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  WIFE STEALER

  by F. M. Parker

  The Wounds Of Battle Would Not Slow Them

  Grant had smashed Vicksburg and cut open the heart of the Confederate States. Still, the war raged on. But for some, the fighting was over. Men like Captain Evan Payson, a Union Army surgeon wounded saving others' lives, and John Davis, a Confederate prisoner of the hated Union army. Now, two desperate soldiers have struck a deal: in exchange for his freedom, Davis will carry Payson home to die in Texas.

  The West's Most Savage Outlaws Could Not Stop Them

  But between the bloodied waters of the Mississippi and the dust of El Paso is a land of dangerous outlaws sowing death wherever they go. As Davis and Payson push into Texas, they discover that their fighting days are not done. Because in a lawless land, two enemies have found one cause: staying alive. And their only chance of doing it is to stand and fight together.

  Two Men Were Riding For Texas... And Their Last Battle

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  "SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED... PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE."

  Publishers Weekly

  "ABSORBING...SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!"

  Library Journal

  "PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY."

  Bookmarks

  "REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE."

  University of Arizona Library

  "RICH, REWARDING... DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP."

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  The Highwayman

  Wife Stealer

  Winter Woman

  The Assassins

  Girl in Falling Snow

  The Predators

  The Far Battleground

  Coldiron – Judge and Executioner

  Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf

  Coldiron - The Shanghaiers

  Coldiron - To Kill an Enemy

  The Searcher

  The Seeker

  The Highbinders

  The Shadow Man

  The Slavers

  Nighthawk

  Skinner

  Soldiers of Conquest

  Screenplays

  Women for Zion

  Firefly Catcher

  DEADLY DINNER

  "Eat fast," Ben said, thinking about the short Mexican who had just left the cantina. "I don't like the feel of this place."

  "What's wrong?" Evan asked.

  "No time to talk. Just eat." Ben cut a large bite of meat and began to chew.

  Four bearded Mexicans came in from the street. One was the short man who had left. The man in the lead was tall, with narrow shoulders and a long, sharp face. He stopped, and as he swept the room with his sight, his comrades came up to stand beside him.

  "Evan, shoot that short man on the right side of the tall one," Ben said in a low, tense voice.

  Evan looked at Ben, not sure he had heard correctly. Ben's eyes gleamed a feline yellow in the lamplight. Then they narrowed.

  "Shoot!" Ben hissed. He came swiftly to his feet, and his six-gun boomed, exploding the silence in the cantina. The rapid boom of his shots blended into one continuous roll of thunder.

  "Shoot any man that moves. Even twitches."

  ~ * ~

  A man who has no woman sleeps with the wind. A woman who has no man has only a blanket to protect her.

  —Author Unknown

  PROLOGUE

  The Making of the LLano Estacado, Staked Plain.

  The broad sea, ancient beyond imagination, had been created so long ago that even the sun had forgotten it had ever shone upon its birth. The sea had come into existence when the breast of the continent had subsided and the great oceans of the earth flooded in to fill the depression.

  Seventy million years ago, the sea was shoved away to the south as a tremendous force lifted and buckled a broad section of the earth's mantle. The force continued to torture the crust of the earth, thrusting the rocks upward until a mighty mountain range with a north-south axis pierced the sky.

  On the west side of the mountains, a grand river came to life, fed endlessly by the countless streams pouring with awesome violence down the mountains' steep flanks. The strong current of the river rushed away to the south until it reached the far-off sea.

  On the east side of the mountain range a myriad of streams tumbled down from the high ramparts. As the grade of the streams flattened on their lower reaches, they slowed to wander in meandering courses, dropping their load of eroded mountain debris. The valleys of the streams became choked with swamps and shallow lakes as thousands of cubic miles of sediment were spread in an ever-thickening layers over the land.

  The millennia passed, score after score, adding to millions of years. During the long epoch a broad plain was built at the base of the mountain and extending to the east and south for hundreds of miles. So flat was the land surface that the larger animals could see each other for great distances, to the limits of their vision.

  Twenty million years ago on the bank of the grand river, and near where it entered the sea, a hungry lizard raced down the bank to capture a fish that was stranded and floundering in a shallow pool of water. The lizard's tail left a small scratch in the mud. From that tiny scar in the dirt during the next rainstorm, an incipient streamlet was born.

  The rivulet had inherited the hunger of the beast that had created it. Within a foot, the rivulet cut into the course of another trickle of water and beheaded it, adding that miniature flow to its own body. Then it captured another streamlet, and another. Swiftly the rivulet grew to become a creek.

  The new creek greedily ate its way north across the plain, in its journey encountering the channels of many streams. A battle was fought each time to determine which stream would die. The hungry offspring of the lizard won every battle.

  The creek grew to become a river flowing in a wide valley. Its headwaters had reached the very summit of the mountains far to the north. Now there were two large rivers, with a mighty mountain range rearing high into the sky between them.

  This is the way a tribe of men, migrating from a distant place far north of the mountains, found the land when they arrived twelve thousand years ago. The people liked the flat plains and the two rivers, and the abundant buffalo, elk, and antelope, and they stayed, their numbers increasing.

  Thousands of years later, barely a tick of time as measured on the geologic clock, a second tribe of men arrived, moving cautiously up from the south. They also found the land of plains and the rivers most pleasing. These men called the flat land the LLano Estacado, and the rivers the Rio Grande and the Rio Pecos. They settled there with their women and children.

  Time ticked again, and a third tribe of men came hurrying onto the land. They came from the east and their numbers were many. They made savage war upon the first two tribes. They made even more terrible and bloody war between factions of their own tribe.

  The events of this story happened during the days of the third tribe's civil war.

  ONE

  Rio Grande, Northern Mexico, July 4, 1863.

  Ben Hawkins reined his horse to a halt on the bank above the Rio Grande. The string of four stolen horses he led, tied nose-to-tail with short lengths of rope, came to a stop behind him. The animals stood sweat-lathered and lungs pumping.

  Ben dug a telescope from a saddleb
ag and twisted in the saddle to look south behind him. He extended the brass tube and with the aid of the magnified field of vision, scoured the land he had raced across. There was no sign of his pursuers, only the desert baking under the burning sun and a faded blue domed sky arching high above. He hadn't expected to see the Mexican riders, not yet, for he had changed mounts four times since sunup, rotating among the horses and pushing them hard. In four days he had traveled three hundred miles.

  Ben collapsed the spyglass and stowed it away. He began to examine the dense stands of huge cottonwoods growing on the floodplain along both sides of the river. The Mexicans might be miles behind, but this was Comanche territory and he didn't want to stumble into a band of those fierce warriors.

  He saw nothing of concern from his location; still, there were sections of the woods that he couldn't see into and he wanted a closer look. He tied the Mexican horses to a tree and then rode his gray mount, Brutus, down to the river's edge. Ben studied the far shore for a time, checking the openings among the cottonwoods, and the border of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, that showed beyond the trees. Seeing nothing threatening, he crossed the river on a sandy-bottomed ford where the water ran clear, and came onto American soil.

  Ben searched for the presence of other men. He found only the tracks of buffalo, deer, wolves, and smaller wildlife. He returned to the south shore.

  All the horses had now caught their wind and cooled, and Ben allowed them to drink. The Mexican horses were again fastened to a tree. Ben brought the saddled Brutus near the water with him and dropped his reins to ground-hitch him. The cool, clean water had enticed Ben to bathe. He thought he had time before his enemies arrived, but still he wanted his guns and horse close.

  Ben hung his belted Colt pistol over the saddle horn and quickly stripped down to his skin. He was two inches above average height and rawboned. He had gray eyes and his hair was black. His beard, now some two weeks long, was a reddish black. The dusty, sweaty clothing was swiftly washed, the water wrung out, and the clothing hung on a low limb of a cottonwood. He took one last keen look all the way around, and then dove into the river.

  Ben came up spouting water. He flung his long hair back across his head and squeezed the water from it. With long, easy strokes, enjoying the grand feeling of the water upon his skin, he swam across the thirty yards of river and back. In the shallow water just above the ford, he scrubbed his dirty body with the fine sand of the river bottom. Then he lay down by the riffling ford and let the cool, gentle fingers of the river current wash over him and carry his weariness away.

  A hawk come from somewhere in the north and with its head turned down and telescopic eyes hunting, began to circle in the sky above Ben and the horses. After half a dozen circles, the bird drifted away downriver, still hunting.

  "Brutus, I think Mr. Hawk must have decided we were too big to eat," Ben said to the gray.

  The long-legged brute looked down with gold-flecked brown eyes at his master, lying in the water with just his head showing like a big river turtle. The horse snorted once to show it had heard the man's words. Then it lifted its head and rested watching the far shore.

  Ben felt a wind come alive, and heard the leaves on the cottonwoods begin to stir. At the sound, he sat up, for a feeling had come over him that he had spent too much time in the water. He waded to the shore and hastily pulled on his damp clothing and stomped into his boots. He swung astride Brutus, reined him up beside the other horses, and untied them.

  The cavalcade of horses splashed across the Rio Grande to the north shore, and onward through an opening in the cottonwoods to the broad, flat Llano Estacado.

  Ben found what he needed, a place where the limestone rock beneath the plain had been leached away, leaving behind a sinkhole deep enough to hide the horses. He took the animals down into the house-size depression and tied them to a stunted oak bush.

  Carrying his telescope and rifle and a bandoleer of cartridges, he went back half a hundred paces toward the river to a slight rise of land. He lay down in the knee-high buffalo grass. Through a break in the trees, the river crossing was in plain view a couple of hundred yards distant.

  He rested the telescope and rifle upon the bandoleer to keep them out of the dirt. Both the rifle, a Spencer seven-shot repeater, and the telescope had been taken off the dead body of a Union sharpshooter he had killed in the battle of Cedar Mountain in Virginia this past August. It had been during that battle that his life had changed forever and he had fled back to Texas.

  The Spencer was a fine weapon. With it Ben could shoot thirty aimed shots in a minute. Even if his enemies came in a large number, he should be able to fight them by himself. That was good, for all he had was himself. He was a thief who walked alone.

  Now there was only the waiting. He hoped the Mexicans didn't cross the Rio Grande and come into the States chasing him.

  He made himself as comfortable as possible on the ground, and with eyes hammered down to a squint by the bright sun, kept watch south. Frequently he raised the spyglass and scanned the great, level plain. After a time, the hot wind began to blow more strongly, whispering the reeds of grass together with a sibilant, snaky sound.

  His pursuers would be several of Ramos Valdes's toughest pistoleros. How many, or who would be leading them, Ben could not guess. They would have orders to kill him on sight and reclaim the stolen horses. Should he make one mistake, he would die.

  This was the third time he had made the journey south to steal Valdes horses. They were famous throughout northern Mexico and south Texas for their speed and endurance, and for their brilliance and purity of color. They were worth the risks to go upon the rancho and take them from under the noses of the guards that were always posted. The Valdes brand, V Bar V, was burned into the left hip of each horse. In most parts of Texas, a horse stolen in Mexico and brought north of the Rio Grande was totally acceptable. If it carried the Valdes brand, that added much to the value. Sometimes, though, the more law-conscious Texan would modify the brand to a Diamond Bar Diamond, fooling nobody.

  The four horses Ben had with him would sell for many hundreds of dollars, an amount several times the yearly salary of a working cowboy. He could make the trip from Abilene and back in three weeks, or a little longer depending upon the trouble he encountered. The time was very profitably spent. He intended to steal enough of the Valdes horses to acquire the money necessary to carry out his plan.

  Ramos Valdes was wealthy, owning more than 200,000 acres and controlling twice that many by the use of force and through the connivance of Mexican federal officials to whom he paid bribes. Scores of peon families labored at barely survival wages to care for his large number of horses and vast herds of cattle. The man would not miss the few horses Ben stole. Still, he would kill Ben if he could catch him.

  Ben lay in the heat and wind-tossed grass and sweated. He wiped at the salty brine trickling down through his black beard and flicked a droplet off the tip of his nose. He waited. He was a patient man.

  Ben frequently scanned the land, for his enemies could appear at any minute, and most probably would come from the south. But he also kept a close watch to the east and west along the American side of the river. The Mexicans might suspect an ambush, and veer off his trail, cross the river someplace other than the one he had chosen, and strike him from the side or rear.

  Ben halted the sweep of his spyglass and focused it more sharply. Something was moving far off. He had spotted the band of men, six miniature riders upon six miniature horses. They were dogging his exact trail. That fact told Ben that old Ramos Valdes was not leading.

  He was too foxy to come straight at Ben and fall into an ambush.

  The band of men drew ever closer. They moved as a tight group, a large hunting animal in swift pursuit of its prey. The band reached the river and stopped on the south bank. One man dismounted and began to examine Ben's tracks. Ben recognized Carlos Valdes, the older of Ramos's two sons. Ben wondered what Carlos thought about him taking time t
o have a swim.

  Carlos called his men together and they began to talk among themselves. Ben saw two men, nervously eyeing the north shore, shake their heads in disagreement with what Carlos was saying. Then Carlos spoke, giving an order, and all the men swung astride their mounts. They rode down the bank and into the water of the ford, and crossed the river onto the American side.

  "Damn you, Carlos," Ben exclaimed, his mood turning ugly at the man's action. He wasn't going to allow the Mexicans to chase him across Texas.

  "Carlos, you should've stayed in Mexico," he whispered, and raised the Spencer to his shoulder. The .50-caliber lead bullet the rifle fired was a real man-killer. He put the sights of the weapon on Carlos's broad chest and took up the slack in the trigger.

  TWO

  Ben held the rifle aimed at Carlos, but halted the squeeze of his finger on the trigger. He considered the Valdes wealth to have been gotten largely by illegal means. Further, a great uncle of Ben's had been killed at the Alamo, and another at the battle of Goliad, so stealing from the Valdes did not trouble his conscience or cause any regrets. Still, Ben understood why Carlos and his pistoleros were trying so hard to take back the horses; they considered them to rightly be Valdes property. Also, they wanted to catch and punish him to set an example for other thieves. The fact the men were trying hard to kill Ben was bothersome; however, he would make that feat a very difficult task to accomplish.

  He shifted the aim of the weapon from Carlos to the black horse he rode. A cold chill went through Ben at the thought of killing the splendid animal. He moved the point of aim back to Carlos. Shoot the man or the horse, hurry and decide, for the band of pistoleros was spurring their mounts up the north bank and directly at him.