Dread Reckoning Page 5

  “What’s this horse done to you?” Royce still held the belt, his fury crushing the leather strip.

  The horse would have had a lush red chestnut coat if not for the obvious signs of cruelty and lack of care. Instead, the body was marred by excessive driving wounds and malnourishment caused the shape of ribs and other bones to be prominently evident. Flies blew around the wounds - Royce also aware that ravens circled above, waiting for the horse to become carrion.

  “Fugg off! This’s got nothing to do with you.” The rider was back to his feet. “Stupid horse, he keeps giving up, bucking, doesn’t obey.”

  “Because he can’t,” Royce turned back, “you’ve abused this animal,” finding that the rider had a gun pointed at his face.

  “Leave,” the rider commanded, putting his hat back on, “or I’ll put the horse’s bullet in your face instead.”

  There was no hesitation. Royce had swung the belt up - a shot responding too late - hitting the revolver toward the sky. He lashed the belt at the rider, almost half of the end curling around the neck. He yanked him closer into a swinging curled fist.

  As the rider toppled back to the ground, Royce caught the falling revolver and pointed it back at his face. What’s your name?”

  “Whadda you fugging care?”

  “What’s your fugging name?”

  The rider hesitated until he heard Royce cock the weapon. “John… John Cassidy.”

  “Well, John, you should always click this here little hammer on your gun,” Royce indicated where, as he aimed the weapon between the rider’s eyes, “if you intend to shoot a man.”

  John pleaded, “Don’t do it, mister, it’s just a stupid horse!”

  As Royce stared down the barrel to the rider’s cowering face, gently squeezing the trigger that would end the cruel man’s life, the horse stood up and forced a gentle whinny.

  A reminder…

  “You’re lucky Red Roy died,” the miraculous escapee tied the fearful man’s arms to his side with the belt, “and Royce Falco lives.”

  “What? Red Roy’s dead?”

  Royce didn’t answer the man that obviously didn’t recognise him from wanted posters.

  “John Cassidy tried another question. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Royce took the horse’s muddy head in both hands, noting the white striped blazes along the dirty pocked red coat, looking into his exhausted blue eyes. “You’re going to be strong again, a champion.” The horse’s nostrils breathed small snorts upon the man and Royce responded by blowing gently back upon the nose.

  “What are you doing?” John tried.

  “Shaking hands…” Royce smiled at the horse. “What’s his name?”

  “I never named the stupid thing.”

  “Every soul deserves a name.” Royce looked intently into the animal’s eyes. “We’ll find out your name, together, hey?”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “Be thankful I didn’t kill you.” Royce took a lasso from the horse’s saddle and reworked it to tether John, hands bound, along behind the horse. “Your Fate lies along a different path.” He then took the hat from John’s head, placing it upon his own.

  “Hey, that’s my hat!”

  “You don’t deserve such a fine hat.” Royce adjusted the brim of the bowler hat between two fingers upon his head. “And you won’t need it while you’re following the horse, learning some manners.”

  Royce placed his rat companion on the horse’s saddle. “Watch this piece of shyt, Cornelius, will you?”

  “What are you doing with that stinking rat?”

  “He gets to ride the horse, not you.”

  “But it’s my fugging horse!”

  “You also don’t deserve such a noble creature. This horse can’t take a rider, for now, because of how you’ve treated him.”

  “Let me fugging go!”

  Royce ignored the command, checking inside the saddlebags. “You’ve got oats and water, and your horse is starving to death?”

  “So what? He’s useless.”

  “You’re useless…” Royce fed the famished animal by hand and cupped water to its dry thirsty mouth for it to drink. His thoughts dwelled upon the events leading up his miraculous escape of the gallows. Charles Lafayette had probably made his last appearance now that the ordeal was over, like a performer exiting the stage after a show. “But you could be better. And this horse will become a champion.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To find my Wakoda brother.”

  John was confused. “You have an Indian brother?”

  With no answer, the Hayworth Penitentiary escapee took the reins of the horse and led him slowly onward with the tethered captive trudging behind.

  Royce Falco left the haunted prison of mysterious tolling bells behind, but would take the dread reckoning of his Last Midnight wherever he may roam.

  Matteo and Nickolas Tobin have spent years using their career as surveyors to fund their side project of investigating supernatural phenomena across the Wild West.

  A native Wakoda ritual that the brothers stumble upon while exploring the area of Otter Creek will change them forever when they discover that the forces of Fate had destined them to be participants in the ceremony.

  Whether Matteo and Nickolas will accept their role in that destiny is another matter.

  The Civil War is over. American expansion pushes westward across the United States, unaware of the supernatural dangers that lurk in the Wild West.

  A Bostonian tourist is thrust against his will into this savage land of outlaws and desperados. Finding allies in a war veteran, a native tracker, a gold rush baroness, a mysterious magician and a trusty dog, Jacobi Nicholson will find that he is destined to heal some of the scars this unforgiving landscape has given his new friends.

  Bound by the spectres of an old frontier myth, will the gang defy the Law to do what is right and go beyond legend…?

  Erica’s father wasn’t aware of the terrifying monster that lurked below their ranch in the abandoned gold mine.

  If he had known, he may not have announced that he was going to build a Flying Machine by the Fourth of July. He may not have worked on the contraption with such a manic fever, oblivious of his dying wife. And, he may have been able to avoid the monster feeding on what was left of his fragile mind.

  For Erica’s father, the Flying Machine and his quest for the sky had to succeed - nothing else mattered!

  Royce Falco is scheduled for execution in the Hayworth Penitentiary.

  His usual confidence to slip from such situations is crushed when a mysterious visitor brings news that his demise has been orchestrated, but also brings an offer to alter his fate… the decision will come at a price.

  Dread sets in as Royce’s last midnight approaches in the reputably haunted prison, because at 5 o’clock they take him to the gallows post.

  An entire train and its passengers have mysteriously vanished from Echo Station overnight without a trace.

  The only clues to solving the impossible occurence arrive in the form of a series of increasingly frantic messages that were telegraphed to the town of Sundown during the night of the vanishing. Descriptions abound of sinister men in beaked masks and heavy cloaks that the sender names as plague doctors, and monsters that remain unnamed.

  With only the raving telegraphs as evidence, this may be an investigation that can’t be solved.