.45-Caliber Desperado

Table of Contents

 

 

The river grew brighter before him, the dusty cottonwoods looming larger and larger. A breeze rattled their branches. Behind Cuno, Arguello groaned and leaned more of his weight against the young freighter's broad back and shoulders.

“Hold on, Christiano,” Cuno urged. “We'll get you a cold drink of water soon.”

A cracking sound rose in the distance ahead of Cuno. It sounded like branches being broken over a knee. Then louder pops sounded as well, as someone at the head of the outlaw pack screamed.

Another man shouted.

A horse whinnied shrilly.

Cuno squinted to peer over the heads of the other riders. Several of the lead riders were checking down their mounts and raising rifles.

Amidst the trees along the river, smoke puffed on the heels of the spattering gunfire.

Cuno's heart thudded, and his lips mouthed the dreaded word.

PRAISE FOR PETER BRANDVOLD AND HIS NOVELS:

“Lots of action . . . If you thought they didn't write 'em like this anymore, this book is for you.”

—Bill Crider

 

“Brandvold creates a fast-paced, action-packed novel.”

—James Reasoner

 

“Action-packed . . . for fans of traditional Westerns.

“—
Booklist

 

“Recommended to anyone who loves the West as I do.”

—Jack Ballas

 

“A writer to watch.”

—Jory Sherman

 

“ A natural born storyteller who knows the West.”

—Bill Brooks

.45-CALIBER DESPERADO
.45-CALIBER FIREBRAND
.45-CALIBER WIDOW MAKER
.45-CALIBER DEATHTRAP
.45-CALIBER MANHUNT
.45-CALIBER FURY
.45-CALIBER REVENGE

 

THE DEVIL'S WINCHESTER
HELLDORADO
THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS
THE DEVIL'S LAIR
STARING DOWN THE DEVIL
THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE
RIDING WITH THE DEVIL'S MISTRESS
DEALT THE DEVIL'S HAND
THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET

 

GALLOWS EXPRESS
BORDER SNAKES
BULLETS OVER BEDLAM
COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL
DEADLY PREY
ROGUE LAWMAN

 

HELL ON WHEELS
ONCE LATE WITH A .38
ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN
ONCE A RENEGADE
ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER
ONCE A LAWMAN
ONCE MORE WITH A .44
ONCE A MARSHAL
MANHUNT

 

BLOOD MOUNTAIN

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

.45-CALIBER DESPERADO

 

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / September 2011

Copyright © 2011 by Peter Brandvold.
Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.

 

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
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ISBN : 978-1-101-54387-0

 

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THE BALD GIANT'S fist was a battering ram.

As it flew toward Cuno Massey's face, it grew as large as a wheel hub in the young freighter's eyes. It glowed like solid brass in the sunlight hammering the dusty prison yard. Black hair curled against the bulging knuckles. Grease and grime lay like mud chinking beneath the clamshell-thick thumbnail.

Cuno had feinted left when he should have feinted right, feet spread, hips pivoting. He was caught off balance. His father, who'd taught him to fight, would have clucked reprovingly.

The fist disappeared an eighth of a second after it had become all that Cuno could see. For a full second after that, the world went dark. It filled with the tolling of cracked bells. Beneath the ringing, there was an explosion. Beneath the explosion, Cuno could hear grinding sinew followed by the racking agony of an Apache war lance rammed through his nose deep into his brain plate.

Warm blood oozed across his cheeks and dribbled into the corners of his mouth. It was thick as molasses, but it tasted like copper. He inhaled some of it, blew it out in a sneeze-like cough, brushing a fist across his mouth.

He shuffled a half-dozen feet straight back as he heard the prisoners yelling through the doors of their cells stacked in three tiers around him. Others, released from their cells for Fight Day to view the proceedings in the roped-off arena in the prison's main yard, were nearer the fight but were also being silently warned back by many guards wielding sawed-off shotguns.

Some of the crowd was cheering. Those who'd placed their bets on Cuno were booing. There were damn few of those, as the bald giant's reputation as a bare-knuckle fighter was second to none at the Arkansas River Federal Penitentiary outside Limon, Colorado Territory.

Somehow, though blood continued to dribble from his nostrils, and the yard with its buffeting American flag and roofed guard towers and three-tiered cell barracks pitched wildly around him, Cuno managed to set his feet in the finely churned dust. He did not fall. The bald giant, with a mustache as large and sweeping as a raven's wing, narrowed his hawkish yellow eyes in amusement.

Amusement turned to resolve as, clenched fists raised, he grinned confidently and sidestepped forward, the muscles in his massive chest and belly ridging and writhing like snakes beneath sweat-slick skin tanned to the golden brown of a roasted chicken.

Like Cuno, Mule Zimmerman was clad in only the black-and-white prison pajama bottoms that dropped like knickers to just below his knees. His feet were bare.

“Ya should've gone down, kid. Should've gone down and stayed down.” Zimmerman winked tauntingly, bobbing and weaving, moving his fists, poising himself for the final blow. Cuno could barely hear him above the roar of the crowd comprised of both reveling prisoners and armed guards. “Mighta gone easier for you if you'd just passed out. This way, see—since the warden's lookin' on an' all—I'm gonna have to kill ya.”

He jabbed his left fist.

It was a weak punch meant only to drive Cuno's face into the big man's right. It didn't work. A red haze had bled down over Cuno's eyes when he realized the gravity of his situation and, flicking a glance to the second story of the barracks on his left, he saw the smugly smiling countenance of Warden Henry Castle flanked by two beefy guards in their tobacco-brown uniforms holding Henry repeaters up high across their chests.

In his straw boater, bow tie, and shiny black brogans, and holding a braided rawhide quirt over the rail before him—he was leaning there like some tony cad admiring the girls as they passed in their summer-weight frocks—Castle resembled a smaller, dapper version of Mule Zimmerman. His face was waxy, his mustache polished to sharp ends that swept upward around and to either side of his pale, slender nose. His teeth were large and white beneath his curled upper lip.

Cuno set his jaws. His eyes dulled with a cornered animal's decisive fury as he stared at Zimmerman, who stood two inches taller than Cuno's five-ten, and a good thirty pounds heavier than his own lean two hundred. Just as the big man's fist flew toward Cuno's nose once more, his yellow eyes softening with shrewd confidence, Cuno ducked.

The fist made a sharp
whush!
as it slashed the air over Cuno's head.

Zimmerman grunted.

The roar of the crowd softened slightly. Cuno heaved up off his heels and, no slouch himself when it came to bare-knuckle savagery, hammered the big man's hard belly once with each fist. It was like pounding a muddy sandstone wall.

Zimmerman grunted again, voiced his indignation with a curse, and shuffled backward.

“Well,” Cuno heard the warden say as he stood leaning over the balcony rail fronting his sandstone, bar-windowed office.

Zimmerman roared, narrowed his eyes, and bunched his lips. He started to raise his hands, but Cuno, swallowing the pain of his broken nose while aware that both eyes were swelling shut, used his quickness to his best advantage. He brought his own large fist up and hammered away at the big man's cheeks and jaws.