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  It would have been funny if things weren’t so serious.

  Savage was ready to go on with the gun duel when, through the rising dust and atop the false front of the general store on the south side of the square, he caught the glint of sunlight on gunmetal. He sighted the hunched figure of a man in military blue lining Jimmy Ringo up in his sights.

  And at the top of the street, uniformed figures on horseback appeared.

  Kirk was back!

  There was no time to shout a warning. Savage drew and fired. The sniper toppled and nose-dived twenty feet to the street. Realizing what was happening, Ringo cut loose as troopers charged, and in moments Ringo, Savage and Yaqui Joe were hightailing for the nearest exit from the square.

  SAVAGE 10: HANGING JIMMY RINGO

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  This Electronic Edition November 2021

  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 – Born to Raise Hell

  THE GOVERNOR MADE his solemn declaration one day in early summer from the balcony of his mansion in Alameda;

  “Jimmy Ringo must hang!”

  It sounded a great idea to all those who heard it—especially coming the morning after wild Jimmy had busted out of jail ... again.

  Until now, solid, respectable citizens with money in the bank and silver in their hair had been horrified.

  Hang Jimmy Ringo ...?

  ‘Garbage!’ they’d chorused in the past. ‘He’s just a boy sewing his wild oats. Weren’t you young and frisky yourself once, Governor?’

  They weren’t saying these things now.

  They fully supported the governor because reckless and handsome Jimmy Ringo had finally gone too far.

  Busting out of the governor’s own hoosegow was bad enough in itself to see Jimmy hang. But when it was claimed Jimmy had put a bullet through Deputy Roy Murch’s heart during the breakout, that sealed his fate.

  This was not only cold-blooded murder, it made the administration’s law enforcement appear dangerously incompetent. Not to mention that it held the governor himself up to public ridicule.

  That was going too far by a long chalk.

  The governor insisted that the final test of strength between law and order and the old ways of the past had now arrived. He placed a $5,000 reward on Jimmy Ringo’s head and threw General Kirk and his soldiers into the manhunt.

  It was time to finally shrug off the ‘Hellion Territory’ tag and don the shining new robes of Peace and Prosperity to carry them into the West’s beckoning future.

  Sounded disarmingly simple.

  So the cry went out—Get Jimmy Ringo and hang him high!

  In the prevailing mood of righteousness and revenge, there were still a few who were prepared to voice the notion that based on Jimmy’s reputation, the wanted man might be sporting a long gray beard tucked into his gunbelt before any lawman ever saw him again. Much less got close enough to put a noose around his neck.

  Strangely enough, the man who secretly believed it could prove as hard to shackle dashing Jimmy as it would be to leg-rope the moon, was Governor Dunstan Melville himself.

  None but a handful of the great man’s closest advisors were aware that Security had hired the services of a part-time government agent to assist in the hunt. The man was reputed to be equal in gun speed as Jimmy but a hell of a lot meaner.

  Clinton Dylan Savage.

  The very name seemed to carry with it a reassuring ring, and knowing the man was on his way, the governor slept for the first time in days. His dreams were of a big man with a black mustache and powerful shoulders. The man rarely smiled but always got his man—and made the governor the toast of Washington and the President’s closest personal friend.

  The image the governor built up in his mind was an accurate enough picture of the man, but not a complete one. Savage had his flaws. And how soundly might the governor have slept that night had he known his dedicated agent was less than twenty miles away and sleeping with the virgin daughter of an obsessively protective trail house-keeper who had shot men for simply looking sideways at his little girl. It was widely known the man always slept with a double-barrel shotgun next to his pillow—just in case.

  It was better that the great man should sleep in ignorance. For there would be little sleep for anyone once Savage arrived. Yaqui Joe boasted that his trail partner had a talent for causing sleepless nights wherever he went.

  Others claimed it was more like genius.

  She was crying now. Savage liked it when they shed a tear or two. It added a little something to the mood, he liked to think.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured her, his voice sounding deep in the silence of her room beneath the tin roof of the trail house. “There’s nothin’ to weep about.”

  “But I promised father—”

  “Forget Irish Joe.” Savage’s voice had a hint of annoyance in it now. Truth to tell, he was finding the topic of Shelleen Mallone’s shotgun-toting, churchgoing, daughter-protecting father wearing a tad thin.

  So Irish Joe was about the toughest man in these parts—or so they claimed. But if this were the case, how come he was snoring his curly head off on the floor below after losing a drinking contest with the same man who was up here in bed with the little girl old Joe boasted would walk down the aisle one day ‘as pure as the Virgin Mary had made her?’

  Irish Joe was badly overrated, Savage believed, and Shelleen was better than he dared dream.

  “Come here,” he ordered. And she did.

  Up here in this high room with starlight flooding through the window and watching the twin moons of her creamy breasts roll and bounce above him, Savage felt he was floating up there amongst the moon and stars. In short, he was relaxing in the best Savage way before taking on a job of tracking some punk who just might be the most dangerous son of a bitch in the entire Southwest.

  While Irish Joe’s virgin daughter worried her little heart out, Savage noticed her tearful concerns in no way hampered her rhythm—it could be said she didn’t miss a beat.

  “If papa were to find out, I’m sure he’d kill us both.”

  “I won’t tell him.”

  Shelleen kissed him hard, her tongue exploring his mouth. She groaned a little, closed her eyes and threw back her head.

  “Oh, Savage,” she moaned, “why am I feeling so guilty? Why are we doing this?”

  “Because it feels so good.”

  Then he looked at her quizzically.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  “You do and I will kill you.”

  Shelleen closed her eyes as if she were about to pray.

  “But I do wish I could be the good little girl papa wants me to be.”

  “Don’t worry your little self, sugar ... you are good.”

  Shelleen opened her eyes. They were fi
lled with passion. For a virgin, Savage remembered thinking, she knew all the moves.

  She opened her sensuous lips to heap some more of her guilt on him when the cannonade opened up.

  Leastwise, it sounded sufficiently like an artillery battery to the ears of a man who’d heard more than his share of them. He surely reacted like it was the real thing.

  With one buck of his hips, he sent a screaming Shelleen flying from the bed. In the same movement, Savage scooped up a Colt .45 from the double gun rig hanging from the bedpost and pointed it at the door, pulling back the hammer with a steady arm and ready to return fire.

  The noise then ceased as quickly as it had begun. And with a moment to reflect, a sweating Savage realized his error. It was not the thunder of guns that had scared half a year’s growth out of him, hadn’t even been Irish Joe trying to blow him apart with a double load of shot. In fact, it wasn’t gunfire at all but rather a sudden insane clattering on the metal roof a few feet above his head which had sounded equally as menacing.

  Shelleen’s pale face appeared over the side of the bed, her eyes threatening to pop from her head.

  “What the—?” they said in unison.

  Savage was now irritated. “I’m askin’ you. It’s your house.”

  “I’ve never heard such a racket before. Are you sure it’s not papa?”

  If it was, Savage wasn’t about to sit here twiddling his thumbs. Putting his feet to the floor, gun at the ready, he padded to the window and peered out. He looked down first, heaving a huge sigh of relief when no sign of life showed on the floor immediately below, the floor shared by shotgun-fancying Irish Joe and his gun toting brother Vinny.

  But movement stirred on the ground and Savage saw staring up at him from the shadows, eyes the size of goose eggs.

  “What?” Savage mimed.

  It seemed to Savage the Mex mouthed back the word, “Goats.”

  Savage was tempted to touch one off, maybe lay a round or two squarely between those pair of goose eggs. He fought the temptation and repeated his silent query.

  This time Yaqui Joe pointed to the roof at the same time repeating the word. The word was definitely ‘goat.’

  Savage’s finger actually tightened on the trigger, but before he could do something he might one day regret, an inoffensive bleat sounded directly above his head. He almost threw his neck out when he swiveled his head skywards.

  An old billy goat with a dirty beard stared down at him.

  Savage knuckled his eyes and shook his head. When he looked again, there wasn’t just one goat chewing high atop Irish Joe’s trail house, but there were no less than two nannies and five little kids. They all returned Savage’s stare as if he were stupid and half cut.

  There could be no denying the fact that leaning stark naked halfway out of that high window with a cocked .45 in his fist, he did look about as stupid as he could ever remember.

  When a man lived as close to the edge as Savage did, dangerous situations involving lawmen, husbands, outlaws and the like were all part of the game, and viewed as such.

  This was different.

  Savage knew he was taking huge risks tonight when he made his way from the sprawling, noisy barroom on the ground floor, past the second floor rooms where Vinny snored like a grampus and Irish Joe slept cuddling his shotgun, up to the naked arms of the gorgeous Shelleen Mallone.

  He was prepared to face any danger if and when it came.

  But goats on the roof ...? How could such a thing be?

  Naturally he was ready to blame his saddle companion, Yaqui Joe. But on this occasion his sidekick from Sonora was squeaky clean innocent. This was the handiwork of hard-snoring Uncle Vinny.

  Vinny did a little dealing on the side here on this treeless, bony bluff overlooking the main stage trail to Alameda—dealing in cattle mainly, but sheep and goats if there was a dollar to be made.

  Late that afternoon, Vinny arrived back at the trail house with a bunch of goats which he immediately set loose in the yard without telling brother Joe, and headed for the bar.

  The goats were hungry and there wasn’t a blade of grass in the yard. Saddle horses had cleaned up everything.

  But the trail house was not entirely devoid of vegetation, as one gray-whiskered old billy quickly saw. Over the years, the prevailing winds had deposited dust atop the trail house’s flat tin roof, which in turn attracted seeds blown there on the wind, which eventually got to grow a nice little green strip which Irish Joe thought softened the outline of what was a pretty gaunt and naked-looking skyline.

  Safe from horses, cattle and humans, this green verge was nothing but mouth-watering temptation to a bunch of hungry and nimble-footed goats. And while most of the unlucky patrons of the trail house slept, the little family made its way to the woodpile, then on to the woodshed, across the roof to the slope at the back of the stables and eventually onto the roof.

  Savage didn’t wish to know how they’d made it there. His main concern was to get them off before they woke the entire trail house—gun-loving Mallones included.

  Savage signaled the same to round-eyed Yaqui Joe, who couldn’t believe why such a crazy job should fall to him.

  Yaqui Joe signaled back; Come down and let us make tracks for Alameda.

  Savage’s response was to point the fully loaded .45 at him, and Yaqui Joe began to climb—woodpile, woodshed, roof, slope, stables—so far so good.

  “Is loco crazy,” Yaqui Joe panted as he clawed his way up past Savage’s naked frame. “Why we not run? Surely you have had enough of the senorita by now ...?”

  Savage waved his gun barrel. ‘Enough’ wasn’t in his vocabulary. Yaqui Joe put one boot up on the roof and the goats began to back away—all but the billy.

  He stood his ground, his whiskers waving in the breeze as he chewed vigorously. The others stopped their retreat. All standing in line with ears pricked, they looked like a lot of goats, and it was a fair bet that any man less stubborn or addicted to virgins than Clint Savage might have decided to cut his losses and take the sensible way out, even at this late stage.

  Not so Savage.

  Shelleen was doing things to him that Yaqui Joe could not see from atop the roof, and his voice sounded husky as he growled;

  “Don’t let him fool you. They’re all bluff and bullshit. Shoo ’em back the way they came, and stop ’em making so much goddamn noise.”

  Yaqui Joe sighed mightily, refused to look down, and scrambled fully up onto the roof some thirty feet above the ground.

  “Okay!” Savage whispered. “Head ’em up and move ’em out.”

  “Easy for you to say, amigo.”

  “Should be dead easy for you, greaseball. You smell so much you’re almost like brothers.”

  Yaqui Joe swore in Spanish and it was lucky for him Savage didn’t understand.

  A few minutes went by and Savage thought Yaqui Joe would have the situation all under control. So he went back to doing what he was doing before he was so rudely interrupted.

  But Yaqui Joe was scared of heights and had been saying a few prayers and asking for divine help when the billy lowered its head until his horns stuck out like lightning rods.

  “Amigo!” Yaqui Joe screamed.

  For the second time that night Shelleen found herself unceremoniously dumped on the floor.

  Savage was out of the bed in an instant and just in time to see Yaqui Joe fly past Shelleen’s moonlit window.

  It was as though that single word coming from the falling man’s constricted throat turned a grating key in the rusty lock of silence which had been holding the desert night in its breathless grip.

  As Yaqui Joe plummeted, Savage let out a roaring curse and made a grab for him. The uproar startled the goats which were suddenly bounding in all directions, little sets of rock-hard hooves hammering Irish Joe’s metal roof with a racket to wake the dead.

  While down in the bar, the tumult brought whiskey-addled drunks out of their midnight dreams to start screaming and crashing a
bout like blind animals in the darkness. And now, Shelleen was filling her healthy young lungs to screech in panic as her windowsill gave way under the strain of evil-smelling Yaqui Joe and stark-naked Clint Savage. Both men fell ten feet straight down to land with a deafening crash on the landing directly outside Irish Joe’s half-open window.

  Irish Joe’s tousled head made an appearance, quickly followed by brother Vinny’s.

  “Wh-wh-wh-what the shit’s goin’ on out there?”

  Irish Joe’s words were barely coherent. But even if his tongue wasn’t fully operational, his eyes were as sharp as drill bits.

  What they immediately saw was a naked house guest who’d fallen from his daughter’s widow above. He looked up to see his bare-breasted daughter howling hysterically from that very same window.

  A sawed-off came sweeping into sight so fast that all Savage could do was grab hold of his sidekick and push him off the edge of the landing, then drop to the ground himself some fifteen feet below a half-second before the crash of both barrels would have torn his naked frame to pieces.

  Leastways, that was how he tried to explain his actions to Yaqui Joe some half hour later as they stormed through the desert night, listening to the ringing hoof echoes of their mounts grow louder while Irish Joe’s shotgun blasts grew fainter in their dust.

  But Yaqui Joe wanted nothing to do with Savage’s explanations. He’d had all he could stand. They would part company at Alameda and Savage the crazy man and vile seducer of defenseless women could take on the Ringo assignment alone. He was not only not good enough for Yaqui Joe to travel with, he was not man enough to share the company of even Joachim his mule.

  “Sorry you feel that way, greaseball.”

  “You are an evil hombre.”

  “I’ve gotta agree.”

  “A fornicator, a betrayer and a non-Catholic.”

  “Whole thing and more, huh?”

  “And you will not make fun of Yaqui Joe no more.”

  Yaqui Joe rode on ahead, sombrero flapping in the breeze. “We shall leave the trail at the butte, then go on to the big city and—”