Outlaw Starr: Judas Hearts

Page 4

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Page 4

The silence of sleep became a confusion of noise and voices. Joshua woke up in time to see a group of five armed and angry men shove their way into the jail and overtake the deputy. Before he'd finished clearing his mind of sleep, the vigilante group had knocked out Deputy Tim, taken the cell keys and had Joshua's cell door open.

"Hold him down, men! I'll tie him!"

Josh couldn't move. Four of the middle-aged men held him down, and the fifth man tied a rope around his hands, tied it far tighter than the handcuffs had been. They yanked him up and dragged him out of the jail and into the dark night. They jerked him and pulled him forward, toward the corral. All of them shouted and leered and roughly shoved him around. Their words melted into incoherent babble in his ears and their reddened, bloodthirsty faces loomed huge in his eyes.

His brain torched with terror and rage and panic, when the rope slid over his head, and his mind spun like a tornado. "You ain't gonna hang me!" he muttered. "You ain't gonna hang me!"

Like a strike of lightning, he threw his entire weight against the nearest man and tumbled to the ground with him, snatching the gun out of his hand, in spite of his own hands being tied. Fast as a striking rattler, he fired a shot point blank into the man's face, then turned the gun on the other four men, shot one in the neck and another in the chest, but missed the last two. They had fled at the start of the shooting.

Joshua sat up, breathing hard, and hastily rifled through the dead men's clothes until he found a pocket knife. He sawed away at the ropes around his wrists, dropped the knife, twice, in his attempts. His lungs gasped as if he was drowning.

The ropes finally fell away from his wrists, and he threw them aside, threw aside the noose and took up another of the dead men's guns. He checked that it was loaded, then jumped up and ran back to the jail.

He staggered through the door and met the recovering deputy face to face. The dead man's gun swung level with Tim's eyes and caused him to freeze in place, his hand still six inches from his revolver.

"Open that safe and give me my Colt, or get ready to meet some angels," Joshua grunted, still gulping the thin, dry air like a suffocating man, sweat running down his face and dripping from his stringy blonde hair. He watched the lawman sink to his knees beside the safe and open it up with trembling hands.

"Back off from it," Josh said, waving the gun at the man and then moving forward to snatch up the deputy's six gun and his own black revolver and dagger. He leaned into the cell and grabbed his grey cowboy hat, then threw an evil grin down at the deputy.

"Sorry to be mean, but you can't be follerin' me." He pointed the Colt at Tim's left knee and fired, grazing it badly enough on the side that he couldn't walk on it, but not badly enough to cause him to bleed to death. The deputy screamed and clutched at his leg.

Joshua turned and ran back out into the spooky night, ran around to the small corral along the side of the jail. He found his buckskin stallion penned there, found his saddle and tack and bags under the shed roof. With practiced efficiency, he had Diablo saddled and ready in a hurry. He mounted and jumped the stallion over the fence and rode away toward the south, over the hills and toward Phoenix.

Once he was out of Wickenburg, his mind dropped everything about the lockup. All he could think of, then, was getting his revenge. He vowed to himself to get it, and to make every bit of it count like revenge had never counted, before.

The End

©2008 Kai Starr/Kaichi Satake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions. These are works of fiction. All characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. Please email me regarding fanfiction permissions, before using my characters, worlds or other original creations.

Page 3

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:00:00 GMT

Page 3

Joshua had been right about Deputy Tim not opening the cell door, alone. They skipped lunch and waited until suppertime before they brought him anything to eat or drink. Another man stood with Tim, holding a sawed-off shotgun on Josh, while the deputy opened the door just wide enough to shove the plate of food in, on the floor. Josh ate the tasteless food and then took the empty plate and wooden spoon and threw them at Tim. The spoon didn't go very far, but the tin plate sailed across the room and smacked Tim in the back of the neck.

"Hey!" he snapped, scowling at Joshua. "You sorry little sumbitch! You done it, now. I ain't bringin' you nothin' else to eat! You can starve, for all I care!"

"Won't be no worst than eatin' that shit," Josh growled. "What'd you do, scoop it up off the damn street?"

"You're the most ungrateful little sumbitch I ever seen."

"You ain't seen nothin', buster," Joshua said, his eyes going crazy, again. "You think I ought to be grateful fer bein' locked up and shoved about and poked at like some damn animal? You damn crazy, if you do."

Tim stood up and turned to face him, took a few steps closer. "You ain't even as good as an animal, Love. If it was up to me, I'd done shot you dead. One bullet through your crazy head, say I slipped. Oops! I didn't mean to shoot him, Sheriff! Just his head was in the way of my gun when it went off."

That crazy, rattlesnake light in Joshua's bright blue eyes intensified. "Why don't you, then? Save the county some money. I'll even sit still fer ya, so ya can't miss."

"Oh, it's temptin'! You don't know how temptin' it is." Tim scowled at him. "But I ain't no killer. I ain't like you. The law will take care of you. Ain't my place to put you down. It's the people's place to do it."

"Huh. You a fool." Josh decided to ignore him, then. He turned over on the bunk and faced the wall. His prolonged anger tired him out, and before long, he slipped into a dreamless sleep.

©2008 Kai Starr/Kaichi Satake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions. These are works of fiction. All characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. Please email me regarding fanfiction permissions, before using my characters, worlds or other original creations.

Page 2

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:00:00 GMT

Page 2

Wickenburg's main street lay quiet except for a few people walking to or from their daily business. All of them eyed the four strange boys with searching eyes, but they lost their concern, when the fellows waved and smiled at them. Not a soul noticed the friendly young men when they dismounted in front of the bank and casually tied their horses to the rail.

Lester stayed by his sorrel, leaned up against the rail and rolled himself a cigarette. Billy and Morgan followed as Joshua ambled across the boardwalk and toward the bank's doors. Their spurs jangled and their boots thudded in the slow, unconcerned walk of ordinary men who weren't about to rob a bank. All three of them slid their bandanas up over their faces and drew their guns just as they reached the door.

But they didn't all go in. Joshua opened the door and stepped inside a ring of pistols and shotguns, pointed at his head and chest. He heard Billy and Morgan run, and his heart constricted in one big jerk of rage.

"Joshua Granville Love," the sheriff said, smiling with exaggerated relish, "you are under arrest. Drop the gun and put your hands over your head."

Josh let his ivory-handled Navy Colt drop to the floor and slowly raised his arms. Two men rushed up and seized his arms, and the handcuffs stung his wrists. The sheriff lowered his double-barrel shotgun and pulled the mask off Joshua's face. The two of them just glared into each other's eyes, and the sheriff was the first to break the stare. He shook his head and laughed. "I never thought I'd see your face this close and live through it. You sure don't look as bad as you are."

The sheriff bent to pick up the black Colt, and Joshua hissed at him. "You don't know the half of how bad I can be, mister. Looks ain't nothin'."

"Mm-hmm, bad comes from the heart, not the face." The sheriff nodded to his deputy. "Pat him down and then take him to jail, Tim. I'll settle with his friends and meet you over there."

"You dirty sons of bitches," Joshua spat, as the deputy and another man patted his entire body, relieved him of the Spanish dagger he wore under his left sleeve and handed it to the sheriff. "You can't hold me."

"Wanna bet?" the deputy grinned, leading him out of the bank and into the street. "You go on and try to escape, boy. I'd love to blow your murderin' head off. Hell, why don't you just twitch a bit? I don't need you to run."

Joshua seethed, glanced at his buckskin stallion, still tied to the rail. He eyed the man to his left and found him to be too burly to knock down, easily. Then he eyed the deputy, who had his revolver aimed at his prisoner's side, level with his heart. Deputy Tim noticed him throwing that evaluating eye over him, and he snorted. "Yeah, go on. Try it. Let me shoot your ass. And if I don't, somebody else will. Elbert ain't above shootin' a dog, neither. Ain't that right, El?"

"Yep. Like to shoot this 'un. Send him back to Texas--oh, I mean hell. Same damn thing!"

The two of them laughed all the way to the jail, and their laughter compressed the rage in Joshua's belly until he thought it might burst into flame and consume the whole world in one big flash. He was so angry that he couldn't even see where they were taking him, couldn't see the people who came out of the shops and saloons to point and stare at him. His sight eased back to normal when the shadow of the jail fell over his face. He looked into the little building but could see only darkness inside. The heat in his guts boiled up a rush of nausea that he was barely able to swallow.

Deputy Tim let Elbert hold Joshua while he got the jail cell door opened, then he snatched Joshua's arm and violently shoved him through the door. He laughed, watching Josh stumble forward and fall to the floor. The iron bars slammed shut with a permanent clank.

Tim removed his hat and rubbed a calloused hand through his frosty blonde hair. "Boy, you got you some fine friends," he leered. "They gonna get them five thousand dollars, today, and you gonna get a neck stretchin', you murderin' little sumbitch."

"You ain't gonna hang me," Joshua hissed, his blue eyes wild and crazy. He didn't even try to get off the floor. "Ain't nobody gonna hang me!"

"That's what you think! Ain't no judge in the world fool enough to not string you up!" Tim walked away from the cell, moving his conversation to Elbert. "Thanks for the help, El. I'll save you a good spot at the gallows, when we break his neck."

Elbert nodded, solemnly. "Thank you, kindly, Timothy." He took a last disgusted look in Joshua's direction and then let himself out.

Joshua sat there and let his bright blue eyes bore holes in the deputy's back, but the man ignored him. Being so suddenly dismissed only added to Joshua's rage, and heightened his nausea. He thought he'd better try to fight it and calm down, so he could think of a way out of this mess.

He pushed himself up and flopped onto the little bunk, holding his hands up to study the handcuffs. They were tight around his wrists, so tight they almost cut off the circulation in his hands. He pulled at them, twisted up his hands and tried to slip them out, but the cuffs were just too tight. He'd break the bones in his hands trying to get them free, and then he couldn't shoot. He sighed and dropped his hands to his chest.

"Hey, badge," he called, looking over at the deputy. "Why don't you take these damn handcuffs off me? They's hurtin' me. I can't do nothin' in here."

"Forget it, boy." Tim didn't bother to look back at him, just sat at the desk and read the newspaper. "I heard how clever you are. You think you can grab my gun, don't you? You ain't gonna get the opportunity. We'll take 'em off when Sheriff Rawlins gets here and can hold his gun on your snake ass." He suddenly turned around, holding the paper up and grinning at Josh. "Just think, your name will be in this paper, when they announce your hangin'! Why, you'll be a big celebrity, 'round here. You'll make a whole pile of folks happy when you die."

"I ain't gonna hang, you son of a bitch."

"Oh, yes, you are. You gonna die real good, too. I bet when that noose tightens up around your neck, you'll be up there beggin' and cryin' for your mama and pissin' yourself, like all the other ones does."

Joshua turned onto his left side and shot a demon stare at the deputy. "I ain't like all the other ones. I ain't scared to die."

"Yeah, that's what they all says, while they're sittin' in this safe little cell," Tim said, turning his back to Josh, again. "It's a whole 'nother story, when they get up on them gallows and see Death up close, with their own two eyes."

Josh held his hellfire glare on Tim for a long time, even kept it on him when Sheriff Rawlins returned and stood with his gun trained on Joshua's head while Tim removed the handcuffs. Rawlins didn't stick around, afterward, as he had other business to attend to. He seemed to have no interest in Joshua, now that the outlaw was tucked firmly into his cell. That riled Joshua up, even more. It was one thing to be caught and locked up, but quite another to be humiliated and ridiculed and taunted and ignored.

He finally got tired of glaring at Tim, and lay staring at the ceiling, instead. His mind rolled and rolled at high speed, trying to find some method of escape. Tim's worry over him grabbing the gun through the bars was pointless. Josh had noticed Tim didn't carry the cell keys on his belt. They hung on a nail over the desk, a good ten feet away from the cell door. No, if he were to try to get out of the cell, he'd have to get Tim to open the door, first. Maybe he could do that when it was dinner time. They'd have to get the food into the cell, somehow, and a plate wouldn't go through the bars.

He sighed, thinking that if Tim was so cautious about not getting close to the cell by himself, he certainly wouldn't open that door by himself to stick a plate of food in. The nausea returned and pushed bile up his throat, as he went through idea after idea and came up with nothing workable.

His mind let go of plotting his escape, and turned to his former companions. Each man's face flashed in his mind, and he began to imagine what he would do to them, when he caught up with them, again. He convinced himself he wasn't going to hang--he couldn't hang. He had to make those bastards pay for their betrayal, even if he died in doing it.

©2008 Kai Starr/Kaichi Satake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions. These are works of fiction. All characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. Please email me regarding fanfiction permissions, before using my characters, worlds or other original creations.

Page 1

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:00:00 GMT

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Author's note: Joshua Love is a recurring character in my "Desperado" series of Western novels. This story takes place a couple of months prior to the start of the first novel I wrote with him in it, called Three Ways From Sunday. He's 19 years old, in this one, and already has a $5,000 bounty on his head!

It was April of 1873, and the clear blue sky blazed with color from the white sun racing up from the eastern horizon. Four young men sat on fidgeting horses, in the brushy hills that jagged across the landscape a few miles south of Wickenburg, in Arizona Territory. None of them spoke, until Billy Walters drew the watch from his pocket and stared at it, then threw a nervous glare at the gang's leader.

"How long we gonna sit here? It's damn nigh eight-thirty."

Joshua Love squinted his bright blue eyes at Billy. "And the damn safe don't open 'til nine o'clock. What you gonna do 'til then? Stand around and play cards with the clerk?" Billy's stupid brown eyes glared back at him, and that just made Joshua angrier. "I done planned this down to the minute. Y'all hooked up with me, and I didn't ask none of you to run with me. Y'all said I was in charge, 'cause I know what the hell I'm doin'. Now, you want to act like I'm a problem? If you think you can rob that bank right now, you get your ass down there and do it. But I ain't comin' with you to get trapped and die like a damn fool."

"You ain't no problem, Joshua," said Lester Jenkins, his sneaky green eyes wide from worry about placating the crazy Texan outlaw. He didn't know why Billy couldn't keep his mouth shut and stick to the plan. He didn't like waiting any more than the others did, but he knew they had to keep Josh calm and unsuspecting, or he might just kill them all. And he could. "We trust you can get us in and out without no shootin'."

Joshua's rattlesnake glare spun toward Lester. "Then how come y'all questionin' me, all of a sudden? What you plannin' to do, shoot me, onced we got the damn money?" His eyes went wild with the craziness that usually stayed hidden until the whiskey released it. "If you think you can, then you let fly, brothers. I'll take you all down, a'fore a one of you can even draw."

"Settle down, Josh." Morgan Doolin rode a few steps closer to him, his voice bubbling like hot oil. He echoed Billy's nervousness, and he tried to fight it. Still, he couldn't bring himself to play the toady, the way Lester did. Joshua Love was nearly six years his junior, not even twenty years old, yet, and it ate at Morgan's pride to have to follow him, just as it ate at Billy's. The matter wasn't helped any by the fact that Morgan didn't like Joshua, resented his blonde good looks and his powerful personality. Morgan wasn't bad looking, himself, a man of medium height, with thick dark hair that fell in curls over his shoulders, a big waxed mustache and piercing dark eyes. But his looks were hard, and his personality matched them. "Ain't nobody gonna shoot you."

Speak for yourself, thought Billy. He also resented Joshua's looks, though he and Josh were nearly the same height, both skirting the edge of six-foot-two. Billy, however, stooped his shoulders as if he was ashamed of his height. Josh stood straight with his, and carried himself like a king, his long stride graced with a catlike fluidity. Billy didn't have Joshua's straight nose or his sandy blonde hair or his healthy complexion. He had a slightly bulbous nose that tried to turn up on the end, unruly mouse-brown hair and blotchy pale skin that did nothing but burn under the Arizona sun. He sat there and glared at Joshua and wished he could mess up his nice face. But he knew he couldn't. He'd have to be satisfied with his share of the five thousand dollars they'd get in exchange for their gang leader. Nine o'clock seemed a hundred years away.

"Then let's go over it one more time," Josh said, his voice still hard. "We ain't goin' in 'til nine o'clock. First thing, shouldn't be no customers. If they is, we ain't shootin' 'em. They ain't to be no shootin', lest the law gets on us. We ain't shootin' them, if we don't have to, neither." He pointed at Lester, who was rubbing his crooked nose with the back of his hand. "Lester, you stake out by the horses and watch the doors." He moved his finger toward Billy, whose nostrils flared at the point. "Billy, you stop inside the door and cover me and Morgan and whatever folks is inside the bank." Morgan didn't flinch when the finger came his way. "Morgan, you and me'll go to the cashiers and get the loot. I'll do the talkin'. We'll go to the canyon, after, and split up the money. We stayin' together, no matter what, even if the law's on us. Y'all got that?"

"Yes, Joshua, we got it," Morgan growled, unable to hold in his annoyance, any longer. "You done told us five times, now."

Joshua scowled at him. "I want to make sure it's all right. Takin' down a bank ain't the same as takin' down a coach. They's a lot more that can go wrong."

Billy huffed his annoyance, as well, but Lester stammered a quick vote of confidence, trying to counteract the belligerence of the other two. "I...I don't mind bein' told, again, Josh. It's good to go over it!"

In spite of being the homeliest of the group, Lester didn't feel the same kind of resentment toward Joshua's looks as the others did. He didn't think anything was wrong with his own stout build, or his thin chestnut hair, and he didn't particularly think anything at all about his face. No, his resentment of Joshua came in over the Texan's charisma and his well-deserved reputation for being a fast and accurate gunman. He couldn't admit to the other resentment, the one over the women. Joshua Love attracted women like fresh buffalo dung attracted flies. Lester Jenkins had never even kissed a woman, before. At least, not a woman he wasn't related to.

Joshua's bright blue eyes searched all three of them and squinted. "Y'all sure actin' funny, now. You didn't have no problem goin' over nothin' the other times. What's the matter with you, this time?"

"Ain't nothin' the matter," Billy snapped. "We just worryin' since it's a big job, this time. More dangerous. Makes a feller nervous to keep bein' told the same thing over and over, like we all stupid."

"Well, let's just do the damn job, then. I ain't said none of you was stupid." Josh looked at his own pocket watch, and then stared toward the hills that hid them from view of the town. "Ain't but a few more minutes. We can start ridin' that way. Keep an easy pace, and look friendly."

©2008 Kai Starr/Kaichi Satake. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright conventions. These are works of fiction. All characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. Please email me regarding fanfiction permissions, before using my characters, worlds or other original creations.