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  Savage made a wild grab for the door but found it locked. He ducked instinctively as Colt thunder erupted beneath him. A bullet burned his forearm as Savage yelled to Angela to open the door. But it remained steadfastly shut while a badly-leaking Johnny Dukes was doing his level best to knock him off the landing.

  Only one thing left to do.

  Getting his back against the wall, Savage braced his boots against the heavy rail, summoned every ounce of strength and bad temper, and heaved.

  For several seconds, with the Texan still firing at him like a fool, it seemed the stairs were going to hold. Savage gave it the last of what he had. A tearing sound was followed by the groan of protesting timbers and next moment Savage was hanging by one hand to a brass door handle as half a ton of staircase plummeted thirty feet into the alleyway below.

  SAVAGE 8: A BODY TO DIE FOR

  By E. Jefferson Clay

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

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Electronic Edition: May 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.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Chapter One – The Last Roundup

  THERE WAS TENSION in the air on this Arizonan night. Across the darkened hills drifted the howl of a wintering wolf. Nothing seemed to move as Savage dropped to the ground.

  “Where the hell are they, amigo?” whispered his snaggle-toothed companion.

  “Who the hell are they is more the problem,” growled big Clint Savage, slipping one into the chamber. “Guess this is one way to find out.”

  He opened fire.

  It was like Gettysburg all over again as the Big Fifty buffalo gun roared in the mountain stillness. Every critter within a mile ducked for cover as Savage jumped to his feet.

  The two bandidos trailing them were after Yaqui Joe. And for good reason. The shifty breed had been plundering the province of San Cristobal for years. He’d stolen fish, chickens, oxen, goats and one plump matron with a vile disposition named Clarissa Humbleton.

  Clarissa was a million miles from the thoughts of Yaqui Joe as he cringed in the darkness with both hands covering his ears. Spent shells from Savage’s thundering gun peppered his quaking body.

  Yaqui Joe wanted to be elsewhere—like in El Robles in the springtime when the fish were biting and Padre Abundio would bless you and forgive any sin no matter how great if you paid him enough hard cash. He would even settle for a posting with the Provincial Army, currently at war with Pancho Gonzales. Right now, war sounded good to no-good Yaqui Joe.

  “Let’s go, greaseball!”

  “But, amigo—”

  It was too late for ‘buts’. Savage was legging it for the river at speed, leaving one-twenty-four pounds of quivering horse thief no option but to pluck up some courage and follow.

  When put to it, Savage could cover the distance in even time. He’d even clipped a second or two off his record the night Angel the Assassin caught him with his woman from Havana.

  Savage had vanished into the river before Yaqui Joe was halfway across the clearing. The bullets were flying thick and fast and the night was crazy with howls of obscenities.

  Then Yaqui Joe was hit.

  He was screaming like an Apache as he hit the ground and tumbled into a gully wash.

  It wasn’t until he sat up, dazed and dusty, that he realized the bullet he thought had shattered his leg had only knocked off the heel of his boot.

  This discovery came too late to help Clint Savage. He’d heard the breed howl, saw him go down and was now leaving the safety of the river to rush back to his aid.

  Yaqui Joe was touched. The bandidos were at first startled then elated. Savage was big time. They’d hoped to blast him, collect the bounty on his handsome head, finish off low-thieving Yaqui Joe and then they would be on easy street.

  “Let him have it, amigo!” one bandido yelled.

  Again the brutal roar of gunfire ripped through the night. But the venomous lead accounted for nothing more than some dried-out vegetation, a chunk of rock, and an unlucky squirrel who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Savage dropped into a slight depression the moment he heard the bandido’s call. The volley of hot lead whistled harmlessly over his head. As he raised his head above the rim, he saw Yaqui Joe up on his haunches, ready to run and quite plainly unhurt.

  That made Clint Savage mad. Mad at the breed, mad at the ambushers, maddest of all at himself for allowing this manhunt to go on for so long.

  He came up shooting like a dust-shrouded apparition, purple lances of gun flame belching enormous gushes of gun smoke in a continuous rolling volley.

  They never knew the fate of the two bandidos from Clawhammer Valley. All that mattered was that there was no return fire, no more shouting, not even a howl of agony.

  A heavy hand took Yaqui Joe by the scruff and lifted both feet off the ground. A fist in the gizzard or a scathing lecture was imminent until Yaqui’s brain, always agile in a crisis, started to function.

  “Senorita Angela,” he said.

  Savage blinked. “What?”

  “Angela. She is in Morales.”

  “What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

  There had been no mention of redheaded Angela Cummings since they’d crossed the border from New Mexico one long week ago. Angela, with her voluptuous body, her sea-green eyes and her capricious nature, had been wiped from the Savage memory file the moment she walked out on him hanging onto the silk-shirted arm of good looking Johnny Dukes.

  What was she doing back here in his life, quivering on the unshaven lips of an ugly half-breed who’d just about got him killed?

  He was about to find out.

  Yaqui Joe began to gag. “If you do not let me go, senor, I think I will choke.”

  “It’s what you deserve,” Savage said, dropping him to the ground. “So tell me.”

  “She said she would meet us in Big Bend. She tells this to Yaqui Joe with tears in her eyes and a sob in her voice such as—”

  “Why did she say she’d meet us? And why’d she tell you, not me?”

  “Because she fears you would not speak with her again. As to why she wishes to see you again, I do not know. But I swear what I say to you is the truth.”

  At this the breed paused to smile slyly.

  “You like to see this pretty one again, companero?”

  Savage refused to even consider the question until they were mounted and on their way again.

  Then he remembered, and it was just like yesterday ...

  Her voice was like honey and her body like silk. They were together in the hazy blue room above Benny’s up-a-flight bar on Laz Notre’s Petey Street.

  “Oh, Clinton, is this it?”

  It felt like ‘it’ to him. “Huh?”

  “You know. Montezuma’s Position. You promised to show it to me.”

  Savage didn’t know a thing about Montezuma’s Position. He’d made it all up. It was the sort of thing you told a woman when you were trying to lure her to your bed.

  She said she loved it so Savage showed her more. Unfortunately, so much more that the big brass bed collapsed, which somehow broke th
e mood and led them to take a breather and a drink. That’s how he came to hear about Johnny Dukes.

  “He’s in town looking for you, Clinton,” she calmly informed him over a fruity vintage from Castela del Real. “Such a jealous man. He says he’s come a hundred miles to kill you. He really is a lizard, isn’t he, honey?”

  Savage sat completely naked in the ruins of the beautiful bed. He was disturbed by the news on Dukes, a man not nearly as good looking as himself. But he was even more startled by the fact that this gorgeous redhead had spent the past three hours making love to him without once mentioning the fact that one of Texas’ most notorious killers was actually in town and looking to nail his hide to the nearest post.

  “How come you just remembered all of a sudden?” he queried a tad stiffly as he started to dress.

  “You are not sore, are you, Clinton?”

  At that moment he was almost sore. Really sore didn’t happen until some five minutes later when he was attempting to leave the upstairs love nest via the outside landing. He saw sudden death climbing stealthily up the fire stairs with a shooter in either hand.

  “Savage?”

  “Dukes?”

  The killer was so stunned he gave Savage the time he needed.

  Ducking low, Savage palmed his six-gun and opened up, blowing away railings, risers and three potted plants before scoring a hit. By then Dukes was blasting away with his twin guns. Savage suffered nothing worse than a few splinters and a hole in his new corduroy shirt before the whole shot-to-hell fire stairs began to crumble.

  Savage made a wild grab for the door but found it locked. He ducked instinctively as Colt thunder erupted beneath him. A bullet burned his forearm as Savage yelled to Angela to open the door. But it remained steadfastly shut while a badly-leaking Johnny Dukes was doing his level best to knock him off the landing.

  Only one thing left to do.

  Getting his back against the wall, Savage braced his boots against the heavy rail, summoned every ounce of strength and bad temper, and heaved.

  For several seconds, with the Texan still firing at him like a fool, it seemed the stairs were going to hold. Savage gave it the last of what he had. A tearing sound was followed by the groan of protesting timbers and next moment Savage was hanging by one hand to a brass door handle as half a ton of staircase plummeted thirty feet into the alleyway below.

  A figure was ponderously rising from the wreckage—a groaning, moaning, dusk-shrouded, evil-cursing figure which unfortunately looked human and which incredibly clutched a gun.

  Savage cursed.

  Why was it that righteous people could die in bed in the middle of a healthy snore while so many breeds of scum, vermin or jealous lovers seemed almost indestructible.

  The figure was aiming up at him again.

  Savage was now in the High Risk Position.

  Swinging precariously, he cut loose and one mean-spirited sonuva disappeared into the night.

  Wild screams coming from a window above were accompanied by the sound of hoofbeats from below. The sight of Yaqui Joe rarely came under the heading of ‘welcome’, but this was one time it came close.

  Gratefully Savage released his grip.

  The breed’s gap-toothed grin was like a shining light in the darkness. Throwing a leg over Stud’s broad back, Savage was off at the gallop with jackass and rider hard on his heels.

  The street quickly filled with people—the fat, the thin, the flush and the hard-up. All were yelling and more than one looked dangerous as those bloodcurdling howls continued to shake the night. Savage saw Angela rushing to Dukes’ side and throwing her arms around him while the pair of strangers tore down Main Street like it was Saturday afternoon at the track.

  Savage cursed and started shooting.

  He wasn’t exactly aiming to hit anyone, but wasn’t missing by much either. His fusillade had the desired effect and the towners were scrambling out of their way without a thought of trying to stop them as they stormed past the last rickety house with the clean plains wind in their faces.

  “Madre!” Yaqui Joe gasped as Savage dropped back a pace. He pointed ahead at the cross trail sign. “Which way, amigo?”

  “South,” came the measured response.

  “Why south?”

  “Why not?”

  Savage might sound indifferent but this was anything but the case. He had an appointment down south in a place named Granite, which had to be a tad more peaceful than Laz Notre.

  Was that thunder rumbling in the night or the dark gods laughing?

  “Come on, you broken down old crook!” breathed the killer, squinting along the barrel of his rifle. “Quit hidin’ from a man. Nobody lives forever, you know.”

  Ben Ryder, although far from broken down, certainly came under the heading of a crook. But he wasn’t hiding from anyone this balmy day on his piece of land up on Cloud Plateau. He didn’t know there was another human being within miles, in truth. He was just doing the same old thing he did day after tedious day, ten miles from Granite and about twice that distance from the yellow sand fringes of the Furnace Desert. He was checking his roses, his movements making it difficult for one unsuspected back shooter to draw a bead.

  The killer blinked watery gray eyes as he waited.

  A skinny and ill-tempered twenty-two year old, Rory Shane was impatient but was competent at his profession—which was shooting people in the back for pleasure and profit.

  He’d been but a chubby two year old when his uncle, Blackie McTigue, and Ben Ryder robbed the shipment known as the Spanish Gold. But while Uncle Blackie received a twenty-year stretch for his part in the crime, somehow Ben Ryder had escaped free as a bird for a surprising ‘lack of evidence.’

  The killer’s lip curled as he watched a pair of deft hands prune a bush. Lack of evidence! He believed Ryder had bought his way out of the law’s clutches while his good Uncle Blackie rotted away in a ten-foot cell.

  Languishing on Death Row at that very moment following the death of a fellow inmate, rugged Blackie McTigue would have happily committed another murder if he’d heard his least favorite kinsman refer to him that way. Over the long years as he grew from unimpressive youth to sniveling manhood, Rory Shane had visited McTigue often, to get information on where they’d stashed the gold. Each time without success.

  “Ryder has it, kid,” was the same story every time. “And so far as I know, it’s still somewheres out in the desert. Now leave me alone. If you’re what visitin’ day means around here, I’d as soon as go without.”

  Nobody liked Rory Shane. Even his own kinfolk. He could live with that if only he could be rich.

  Like twenty-thousand dollars rich.

  He spat in the freshly-tilled earth of Cloud Plateau. Ben Ryder was breathing this clean, crisp air while Uncle Blackie was due to swing this week. To Rory Shane that just didn’t seem right. At least not in the way his squirming toad brain saw things.

  But where tight-lipped Uncle Blackie would kick his way into eternity on the business end of a yellow hang rope, just as poor on his last day as on his first, Ben Ryder was still stinking rich.

  And the way Rory Shane had it figured, that twenty grand in old Spanish coins was most likely right here.

  Where else could it be?

  Why hadn’t someone figured this out before?

  Rory stiffened. The silver-haired gardener had paused to mop his brow with a spotted bandanna. The way he moved told Rory that Ryder had been something once, maybe even something special. The man looked fifty, about the same age as good-as-dead Uncle Blackie. But this jasper moved with a grace that turned Rory’s mouth dry.

  What if the old bastard was carrying? What if he was still as quick as he was in the old days?

  Rory thought about getting it over with fast. He’d done the same thing often enough in the past when his shallow courage failed to measure up to his lofty ambitions.

  But he needed some answers.

  Then his target suddenly moved into clear sight and reac
hed for his gun rig hanging from a tree branch.

  The drygulcher’s finger itched as he brought the rifle to his shoulder again. “Don’t do it!” he whispered. “At least not before you tell me where it is.”

  While Ben Ryder, the man who had been the subject of speculation and ongoing interest from the territory’s top lawmen down to the citizens of Granite, who treated him more like a friend, took his last look at the blue hills and didn’t know it.

  Times like this, Ben Ryder would look back at his younger days with enormous regret.

  He’d ridden by the light of the moon, flaunted the law, watched good pards die, until he suddenly lost interest and chose to go straight.

  It was the best decision he’d ever made.

  There was irony in the fact that as he slowly reached for his gun rig, sensing there was someone watching him, the old outlaw’s thoughts turned to his former pard Blackie McTigue.

  Ben Ryder had been plagued by just about every treasure hunter there was, every man-Jack of them driven by the one notion—that he was the only man who knew the whereabouts of the Spanish Gold. In that fatal moment, the face of Blackie McTigue appeared before him. It was a face that had stalked him all these years.

  For twenty years he’d out-thought, outsmarted and at times out-gunned the gold hunters, knowing that every day was a day closer to this one.

  But he never feared it.

  Straight and proud, he turned and made defiant contact with the hate-filled eye squinting down the barrel. Then his hand dropped to gun butt as the rifle roared. The Cloud Plateau day was shattered into a million shimmering fragments and Ben Ryder knew he was dead.

  On the same brilliant day as Clint Savage set out for Kray County.

  Chapter Two – Outlaw in Town

  AT THE END of a long twelve hours in the saddle, Yaqui Joe sat about building a little campfire within a neat circle of stones. He was opening a can of stew and setting the pot to boil, and getting a little peeved. During their uneven and improbable partnership, Savage treated him more like an underling because he happened to have been born small, ugly, and kind of saddle-colored.