The Road to Amarillo: The Wes Crowley Series, #11

By Harvey Stanbrough

Between Books 2 and 3 of the 12-volume Wes Crowley saga, there's a 16-year gap. This is the ninth book that works toward filling parts of that gap. This is also the final novel for the Wes Crowley Gap Series.

 

During his time as a deputy US marshal, Wes has made new friends. He's also made, and vanquished, a few new enemies. But even with all the diversions of love and war, there remains the main overall goal of ridding the Territory of comancheros to clear the path for statehood.

 

Now, perhaps, is the time to focus on and achieve that goal. Wes is longing more and more for Texas, the Rangers, and his Amarillo friends. Will he finish the job Governor Lew Wallace hired him to do? If so, will he finally be going home?

 

If you've ever dreamed of riding wild on a good horse in a just cause, this is the series for you. Lay up your saddlebags with provisions for a few days, then saddle up and come along!

• Language: English
• Publisher: StoneThread Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223166078

Harvey Stanbrough

Harvey Stanbrough is an award winning writer and poet who was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas, and baked in Arizona. Twenty-one years after graduating from high school in the metropolis of Tatum New Mexico, he matriculated again, this time from a Civilian-Life Appreciation Course (CLAC) in the US Marine Corps. He follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly and most often may be found Writing Off Into the Dark. Harvey has written and published 36 novels, 7 novellas. almost 200 short stories and the attendant collections. He's also written and published 16 nonfiction how-to books on writing. More than almost anything else, he hopes you will enjoy his stories.

Book preview

Chapter 1

At mid-morning the day was already growing hot in Kiker, New Mexico Territory, as Billy Gamble, proprietor and bartender, stomped along the otherwise quiet main street. His thoughts were on that bunch of upstart Mexicans in La Encantada Cantina—his cantina, the cantina he owned by god!—and his attention was on his boots and the ground just ahead of them.

Small, angry puffs of dust blew up around each boot as it contacted the ground, and little spurts of the stuff shot back the way he’d come as he moved into each new step. An angry banty rooster couldn’t have kicked up such a fuss. Mumbling under his breath, Gamble shook his head, then cleared his throat harshly and spat hard to the right. Rather than soaking into the dirt and sand, the thick globule swelled and surged momentarily, then rolled back into itself and glistened in a tiny caldera, a spittle gemstone adorning the center of the street.

The town was also silent but for the mutterings and footfalls of Billy Gamble. No birdsong, no sounds of children or adults, and no saddles or wagons creaking anywhere. Even the wind had laid down. Amazing, the effect one man’s focused anger can have on his surroundings. Even the seemingly endless staccato issued earlier by an untold horde of brats had disappeared with them into the school, as the residents called the dilapidated adobe hut at the end of the street. He scowled. You would think they’d at least slap a coat of whitewash on the outside if they were going to use that hovel as a school.

Gamble glanced up to gauge the distance to his house. Only a few blocks to go, just past the so-called school and then left a half-block. Then by god he’d see what was what. When he’d left the cantina—well, no. To be precise, he hadn’t left. To be precise, when the damned Mexicans, all would-be comancheros, had sent him away from the cantina, they instructed him—instructed him, mind you! in his own establishment!—to find places for them to live. And because he wasn’t thinking straight, having had his face slammed hard against the surface of the bar in a surprise attack, he had set out to do just that.

But within the first several stumbling steps away from the cantina his thoughts had cleared. He’d remembered who he was, and he had changed his mind. They could damned sure find their own places to live, if they even chose to stay in Kiker after he was through with them. More than likely they’d turn tail and go find someone else to annoy. An angry grin tugged at one corner of his mouth but didn’t quite form. Still, one step at a time. For now, he would go to his house, retrieve his shotgun, and return to La Encantada. Then they would see who was boss in Billy Gamble’s damned cantina.  

Ahead a few blocks on the right, on the top step of the small chapel across from the school, the local priest—well, or pastor or whatever title he was using this week—raised his right hand in a gesture, a thin-lipped smile on his face. His left hand still held the door, as if he’d just stepped outside.

Pastor, probably. He wasn’t wearing a robe like Gamble had seen the Catholics wear at the big churches in St. Louis, though his black suit was almost indistinguishable from a robe at this distance. And more so because he was wearing that holy black hat with the wide, flat brim and an inverted bowl for a crown. He probably wore it mainly to hide how few wisps of blondish red hair still clung to his head.

Unlike Billy Gamble, who never wore a hat at all. He was proud of his thick red shock and the thicker Irish heritage that had provided it. As he reached up with his right hand to smooth his hair, his thumb hooked his apron and pulled it partway up in front of him. Enough so he noticed it and realized he hadn’t taken it off before he left the bar.

The apron was looped over his neck and tied behind the waist of his dark grey trousers. Otherwise he wore black boots without so much as a scuff mark—appearances mattered among successful men—but the sheen somewhat muted by the layer of dust, plus a long-sleeved white shirt, and an aggravated, annoyed look. As if to explain the furrows on his forehead, he muttered a quiet curse. It was nothing the priest could hear, but then Billy wouldn’t care if he did hear it.

Normally he would have taken off the apron and hung it neatly behind the bar before he’d left. He never wore an apron beyond the confines of the cantina. After all, he had ordered it all the way from St. Louis. It was a real apron, substantial and white, like the ones the bartenders in the high-end establishments in the city wore. Of course, when he’d departed the cantina, he had been too upset to realize he was still wearing it, much less to think about taking it off.

Anyway, only the annoying priest or whatever he was had seen him, apron and all, and he hadn’t seemed to have thought anything of it. He wagged one hand quickly in the priest’s direction, then heard something behind him.

He stopped and whirled, eyes wide, a chill racing along his spine.

Silly. It was nothing. Not that he was really worried about the Mexicans. He was just nervous, probably from the anger shuddering through his body from his bruised ego. Anyway, there was nobody immediately behind him. The sound had come from farther up the street. Aside from himself and the priest, apparently there were other people out and about, though there were only three.

Two of those were men. One, probably the elder but Billy couldn’t really tell because the man was mostly facing away, stood in the back of a wagon. It was stopped in front of the feed and ranch supply store. Probably that was the sound that had drawn Gamble’s attention. Probably the man had scuffed the soles of his boots on the wagon bed. Beyond the man in front of the wagon, two bay horses with blond manes and tails stood in harness, motionless and bored. Their tails switched lazily side to side to drive away flies. The other man, probably the younger, had just disappeared inside.

Wide red suspenders rose from the dusty black trousers of the man in the back of the wagon. They ran up over the back of a white shirt already stained under the arms, and they disappeared over narrow, bony shoulders. He wore a flat cap, and beneath it he sported the reddish-brown neck of a man who didn’t believe in wide-brimmed hats. He gripped his own waist and stared at the door of the store as he waited to receive whatever the other man brought out.  

The third person was a woman, easy enough to identify even at this distance as the Widow Markle. She was still dressed all in black, hat to shoes, and wearing a veil. All of that even though today was the ninth or maybe tenth day after Thomas Markle, her late husband and the town’s latest attempt at a marshal, was planted in the cemetery on the low rise south of town.

Most of La Encantada’s patrons agreed that the marshal had died of stupidity, having exercised a lapse in judgement. With his revolver, which by all accounts was in perfect working order, still in his holster, he had attempted to impress a would-be bandito with his knowledge of the law.

The bandito, who was hungry and only passing through when he liberated a cherry pie he’d spotted cooling on a windowsill, was not impressed with the marshal’s recitation. Nor, apparently, was he convinced he should spend the night in jail, much less remain there until the circuit judge came through sometime later in the month. To his credit, before he resorted to more strenuous means of resistance, the bandito tried to explain. The woman who owned the pie hadn’t protested—in fact, she hadn’t even noticed the pie was missing until the marshal poked his nose in—so what business was it of the marshal’s in any case? All of which he expressed to the marshal by saying, Mister, ain’t no part of this none’a your business.

Whereupon the marshal, with his revolver still safely ensconced in his holster, had attempted again to explain the unbiased facts of the law to the bandito. Unfortunately, the patience of the latter having expired, he drew his own revolver and shot the marshal dead. Then he casually thanked the woman for the slice of pie, ascended to the saddle, and rode just as casually out of town to the south.

It was just as well he hadn’t fled. He was followed only by the woman’s smile and a wistful look. Apparently it never dawned on the townsfolk, even the newly widowed Mrs. Markle, to form a posse or go after the bandito or any such thing. Had he survived, Marshal Markle might have learned to allow his revolver to do the reciting of the law, or at least the disarming, after which he could recite all he wanted.

None of which, of course, mattered in the slightest to Billy Gamble, who had problems of his own. As the Widow Markle disappeared into the dry goods store two doors past the wagon still parked in front of the feed and ranch supply store, he turned back to the front.

The priest or pastor or whatever had disappeared back into his church.

Chapter 2

Gamble shook his head and leaned into his stride. The sooner he got to his house and then back to La Encantada to clear up this mess the better. He needed his life back.

He scowled. Who the hell did those guys think they were, anyway?

He rounded the corner at the brown adobe school house and headed up Clay Street toward his small house. Half a block to go.

Stupid question. They claimed to be comancheros. Of course, he knew better. Everybody in the northeast New Mexico Territory from Portales to Clayton knew better. Francisco Paco Messina, a real comanchero, ruled this part of the New Mexico Territory. He had ruled it