Nemesis Read online

  Nemesis

  L. J. Martin

  Createspace (2011)

  * * *

  Rating: ★★★★☆

  Tags: Westerns, Fiction

  The fools killed his family...then made him a lawman. This wild and wooly western, in the Louis L'amore tradition, comes from renowned author L. J. Martin, whose over 20 novels have brought compelling reading to so many. McBain, broken and beaten from the Civil war, is reluctant to return to his family, as a snake dwells in his belly and he can't get the images out of his mind...until he learns his sister and her family have been murdered. Then it's retribution time.

  Review

  L.J. Martin gives his readers such realistic and well-written dialog it makes you feel as if you are standing in the saloon watching this all unfold. The story here is at times rough to take but completely necessary to make sure you understand this is a period in history where only the strong survive.~ Mary Gramlich

  About the Author

  L. J. Martin is the author of 22 novels (westerns, historicals, mysteries, and thrillers), and has a number of screenplays, one of which was optioned by a major NBC approved producer. He's also written five non-fiction books, KILLING CANCER (he's a two time cancer survivor), WRITE COMPELLING FICTION, an instructional work for aspiring authors, MYRTLE MAE & THE CREW, a book of cartoons, FROM THE PEA PATCH, a conservative political series of essays, and COOKING WILD & WONDERFUL, a cookbook with story content. He and Kat live in Montana in the Spring, Summer, and Fall and on the California coast in the Winter. His wife, Kat Martin, is a NYT bestsellling, internationally published, romantic suspense and historical romance author published in over a dozen foreign languages and in 2 dozen countries. When not writing, L. J. is cooking and developing recipes for his webpage wolfpackranch.com, hunting, fishing, or hauling his cameras around the high country, or promoting their careers. He has two dozen novels and non-fiction works listed on Amazon and Kindle.

  Nemesis

  Wolfpack Publishing

  48 Rock Creek Road

  Clinton, MT 59825

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  For information contact [email protected]

  Copyright 2011 L. J. Martin

  ISBN 978-1-885339-28-7

  NEMESIS

  by L. J. Martin

  For

  Mike Bray

  Old friends lost and found again often

  age like good wine….

  Chapter One

  It’s been fifteen years since I’ve killed a man.

  At least a man against whom I held a grudge, the recent unpleasentries excluded as in the smoke and haze of battle you seldom saw the face of a man you dispatched. And that whole affair seemed President Lincoln’s grudge and only my duty as a sworn soldier. Not that the taste in your mouth is any sweeter for the small difference. After all, killing is killing. But that man fifteen years ago, when I was a younger of only fifteen years, came against my family, and he was well known to me and mine.

  I have now carefully cleaned and sighted my weapons again, and cast a few bullets, as I have a task before me.

  But I hoped the task would never shadow my door nor sour the taste in my mouth again. I’d hoped no man would offend or threaten me or mine so much I’d feel the need…the requirement…to put them in hell.

  The devil of it is it looks like I now have an even half dozen lowlifes on my list of chores.

  Five of the six offenders, seeming dry and dusty, rode into my sister’s homestead, three hundred twenty acres in the middle of thousands more of federal free-graze land, feigning needing the well for their horses and their own parched throats. Sarah McBain MacIntosh was as fine an upstanding Christian woman, a lady, a sister—and at one time a friend—as God ever created, and would never turn a man away from a mere drink of water or a hot meal for that matter.

  Old Ignacio Sanchez, whom I’d met only once, related her story to me via a very hard-to-read letter.

  The worthless scum repaid my sister’s hospitality by back shooting her husband like a cur dog, in turn cutting down my sister as she went for the scattergun to defend children and home, then burning their place to the ground with my two beautiful angel nieces still inside. Angels whose presence I was never blessed with, except at a long distance, and whom I never had a chance to give so much as an uncle’s hug.

  And there is the question of a journal my sis kept, that Sanchez said he held for me, should I ever come his way, as it was too expensive for him to mail the weight. He knew where it had been hidden in the barn, a woman’s private thoughts, and retrieved it. To be truthful, I hate the thought of reading her writing, as I’m sure I’m mentioned with scorn.

  My sis was a beautiful woman, inside and out, and as talented as she was beautiful. She was a writer, gaining the respect of the local newspaper in Illinois, before she married, as a ladies columnist.

  Should some heathen Indian filet my heart someday, he’ll find a good part of it was occupied by my sweet little sister.

  The sixth of the louts I seek is the scum suckin’ bastard son-of-a-whore who hired the back-shooters to do the deed, or so Ignacio believes. That pecker head is a former Pennsylvania Colonel, or so it is said; a man who held the line at Gettysburg’s fishhook, not far from where my brigade and I took our stand. He and I should share a warrior’s bond, but we share nothing of the sort.

  He’s a man who’s killing now for a much less noble purpose, only to increase the pile of gold he already hoards. He’s the murderer of a fine young man, a beautiful and loving woman and mother—although her body was never found, believed by Sanchez to have been burned to ash—and two angelic innocents. All over three hundred twenty acres of homestead sagebrush and a mud bog of a spring, rank water not worth a tinker’s damn, which only served to wet the throats of a few mangy Mexican cattle.

  It was only by the grace of God and the protection of a thick stand of cattails lining the spring’s trickle, that Sanchez lived to tell the tale. Otherwise I’d have thought, as the law seems convinced of…or is willing to lie about…that the fire was fate, their deaths an act of God. It came as no surprise to me that the gracious God I occasionally beseech…I should say be-seeched…was not at fault, as Sanchez confirmed.

  It was more’n two months before I got word of the Colonel’s dastardly deed.

  Sanchez wrote his letter in a timely manner, but it lay gathering cobwebs in the Salmon, Idaho post office…a corner of the trading post…for more than a month, awaiting my infrequent visit down from high on the mountain.

  I’ve spent a rough month since, here in the high country, mourning my kin, and another week working up the roiling boil that fuels the resolve now simmering in my twisted gut, and a half-day packing for a trip from which I’m sure I’ll not return. And to be truthful, I don’t much give a damn if I do.

  Last night, for the first time in five weeks, I slept the sleep of the dead-to-the-world with no dreams of fire and screaming babies—it’s funny how coming to terms with oneself, and one’s fate, settles one’s sleep. Now, knowing exactly what my task is to be, I’m resolved to see it through, hell or high water. And pure hell it should be.

  This morning I’ve stepped lively for the first time in more’n a month. I’ve packed the mule, Jackson, named for a hard-headed colonel who sent us into hell’s fire more than once. I sucked up his latigo extra tight, giving a knee to the belly of the old blow hard, and giving the latigo another hard pull at the same time, as it’s to be a trail-pounding trip.

  I’ve also saddled the buckskin, and we are all three about to say goodbye to the high-mountain home I’ve come to love—a cabin where I’ve spent a half-dozen years
trapping, skinning, and tanning, when not sawing and hammering, as if I was going to live another half century beyond my thirty years.

  The place ain’t much in the way of home-steader’s improvements: lodge pole logs fitted and chinked with mud and dry meadow grass, a sod roof growing green with grass and wildflowers so as from above it looks to be part of the meadow, rough sawn log floor, and glassless windows covered with rough but sturdy shutters. The privy is only a few steps from the door, and built with the same careless abandon. And there’s a spring near at hand that runs warm year round and serves for kitchen water in the winter, if you don’t mind a little whiff of sulfur. It makes life a mite easier when otherwise you’d be melting snow and ice.

  The place has been home and kept the critters and weather at bay for a good long while and, excepting for my intrusion, is as beautiful a spot as God ever created. And I’m not totally alone. The lodgepole pine and puzzle bark trees host squirrels and a hundred varieties of feathered critters. Deer and elk often visit the meadow and stream. Even bighorn sheep look and lord down from the cliffs above. All of them are more welcome than the occasional griz or the marauding black bear, who drop in all too frequently. On great occasion, a wandering wolverine has proven to be more than a pest, extolling his reputation as the angry old man of the forest—more trouble per pound than a bucket of rattlesnakes.

  Beyond the stumps of those timbers I used to build the place, the pines surround the cabin sides and rear and climb the gentle hill behind; and across a sweet grass meadow twenty paces in the front flows a brook filled with six inch trout that fry up crisp as bar crackers after they swim in a pan deep in poppin’ hot sowbelly leavins’. Beyond the crick the meadow fingers into a stand of puzzle-bark ponderosa so thick and tall they make you want to sing the praises of the Lord every time you stare into their shadowy depths, or up into their dizzying heights. Particularly this time of year, when the crick runs cold, clear, and high with tears of the melting white mountain sides. Yellow blossoms of arrow-leaf-balsam-root pepper the voids where the sun kisses the fingers of green…but I shouldn’t think on it as it will soften my resolve.

  Still, I’ll miss the screech of the hawk and eagle overhead, the raucous scathing cry of the crows, the bark of the whitetail buck, the honk of passing geese, and particularly the ringing cry of elk bugling in challenge from the depths of the copse of puzzle bark trees when the leaves turn gold and frost again teases the sweet grass.

  In so many ways I hate to leave this spot as it brought me peace for a good long while, but I have a job of work to do. And that job’s a damn sight more important than worldly possessions, the glory of God’s earthly adornments,…or even peace of mind and soul.

  I doubt if I’m up to the full task at hand. Not the moral part, for I’ve got no problem with that or being judged by my maker for the effort. Although I’ve stopped the dropping to my knees and talking with Him before my nightly rest, just in case He tries talking me out of my trek.

  Since reading that dreadful communiqué from Señor Sanchez, I put far more stock in the ‘eye for an eye’ part of the Good Book than in the ‘turn the other cheek’ part.

  If there was ever a group of thunder-pot-stains that need killing, it’s this half dozen and I don’t believe an ounce of remorse will enter into the doing of it…presuming Ignacio Sanchez proves to be the truthful a man I believe him to be.

  The hell of it is, I’m a little long in the tooth and stove up to be on the prod against this kind of odds. Even thirty years of living can be too much if the road getting there was sufficiently rough. The war and reb canons did some damage to my parts, leaving me with a gimp in my hind leg and kink or two deep in my head-bone—it seems my temper refuses to be turned low once the blaze is lit, and it’s oft times caused consternation, and worse, to those nearby when I’ve been riled. Dishonestly, in particular, turns my insides to storm. It’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen the high lonely as a place to reside.

  Nightmares of my sis and nieces have replaced the bad dreams of the war. I’d learned to think of my two nieces playing a game of jacks, so as not to think of the war. Now, the murderin’ back shooters have taken that pleasure from me. I bought the girls some nickel plated jacks and a bouncy ball of Goodyear rubber, but never had the heart to deliver them, although I tried to bring myself to do so one time more’n a year ago, the only time I met Señor Ignacio Sanchez.

  How-some-ever this visit works out, even gimpy as I am, my killin’ skills are well tuned, as I still roam the high lonely and keep my smokehouse hanging full and my beaver hoops stretched taut with fresh hides. I’m sure as-the-devil-is-evil not as fast as I once was, thanks to those miniballs and a near canon strike, but I’m a damn sight more deliberate, and the lead I let fly most oft smacks meat. But even if I don’t finish the job, God willin’, I’ll put a few of ‘em toes up and on their way to meet old Satan before the rest of them get onto who’s doggin’ their trail and ventilating their ugly hides.

  It’s my hope that thinking “It’s that McBain again,” in the black of night will cause them great consternation before they die, and that they’ll die hard and slow while crying for redemption and forgiveness. It gives me peace and pleasure to think on it.

  I have the regrettable advantage of them not knowing of me or of my existence unless Sanchez let it be known. Regrettable for I was not claimed by my sister, due to the more regrettable fact I left her and our mother when I went off to do President Lincoln’s work, and was so gut-twisted and anger prone by the experience when the work was done I thought them better off without me. When I finally got the blood off my hands, or at least somewhat out of my dreams, it was too late to return and mend my friendship with my ma and sis. For it had come to me from a good friend that while I was taken with the war my ma went to meet her maker and my sis had sidled up beside a good man. And I knew him to be, as he was a good friend from my childhood. And they’d gone west.

  She had sidled up with my former good friend, Jacob MacIntosh, whom I’d always admired and respected—but a man who later had good reason to hate me, as many did—for it was his brother and my sister’s intended I’d killed when only fifteen. But I knew in my own cold heart that Jacob would do well by my sis—he was not his brother’s sort. His brother was the Kane of the biblical story.

  And I knew my sister Sarah must have a great love for Jacob, as she left what she loved most, writing, to take up with him for a trek into the wilderness.

  It was thoughts of my sis that brought me way out here among the Snake Indians in the high lonely, even though I never had the audacity to make myself known to her, and now it’s too late to do so. Exceptin’ for the trading post in Salmon, and a to a few Snake red men I’ve come across, the fact is I haven’t made myself known to anyone.

  I’m known by most I do now know as McBain, by those I fought through the troubles with as Cap, and by the few I’ve called friend as Mac; and no man, except for the Army paymaster, calls me by my given name, Rufus, which I would much prefer to forget. And fewer yet know my middle name, Taggart, although I favor it.

  Many, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, will come to know, and rue, the name McBain.

  Chapter Two

  Angel Sanchez and his younger brother Ignacio, named after his father, stood with heads bowed, hats in hand, staring down at the grave of their murdered father as the old priest said a final prayer.

  “Via con Dios,” Angel muttered, then turned and strode away, without even a thank you to the priest, his fifteen year old brother having to trot along behind.

  “We go south now, Angel?” the youngster asked.

  “No. I have things to do first,” Angel replied, without looking back.

  “Papa would say you’re being hot headed, Angel.”

  “Papa has nothing more to say, Iggy,” the older boy admonished. “Papa is with his God.”

  “His God?” the younger boy questioned as they neared the horse they’d inherited from their father.

 
; “His God, not mine. Mine would not have let the gringos shoot down a good man like papa.”

  Angel slipped the slightly beat up single shot 43 Spanish Remington rolling block from the scabbard on his father’s saddle, opened the breach and checked to see that it was loaded.

  “Que pasa?” the younger Sanchez asked, apprehensively.

  “I go to the saloon, to ask questions,” Angel said.

  “Papa would not—“

  “You go back to Señor Henderson’s, Iggy, and care for the sheep. When I am satisfied, I will be along.”

  “They will shoot you down like a coyote, Angel,” Iggy said, the concern in his voice.

  “If they do, you go back to Arizona and join mama and your brothers. Nevada will be no place for you.”

  “Por favor, do not go to the saloon. The gringos…”

  “I am only going to ask questions.” Angel swung up into the saddle and eyed his younger brother coldly. “Go back to Señor Henderson’s and mind the sheep. He only let us off to come to the funeral. He expects you back—“

  “He expects us both back, Angel.”

  “After I find out how this happened to papa. You and I both know, papa was no thief, no bandito.”

  “The sheriff told you not to…how did he say…not to stick your nose into his business.”

  “The sheriff is just another gringo. And the death of our padre is my business. Go, now.”

  The younger Sanchez watched as his brother spun the dun horse and rode toward town, then turned and trotted away. It was twenty miles back to the Henderson ranch, and he had a long journey. As it was, it would be well after dark before he arrived.

  He had lost his father, and he now worried that he’d never see his older brother again. Not only the sheriff, but none of the gringos liked the Mexicans or Chinese asking too many questions.