Blood Debt (A Breed Western #08)

By James A. Muir

The Kiowas slaughtered Amos and Eliza Marker without pity. They took young Jed, raised him as a Kiowa. When Matthew Gunn, known and feared as Breed, was called by rich businessman Ty Horn, he didn't know his was Eliza's brother. Or that he had a crazed idea of saving Jed after all this time. Even when he knew, Breed didn't care. And soon he had a debt of honour to be settled with the Kiowas - a debt paid strictly in torture, destruction and death ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215115848

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The Kiowas slaughtered Amos and Eliza Marker without pity. But they took their son, young Jeb, raised him and taught him to be a warrior. To live like a Kiowa. Think like a Kiowa. Kill like a Kiowa.

When Matthew Gunn, known and feared as Breed, was called by rich businessman Ty Horn, he didn’t know that Horn was Eliza Marker’s brother. Or that Horn had some crazy sentimental idea about saving Jeb from the Indians after all this time. Even when he knew, he didn’t care. The rich white man was offering a whole heap of money for the ‘rescue’. And soon Breed had a debt of honor to be settled with the Kiowas—a debt to be paid strictly in torture, destruction and death ...

BREED 8: BLOOD DEBT

By James A. Muir

First published by Sphere Books in 1979

Copyright ©James A. Muir 1979

This electronic edition published August 2023

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Series Editor: Mike Stotter

Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

For a man who figgers: Nick Tryhorn.

And, of course, for Ruth.

Chapter One

ELIZA MARKER SAT up straight on the wagon’s seat and ran her tongue over her lips. All she could taste was salt. That, and the painful cracking brought on by the Texas sun. It came down out of a sky so bright that all color got bleached out, leaving only a silvery-blue emptiness that hurt her eyes and made her wonder why she had let Amos talk her into moving west.

Mississippi hadn’t been so bad. Alright, the crop had failed two years running and the bank was threatening to foreclose on the mortgage, but they could have eked out another year. Even found work in town: Amos was good with his hands, and she could have taken in washing. Something like that.

But Amos was too mule-stubborn to take another man’s orders, and when he couldn’t raise the money to seed a fresh crop, he had upped and sold the farm. Spent the money—wasted it, Eliza thought—on a wagon and four horses, and set out for this godforsaken place called the Staked Plains. There was land for the asking, he told her. Space for the two kids to grow up in, and money to be made out of cows. The last remnants of their stake were set aside for that: to buy some decent breeding stock.

Eliza glanced at her husband, then back through the arch of the Conestoga’s canvas to where little Jeb and Mary were sleeping out the noonday heat. Her gaze travelled on through, to the tail of the big prairie schooner and the seed bull shambling irritably behind. It was a massive brute of an animal, all curly hair and muscle, with ugly horns jutting out from a skull like the wall of a house. It seemed to catch her glance, flicking incongruously delicate lashes over its pale red eyes. And flared its nostrils and bellowed.

Amos, grinned, ‘Guess we’d best halt soon, honey. Ole Ben sounds like he wants a rest.’

Eliza nodded without speaking. ‘So do I,’ she thought. ‘Dear Jesus, I want to rest. I want to rest for about a year. That might make up for these last few weeks.’

She tried to summon saliva from her mouth, but when she ran her tongue over her gums it just stuck to the dried-out arches so that she coughed and began to blink.

‘Be water soon.’ Amos sounded ridiculously cheerful. ‘Henneker said we was comin’ up to a hole. We can fill up there and rest a spell. Then it’s only a couple more days to the spread.’

Eliza tried to smile. After all, a woman had a duty to support her husband. But she couldn’t help wondering what would happen when they got to the ‘spread’. It was all very fine to talk about it as though the place was set up and waiting for them. Just walk in through the door and settle down. Maybe run some water from the pump to take a bath; then cook a meal. After that, comfortable beds with clean sheets and a cool breeze blowing in off the prairie. That sounded good. Trouble was, there wasn’t a house even: it needed building yet. There wouldn’t be a pump, just the spring Nathan Henneker had told them ran a hundred yards from where they would finally build their house. And the sheets were coated with Texas dust and the two beds were in pieces that would need assembling when they got the house built and floors laid. Until then they’d have to sleep the same way they had for the past five weeks: on the ground, with bats fluttering overhead and Gila monsters crawling around. Tarantulas, too, even though Henneker assured them a spread rope would hold off the crawling, creeping things. Eliza didn’t believe him. Didn’t believe Amos, either. This wasn’t a new chance, a fresh beginning.

It was just the last door open to them; an escape from banks and mortgages and money troubles. Go West? Hell! Go lost.

Henneker emphasized her doubts when he came riding back out of the haze with an arrow flapping from his shoulder.

The guide was slumped down over his horse with a dark stain covering his buckskin shirt where the head of the arrow stuck out through his chest. His left arm was dangling loose and his face was pale under the tan. He had trouble controlling his mount.

‘What is it?’ Amos reached under the seat to drag the big Sharps buffalo gun across his knees. ‘What’s happenin’?’

‘Kiowa.’ Henneker fought his pony to a halt and stared at the Markers through bloodshot, hurting eyes. ‘Seven o’ the bastards jumped me. Be six now, on account of I shot one to death.’

‘Oh, dear God protect us,’ gasped Eliza.

‘What do we do?’ asked Amos.

‘Run like hell,’ grunted Henneker. ‘There’s a buffler wallow up ahead. If we can reach that, we got a chance. Lash them horses up an’ get movin’.’

‘We can’t.’ Amos looked worried. ‘Ole Ben can’t run.’

‘Ole Ben can go fuck,’ snarled Henneker. ‘I’m talkin’ about stayin’ alive.’

‘But he’s all we got,’ moaned Amos. ‘We leave him, an’ we got nothin’. I can’t leave him.’

‘Mister,’ said Henneker, ‘you got a simple choice. You can keep yore goddam bull and die alongside him, or you can leave him an’ take a chance on living.’

He didn’t wait for Marker’s answer. Just rode round behind the wagon and cut the bull free. Ben jerked his head a few times to make sure the rope was gone, then began to lumber off through the cholla, blowing noisy declarations of his newfound independence.

Henneker turned his horse back around and used his quirt on the lead horses of Marker’s team. They squealed at the lead-weighted flail landing over their rumps and took off at a gallop for the distant horizon.

Amos tossed the reins to Eliza and cocked the hammer of the Sharps. Jeb and Mary began to scream as the bucking wagon woke them, tossing them high off the boards as the Conestoga lurched and bucked towards the wallow. Henneker rode point, steering his pony with his knees as he fumbled a Colt’s Dragoon from the ornate holster on his left hip. Somewhere along the way he snapped the shaft of the arrow clear, though his left arm still flapped around, as useless as a scarecrow after the birds had learned it can’t hurt them.

They hit the hollow at full gallop, wagon wheels bedding down into the salt. The lead horses charged up the far side and began to buck as the weight of the sunken wheels fought them to a halt. Arrows sprouted from their necks. Three hit the right-side leader and brought it down with blood spuming from spread nostrils. Then two more hit sides and chest. The horse screamed and pitched over, long streamers of blood running down the sides of the wallow as the pony kicked and died. The second leader went down quickly. Two arrows hit its neck, a third went through its left eye and killed it instantly. It fell down and slid back over the rim of the wallow and got tangled in the traces and bucking hooves of the second pair. Henneker stumbled over and cut the harness. He was herding the two horses back when the arrow hit his chest. It went in just under the sternum, striking between the breastplate of bone and his upper ribs. It tucked down to pierce his right lung so that he staggered back, coughing up great gobbets of bright blood. He was still standing, twisting round as he tried to fire the Colt, when the second arrow hit his back. It went in under the left shoulder, deflected off the ribs, and pricked into the wall of his one good lung.

Henneker screamed.

Two more arrows hit him. One lancing his throat, the other bedding deep in his stomach.

The scout doubled over and fell down. The arrows in his chest and belly were driven deeper, tearing through muscle and flesh and organs as his weight fell upon the wooden shafts. A bloody barb emerged from the back of his neck and his eyes opened wide, then clouded as blood filled his mouth and he died.

Amos Marker fired the Sharps at a fleeting shape. There was a scream, and he whooped joy just before the arrow thudded into his side.

It went in low down on the left side, the stone head nicking off his ribs before it entered his heart. Amos dropped the buffalo gun and stared down at the wood sticking out of his ribcage. It was banded with red and black paint, and he put both hands around it before he realized how much it hurt. He tried to drag it clear, but the head was barbed, and all he did was tear up more of his insides. He groaned once, then pitched forwards onto his face. The arrow shaft broke off. Three more hit him, one in the back, two in the left side of his bleeding body.

Eliza screamed and fired the Colt she was holding into the haze of dust and sunlight. The big Dragoon bucked in her hands and after the third shot she dropped it and stumbled towards the wagon. Little Jeb held a Walker Colt towards her. The big pistol was almost too much for him to carry, it dwarfed his fingers, out of scale with his small, childish body.

‘Here, momma,’ he shouted. ‘Here’s a new gun.’

Eliza nodded and took the pistol from his hands.

She cocked the hammer and set both her hands around the butt, index fingers of left and right interlaced over the trigger. Then she turned the gun over and stuck it inside her mouth and squeezed the trigger.

Mary screamed as her mother’s skull exploded outwards, spraying bone and blood and brain matter over the body of her husband.

Little Jeb laughed and wondered why momma had made herself in to a firework. It was pretty. Very pretty.

The Kiowa war chief called Eagle Dancer came down into the hollow.

He counted coup on the bodies of Henneker and Amos Marker. He took Marker’s carbine and all the ammunition he could find, along with one of the wagon horses. That was his due as war chief. He left his warriors to take the scalps, for second coup, and stared at the boy.

Jeb Marker was running his fingers through the hair of his mother’s skull. He seemed amused that there was a hole where the top of her head had been, and chuckled as he lifted his hands to his mouth, tasting the blood. Eagle Dancer watched him for a while, then picked him up. Jeb didn’t complain. The man had interesting smells, and there were shells and feathers in his hair. Also, he had paint on his face that was fun to touch: it made him look much better than poppa. Even better than the patterns in momma’s head.

Eagle Dancer lifted the child high over his head and shouted:

‘This one is mine! He is my son! He is Lost Boy, who now belongs to the Kiowa.’

Buffalo Runner, who was the chief’s friend and second leader of the party asked what should be done with the girl. Eagle Dancer turned Jeb to face his sister, and muttered the question into the boy’s ear. He said it first in Kiowa, then in his faltering English.

‘Girl. What do? She yours? Live? Die? What?’

Jeb chuckled and looked at Mary. Then looked at his Mother. Eliza’s hair was pretty now, the black all streaked with bright red. Her face was smiling, and that had red on it, too. Pretty.

‘Like momma,’ he said. ‘Make her like momma.’

Buffalo Runner stared at the boy, then at Eagle Dancer. The war chief smiled and nodded. Buffalo Runner swung his hatchet down in a short arc. The stone blade hit Mary Marker in the neck. It crushed her windpipe and cut an inch into the flesh. Buffalo Runner swung three times more before the child was dead, then tossed her head over to the bodies of her parents.

After that, the Kiowas looted the wagon and rode away.

Jeb Marker grew up as a Kiowa. He was just over three years old when Eagle Dancer took him back to the camp on the Brazos, and he grew up like any other Kiowa child. Naturally dark,