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  Savage ran like fury. An officer was bellowing pointless orders and men were fanning out across the top of the bluff to search for the intruder.

  Savage had doubled back to the primed but unattended field guns. Sweating and straining, he dragged them out of line so that they were facing each other. Then he crouched behind the end gun, clutching the gunner’s punk and furiously working the vesta until it produced a spark. Not good enough. He tried again and the punk began to smolder.

  Savage gave an evil grin and a yell of triumph that was swallowed in the flash and roar of four field guns firing on each other and exploding into deadly shrapnel that whizzed across the bluff like grapeshot.

  He was over the rim already, but the blast wave carried him further. Behind him the bluff was erupting like a volcano of dirt and rock and shredded bodies.

  SAVAGE 11: NAKED HATE

  By E. Jefferson Clay

  First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  © 2022 by Piccadilly Publishing

  This Electronic Edition February 2022

  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

  Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

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

  Chapter One – The Hard Breed

  SAVAGE WAS DOWN again. This was the third time he had been knocked off his feet in this brutal fight to the death. The latest knockdown was by far the most telling in a horribly uneven contest.

  His head swam. His ears roared. His left arm hung useless at his side as a result of the knife cut that had put him down the second time. There was blood in his mouth. The red haze in front of his eyes was in no way related to the wall of flames consuming stricken Atlanta. The worst of it was the weakness that was sapping his strength and working treacherously against his iron will.

  He was trying to drag himself to his feet just one more time.

  All around him were the jeering, taunting figures of the enemy—slashing at him with clubs and sabers, taking hideous delight in killing him. There would be no mercy for a foe of such heroic proportions, a man responsible for the deaths of several of their comrades before his horse died under him in this smoke-filled back street of a doomed city.

  Savage was up again but swaying like a tree cut almost all the way through by the ax man. He spat blood.

  In the morning, he had taken part in a wild cavalry charge that was as exciting as anything he had experienced in the War. In the morning, he had felt like a hero, a victor and an immortal. Now it was afternoon, and the hounds were tearing him to pieces. All he could do was snap and snarl as they closed in for the kill.

  The big one with the spade beard took him from behind, clamping a headlock around his throat and preparing to ram him head-first against the brick wall of the East Atlanta Shipping Company.

  Savage’s vision was going as the iron bar of that forearm closed off his windpipe. Straining every sinew, he somehow managed to swing his right elbow back, driving it into a flabby gut and drawing a gasp of pure agony from a bearded mouth.

  Air rushed into his lungs as that fierce grip weakened. He pivoted and dropped his big head, snapping his forehead full into the man’s face.

  The man fell like a stone. Blood gushed from the three-inch vertical split running from brow to hairline.

  For a moment, Savage tasted triumph. For a handful of seconds as the enemy held off and the adrenaline rushed through his body, he thought he might pull off the impossible. He could batter his way through, run like hell and rejoin the regiment. He was sure he could do it—for a moment.

  Then they came at him again, and now they were no longer playing with their dangerous foe. Now they were rushing him and forcing him back with the sheer weight of numbers, beating him to the ground with their empty weapons.

  Hard bootheels were drawn back.

  They were going to kick him to death.

  Savage was sinking, sinking with a great roaring in his ears and a bitter certitude now that the long War was all over for Clinton Dylan Savage, cavalryman and Army scout.

  “Finish the bastard, Jeb!”

  The voice seemed to come from far away, but the soldier named Jeb was all too close. He raised his rifle to drive it down with a razor-sharp bayonet.

  Savage could only watch the bayonet descend.

  It kept coming but missed. Not by mere inches but by incomprehensible feet, the dagger point snapping off as it struck the wall.

  Blood spattered Savage’s upturned face, and the dead man fell on top of him.

  Savage lay still. He could do little else under the crushing weight of the fresh corpse. Muffled, crunching sounds reached him but at first he could not recognize them. It was like the breakup of ice on a distant river. No, it was more like rifle fire bouncing between the high walls of the smoke-shrouded street.

  His attackers were turning away and starting to run.

  The only thing coming towards him in that scene from hell was a man in the same faded uniform as his own. He had a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other, and he was pumping so much lead into the confined back alley that he might have been a battalion of infantry.

  Maybe this was one of those miracles that he had always scoffed at. Maybe the man in the faded serge tunic was some kind of destroying angel. Or maybe not. Savage did not stop to ask questions.

  Bloodied, howling figures were falling, screaming and groaning all around him, and he was cutting a corporal’s stubby legs from under him with a straight-legged, two-footed kick. Then he was grabbing up one of those empty rifles and applying the butt vengefully to the first head within his reach.

  He did some damage, but his two-gun savior was doing more—killing with such fierce enthusiasm and ruthless efficiency that finally Savage simply staggered back against the wall and watched.

  Then it was all over.

  The enemy lay around him like crumpled heaps of dirty clothing. The runty corporal had taken a slug through the forehead which had exited through the back of what had been his skull. The officer in charge lay curled up in a ball, shrunken in death and staring blindly up into Savage’s battle-grimed face.

  The rescuer was a tall man dressed in a ragged uniform. He slowly lowered his smoking sidearm and kicked a corpse to make sure it was dead. Then his piercing blue eyes met Savage’s, and he grinned broadly.

  “You’re a lucky man, soldier.”

  “Lucky you happened along, sir.”

  “Hell, I didn’t just happen along,” the officer said with apparent amusement. “I was watchin’ you take that lickin’ for quite some time—until I realized that these fellers had run right out of ammunition.”

  “I still owe you my life.”

  The words came hard despite Savage’s gratitude. He could converse, cuss and hurl insults in two languages and several Indian dialects, but ‘thanks’ was a word he rarely needed and almost never used.

  “Yes, you do, don’t you, Lieutenant ahh ...?”

  “Savage, sir—25th Cavalry.”

  “Challinor. That’s
Colonel Challinor to you ...”

  He broke off sharply. They heard approaching hoofbeats and the rumble of heavy wheels.

  To Savage’s surprise, Colonel Challinor spun away without a word and vanished between two buildings, leaving him alone. Savage was ready to hightail it as well, but the battle-stained men came towards him with hoots and howls of praise when they saw the enemy dead.

  It would be ten years before Savage heard of his savior again.

  Dust motes floated in the still, golden air of the hotel. The sounds of a busy day in Little Rock, Arkansas, floated up from the street.

  Savage drew the straight-blade razor smoothly through the creamy lather along his angular jawline and then upwards fractionally, stopping when the blade reached the jet-black mustache that had only recently been neatly trimmed—in Savage’s favorite way, of course. He examined the results in the steamed-over mirror. Satisfied, he rinsed the razor and wiped a stray fleck of foam from his chin.

  Then he leaned forward a little for a closer study of the face in the mirror. He saw a big, bronzed man of thirty years with a thick thatch of coal black hair and a full mustache of the same hue.

  Savage could make his green-gray eyes twinkle when he chose, but it didn’t seem worth the effort when there was nobody around.

  Stripped to the waist, he was pleased to see that ten years of hard living had not added any extra inches. Only scars and plenty of them—a few to remind him of the War and many more collected in the turbulent years that followed.

  Savage craved excitement like a dog wolf craved red meat. It was about the only honest-to-God addiction he had, he told his bronzed image. Of course, he was lying. It was just that after spending the past twenty-four hours with the new dancer from the Forty Thieves Saloon in his bed, lust was not an immediate concern.

  He supposed he would miss Jilly. Maybe he just thought that he ought to miss her, or that it might be nice to miss her. Deep attachments were not a Savage habit.

  His sometime sidekick was a far from moral man, but he had been known to accuse Savage of having the morals of a rutting rattlesnake. But then, what would a sawed-off, snaggle-toothed Mexican horse thief know?

  Savage shook a few drops of lavender water into the hollow of his palm and applied it to his face and neck. He liked the clean tang and the kind of self-indulgence which often was in short supply when he was plying his trade, whatever that trade might be. There did not seem to be a name for a man who took on just about any line of work, providing that it was not dull.

  He met his gaze in the mirror, sober and thoughtful now. There was a job waiting for him, and the interesting thing was that he knew nothing about it. All he had so far was the name of the man who had summoned him.

  Colonel Challinor.

  With a sigh, he turned away and padded across the polished floor to the bureau containing his clothes.

  The Savage wardrobe consisted mainly of black shirt and hat, well-worn Levi’s, comfortable boots and a double gun rig. Working gear.

  During his three-week rest in Little Rock, he had acquired a few refinements such as a pair of twill trousers, three new shirts including a pink one which aroused some interest on the streets, and a good suede jacket which probably would not last a week on the trail.

  He reached for the pink shirt and accidentally brushed his gunbelt, knocking it to the floor.

  Savage glanced at the bedroom door. He hated goodbyes. He had planned to leave Jilly sleeping and just disappear from her little life.

  So much for the best laid plans.

  The door opened, and the Forty Thieves’ main attraction stood there wearing nothing but a sleepy smile and a blue-green bath towel which barely covered her nakedness.

  “Darling,” she murmured, “what are you doing?”

  “Er, just have to go down to the lobby, sugar. Go back to bed and I’ll—”

  “But, darling,” she interrupted.

  He wasn’t quite sure he liked that smoky look in her eye.

  “Yeah?”

  She crooked a finger. “What can you get in the lobby that you can’t get here?”

  Normally Savage liked that kind of talk. Loved it even. It was just that he really did have something to tend to in the lobby. And besides, twenty-four hours was a long time in the saddle.

  “Er ... ummm ...”

  “Clint honey, you sound almost bashful.”

  Then she yawned and stretched in a way that made her long dancer’s legs look even longer—and made other points of interest look even firmer.

  She pouted prettily and said, “Could it be you’ve just lost interest in little old me?”

  This was a tough question. Savage could remember times when all alone on the Texas Panhandle, or halfway lost down the Grand Canyon hunting some back shooter or another, he would gladly give an arm and maybe a leg for a wondrous warm and pink vision like this to appear by his lonesome campfire.

  But that was then. This was now, and now was different.

  He put on his phoniest grin.

  “Jilly, I’ve got two fellers downstairs who have serious business with me. They won’t take no for an answer, and ...”

  Savage’s words dried up in his throat as the towel slipped to the floor. Sure enough, that old familiar feeling was back again and he was heading for the bedroom door.

  “Baby, you’re really somethin’,” pretty Jilly murmured.

  He knew it, but that did not stop him from proving it all over again. Just for old times’ sake.

  Savage was a realist but Jilly liked to make believe.

  It was not enough for her to roll in the hay with a man who had licked his weight in Mexican bandidos, been marooned for six weeks alone in the snow-locked Rocky Mountains subsisting on deer moss lichens, and once danced with a Prussian noblewoman who was so moved by the occasion that she was seen to roll her tongue in Savage’s ear during the cotillion.

  Jilly wanted more. She wanted to pretend that she was someone else and somewhere else.

  “More, varlet, or it’s the dungeons for you,” she panted with blonde tresses tossing as she put everything she had into this sweet combat. “Wouldst thou disappoint thy queen?”

  Savage was untroubled by whatever was going on in Jilly’s head, and it did not matter if she was talking nonsense. When Jilly stopped talking and ran her warm, moist lips all over his scarred torso like she was starving and had just heard the dinner gong, she could be Lucretia Borgia or Lottie Crabtree for all he cared.

  The lady was so good at what she did that it was almost enough to still that faint, nagging feeling that although this might be the best session of congress he had all year, maybe he should have gone downstairs after all.

  Then Jilly showed him another new trick he did not even know about, and he seized her round, lush loveliness while she sighed and dreamed of knights in armor.

  It was affecting his vision.

  Leastwise that was his first reaction when he gazed over Jilly’s creamy shoulders and saw two heads so much alike that they might have been twins. The clean-shaven, smartly hatted, sternly sober and reproving heads surmounted starched white collars, neatly knotted ties and carefully brushed jacket lapels.

  In his confused state, Savage wondered briefly if he had finally overdone it. Then he shook his head and squeezed Jilly’s fine plump arms as a warning that they no longer had the room to themselves. Twisting beneath her, he made a lightning grab for the double gun rig swinging from the bedhead.

  Jilly screamed as the taller of the twins lunged past her and clamped a kid-gloved hand over Savage’s right wrist.

  “Kill him!” Jilly urged, not being a woman to accept such interruptions lightly. “This is the goddamn United States of America. You can’t bust in on people like this and—”

  “Quiet, baby,” Savage said with quiet resignation.

  The twins surveyed him soberly, one on each side of the wildly rumpled bed. They showed no perceptible interest in Jilly’s splendid nudity. The shorter twin’s manner
was reproving as he spoke.

  “You gave us your word, Mr. Savage.”

  “You promised you’d be down in one hour,” the other twin said supportively.

  “The boss said we’d have no trouble with you.”

  “He said you owe him, and that you are a man of honor who would recognize that fact and comply with—”

  “All right—all goddamn right!” Savage said testily, swinging his feet to the floor and starting to dress.

  They really had him on the griddle when they mentioned honor. His brand of honor might seem extremely flexible in some areas and nonexistent in others, but this was different.

  Challinor had saved his life, and if the man had a mind to call in his debt after ten long years, Savage felt obliged to repay the favor.

  The twins were not really twins at all. Their names were Petrie and Cole, and as they said, he had promised an hour ago to meet them in the hotel lobby—at precisely the time when he was following Jilly into the bedroom.

  Strapping on his guns, Savage looked down at Jilly. She had wrapped herself in the crumpled bedsheets and was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin. The look of confusion and reproval on her flushed face only made her prettier.

  Savage sighed a second time and said, “I won’t even try to explain, honey, but I’ve gotta go.”

  “Where to?” she sulked.

  “Would you believe Wichita, Kansas?”

  “That’s enough,” warned Cole while Petrie pressed his finger to his lips.

  “Are they law?” Jilly queried.

  “I’m not sure what they are,” Savage replied as he headed for the door. “But it doesn’t make any difference. Hasta, baby.”

  “Clint.”

  “What?”

  She wasn’t sulking any longer.

  “You were only so-so as a varlet, I hate to tell you.”

  “Guess I can live with that.”

  “But I’m here to tell the whole blue-eyed world you are the best-ever knight in armor. And I do mean ever.”

  Chapter Two – Meet Me in Wichita