The E.R. Slade Western Omnibus No.1

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  The E. R. Slade Omnibus

  A Wagon Load of Gold

  Jeremy Waite is offered a quarter of a wagonload of gold in return for his services as a gunhand in recovering it. “Are you fast?” asked Leanda. Jeremy was fast enough to empty his gun into the side of a barn before it could rot away, but why should he elaborate to Leanda about that? The prospect of getting rich made Jeremy disinclined to question much ... until things heated up and he had to confront the girl’s gun-fast boyfriend.

  Gunman’s Gold

  Mistaken for the notorious outlaw Chuck Riley, Clint Lee Calloway was arrested and sentenced to hang. But somehow he managed to break out of jail and escape into the desert. Now, thirsty and exhausted, he comes on Riley and his gang trying to make Carmen Haversam reveal the whereabouts of her dead father’s gold. Lee isn’t the man to slip away quietly, though he knows riding to the rescue will buy him plenty of trouble.

  The Man in the Big Four Hat

  Ike Clauson has taken over the town of Taylorville , made himself marshal, and told the council it won't cost them a cent, so long as they don't interfere with him or his high-stakes gambling den. But he has a younger brother who runs wild , and one day the Kid kills storekeeper Bailey. Ben Gordon, in town for supplies, ends up trying to help Bailey's daughter Nancy keep her inheritance, and herself, out of the clutches of Ike Clauson, whose gun-handling abilities no one but Ben is willing to confront.

  The Dolan Debt

  A tale of two brothers: Coe Dolan is a hardworking, easygoing cowpoke; brother Pete is a con man, swindler and cardsharp who plays one hand too many out of his sleeve and gets himself shot dead. Coe never approved of his brother, but when he realizes Pete 's gone missing he feels obligated to find out what happened—though the deputy tells him to leave town and the sheriff turns up murdered.

  THE E. R. SLADE OMNIBUS

  A Wagon Load of Gold~*~Gunman’s Gold

  The Man in the Big Four Hat~*~The Dolan Debt

  First published by Manor Books By E. R. Slade

  Copyright © 2016 by Bruce Clark

  First Smashwords Edition: September 2016

  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.

  Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges ~*~Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  A Wagon Load of Gold

  Chapter One

  Jeremy Waite was yanked out of a sound sleep by a hand which took him by the shirt, picked him up bodily out of bed and hove him like a sack of potatoes against the thin splintery wall of the Grand Palace Hotel.

  “Okay, Blue,” a grating grim voice said, “where is it?”

  Jeremy’s eyes hurt from the glare of the lantern that somebody had just pulled the shade off, his head hurt from having gotten the worst of the disagreement with the wall, and one leg was asleep. He squinted and turned his head away.

  “What the ...” he muttered.

  A hand came from somewhere—at least he guessed it was a hand, though it seemed rough and hard as a club—and snapped his head around by contact with his cheek.

  “Whoa, whoa,” he said groggily. “Hold up a minute. I don’t even know ...”

  The paw like fist of a big blocky man came at him, but he saw it coming this time and ducked it partially. There were two of them, the big man who smelled like he’d just climbed out of a manure pile, and another, thinner man, who held the lantern high, so it lit his anxious white face.

  “Where is it, Blue?” the blocky man roared. He had a face like a cross between a toad and a bulldog, with some ornery outlaw steer mixed in. “I ain’t got all night.”

  Jeremy struggled, getting his feet under him, his left leg all aprickle as it woke up.

  “Just let me get my head clear, gen’lemen,” he said. “If I stand up ...”

  The paw came at him again and he ducked, but still caught most of the force of it. He thought of his pistol under the pillow. A lot of good it was doing him tonight.

  “I’m not Blue,” Jeremy said reasonably. “You’ve got the wrong fellow. My name is Jeremy Waite.”

  The paw reached out and got him by the shirt, lifted him with surprising ease to his feet, the toad-bulldog-outlaw-steer face coming to within two inches of his own, so they were eyeball to eyeball. The man’s breath would have choked an ox at that range.

  “Now then,” the blocky man said, punctuating each of his words by slamming Jeremy against the flimsy wall. Rats scurried, and doors and windows rattled all through the rickety building. “I don’t plan to take no lip from you. You got it. I want it. Now.”

  Jeremy’s eyes were blurred with all the jarring. On the bright side, his leg no longer prickled so much. “Look, if you tell me what it is you want, maybe I can help you. I got no reason not to help you, if I can.”

  “Well ain’t he reasonable?” The arm straightened and Jeremy thought he was going to go through the wall. “I ought to kill you now and be done with it. You’ve cost me more than a thousand of your type is worth.”

  “Don’t kill him before he talks,” the man holding the lantern said. He had the sort of voice that made you think he was holding his nose.

  “No, but I could start to kill him,” the other said grimly, with a sort of relish.

  Jeremy had been doing some thinking on his situation through all this. It seemed plain he wasn’t getting anywhere telling the truth. All right then, maybe if they liked a lie better he should give them one.

  “Okay, okay,” Jeremy said, holding up his hands. “I own up. It isn’t here. I hid it.”

  “Where?”

  “If you’ll lay off a minute or so, I’ll tell you.”

  “Make him show us,” said the anxious, lantern-holding man. “I don’t trust him. And Mr. Courtland said ...”

  “I know what he said,” the blocky man said shortly. “All right, Blue, let’s go.”

  ~*~

  The night was cool, the town quiet, considering. An argument was going on at the far end of the street, and somebody was showing off his gun technique by shooting the windows out of a brothel, which much excited the ladies and patrons inside, who were screaming and hollering and sometimes shooting back. But other than these commotions, and the usual racket from the rowdy dance hall, and from a party going on in one of the mining tycoons’ houses, and the confusion of tinny pianos and bawdy singing and laughter, the town was quiet and calm and sedate. A very pleasant little community for a place with three new strikes and only one lawman, currently away hunting the men who had shot the owner of the Prince of Parkersville Mine, the biggest in town.

  Jeremy’s hopes for an opportunity to make a run for it were dimmed by the way the chunky fellow kept hold of his arm and jabbed a gun into his ribs. They marched him to the livery. Obviously they expected him to lead them somewhere out of town.

  Feeling battered and not very clearheaded, Jeremy rode west, toward the mountains. He had a vague notion that perhaps escape would be easier there because of the amount of cover.

  Moodily, he began to ruminate. His luck had been running all to disaster recently, and it was getting to be a sore point with him why Providence should single him out. First it had b
een Indian troubles back at the Wells where he’d had to fill his canteen or die of thirst, then it had been horse troubles in the desert, when his bay had stepped into a fox hole and broken a leg, and he’d had to shoot him and walk ten miles to the fort and spend all but his last two dollars buying this obstinate old swaybacked gelding; and now here he was hauled out of bed in the middle of the night by people who thought he was somebody else and had something they wanted.

  Pa had said there would be excitement enough just running the ranch in Texas. Said he thought his son’s notion to go gold hunting was the damfoolest idea he’d ever hatched, that he was sure to find nothing by trouble, and would likely get himself killed into the bargain.

  Maybe Pa had been right. Four years of chasing talk of rich strikes all over the West, from the Comstock to “greater than the Comstock” had panned out to just under five dollars worth of gold. It was not the kind of luck he’d planned to go home and brag on.

  His captors kept quiet at first, and they kept close, too. There was going to be no giving them the slip in the dark.

  They rode all the rest of the night and at sunup they flushed a couple of rabbits. The pale-faced thin man cooked them, while Jeremy and the heavyset fellow hunkered by the fire. In daylight they looked less formidable and more like a couple of grubby miners, somewhat stupid-looking and ignorant.

  “Aw, Cookie,” the blocky man said, “leave it on the fire until it’s cooked, will you? How many times I told you I don’t like raw meat?”

  “It ain’t raw,” Cookie said irritably. “It don’t have to be burned to charcoal all over before it’s done, you know.”

  With his dirty fingernails Blocky tore open rabbit meat as though it were bread and showed the inside. “It ain’t cooked,” he stated, glaring at Cookie.

  Cookie tossed it right on the coals and glared back. Jeremy got the idea these two had had this conversation before.

  He let them argue without interference and lay back on his elbows. He’d been hatching a plan, and now he turned it over in his mind slowly trying to decide if it was a good plan or a bad one.

  After breakfast, Blocky said, “How far now, Blue?”

  “Not too far. Few miles. But we’ll be till dark getting close. The goin’s harder in the hills.”

  Jeremy wished he knew what it was they were after; his plan had considerable many holes in it and he might be able to think of a better one if only he had something to go on. But it wouldn’t do to ask questions when the likely answers would be more bruises. That left his plan, such as it was. Risky, but maybe they wouldn’t kill him if it failed, since they wanted to know where he’d hidden whatever it was.

  By noon they were well into the foothills, amongst the fir and spruce and winding through crags on a narrow, difficult trail. Bad advice had sent him up this trail scouting for gold, and left him broke and disgusted; but now maybe he could get something for his time here—his freedom. Maybe. If he was lucky. Maybe these two knew the trail, too; but there was no help for it if they did. Jeremy led the way, hoping he wasn’t going to turn a corner and startle a grizzly, since he wasn’t armed.

  They hadn’t gone too far along this tricky trail before Blocky said, “Hold it, Blue, hold it right there.”

  Jeremy stopped, not much liking the sound of Blocky’s voice.

  “Before we go any farther, I want to know how you got a loaded wagon up this trail,” Blocky said.

  A wagon. So what was in the wagon?

  “Didn’t,” Jeremy said promptly, turning to look Blocky straight in the eye. “Came in from the other side of the pass.”

  “The other side?” Blocky looked bewildered. “How’d you git it over the mountains in the first place?”

  “Never been through Eagle Pass five miles south of here?”

  “No.”

  “Went that way.”

  “Mighty clever. Git going.”

  “Sure.”

  So what was in the wagon? Guns? Whiskey?

  They stopped shortly after in a little meadow by a stream with the aspens rustling gently in the breeze overhead, and Cookie wanted to fish, but Blocky told him to shut his yap and get back on his horse.

  “How far now?” Blocky asked.

  “A ways. Like I said, we won’t make it by dark.”

  They got moving again, and in his mind Jeremy kept rehearsing. Now that the attempt to lose these two wasn’t far off, he was having serious doubts that the plan would work. Still, it wasn’t like he had plenty of choices. Damn well better work, was all, or he’d be up a stump.

  The trail wound through a canyon, on a kind of ledge along one side, with the tree tops below them, openings between showing the little riffle of water running along the bottom. The horses’ hooves kicked pebbles off bouncing down from ledge to ledge, and sometimes they dislodged a rock big enough to thrash the limbs of the twisted trees clinging to the canyon wall. It was a good deal of a long way down and the trail was so crooked, with the wall of the canyon going up jagged on the left, that you could never see more than ten paces ahead, many places much less.

  He was as always leading the way, Blocky right behind, and Cookie trailing Blocky. Cookie seemed nervous about the trail, peering uncertainly over the edge every couple of seconds. Blocky wasn’t bothered, though. He sat under his battered-brimmed hat like a beetle under a flower petal, only it was a mighty sorry looking flower petal. Blocky looked most as stupid as a beetle, too. Jeremy hoped he was.

  The trail took a sharp jog to the right, following the canyon wall, then curved hard to the left. Just a few steps around this curve a narrow cut in the rock angled back and itself quickly took a jog. Jeremy knew it was there because he’d once been surprised by a grizzly coming out of it. He hoped no grizzlies were in there now. Being momentarily out of sight of the others he spurred his horse in.

  No grizzlies.

  He slipped down, scooped up some pebbles and tossed them over the top of the rock so they’d land beyond the next turn. He heard the horses go by without pausing, the men saying nothing.

  He tossed more pebbles, throwing them as far as he could; then he listened. As soon as the sound of hooves faded he backed his own horse out of the cut and set off in the other direction as fast as he dared to go.

  What he hoped was, with the long section of trail so crooked that you couldn’t see ahead more than a few feet, Blocky and Cookie would ride on without getting too suspicious for some distance before they noticed anything wrong.

  Jeremy had gone far enough along the back trail to be smiling over the success of his plan, when he rounded a jog and came face-to-face with an ugly old man aboard a mule, who drew up looking surprised and said, “Why, if it ain’t Blue!”

  Chapter Two

  For a few moments they just stared at each other. The old man’s flowing white whiskers and bright, calculating eyes made him look like something out of one of those Irish tales a hand back home used to tell, except this fellow was toad-faced ugly.

  Then the little leprechaun of a fellow thought of his gun and drew it to cover Jeremy.

  “Aw, now,” Jeremy said, disgusted and discouraged. “First of all, I ain’t Blue, whoever he is. The name is Jeremy Waite, from Texas.”

  “Texas,” the fellow said, and spat. “Don’t bother me with that line o’ bull.” He didn’t have an accent like an Irishman. “I know who you is. I seen you leave Parkersville with them other two crooks. Give ’em the slip, did you?”

  “Yeah, I give them the slip. But I still ain’t Blue but Jeremy Waite.”

  “They won’t be far behind, I reckon,” the old man said thoughtfully. “Git down off’n your hoss there, and lead ’im on past me. Real careful. Don’t make no sudden moves.”

  Jeremy didn’t see the point to argue, and so did as he was told.

  “Git on ’im agin. And ride. I’ll be right behind.”

  They went along a little, Jeremy ruefully thinking over this new piece of misfortune. Seemed like he was just destined to get nowhere no matter
what he did. At length he said, “I guess you want the wagon.”

  “What wagon?”

  “You don’t want the wagon?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said cautiously. “What kind of wagon is it?”

  “Never mind. What do you want, then?”

  “It ain’t what I want, it’s what Leanda wants. She wants you. I cain’t hardly figure out why, now I seen you. You ain’t no more handsome than a buffalo chip. But she says you give her that big fancy ring she has, and promised to marry her. No man walks out my niece, if he ain’t no prettier than a buffalo chip or not.”

  Jeremy was irritated about being compared to a buffalo chip, but he’d thought of something.

  “Looky, Whiskers, we headed for your niece now?”

  “Yep.”

  “How far?”

  “Just down to Red Canyon. Leanda’s still there a-pinin’ away for you. Stupider girl than I took her for, to fall in love with an ugly no-good like you. And let me tell you something. If you take off agin, I’ll come after you agin, and I’ll catch you, too, and see you come back and do right by my niece. You got that?”

  Jeremy grinned. This wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Put him a little out of his way, but when they saw the mistake they’d made, he’d be clear. And meantime he’d have a good place to hole up, and maybe even find out what this was all about.

  ~*~

  Red Canyon was two days’ ride south, in the foothills. It was a mining town, a dismal, dusty kind of place, air full of grit. The street was a-rumble with heavily laden ore wagons which had to go down Main Street to get from the mines to the stamp mills near the railroad depot at the mouth of the canyon. This was a tamed, law-abiding town, as much as that meant out here. The marshal had two deputies, one of whom was to be seen lounging on a bench in front of the office.

  It was late in the day when they rode in, and after passing the marshal’s office, two saloons, the fancy new schoolhouse, the dance hall, two more saloons, the Percheron Bank, the hardware store, more saloons, a livery, more saloons, the blacksmith’s shop, another saloon, the cooper’s, the lumber yard, and more saloons, then the undertaker’s, they pulled around back of a shackly house, made of every size and shape scrap of wood, and turned the horse and mule loose in the corral. Old Whiskers gave them a drink, threw in some hay from a rack in a makeshift shed to one side, and measured out a stingy ration of oats from the feedbox with the attitude of one passing out gold. Then they went around to the front door.