Outlaw road a breed west.., p.1
Outlaw Road (A Breed Western #10), page 1
The Home of Great Western Fiction
The gang who murdered Breed’s woman and framed him for a bank robbery hadn’t reckoned on his powers of survival. Half-white, half-Apache, Breed was an outcast with vengeance in his blood and murder in his heart. Nobody—but nobody—messed with Breed and lived to remember it…
And Breed, alias Azul, was full of rage—his one desire was to track down Nillson and his gang and inflict the gruesome, agonizing deaths he’d carefully planned for each and every one of them…
BREED 10: OUTLAW ROAD
First published by Sphere Books in 1979
Copyright ©James A. Muir 1979
This electronic edition published December 2023
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 / Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate
Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.
Chantilly lace and a pretty face,
and even without the pony tail
this one is for Eve Kane.
Chapter One
ARNE NILLSON HAD a sense of humor.
One time, down around Nogales one Fourth of July, he had kept a gun on the Citizens’ Committee and forced them to haul all of their fireworks to the marshal’s office. Then he made them stack the crates of rockets and roman candles and fire pots around the walls and door and set light to the lot. The jail had—literally—exploded, and the marshal came out burning. Arne shot him in both knees, then stood there laughing as the fireworks consumed his screaming body.
Another time, outside of Tucson, Arne had stopped a stage and lifted the strongbox along with the passengers’ valuables. Then he ran off the horses and lashed the passengers and the driver in the traces and forced them to haul the coach almost into the town. Two of the passengers—a middle-aged drummer with a weak heart and an old lady with silver hair—had died on the way. Arne just left them dragging in the dust while he used the whip to urge the survivors on to greater efforts.
In Doña, Ana a saloon whore had complained that his thick red beard tickled her lips. So Arne pulled a knife and cut the lips away. The whore was still screaming as he buttoned his black pants and quit her room. Laughing.
He was a big man, a head or so over six feet, with flaming red hair and a beard to match. He had bland blue eyes and muscles like an ox. He favored a black suit with a matching, low-crowned black hat, and a white shirt that gave him the appearance of a wandering preacher. The Smith & Wesson Schofield he wore about his heavy waist and the Le Mat pistol-shotgun on his saddle contrasted with the image of robust churchman.
Arne Nillson was an outlaw. He was wanted in Texas, New Mexico, Kansas and Arizona. The various rewards offered totaled out at close on two thousand dollars—near as much as the Government was offering for Jesse James.
Arne, as his name suggested, was of Scandinavian stock. His family were second generation immigrants, farmers back in Illinois. Arne got his red hair and his massive build from his Swedish forebears; his muscles came from a boyhood spent chopping wood and dragging plough. His penchant for killing was all his own. At fifteen he had stolen his parents’ savings and run away from the farm. After buying a horse, a saddle, a pistol and a single-shot Henry rifle, he had seventy-five dollars left. When a road agent armed with a Meteor shotgun and a Colt’s Navy model revolver took the money from him, Arne had decided that the outlaw road was the easiest way to make a living. He recouped his losses inside of three days and headed west. Missouri was wide open back then, and the Oklahoma Territory was a fine hiding place. Arne spent a few happy years there, then drifted on into Texas and New Mexico. His youth was deceptive, concealing terrific strength and a love of murder that often frightened the older, more hardened bandits he rode with.
He wandered on into Arizona, then up into Nevada, where he found kindred spirits and a place to hide out as good as the wild Oklahoma country.
By the time he was thirty he was leading his own gang and growing richer by the week.
He had three regular followers, men as mean as him, though without his warped sense of humor: Paco Camino, Burt Hart, and Maze Lynch.
They made a good team. Killing was second nature to them all; taking other people’s money, third. And they were afraid of Arne, because under his wide-toothed grin and smiling blue eyes there was hidden a ferocious temper that could explode out in sadistic action when the mood took him.
Burt Hart had once opened the Bible he always carried with him and begun to deliver a twisted sermon about love of money being the root of all evil. Arne had backhanded the white-haired outlaw to the ground, then stuffed the Bible, page by page, into Burt’s mouth, forcing him to chew and swallow every page. Afterwards, Burt had been violently sick and complained of stomach cramps for a week. Arne had kidnapped a doctor and forced the man—at gun point—to tend Burt. When Hart was recovered Arne shot the doctor low in the stomach and laughed, and said, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’
He spent the next day and a half watching the man choke his life away, then took Burt and the others into Spring Valley to celebrate Hart’s recovery. He picked up all the tabs for food and drink and whores out of his own pocket. He was that kind of man.
There was a town in Nevada that suited Arne perfectly. Set up beside a feeder branch of the Colorado River where the southern swing of the Rockies came down into the Colorado Plateau, it was flanked round with high ridges, the trails in and out narrow and easily defended. The place was called Blood City, and it was an outlaw hang-out: no questions asked, or law administered. The only criterion: money. Arne made it his base.
Banner was just three days’ ride away, across the Arizona line. And Banner had a bank that was reputed to be full of money. Arne decided to take it.
The only problem was that Banner was a mite close, and if the people from Blood City began fouling up their own doorstep, the city might not last too long.
Maze Lynch suggested that and got shouted down by Arne. The big redhead would find a way to hit the bank and ride clear. He always had: he would think of something again. And if Maze didn’t like it, then he could goddamn well stay safe on his soft butt and watch the others count their money. Paco and Burt shrugged and agreed to go along: they had faith in Arne.
Banner was a thriving community. Main Street was wide and flanked by stores, saloons, a livery stable, and two hotels. There were three eating houses and offices for the stage line, the marshal, and a lumber company. There was a church at one end of the town and two cross streets bisecting the lay-out. Beyond the central hub of activity there were ordinary houses: clapboard structures that spread in size in accordance with the owners’ success in life. Water from the mountains fed the gardens built around the houses, birthing vegetable gardens along with the cactus plants and the hardy wild oak trees.
It was a neat, tidy town, close enough to the Great Divide that it missed the wasting heat of the more southerly sections of Arizona, yet not so far north that it caught the freezing winter winds.
It was, in many ways, an ideal town.
The man riding slowly down Main Street was a long way removed from the citizens’ idea of an ideal inhabitant.
For starters, it was difficult to say whether he was white or Indian. The tangled mane of blond hair, bleached near-white by the sun, suggested American parentage as much as the cold blue eyes that scanned the street in automatic, steady sweeps. He wore a Colt’s Frontier model on a belt that was eased round so that the pistol balanced on his left hip while he was mounted, thus bringing the heavy-bladed Bowie knife sheathed on the far side of the belt to his right. A throwing knife protruded from the upper limit of his right moccasin—which was odd for a white man to wear—the slim hilt wrapped in leather.
He was odd: a mixture of two races. He rode a grey, part-Arab stallion with a Winchester rifle booted forwards of the saddle, like a white man. Yet his features were dark, with a broad nose and high cheekbones set above a wide, full-lipped mouth, like an Apache.
He wore a low-crowned, Sonoran Stetson that shadowed most of his face. A linen shirt that might once have been white, but was now ingrained with dirt and sweat and washing so that it was as near colorless as cloth could get, topped by a leather vest. Brown buckskin pants covered his legs, fitting tight and tucking into the knee-high Chiricahua moccasins.
He was handsome in a way that suggested depths of violence, and his eyes, as they prowled the street, were cold and watchful: alert for danger. A few women stared at him and shuddered pleasantly frightening anticipations of a dangerous lover. The men checked their guns or averted their eyes, unwilling to meet the cold blue stare of the horseman.
He halted outside the Frontier Hotel, sliding down from the tall stallion in a single fluid movement. Paused to stroke the animal’s velvety muzzle before hitching the single rein to the rest. Then went inside.
The Fro
Behind the desk there was a clerk. He was young, with a thick spill of brown hair watered back from his forehead. He had brown eyes and a black vest with stripes down the front over a white shirt. The string tie around his neck was tugged loose, the stud fastening his collar drawn open.
‘I want a room and a bath.’ Azul rested his arms on the desk: he had come a long way. ‘Preferably together.’
The clerk looked at him. Took in the dusty clothes; the bored look along with the Apache features; and made a play of checking the register and the keyholes behind him.
‘The Queen Saloon might do you better,’ he paused before adding, ‘sir. Or the California King.’
‘I saw your place first,’ said Azul, ‘so I’ll stay here.’
‘I’m not sure we have room.’ The sir came a long time after. ‘I believe we’re full.’
‘You got a whole set of keys behind you,’ said Azul, still easily. ‘You can find me a room.’
‘It’s not me, you understand.’ The desk clerk shrugged nervously. ‘Were it up to me, I’d let you in straight off, but Mr. Gideon says otherwise. He won’t let any … well, he put that notice on the wall.’
He pointed over his shoulder, and Azul saw a framed wood sign, gold letters embossed on red cherrywood: Frontier Hotel. Only the best for our clientsNo Blacks. No Indians. No Untowards.
‘I’m not black,’ he said quietly, ‘so how do you rate me? Indian or Untoward?’
The clerk swallowed hard, looking embarrassed. ‘You’re certainly not a nig… black, that is. But you are … well … not white?’
‘My father was,’ said Azul, feeling the first stirrings of anger. ‘Pure white. From Scotland. My mother was Chiricahua. Does that make a difference?’
‘I’m afraid it does. Mr. Gideon says—’
The words choked off as Azul reached over the desk to grasp the front of the clerk’s shirt. His first balled the cloth in a tight knot that dug into the man’s throat as he was dragged forwards over the counter. The ink pot set beside the register spilled over under his weight, spreading a mess of black ink across the signatures in the book. His feet left the ground, then his thighs hit the edge of the counter and his eyes began to bulge as his weight dragged back against the grip on his throat.
‘I want a room,’ rasped Azul. ‘Hotels have rooms. They sell them for money. I have money. I got gold coin and greenbacks. You want to argue the difference between their color and mine?’
The clerk shook his head as best he could and tried to say ‘no’. Azul released his grip and let the man slip back behind the desk, watching him rub at his throat and thighs with nervous movements.
‘The ink got spilled,’ said the clerk. ‘You spilled all my ink.’
‘I might have spilled blood,’ grunted Azul. ‘Give me a key.’
The brown-haired man reached behind, not bothering to look.
‘A good room,’ Azul said. ‘Quiet. With a bath.’
The clerk gulped and checked over the keys hooked in the pigeon-holes. Selected one.
‘Room eight, sir.’ This time it was distinct, with no pause. ‘It’s at the back and very quiet. I’ll send someone up with hot water if you like.’
‘I like,’ grunted Azul, taking the key. ‘Hot water, towels and a bottle of whiskey. With a glass.’
‘Yessir! Right away.’
‘No.’ Azul shook his head. ‘In one hour. I want to bed my horse first.’
‘Yessir! Sorry, nosir. Stable’s up the street. Two blocks along. Shall I have your bath ready then?’
‘Be a nice idea.’ Azul turned away. ‘Make sure the towels are clean.’
He went out of the Frontier Hotel with a sour taste in his mouth. It was always the same: the whites saw his Apache blood and branded him a half-breed; the Indians saw his white side and refused him full brotherhood. Yet he had been born to a daughter of the great war chief, Mangas Colorado, and as fine a Santa Fe trader as ever lived.
Kieron Gunn had married Rainbow Hair because he loved her, and had spent the rest of his life living with the Chiricahua, trying to engineer peace between white and red man. Azul—so named for his blue eyes—had grown up with the Apache, learning their ways as eagerly as he accepted his father’s teachings of the white skills of reading and writing, and such like. He was baptized, christened Matthew Gunn by a priest in the great cathedral in Santa Fe. And now he was poised between the two worlds.
His parents were dead, their hair taken by scalp hunters Azul had hunted down and killed with all the ferocity of his Apache upbringing. Yet still he fitted into neither world. To the Apache he was half white, a lobo; not to be fully trusted. To the whites, he was a half-breed; a bastard union of two kinds. He owned to three names: a proof of his division. To the Chiricahua, and the allied clans of Apacheria, he was Azul—the white Apache. Had he wished to become fully white, he could easily have taken the name his father gave him: Matthew Gunn. But the whites suspected him in equal measure, never really trusting him for his Apache blood. So around the Border Country, where he had hunted and killed his parents murderersi he was known as Breed. And wanted under that name in at least three American states, and one Mexican.
There was a reward poster on him in Fronteras: five hundred dollars, American. In Galenas, the Mexicans were offering $150. He was worth $200 in Texas, and $100 in Avila, Nevada.
He was a man caught between two peoples, able to see both sides of their inevitable quarrel, yet unable to do more than attempt momentarily to halt the devastating clash of cultures. As a child, he had been forced to work harder to attain the status of manhood the Chiricahua gave only grudgingly to their own children because of his white blood, his blue eyes and blond hair. As a white man, he was branded squawman’s bastard, and mistrusted for his Indian heritage.
He was a man alone, with no one but himself to rely on or trust. He was Breed, the killer people feared the length and breadth of the Border. And the incident in the hotel was all too familiar. Like an old song that keeps repeating in the mind until it becomes a natural part of life.
Like a crippled arm or a cancer: you learn to live with it.
He took his horse up to the stable and led it in through the wide doors. There was a grey-haired oldster playing mumblety peg with himself halfway down the aisle of stalls.
‘The damn’ thing never lands right before someone comes in.’ He stood up, squinting at the sun filled doorway. ‘Always there’s an interruption.’
Azul grinned and let the rein of the grey Arab fall to the ground. In one swift movement he bent to draw the throwing knife from his moccasin. Flipped the narrow blade in a sun-swirling arc above his head. Caught it and threw in the same movement.
The blade landed in the packed dirt of the stable’s floor, touching the oldster’s knife so that the shorter weapon trembled. A ray of sunlight glanced off Azul’s blade.
‘Christ Jesus! Don’t do that again lessen you warn me.’ The old man stared at the trembling knife. ‘Only feller I ever saw as could throw like that was ole Jim Bowie hisself. What you want?’
Azul picked up the rein and took the horse into the shadows of the stable. He tugged his knife from the floor, wiped the blade on his pants’ leg, and sheathed it back in his moccasin.
‘A stall. Give him a good rub down, too. And don’t feed him too many oats.’
