Man Who Burned Hell!

  The Man who Burned Hell!

  The little town was Serenity: in name and nature. Then the railroad and miners came, dragging violence and death behind them. Renamed Hell, the sleepy town changed under the rule of Ike Cordis.

  Known as The Devil, Cordis controlled The Three Horsemen, the fastest guns in town.

  Long forgotten was the fourth horseman – a man riding a blue roan. A man determined to make The Devil burn in Hell!

  By the same author

  Valley of Thunder

  Even Marshals Hang!

  Writing as B.S. Dunn

  Fury at Bent Fork

  Brolin

  Brothers of the Gun

  Writing as Brent Towns

  Lightning Strike!

  The Man who Burned Hell!

  Sam Clancy

  ROBERT HALE

  © Sam Clancy 2018

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2592-7

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Sam Clancy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This one is for Sam and Jacob

  and the old feller

  Michael Hickmotte Towns

  Prologue

  A bullet-riddled sign that had once read ‘Serenity’ stood on the outskirts of the town. The name had been crossed out with a slash of red paint and replaced by ‘Hell’ in crude hand-written letters. An apt name for the town it had become, rife with violent deaths and overseen by a man known as The Devil.

  Three mounted horses thundered past the sign, covering it in a new layer of trail dust. The men rode hard towards the town, their eyes focused on a large pall of brown-black smoke that billowed upward, blotting out the pink and red streaks of the afternoon sky.

  When they got closer, they could see large orange flames that leaped thirty feet into the air, fed by all manner of dry fuel.

  The dust-covered men eased their sweat-lathered mounts to a halt when they hit the edge of town. They were presented with the conflagration responsible for the smoke and embers. On both sides of the street, buildings burned, the crackle and snap of tinder-dry planks could be heard over the roar of the fire.

  ‘What happened here?’ one of the men wondered aloud as he tried to comprehend the sight before him.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ grouched their leader. ‘Follow me.’

  They dismounted and led their agitated horses along the main street, speaking reassuringly to them to allay their terror. They came across bodies, strewn haphazardly by the fickle hand of death, left in the very place that they had fallen.

  Flames sucked the oxygen from the air and the oppressive heat felt suffocating as the men continued to walk, the bright silver of their marshal badges glinting in the glow.

  To their left, a burning pile of rubble and part of a scorched sign that read ‘Saloon’ were all that remained of the formerly salubrious establishment. The rest of it was gone. To their right lay a wheel, some shattered timbers, and small black crater, which they discerned had once been some sort of wagon.

  They continued their steady pace, one of them limping, a stunned silence hung over them at the awesome fury of the blaze. To them, it seemed that the entire town was on fire, except it wasn’t. It was just the main street aflame; the other streets still untouched by the inferno.

  Ahead of the small group, two figures appeared through the thick smoke. One was limping, holding what appeared to be a rifle while the second person struggled to support the first. As the three lawmen neared, it became apparent that the pair was a man and a woman. Apart from a blackened face, filthy clothes, and her wild, sooty red hair, the woman seemed fine.

  The man she supported was dressed in black and it looked as though he hadn’t fared as well. He had a bloody rag tied around his upper left thigh, a line of semi-dried blood had run down the left side of his unshaven face and he appeared to be wounded somewhere on his right side.

  The three marshals stopped in their tracks and stared incredulously at the two people before them. The wounded man looked up and smiled wryly.

  ‘Hey, Bass, where you been?’

  United States Marshal Bass Reeves glared at Ford, and for a moment it was hard to tell which burned brighter: the town or the marshal’s eyes. The muscles of his jaw clenched when he ground his teeth together as the rage within him reached boiling point. When he spoke, his voice held an edge that would shatter granite.

  ‘What the hell have you done?’

  Chapter 1

  At birth, Serenity had been a cattle town, nestled in a wide valley with lush meadows, fast-flowing waterways fed from the high snow-capped peaks of the Absaroka Mountain Range, which overlooked its rutted main street.

  Initially, that’s all it was, a one-street town enclosed by false-fronted shops. With the passage of time, it grew and further streets were added. As the demand for a rail spur peaked, the railroad decided to build one into the valley so ranchers could ship out their cattle, making the need for a two-week drive to the closest railhead defunct.

  Around the same time, the discovery of gold in the foothills drew miners in droves. Once it was established that the deposit was quite substantial, a mining company moved in and bought up the smaller claims.

  Soon after that, Ike Cordis came to town with three hired guns – his Horsemen, as he liked to call them. They were cold-blooded killers who could draw and fire with speed and accuracy.

  Sam Beck came from Texas, Colt Bliven from Kansas, and California Wells all the way from Sacramento. Between them, they had a healthy kill tally of twenty-two.

  Cordis quickly took over Serenity’s saloon businesses. When he arrived in town, there were four: the Cattleman’s Saloon, the High Valley, the Ace High, and the Buffalo Wallow. He immediately renamed them more to his liking. They became Ike’s Place, the Pink Garter, the Dead Dog, and the Royal Palace. He kept them open all night; they never closed their doors. Not when there was so much money to be made.

  With the influx of miners and rail workers came violence and death. Before long, not a day went by when there wasn’t a shooting, a stabbing or a fight in the middle of town. Citizens were accosted in the main street as they went about their business. The Serenity sheriff did his best to enforce the law, but died after being shot in the back whilst doing his rounds late one evening.

  And so, in the space of months, Serenity became a hell town where people lived hard and died violent deaths. The sign was changed from ‘Serenity’ to ‘Hell’ and people started to call Cordis ‘The Devil’, the king of Hell.

  Three violent incidents occurred in one day that caused both Hell and The Devil to live up to their names. The first happened in the early morning hours. As a cold breeze whipped along the main street of Hell, the body of a man suspended from a rope began to sway. The noose around his thick neck had bitten deep into flesh, and after four hours beneath the Dead Dog saloon’s sign, his face was distended and disc
oloured and his swollen tongue protruded from between slack lips.

  As the body swung with the wind, the sun kissed a shiny object on the man’s chest, and flashed briefly, though nobody was around to see it. The object was a nickel-plated badge, a sheriff’s badge, and its owner had only been in office since the previous day. His death was meant to serve as a warning to the town council not to interfere in The Devil’s work.

  The warning, however, was not heeded and the town council installed another man in his place as sheriff: a drifter who was offered three hundred dollars a month to wear the badge.

  Within an hour of being sworn in, he died in a blaze of gun smoke, shot down by Sam Beck, one of Cordis’ three Horsemen.

  Thirty minutes later, the third violent event transpired that proved to be the beginning of the end for Hell.

  A thick blue-grey smoke hung in the still air of the dimly lit back room of the Royal Palace. Its source was a fat cigar jammed between the teeth of Ike Cordis. A thin spiral left the end of the stogie as he drew back deeply, increasing the amount of stifling smoke in the enclosed space. He shuffled the deck of cards in his large hands then dealt to three people seated with him around the table.

  Cordis was an imposing man in his mid-forties. At a little over six feet tall with a solid build, his confidence and bearing showed through his easy gait when he walked. His coal-black eyes were deep set below a broad forehead with a widow’s peak hairline, and his jaw was square and strong. His partially grey hair was slicked back, exposing his deeply tanned face.

  Strapped about his waist was a hand-tooled gun belt that held a piece with which he was very proficient, a Colt Peacemaker.

  One of his acquaintances was Justus Harper, the local mine boss. A bull of a man, Harper, also in his forties, had black hair and a face scarred from the many fistfights he’d participated in. Next was Isom Friend, the railroad boss. He was of a similar build to Harper, with brown eyes and red hair.

  The final person at the table would have brightened any room with her presence. With her long black hair and low-cut red dress, Camilla turned heads wherever she went – mostly men’s. The thirty-five-year-old was the owner of an establishment called the Joy Club, where she ran a stable of fifteen girls for her customers’ entertainment.

  Because of her beauty and lavish gowns, the tendency of most was to underestimate and deem her harmless, which was a mistake. Beneath her skirts, tucked into the garter on her right thigh was a Sharps four-barrel pistol. On the opposite leg, her garter held a short, bone-handled knife with a double-edged blade honed into a stiletto point. Many a man had tried to tame the raven-haired beauty; none had succeeded, and one had died.

  ‘What do you have planned for when the spur is finished, Isom?’ Cordis asked, around the stub of the cigar he chewed.

  Friend scooped his cards up from the marked tabletop and looked them over. He didn’t bother to look up. ‘I guess wherever they send me.’

  ‘How long did you say it would be until you’re finished?’

  ‘A couple of months.’

  ‘I know a certain girl over at the Club who’ll be sorry to see you go,’ Camilla told him.

  Friend thought of the redheaded Charley and felt his emotions stir.

  ‘I know my billfold will be sorry to leave,’ he deflected the comment.

  For their part in a simple plan to drive business in the right direction, Friend and Harper received a percentage of profits made by the four saloons owned by Cordis, and the cathouse owned by Camilla. Come payday, the railroad and mine workers were paid in one of the saloons, where the first round of that day was free. Camilla sent her girls down to the saloons to work their marks and encourage them to return to the Club for alternative entertainment. It was simple, yet effective, and the money they were paid was quite a tidy sum.

  ‘I know my profits will take a hit, that’s for damned sure,’ Cordis said. ‘I might have to take up robbing some of them trains when they start running.’

  No one at the table laughed because they knew that the likelihood of that happening was quite high. They all knew that he was behind the disappearance of a couple of gold shipments in the past.

  Taking the cigar from his mouth, Cordis locked his gaze on Camilla. ‘Are you staying over tonight or sleeping in your own bed?’

  She gave him a mirthless smile. ‘After the events of today, I think that perhaps your bed might prove a rather interesting place.’

  Her gaze may have been on Cordis, but beneath the table, her foot rubbed teasingly at the inside of Friend’s thigh. Camilla’s sparkling eyes moved to the railroad boss and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Then she winked at him.

  ‘I fold,’ he blurted out, tossed his cards on the table and made to rise.

  ‘Hold on!’ Cordis snapped. ‘We haven’t even looked at our cards yet.’

  ‘Let’s just say I got me a feelin’,’ Friend said hurriedly.

  Harper tossed his hand in too. ‘Same goes for me. No offence, but you can’t deal for horse crap.’

  There was a knock at the door and a thin man with blond hair and blue eyes, aged in his early thirties, walked in.

  ‘What is it, Sam?’ Cordis asked.

  Sam Beck was a killer for hire whose loyalty was to the person who paid him the most. He was Cordis’ right hand, the Horseman turned to most frequently. Anything tough that needed to be taken care of was normally handled by Beck. Not that the other two weren’t capable, but Cordis trusted Beck as much as one could trust a gun-for-hire.

  ‘You said you wanted to know when the town council was cookin’ somethin’ up, well they’re doin’ it right now.’

  Cordis reached up and removed the cigar stub with his forefinger and thumb. He spat a sliver of tobacco from his mouth and said, ‘Are they now?’

  ‘They’re in the mayor’s office as we speak.’

  Cordis ran his eyes over the others at the table with him. He said, ‘You would think that they would’ve learned by now.’

  His face flushed with anger and he looked back at Beck and barked, ‘Get the others! It’s time to put a stop to this once and for all.’

  ‘We need to stop Cordis, now!’ the large, moon-faced man dressed in black bellowed.

  ‘Shhh, keep it down, Willett. Someone will hear you,’ rail-thin Dempsey Castner almost pleaded.

  ‘I will not,’ Mayor Willett Cowlin blustered from his seat. ‘They’ve killed two town sheriffs in a matter of hours and something needs to be done about it.’

  ‘We could send word to the marshal’s office in Bismarck,’ supplied Clarence Kile.

  ‘We need to do something,’ Cowlin confirmed to the rest of the town council. ‘At this rate, the cemetery is growing faster than the town. We need to get rid of Cordis.’

  As if on cue, the door to the mayor’s office burst open and four men entered, led by Ike Cordis.

  ‘I see you’ve started without me, Mayor Cowlin,’ Cordis’ voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Don’t let us interrupt you. Please carry on.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Cordis?’ Cowlin snapped, even though his face had paled considerably. ‘This is council business. You don’t belong here.’

  ‘Now I was of the opinion,’ Cordis said, ‘that anyone with a business in town could attend a meeting.’

  ‘What could you possibly want at a town council meeting, Cordis?’ Kile snorted.

  A cold shiver ran down his spine as Cordis’ icy gaze settled upon him. ‘We thought that we should be present for the vote. After all, we are citizens of this fair town.’

  ‘And what vote might that be?’

  ‘Why, the one for the new mayor of course,’ Cordis said jovially.

  Cowlin was visibly shaken at the words uttered by Cordis and he didn’t really want to know the answer to his next question. But he asked anyway. ‘What new mayor?’

  Cordis’ voice hardened, ‘Me.’

  Beck pulled his six-gun and thumbed back the hammer. The dry triple-click sounded unbelievably loud in t
he office. However, the roar of the shot seemed to tear the place apart.

  The slug punched into Mayor Willett Cowlin’s chest with the power of a sledgehammer. He was thrown back out of his chair and crashed to the floor in an untidy heap.

  As the echo of the shot died away, Cordis looked at the horrified faces of those present in the room.

  ‘It looks like the vote was unanimous,’ the outlaw boss surmised. ‘I guess I should take office immediately now that it’s been vacated. Well, it will be once you remove the body. Anyone have a problem with that?’

  The silence in the room was deafening.

  ‘No? OK then. Let’s get down to the first order of business. You’re all fired.’

  Chapter 2

  When the plea for help caught up with United States Marshal Bass Reeves, he was in Billings, Montana with six other marshals. They were picking up notorious outlaw Mason Fox, who was to be transported to Lander, on the Popo Agie river, in Wyoming.

  The numerous marshals were due to the fact that Fox’s gang was still at large. There were eight of them and word was that they were in the area waiting to break him out.

  Reeves was a man in his fifties, a hardnosed man who took no nonsense from anyone. His hair was greying and the change had drifted down to his mustache, giving it a salt and pepper look. His face was deeply lined and walnut brown, a legacy of his many years in the job that entailed running outlaws to ground.

  There was a knock at Reeves’ hotel door and a thin-faced man with a nickel-plated badge entered the small, dimly lit room.

  ‘You got a minute, Bass?’

  ‘What is it, Roy?’ he asked Deputy Marshal Roy Willis.

  Willis held up a slip of creased paper. ‘This came for you.’

  Reeves stood up from where he sat on the edge of his bed and reached for the message. While he read it through, noise from down on the main street drifted in through the open window.