyes light up large as a horned owl’s as he recognizes his assailant.

Yeah, asshole: that was me. So, I’m only askin’ ya once more nicely, then you’ll suffer more in the last minute of yer miserable life than ya will in the eternal pits of hell… Where the fuck are they?

The horrible and daring exploits of the Hand of Doom are common knowledge. So, Candy understands her john’s reluctance to give away either highwayman’s whereabouts. Even to this psychotic maniac.

Out of patience, the villain presses his knife against the soft flesh of his young victim’s sun-browned throat. Jonesy yelps in pain, before managing to spit out, Down the road a ways… Small town called Longhorn… Ever’ year they… they hold a festi–

The intruder brutally slams Jones’s head into the oak floor three times.

"Don’t fucken lie, ya venomous li’l snake! Keogh ‘n’ Blackman is at Clem Montgomery’s benzinery, cheatin’ fools outta their last razoos on the poker tables. I’m more interested in the Ghost ‘n’ his shitbag sidekick, Bligh. Those assholes is ‘round ‘ere somewhere. Where are they stayin’?"

Jonesy takes a few moments to clear his head-bang fog. Like I was sayin’… Town of Longhorn–

The kid flinches as his attacker draws back a malicious fist.

No, stop! We don’t travel together… Jones erupts in a rapid rant. The law’s hankerin’ to catch us… ‘n’ every bounty hunter is… on the lookout for groups of five men… on the road, so we spilt up wh’… when we’re movin’ atwixt towns.

Staying his hand, the assailant prompts, Okay… Go on.

We’re gonna meet ‘em… outside of Longhorn on the tristate… border, in th- th- three days. We’s gonna rob… ahhh fuck… the bank on Friday afternoon… while everybody’s busy gettin’ ready for the annual Harvest Dance. Once the livestock is… all processed the cashed-up cowboys, fresh… awfa the trails fill every saloon, gambling house… ‘n’ hook shops’ tills with their earnin’s. Plus, the east-to-west train is… is stopping overnight. It’s a one-off bonanza.

Seemingly satisfied that the young man is speaking the truth, the killer collects his victim’s weapons and ammo before dragging him through the foyer, and out into the stormy street.

"No, please don’t kill me… I told ya ev’rythin’ I know!" screams the terrified youth.

And that’s why I’m gonna kill ya quick.

Even with the recent knowledge that Jonesy is a cutthroat member of the infamous Hand of Doom, the cold, cruel intent on the other man’s face still turns Candy’s blood to ice. She clearly sees that Jonesy’s pleas for mercy are wasted on his tormentor’s ears.

In a flat emotionless drawl that would haunt Candy for years to come, he replies, Enjoy yer short holiday in hell, shitbag, ‘cos when I get there, I’m a gonna make things so much worse for ya than the Devil ever could.

Candy closes her eyes while the intruder slashes Jonesy’s throat from ear to ear in the street. She is thankful for the rumbling thunder drowning out the sounds of his sadistic butchery. To finish, the brute angrily spits on the young man’s fresh corpse.

Peering around the doorway, Candy clearly hears him snidely comment, Thanks for the horse, asshole.

Then he turns to the empty street and vehemently swears, "Oh, shit! You can just fuck right awf!" at someone in the darkness.

But when a bolt of lightning cracks the sky, illuminating the street, Candy sees nobody else, anywhere.

The man’s insane, she thinks, with a disturbing chill.

Packing the extra weapons into the saddlebags, the tall slayer slings a leg over his newly stolen steed, who rears restlessly at her unfamiliar rider.

His deadly gaze again fixes on Candy, making her quiver. Then, for the briefest moment, gentleness melts the man’s ice-blue eyes. He appears tormented, nothing like the monster who only minutes before burst into her room hellbent on butchering a man in the prime of his youth.

I’m very sorry for all the mess, ‘n’ cussin’ ma’am. Once again, I let my unholy rage ruin good manners. For that I’m truly sorry. Ya have a pleasant evenin’, he tells her matter-of-factly, before galloping full tilt into the deluge tumbling from the brooding black sky.

C h a p t e r

-1

Yesteryear

Before birth, his destiny was tainted with blood. When no more than a restless lump in his mother’s belly, a murder of ravens tore through the open kitchen window of the Lonnegan homestead. By the time his terrified mother shooed them out the door with piercing shrieks and a long-handled broom, the ravens had toppled the rickety pinewood shelf that Colt hadn’t yet gotten around to fixing, spilling every book on it, also smashing an ornate china tea set; a precious gift from Christine’s mother-in-law.

Panicked by the high-pitched screams of his pregnant wife, Colt stormed through the door, mind crazed with his darkest fears.

Their usually spotless kitchen looked like a twister had ripped through it.

What happened, darlin’? Are ya ‘n’ our precious li’l one okay? he demanded, rushing over to console his disheveled wife.

It’s all right, Colt. Our wee wanderer’s perfectly fine, ‘n’ still buckin’ like a barmy bronc’.

After Christine explained her odd encounter with the crows, Colt calmed down, righted the bookshelf, and neatly stacked her books in the corner, promising to level the base right after dinner.

"God dang it!! Not the fine china! My momma’s gonna have a calf." Despondent, Colt started gathering the decorated shards of delicate porcelain.

Christine hobbled over and stroked his shoulder with a loving hand. I know the very store where she bought this tea set from. We could buy another lot, ‘n’ she’d never–

"No! I’d never lie to my mother. Was the damned crows’ fault. It’ll take donkey’s ears, but she’ll get over it, eventually."

Okay then, my sexy man. Ya best get back out there ‘n’ finish harvestin’ afore it gets dark. I’ll clean up the rest of this mess.

Colt kissed her passionately before hurrying back out into the sunshine to reap their third consecutive bountiful crop with a huge smile brightening his face. It was the rakish smile Christine had instantly fallen in love with.

Her Colt was tough as nails, but on the rare occasion when he smiled with all of his teeth, she glimpsed the last vestiges of his cute, cheeky boy’s face, before grueling work and responsibility had etched in their dour lines.

In the aftermath of the crows, while Christine Lonnegan was cleaning up the black feathers littering the table and floorboards, she noticed that somehow in the chaos the trespassing corvids had marred their freshly painted white ceiling with one long, wide streak of crimson.

The soon-to-be-mother, who believed the fortuneteller’s cartomancy that her son would be brilliant, yet roam trails far from the norm, saw the dark red stripe as a powerful, benevolent omen.

His father, swayed by the drought that ruined their corn crop for the following two years, bankrupting them –right when they’d been poised to settle their debts– saw matters very differently: Colt knew in his bones it was an evil portent; a sign that her boy was doomed.

And in their own ways, both of them were correct.

C h a p t e r

0

Yesteryear

His first memory is of sitting on momma’s hot, sweaty lap in a rocking chair out on the spacious front porch, in the rich golden hues of late afternoon. Black clouds were rolling in over the distant mountains, blotting out the last traces of twilight. The heat of the plains was being whisked away by strong winds carrying the mysterious scent of rain which burst from the heavens onto momma’s budding vegetable patch, at the base of the flaking white-painted wooden stairs.

To such an imaginative youngster the angled droplets frighteningly resembled Injun arrows flung from unseen bows lurking in the ominous clouds. The illusion was deepened as explosive thunder galloped across the sky, rattling the homestead. He hazarded a nervous upward glance, expecting to see a tribe of angry, semi-naked natives with grisly war-paint faces, racing bareback at them with deadly bows cocked.

The dreamy-eyed youth was wrenched back to reality when momma shivered again. She had been ill a lot of late, and it was in one of those increasingly oft fevers that she croaked the first words he remembers.

Son, yer momma’s awful sick, now. God’s gonna take me back into his lovin’ arms very soon. I want’cha to be a good, strong boy ‘n’ help yer pappy, however ya can ‘round the farm.

Sure, mo–

"What in the fiery pits of hell are ya drivelin’, woman!" snarled his disheveled father, exploding through the front door with a bottle of what looked like cold tea in his left hand. His appearance –scruffy beard, unkempt brown hair, hemp shirt marbled with sweat stains– perfectly reflected his shabby demeanor.

Papa’s outburst stirred the family’s three Alsatians into protective growls.

Shut up, ya mangy mutts! Colt overrode, pointing at the small wooden dwellings beside the vegetable garden. "If ya wanna eat tonight, get in yer god damn boxes, NNOOOWWW!"

Obeying their master, the dogs leapt off the verandah, dashing through the rain to the row of small varnished pine kennels that Colt had constructed for them two winters hence.

Terrified by papa’s raised voice, the young lad slinked deeper into momma’s clammy lap. Papa had been very angry of late; angry and cruel. Especially when he had a tea bottle clutched in his dirty hands. The young boy wondered, as imaginative young’uns do, if the liquid was devil’s blood, because when papa drank enough, he acted very differently; like he was possessed by the demons in the bible stories, which momma sometimes read to him before bedtime.

Woman. Don’t’cha be talkin’ to yer child like that! No wonder he’s such a sissy, papa raved with sour disgust.

Colt Lonnegan had always been an extremely hard