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  Lassiter didn’t think O’Neal would draw first. If he thought the lawman would draw first he’d have been standing still. O’Neal’s draw was so fast that Lassiter barely saw his hand move. O’Neal drew and cleared leather and fired all in one motion. It was the fastest draw he’d ever seen, but it didn’t kill him. O’Neal’s bullet burned through the side of his vest without touching his skin. Then Lassiter put two bullets through O’Neal’s wide chest before he could get off a second shot. If Muley hadn’t yelled with rage, Lassiter might have forgotten to kill him. Lassiter swung the long-barreled Colt and shot him three times.

  HIGH LONESOME

  LASSITER 1

  By Peter McCurtin writing as Jack Slade

  First Published by Leisure Books

  Copyright © 1969, 2014 by Peter McCurtin

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: November 2014

  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.

  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 reader.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

  Chapter One

  Lassiter was using the Bowie knife to cut some dead brush when the sage hen broke cover. Like a bullet with wings the sage hen exploded into the air with a crazy squawk. Before the knife hit the ground Lassiter drew and fired. One shot! The bird jerked in mid-flight and started to fall. Before Lassiter went to fetch the sage hen he swung out the cylinder from the side-loading Colt and dug out the empty shell and reloaded.

  The gun was a .38 Officer’s Model. Lassiter had won it from a thieving cavalry sergeant in a poker game in El Paso. It hadn’t been much of a game. Lassiter got the new-issue pistol and eleven dollars. It was a smaller caliber gun than Lassiter liked to carry, but it was a lot better than the old French-made hogleg he’d taken off the dead rurale in Chihuahua. There were still a lot of ancient French weapons still kicking around nearly twenty years after Juarez had shot Maximilian full of holes, and most of them couldn’t shoot worth a damn. The dead rurale, now being picked clean by buzzards in the Chihuahua desert, had learned this the hard way when he pointed the old Le Page at Lassiter and pulled the trigger. The way the old cannon was pointing, it should have blown Lassiter’s spine out through his back. Instead, it burned a shallow crease in his side. The old Le Page had a heavy trigger pull and before the Mex man-hunter could get off another shot Lassiter put the Bowie knife through his neck from twenty feet away ...

  Now, a week later, Lassiter was miles north of the border in Socorro County, New Mexico. The wound in his side was healing up fast and he had a good gun and a good horse, the dead Mexican’s horse, and he had just gunned down a sage hen with a single shot. He would have preferred a .45 Peacemaker to the Officer’s .38, but it was still a good gun. A thirty-eight killed a man just as well as a big forty-five if you put the lead in the right place. Lassiter figured the right place was right between Wesley Boone’s shifty eyes.

  While the sage hen was roasting over a small fire, Lassiter levered the shells out of his Winchester. Then he cleaned and oiled the long gun and thumbed in a full load of new shells. It was starting to get dark by the time he finished working on his guns. Out in the desert a coyote split the silence with a mournful howl and far away another coyote began to answer.

  The half-wild Mexican horse pawed the ground skittishly and Lassiter spoke quietly while he checked the long tether. The horse quieted down, but the howling continued.

  The sage hen was stringy and tough but Lassiter chewed on it without thinking about that. Lassiter didn’t fuss much over the grub he ate. Sage hen was better than prairie dog and fried steak was better than sage hen. It didn’t matter a good goddam what you ate as long as you stayed alive. And that’s what Lassiter figured to do, come hell or high water. Not that anybody’s life—even his own life—was all that important. It was just that staying alive got to be a habit.

  Lassiter piled some more brush on the fire and dug into his saddlebag for what was left of the tequila. About a quarter of a pint, he figured. Even for tequila it had a stinking taste and a worse smell, but Lassiter didn’t worry about that either. It was dark now, and cold the bitter way it gets on the desert. While Lassiter pulled steadily at the bottle, he whetted the Bowie knife carefully on a piece of soapstone. By the time the heavy blade was sharp enough to shave with, the tequila had relaxed him as much as he ever relaxed.

  Tomorrow, he figured, if the luck went right, he would find Wesley Boone and kill him. Put a bullet right between Boone’s shifty eyes. Huddled up close to the fire in his blankets, Lassiter grinned savagely at his own thoughts. Lassiter didn’t know Wesley Boone, had nothing against him, had never even seen him, in fact. The fat El Paso saloonkeeper who had hired Lassiter to bring back Boone or to kill him had described him as having shifty eyes. Those were the man’s very words. Lassiter didn’t give a damn about the saloonkeeper, about the fact that Boone had gunned down his brother. All Lassiter knew was —Wesley Boone was worth two-hundred-and-fifty dollars to him, dead or alive.

  Lassiter figured it would be dead. He figured the fat saloonkeeper would want that too. It wasn’t strictly a bounty job because the law in El Paso figured it was more or less a fair fight. There was no reward except the one put up by the dead man’s fat brother. One way or another, Lassiter didn’t give a damn. He wanted that money and he aimed to get it.

  Two-hundred-and-fifty dollars wasn’t a hell of a lot after the other big jobs Lassiter had pulled off, but money was money. You needed small money to go after big money. The big money didn’t last because some men don’t care enough about it to hang onto it, and Lassiter was one of them. You needed money, in gold or greenbacks, for women and whiskey and something to eat when you thought about eating. Right now, Lassiter thought, two-hundred-and-fifty dollars looked like a lot of money. Tomorrow he hoped to ride into McDade and earn it.

  And if not in McDade, then in some other part of Socorro County, or some other part of New Mexico.

  With the Colt in his hand, Lassiter fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  The three riders who stopped Lassiter about a mile outside McDade wore deputies’ badges. The one with the cornpone accent did most of the talking. He was the one in charge, a gangling man with streaky yellow hair and duds that were half cowman, half farmer. Some of his front teeth were missing and the spit flew when he spoke.

  “Hold up there, brother,” he told Lassiter lazily when he stepped into the trail from behind a big rock. There was a sawed-off double barrel lined up with Lassiter’s belly, so he held up like he was told.

  “Morning, brother,” the big man said, not shifting the shotgun an inch. The other two deputies stayed in cover on both sides of the trail. All Lassiter could see were hat brims looking down rifle barrels.

  Lassiter forced himself to crack a thin smile. It didn’t work if you were too polite. “Morning, deputy,” he said. “Would that be McDade up ahead?”

  The shotgun held steady on Lassiter’s gut. “Sure thing, brother,” the big deputy drawled. “That be the town of McDade. You didn’t hardly think it was some other town, did you now? ’Cause there ain’t all that many towns around here, is there?”

  Holding the shotgun steady in one big paw, the deputy wiped the spit off his mouth. The two shooters behind the rocks snickered at th
e joke.

  Lassiter didn’t move. “I sure hope its McDade because that’s where I’m headed,” he said. There was only one way to take this situation and that was one move at a time. That is until he found out what they wanted.

  “And what would you be wanting in McDade?”

  “I sort of figure that’s my business,” Lassiter said. He let that hang for a minute, to get the point across that he wouldn’t tell them unless he wanted to. “But since you’re the law, I guess it’s all right. I’m fixing to meet a man in McDade.”

  More spit flew.

  “No, deputy,” Lassiter allowed. “Not exactly a friend. Just a man I’d like to talk with. Now that I told you my business, suppose you tell me your business.”

  Lassiter hardened up his voice when he said this and the big deputy took a firmer grip on the shotgun. The deputy looked right and left, making sure his play was well covered. A yellow loudmouth, Lassiter decided, but why force a fight?

  “My business be the law business, brother,” the deputy sneered. “Now suppose you just tell me this feller’s name you fixing to meet. ’Cause if you don’t you can just turn about and go back where you come from. Now you get that straight, do you, brother?”

  Lassiter smiled. He didn’t have to force it this time. Suddenly he was very relaxed. The commonsense part of his brain warned him to go easy. It told him he hadn’t come all this way for a dumb accident showdown with three half-wit deputies. There was no profit in that. The best he could hope for was to cut down the loudmouth and maybe one other deputy before they got him.

  That was the commonsense side of it. Sometimes Lassiter listened to it, sometimes he didn’t. Now he was trail weary and stinking with sweat. It had been a long ride from El Paso. Thinking about it didn’t make his temper any too good.

  “You think you’d turn me back, would you?” Lassiter said, cold-voiced, reining his horse in tight. “Maybe you better think about that before you try it.”

  The big deputy wasn’t all bluster, just most of him. “Cover him good, boys,” he called out. To Lassiter he said, “You fooling with the law, mister. I got a legal right to ask you any question I think on. You won’t answer you don’t get into McDade. Now you speak your piece or ride on back the other way. Them’s my orders, mister.”

  Now it’s mister, Lassiter thought.

  “You make me,” he rasped. “Try it deputy. You and your scatter-gun.”

  The big deputy was close enough to see Lassiter’s eyes. Bluster took over. “Look, mister,” he started to say.

  Lassiter’s right hand rested lightly on his thigh. “Use that gun or get out of my way,” he snapped. “Only don’t miss or shoot too slow, brother. I sincerely mean it.”

  Lassiter listened to the wind. It was hot, dry, lifeless. A man dead in this desert lasted forever if the buzzards or coyotes didn’t get him. This wind—and the god blasted sun—tanned his flesh like leather.

  The deputy lowered the shotgun and tried to cover up his yellow streak with official pomposity. No spit sprayed out of his dry mouth when he spoke. “Let this hothead through, boys. We’re the law and it ain’t our place to start a shoot-out. We got these here badges to think about.”

  Still not taking any chances, Lassiter said, “That’s a right sensible attitude, deputy. Why get yourself killed on account of a little tin badge?”

  The big man glared at him. “You get into McDade you’ll answer some questions, sure enough. Sheriff O’Neal ain’t a reasonable man like I am.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Lassiter sneered. He knew it wouldn’t help but that’s how he was.

  “You’ll talk to Sheriff O’Neal all right,” the loudmouth deputy said. “You think you can ride into McDade and do as you goddam please. You’ll answer any questions Sheriff O’Neal has a mind to ask you. You heard of Sheriff Billy O’Neal I’d say.”

  Lassiter was getting bored. That’s how it always was when the tension built up and went nowhere.

  He’d heard of O’Neal all right but had never met him. Most of the things he’d heard weren’t good. O’Neal had made a name for himself in a lot of wild towns in Kansas and Oklahoma. The famous lawman couldn’t be all that young any more. That could make him even more dangerous.

  “I know the name,” Lassiter said. “And now that we’re having such a nice visit together, the name of that feller I’m looking for is Wesley Boone. Supposed to be handy with a gun, people tell me.”

  Lassiter knew he’d struck a sore place but he didn’t know why. Yellow or not, for a minute the big deputy looked ready to use the shotgun. He didn’t. “Never heard of him,” he lied.

  Lassiter rode on through.

  Up ahead was McDade. The name was McDade —whoever in hell McDade was or had been—but it looked more like a Mexican village than anything else. That’s what it had been originally, Lassiter figured. Now it was an ugly mixture of crumbling adobe houses and unpainted frame dwellings. There were two saloons, a bank, a hotel, a livery stable, an undertaker shop. It was bleak and sun-blasted and dirty. It should have been empty looking the way New Mexico towns always were. Instead, it seemed to be choked up with people.

  The first thing Lassiter noticed was the large number of hard characters with guns slung low on their hips. They lounged around, spitting and smoking, waiting for something to happen. Lassiter decided he had never see such a collection of plug-uglies in one miserable, stinking town. It looked like every killer and would-be killer in the Southwest had come to McDade to hire out for some kind of war.

  The two false-front saloons were running wide open. In the first one, The Socorro Palace, a Mexican band was struggling through a brassy waltz. Lassiter decided the mechanical piano in the McDade Paradise was less hard on the ears and that’s where he went. Two Mex gun-bullies with bandoliers were slobbering over a bottle of rotgut on the front steps. They moved their legs to let him through, sneering at his trail-worn duds. Lassiter decided to let it pass.

  Inside the player piano was grinding out “The Yellow Rose of Texas” in quickstep tempo. Four or five bravos were pulling the same number of tarted-up whores around the dirty plank floor. The whole place smelled of stale beer, fierce whiskey, tobacco smoke, and bodies too long without a bath. Lassiter elbowed his way up to the scarred mahogany bar and yelled for a beer. The crowd was keeping three barkeeps busy and Lassiter had to yell good and loud. The hard cases near Lassiter eyed him suspiciously. Like a lot of he-cats spoiling for some action, he thought.

  The beer wasn’t good, wasn’t cold, wasn’t anything but wet. After the long ride from El Paso it was like the best champagne. Lassiter hoped nobody would steal his horse while he was drinking the beer. Ordinarily, in most towns a man’s horse was safe, but here... This was one hell of a town Sheriff Billy O’Neal was running.

  While Lassiter was pulling at his second beer, one of the whores came over and asked him to buy her a drink. The whore was part Indian, part white, part something else. The something else could have been Chinese. Only a goddam liar would have called her pretty. But at least she was young and she smelled more of strong perfume than anything else. It had been more than a week since Lassiter had that woman in El Paso. A week was about as long as Lassiter could go without straddling a woman. After that he got edgy and likely to use other, more deadly ways to ease the tension. This one would do all right, he figured.

  The whore had a funny accent. Lassiter hoped she wasn’t the kind of saloon girl who liked to tell her customers her goddam life story. Whores like that were worse than a case of chiggers.

  “See, I been saving a table just for you,” the whore said. She had a wide smile full of teeth. The body was still good, Lassiter decided matter-of-factly. And after a week on the trail he had absolutely nothing against women who stank of cheap perfume and rubbed macassar oil into their hair to make it shine. After all, how long did it take to straddle a woman and ease the tension.

  A dirty little Mexican waiter brought two glasses and a bottle. Lassiter didn’t argue
about the price, which was about three times as high as it would have been in the best saloon in El Paso or anyplace else. The fat saloonkeeper who sent him after Wesley Boone had given him fifty dollars on account. Half of that was gone. He didn’t worry about it.

  “You got a name, honey?” Lassiter asked the whore. It didn’t matter one bit what this crotch-thumper called herself. Still, a man had to make some kind of small talk while sharing a bottle with somebody, even a half-breed whore in a saloon. Once a Southerner, always a gentleman, Lassiter sneered at himself.

  The whore choked a bit, not much, on the glassful of rotgut she put away. “I am called Maria,” she told him. “That is what they call me here. No doubt because all Americans think all Mexican girls are called Maria.”

  “Well, aren’t they?” Lassiter asked, already bored with the conversation.

  The whore looked mad. “My real name is Serafina. But you can call me Marie if that is what you wish to do.”

  Lassiter downed another drink. That made three. “Cool down, honey. I’d say Serafina is just as good as Maria any day of the week. Now you and me’s got to drink up so’s we can get started on that other business.”

  The whore giggled.

  While they were finishing the bottle Lassiter asked her what in hell was happening in McDade. She might have been nervous if the whiskey hadn’t loosened her up. She was a little nervous anyway, but she got over it. “You mean you don’t know?” she said.

  “You fill me it,” Lassiter said.

  Bad though it was, the rotgut whiskey had taken the edge off Lassiter’s impatience. And that was good because the whore went on and on. The way she told it was as stretched out as wet rawhide. Picking his way through Serafina’s lies, exaggerations and half-truths, Lassiter put together a more or less clear picture of the situation in the McDade area.

  “Mister O’Neal, he’s the sheriff,” the whore said, “and a mighty tough man. But O’Neal, he’s just the sheriff, and not the big boss. The big boss of McDade is Major Caulfield. The Major is only here two or three years, but he’s the big boss. The Major Caulfield is some kind of Irishman was with the Confederate Army in the big war. A very proud man, very cold. People say he would like to take over the whole county, maybe even the whole New Mexico Territory.”