Latigo 2: Vengeance Trail

By Dean Owen

On one side, a ruthless railroad king and the coldest-blooded killers in the West. On the other side, one man—Latigo—a proud-hearted rover with just one thing on his mind—revenge.
Now, in the sprawling, rough-and-tumble frontier country where what’s right and what’s wrong are measured by the fast draw of cold steel, a woman is about to hang for a murder she didn’t commit. Latigo has been summoned to her rescue. And, at last, the trap is set for him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215574829

Dean Owen

Dean Owen aka Dudley Dean McGaughey was a prolific writer of pulp westerns and popular novels, who published over one hundred books during his lifetime. Dean Owen, the pseudonym he most often used, was then a full-time freelance writer from the early 1950s until his death. His first stories and novels were westerns, and he continued to write them throughout his career. Some of his more notable works were novels adapted from the television shows "Bonanza," "Heck Ramsey," and "The Rebel," as well as a science fiction/popular novel taken from the movie "Reptilicus." He also wrote "The Bride of Dracula" a movie tie-in for the Hammer film starring Peter Cushing.

Book preview

Prologue

FIRST SNOWS HAD begun to whiten the high country when the startling news of Cole Cantrell’s death reached into far corners of the frontier. Latigo had become such a legendary figure, had so many times outwitted those sent to kill him, that he was believed to be invincible. News of his violent end saddened friends. Enemies slept soundly.

Many people at first refused to believe he had died, but there had been an eyewitness. Cantrell had been shot to death on a lonely mountain road by a man named Bill Cutter.

When Burley Quint heard of Cantrell’s passing, he threw his hat into the air and shouted, I’ll buy that Bill Cutter a gallon of the best whiskey in Denver. Hear that, Jeff? Cap’n Cantrell got his head blowed off!

I hear. Jeff Crowder backed against one of Quint’s freight wagons to steady his legs. He rubbed at his graying beard and thought back to the war when he as corporal and Quint as sergeant had served under Captain Cantrell.

Quint broke into an exuberant jig. Shortly after Appomattox, Quint had come within an inch of beating his former captain to death at a place called Eaganville, only to be soundly whipped himself.

The son-of-a-bitchin’ cap’n ain’t no more!

Ex-corporal Crowder, now a swamper on Quint’s freight line, thought his towering boss looked foolish dancing around like an arm-swinging girl at springtime.

I always liked our captain, Crowder muttered. Fortunately for Crowder, with Quint shouting his pleasure, the comment was unheard ...

At a lonely mining claim outside of El Dorado Gulch, Helen Holmes was shoveling gravel when she heard about Cole Cantrell. It stunned her, and she wept, tears streaking her pretty face. No matter what she might have been in the past, it was Cole Cantrell who had handed her a new life ...

And across the mountains where rails were pushing westward, the pockmarked Al Dain, who had in turn hunted and been hunted by Latigo, muttered, Now I won’t never have my chance to even up with the bastard for killin’ my friends!

Across the continent in New York City, Dain’s former associate, Doak Lancer, was reporting for work when he read of Cantrell’s demise in a lengthy telegram.

I always thought I could outgun Cantrell if we ever met face to face, Lancer mused aloud. Now I’ll never know for sure.

At that moment he heard the thump of his employer’s walking stick on the marble staircase of the Python Building. As if on signal, a pale middle-aged secretary sprang up from his desk and threw open the ornate double doors of the Python office.

Good morning, Mr. Max, he said timidly.

Claudius Max, a power in New York finance and Washington politics, stormed in, all bulk and swagger.

Doak Lancer thrust out the telegram.

Max’s small eyes scanned the message that had come from Python’s western office at the foot of the Rockies.

A great rumbling laugh shook Max’s belly. "At least one of my men was finally able to silence that thorn in my side!"

He pointed his walking stick at the secretary, who was just closing the doors. Lackman!

Y—y—yes, Mr. Max ...?

Bill Cutter apparently has disappeared after the shooting. I want him found! I intend to bring him to New York and personally hand him ten thousand dollars in gold for killing that son of a bitch!

Lackman licked his lips. I ... I will try to find him, Mr. Max!

"Find him! Max whirled on Doak Lancer, who stood at ease. You worked with Cutter. Where is he likely to hide out?"

It’s not like him to run. He must have a good reason. But he’ll show up sooner or later. Doak Lancer with his fiery red hair and pale skin had been brought east to serve as bodyguard for Claudius Max. He was about thirty, a man of scant conscience and uncanny ability with a gun.

Doak, you had your own chance at Cole Cantrell out west. But he outfoxed the lot of you, Max reminded him.

He had a run of luck, Doak Lancer replied quietly. It was bound to run out. And it did.

But not before he gunned down Sam Stark and Ed Lewt. I tell you, Doak, I thought for a time he was going to whittle away till he got Al Dain and then you and Cutter. Christ, five of you against one man and you couldn’t nail him.

The bodyguard’s pale-blue eyes were expressionless. He tolerated Max’s frequent tirades. Python, of which Max was the head, paid extremely well for services rendered.

And that’s not to mention the other less important members of our company that he cut down, Max thundered on. The violence, the rage in that man ...

Understandable, Mr. Max.

Max fixed him with a cold stare. Understandable? Just how is it understandable?

You forgetting that we ... eliminated Cantrell’s family?

Hmmmmm. Well, yes. Then the great chest began to shake with silent laughter.

Lancer said, Everything would have gone all right if Sam Stark hadn’t got drunk and raped that prostitute. Then he had to go and brag to her about the killings.

You were in charge, Doak. Why in hell did you let it happen? That’s what I could never understand.

Creed had put Sam Stark in charge, remember.

Still can’t understand why my empire was threatened by an ex-army captain. And by a common whore who might start shouting about murders at any time ...

I admit to shooting the girl after Stark and the others got through with her. To shut her up. Doak Lancer spoke in a voice he might use in discussing boots or weather. My only mistake was in not making sure she was dead.

Why couldn’t the girl have been found and ... eliminated? Max demanded.

It’s all right there in the telegram!

Max glared. Across the room Lackman, behind his desk, looked as if he might faint. Few men ever talked up to Mr. Max as Doak Lancer did. Even if he spoke in a soft voice. Lackman was deathly afraid of the wicked-looking gun Doak Lancer wore under his coat.

Claudius Max looked at the telegram again. Yes, it is all here, he grunted.

Ed Lewt and Cutter were on their way to silence the girl at long last, Doak Lancer said patiently. Creed had finally learned she had married and was going under the name of Helen Holmes. She and her husband and his two kids live out of El Dorado Gulch on a gold claim. In Santa Fe she went under the name of Cindy Lou. That’s why it took so long to find her.

Creed bungled from the minute I sent him west. Even after I demoted him he still bungles. Max thumped his walking stick against the thick carpet.

Creed tried this time, the bodyguard said.

Tell me how he tried, Max said through his teeth.

Creed sent four men after her. Lord knows what went wrong. Ed Lewt was found dead along with the two new men. Creed thinks they blundered into Cantrell. That Cutter was the only one to get away. Then he laid a trap for Cantrell.

Thank God for Bill Cutter! Max threw walking stick, hat, and cloak on a chair for his secretary to care for, then strode across the office. As he approached a large flat-topped desk adorned by a bust of Julius Caesar, he mused, I wonder how Theodora will react to the news of Latigo Cantrell’s death.

Even though he spoke to himself, the rumbling voice carried to bodyguard and secretary. They exchanged glances at the rather strange remark.

Theodora was the startlingly beautiful Mrs. Claudius Max.

Cole Cantrell’s death had been reported in late fall.

It was the following spring at a way station near Mulligan Flats that Cole Latigo Cantrell returned from the grave. But on the trail back from the dead he had acquired a new personality. And he used a gun in a manner foreign to all that was remembered of him in the previous lifetime.

On the spring evening of his return, five wagons of the Great Mountain Freight Lines, Burley Quint, prop., were pulled up in a meadow beside the frame buildings of the way station. Quint and his crew had bedded down early. But ex-corporal Jeff Crowder couldn’t sleep. It was one of those nights when his late wife was so close to him he could touch her young body and feel her breath on his cheek. Crowder, who would rather take an ax to his big toe than have anyone see him in tears, tramped over to the way station to get his mind off the memories. There he got in a poker game with four miners who had sold out their claim and were on their way to Denver.

The owner of the way station, Simon Gibbs, bald and hound-eyed, kept a fresh bottle on the table. With the frontier whiskey and the tension of the game, Crowder’s pretty wife began to drift back into that special closet in his mind that most of the time he kept curtained off.

He had married young and lost his bride after two years. That was back in ’58. He was still suffering when war came. He joined the New York Volunteers when they wore fez and sashes. But Reb sharpshooters found the brightly colored uniforms to be splendid targets. The army switched to blue. He had gone into the fighting never expecting to come out alive. He took chances. Many of those fighting alongside of him were prudent. They died. He was reckless and lived.

Because he was rootless as a widower, he had attached himself to a solid slab of human cliffside known as Burley Quint. Quint was mean and vindictive, but he was the anchor Crowder needed. After the war they came west, where Burley Quint’s cousin was in the freight business.

Crowder became his second in command, as he had been in the war. Quint was generous with his money, but Crowder found it hard to stomach some of the things he did. Such as Quint euchring his cousin out of the freight business.

But before that, on the last day of the war, Quint had come close to hanging a captured Rebel lieutenant, claiming he was a spy. Quint really wanted to go through with it because he had an intense hatred of all officers.

Captain Cantrell came riding up just in time to keep Quint from hanging the lieutenant. Which pleased Crowder, because he kind of liked Lieutenant Sateen and would have hated to see him jerk his life away at the end of Quint’s rope. But Quint, who already hated Cantrell on general principles, became maniacal on the subject.

And now at the Mulligan Flats way station, Crowder had just won over a hundred dollars on three tens and was raking in the pot when two masked men appeared in the doorway.

Gents, any of you even breathes hard is dead!

The spokesman was fairly tall, in buckskin shirt and dark-blue pants. He and his shorter companion wore bandanna masks with eyeholes. Each held a cocked pistol.

Gibbs, behind his short bar, lifted his hands. For Gawd’s sake, boys, don’t shoot!

The one in the doorway gave orders to his confederate. All were to empty their pockets, carefully. The confederate wore a yellow slicker even though it wasn’t raining. He carried a leather sack in addition to the revolver.

The one in the doorway laughed when the miners wailed that the money being collected represented over a year’s hard work.

The one in the yellow slicker said, Looks like we got crybabies here, Latigo.

Yeah, said the one in the doorway. I like to see your tears, boys. You’ll sure remember Latigo Cantrell, now won’t you?

Crowder’s jaw dropped. He was sitting on the far side of the table, facing the door. The wick of one lamp was turned low and the other lamp was smoking. He stared hard. The man in the doorway was tall enough, for sure, and now that Crowder looked closer he saw the man’s dark-blue hat, the kind worn by cavalry officers. And by God he was wearing moccasins instead of boots. That was the way they said Latigo Cantrell always dressed after the war.

Crowder shook himself. But Cantrell was dead, gunned down late last fall in the wild mountains over east. And yet ...

Clean out the money box behind the bar, the one in the blue hat ordered.

Gibbs looked as if he might faint as the bandit in the slicker emptied the box into his bulging sack.

Got it all, Latigo, said the confederate.

Latigo Cantrell thanks you boys for the money.

Crowder blurted, Cap’n, sir ... it’s me, Jeff Crowder. Your corporal, don’t you remember ...?

Corporal, you tell those hombres I’m a damn good shot. Anybody sticks his head out that door will have a hole between his eyes. Latigo Cantrell at your service, boys. Laughing, the two men ducked out. There was a sudden pounding of hooves as they galloped away into the darkness. The miners wanted to go after them.

There’s a thousand places they can hole up in these mountains, Gibbs said shakily. Hell, they’ll blow us apart we get too close.

The miners began shouting, banging fists on the table. They turned on Crowder, accusing him of being in league with the two bandits.

You knowed him! shouted a big brown-bearded man. "He sure knowed you!"

Crowder sat shaking his head slowly from side to side. I can’t believe it ... not our cap’n.

Burley Quint came in from the freight wagons, yawning, scratching his huge chest. What the hell’s all the yellin’ for? You woke me up.

Crowder told him.

Quint took a moment to reflect on it, then stomped so hard on the floor Crowder expected his boot to break through the planking. "Cap’n Cantrell alive! His broad face began to turn purple. You sure, Jeff?"

Jeezus, he looks like him, he stands like him. He sounds like him....

Gibbs said, He sure called himself Cantrell. Latigo Cantrell.

Before the week was out a party of travelers was held up by the same pair. By the end of the month there were more holdups, more money taken. One victim was slightly wounded.

Cole Latigo Cantrell had returned from the grave with a vengeance.

Chapter One

COLE LATIGO CANTRELL had intended to take another month in his long convalescence. Now it was impossible. An impostor had been robbing outposts and travelers. This blackened not only Cole’s own name, but the names of his late father and mother, Badger Cantrell and White Elk. Cole personally had consigned their bodies, in the fashion of the plains Indians, to the land of shadows. That was nearly two years ago.

On this spring morning, Cole emerged from the lodge that had been his sanctuary since the shooting. He sniffed the good pine-scented dawn air, thankful to be alive. Along the swiftly flowing creek a morning haze lifted into the trees. The Crow camp was astir. Dogs in chorus welcomed the new day, and the shrill voices of children could be heard.

It was a day of excitement. Late yesterday afternoon a great herd of bison had been sighted. There would be a hunt. And it was Cole’s chance to repay the camp for providing food and shelter.

Smoke from cookfires already curled into the sky. An aroma of broiling antelope permeated the camp. Cole stood tall, black-haired, pale from his ordeal that had begun in late fall. He was thinned down, his clothing fitting better than a month ago but still loosely. He tilted his dark-blue cavalry officer’s hat so he could watch the rim of the sun. The sun was a luxury. For so long, death had been but a whisper away.

A tall Indian in breechclout and leggings approached Cole. The Indian had returned to the Crow camp that morning after a long absence.

"Kahay," he greeted. Tonight come to my lodge, Two Trails, he said, using Cole’s Crow name. "We will smoke together. Eat plenty buffalo. Ba-Rush’pe Ahuk!"

Cole said, "A-ho, Wolf That Walks! Once plenty buffalo. Not now."

The eyes of Wolf That Walks glittered as he acknowledged the truth of this. Drying racks should have been filled, but there was little buffalo meat. For the first time Cole could remember, food was scarce in the Crow camp. They both knew the reason.

Professional hunters were decimating the buffalo herds, mostly for hides. The meat was left to rot.

Today we hunt buffalo, Wolf That Walks said.

I go with you.

They say you are still too weak, Two Trails.

I am strong. Cole placed a hand at the place on his chest where a bullet had almost taken his life.

Wolf That Walks seemed pleased. Then his gaze clouded. They say you will soon return to the camps of the white man. They are different from us, my brother. Different from you.

The white men are the same, Wolf That Walks. Except there are more of them.

There seems no end to the white man’s number. And the Crow people are few, Two Trails. You must stay with us. Because it is known that there is no place to equal Crow country.

I know. They spoke in Crow.

"And although many have tried, no one can take our land from us. For it has always been Crow land."

Always? Cole said with a tight smile.

Ever since we took it from the Shoshoni people, Wolf That Walks added slyly, but Cole had lost his smile.

I go back to the white man’s camps to hunt down murderers. And to clear my name. Cole spoke of the impostor. So today I go on the buffalo hunt to prove to myself that I am ready for the trail.

Wolf That Walks said, I think it is dangerous for you to hunt today.

I need the test. And I must donate meat to the lodges of those who have helped me.

There is another reason you should not go. Aside from weakness.

My mind is made up.

You remember Red Knife? the Indian said. From your youth?

What I remember about Red Knife is not pleasant.

He is back with us.

Cole’s gaze settled on the coppery features of Wolf That Walks. I thought he was an army scout.

No longer with the pony soldiers. He does not speak well of you, Two Trails. And you know why. The Indian glanced significantly at the lodge where Cole had emerged only minutes before. It was purposely set apart from other lodges. It was the residence of Dark Star, a medicine woman who demanded and received her privacy.

Do not go on the hunt, Wolf That Walks advised. Give yourself a chance to recover from your wound.

I am recovered.

But your mind is bound to be slow. And you must be alert and quick to smell danger, if Red Knife gets at your back. Which he will.

I’ll have one eye on him. One eye on buffalo.

Dark Star called to him, and Cole entered the lodge. In the dimness he could see the whites of her eyes. She stood by the small fire where she had prepared their morning meal. A faint breeze blew down through the smoke hole where lodgepoles were lashed together.

I will give you a reason not to go on the hunt, she said softly. She lifted the dress of deerskin over her head. She came to him, wearing only a shift that failed to hide small but perfectly shaped breasts. Let them hunt. You stay with me. She gestured at the bed of furs.

Wait until the hunt is over. He smiled and stroked her soft chin.

I overheard what Wolf That Walks told you. Red Knife has come back from the whites. He knows you’ve been staying here with me, of course.

He was in love with you once.

Red Knife will go on the hunt. And it will mean danger for you.

I must bring in my share of buffalo.

She tried to argue.

I have to prove to myself that I can still shoot. That my eye is sharp and that I can face danger. Above all, prove that I am a man.

Last night in our bed you proved that. But when she failed to sway him, her lovely mouth tightened. "A buffalo hunt is madness ... for you. You are not ready."

All these weeks the Crow provided me with food. Now I must repay.

There will always be buffalo to hunt ...

He shook his head. "You and I know better. You see the future in your medicine fire. But all I have to do is look and listen and know that one day soon the great herds will vanish."

He kissed her and stepped outside, thinking of the problem the Indians faced. Even a grand duke had come across the ocean to participate in the sport of the bison hunt. The duke’s party, so Cole had heard, was a small mobile city in itself, providing as much luxury as possible in the high country for the royal presence. Over a thousand head of buffalo had been slaughtered, so it was claimed. All that excited the grand duke was the thrill of the shoot. That he was helping keep the Indian belly empty probably did not occur to him. And the army officers who accompanied him on the hunt, so it was said, were only carrying out government policy. And this was to reduce the food supply of the enemy and eventually bring him to his knees.

A method much safer than to meet him in combat. At first the army had scoffed when experts proclaimed that the finest light cavalry in the world was the Cheyenne in the north, the Comanche in the south. Now there were believers. Hence the new policy to eliminate the Indian’s main food source, the buffalo.

Dark Star, tall and graceful in deerskin dress, black hair shining in the morning light, came to stand beside Cole.

Please, Cole, don’t go ...

There was a splashing of hooves in the stream that flashed through the trees as the horse herd was being driven to the flats north of camp. Soon braves would mount up for the hunt. One day soon it would all be gone. Cole’s eyes were bitter. The free life of the Indian, the hunting.

When he mentioned this, she said, That is why you must stay with us and not return to the white world. We need your knowledge to help us deal with the pale skins.

You know I have other work!

It could be your death, she said quickly. Stay with us.

It was an old argument. When he had first been brought to camp, half dead from the bullet wound in his chest, he had been too weak to respond. But as he began to recover, he tried to explain. There was still the vengeance trail ahead of him, the trackdown.

She reached up to his buckskin shirt and touched the area of the fresh scar, as if to remind him of his mortality. A bullet fired by a man he had finally tracked down. One of those five who had coldly murdered his parents. He had pursued them relentlessly for over a year. Two of them had died by his hand.

The third one, Bill Cutter, he had been about to capture.

But a pioneering family named Kinsacker, moving westward, had become involved. Rather than risk a shot that might have struck the wife and mother of Kinsacker’s children, Cole deliberately fired over her head.

Directly behind the woman, using her as a shield, was Bill Cutter, one of the five murderers. Cutter then had a clear shot at Cole.

His bullet knocked Cole to the narrow mountain roadway. Cutter had been about to blow out Cole’s brains, but at that moment Cole was dimly aware of the whir of an arrow, the crunching sound of razor-sharp flint arrowhead against bone. Cutter collapsed. The arrow had come from the bow of a Cheyenne chief. Earlier in the day, Cutter had made the mistake of shooting the chief’s ten-year-old son in order to steal the boy’s pony. Cutter’s own horse had gone lame.

The Cheyenne chief had trailed Cutter and exacted full vengeance. And at the same time had saved Cole from taking Cutter’s bullet in the head.

No one else was left on the road but the chief and the seriously wounded Cole Cantrell. The family in the covered wagon that had been briefly involved in the tragedy had fled in terror. Only a faint wheel rattle and bray of the hard-pushed mule team marked their flight.

So great was the Cheyenne chief’s hatred of all whites that Cole might have been left in the road to bleed to death.

Cole in his delirium uttered a death chant learned from the Crow. This, in fact, had saved his life. For the chief then considered him to be one of them, not a hated white such as the one who had left his young son for dead.

The chief took Cole to the Cheyenne encampment. Then, as had happened before, Dark Star involved herself in Cole’s life. She took him home with her.

It was some