Deadman's Fury (The Deadman Series Book 2) Read online

  Dead Man’s Fury

  By

  Linell Jeppsen

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2014 Linell Jeppsen

  Wolfpack Publishing

  48 Rock Creek Road

  Clinton, Montana 59825

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-292-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  More Fine Novels from Linell Jeppsen

  Author’s Note

  First off, there are some people I need to thank; this includes my editors, Rebecca Stroud and Lorraine Mainzer. Without their help, this novel would be a run-away train full of commas!

  I want to thank Bryden Lloyd for this outstanding cover. I know what I want, but it takes real vision to translate someone’s vague idea into a beautiful work of art. He does it in spades!

  I also want to give a nod to Wolfpack Publishing~ an organization dedicated to the art of Western fiction!

  Lastly, I want to thank my husband, Dan Jeppsen, without whom this book would not exist. Over and over again, he kept me on track, corrected my facts, did his own research and helped me out with the occasional blind alley and dead-end.

  Lastly, I want to say that although I did enough solid research on this novel to choke a horse, I also used a lot of literary license. Many of the scenes and places in this story are a figment of my own imagination and should be taken with a grain of salt.

  For you history professors out there- - - go easy on the fiction writer, okay?

  Now, to the second novel of, The Deadman Trilogy!

  This novel is dedicated to my uncle, Ron Ewbank.

  The last of a breed~

  Chapter 1

  Amelia

  Amelia Winters stepped off the train and gazed at the dusty little town with delight. Her adventure had begun and she wanted to twirl around on tiptoe with excitement. She was on her way to live with her Auntie Iris and her family while going to nursing school about twenty miles outside of Spokane. Although Amelia had been helping her father—Dr. Lewis Winters—in his small medical practice in Marysville, Washington since she was twelve years old, he had decided he needed someone to assist in real medical work like surgeries, triage and post-surgical care.

  The logical choice for surgical assistant had been Amelia’s older brother, James. Indeed, Lewis Winters had groomed his son for the position but James had enlisted in the army four years ago and was subsequently killed in an avalanche along with twelve other Cavalry officers while on assignment.

  Although Amelia’s heart still stuttered occasionally with grief at the loss of her handsome older brother, she was thrilled with the prospect of learning her father’s skills and possibly becoming a doctor in her own right. After all, it was 1892. A bright new future—a whole new century—was just around the corner and she, for one, was ready to embrace all the possibilities.

  Her daydreams were interrupted by the conductor, a wizened old man with an enormous pocket watch in hand, who said, “Miss, you can go into the café with the others for refreshments. And if you need the necessary,” he cleared his throat in embarrassment, “it’s right behind the building…you can see the corner of it, just there.”

  He pointed and Amelia saw the edge of an outhouse behind the larger café/post and telegraph office. Even as she watched, a small, dirty pony bearing a small, dirty man tore around the disembarking passengers and pulled to a stop in front of the post office section of the building in a cloud of dust.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said politely and stepped forward a few paces to join her fellow passengers. Mrs. Dorothy Jones, a widow, had stopped and was impatiently waiting for Amelia to catch up.

  “One must not dawdle when traveling alone, young lady,” the plump, middle-aged woman admonished.

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Jones!” Amelia exclaimed. “The conductor…”

  “Never you mind,” Mrs. Jones interrupted. “Just stay close by my side. This is a wild place, as are all of these little towns east of the Cascades. My son told me to step sharp and keep an eye out for riff-raff while on my way to his home.”

  She sniffed, adding, “Since your father saw fit to send his daughter into the wilds all alone, I feel it is my duty to serve as chaperone until you are well met at the train station in Spokane.”

  It was all Amelia could do to keep from rolling her eyes, but she meekly followed the older woman into the café and sat next to her at a table. The widow Jones was nice, if over-protective, and although she was sure she could navigate her way from the train depot in Marysville to the depot in Spokane, Amelia did not have the heart to be rude or rebuff the woman’s good intentions.

  Her bladder was starting to protest; although the train was new, the only accommodations were chamber pots hidden behind a canvas curtain for the men and a smelly bench behind another curtain for the womenfolk.

  Amelia figured it was the conductor’s job to keep the bench—with its hole that gave a clear view of the tracks whizzing by under the train’s wheels—clean, but he was so old and frail-looking, she wondered if he was shirking his duties. There were odious brown streaks all over it and the odor was unbelievable.

  Besides that, Amelia had wondered how on Earth she was supposed to squat over that horrid hole with her corset, petticoat and heavy layered skirt. She was determined to be as pretty and fresh as possible—not to stink like a chamber pot—when she met her relatives at the train depot.

  Pulling a photograph out of her small, beaded handbag, Amelia studied the two people who would be picking her up at the station and whose roof she would share for the next year. Her auntie was beautiful in the black and white image. Amelia remembered Iris well, although she hadn’t seen her in a long time.

  Iris had long, curly auburn hair much like Amelia’s, ginger freckles and merry brown eyes. She always smelled like flowers and her white teeth sparkled often with mirth. In this photograph, Iris held a young child in her arms. The baby wore a white baptismal gown and seemed to be wailing at something or another while his parents grinned in resignation.

  Amelia grinned, too. Photographers often told people to sit very still while having their likeness taken and, above all, never smile. Her Auntie and Uncle did not seem to care at all about the rules of photography as their amusement was plainly obvious. Squinting at the dog-eared picture, Amelia acknowledged the only reason she knew the baby was a boy was that Iris had written and told her so. Chance Jonathon Wilcox was his name and Amelia could not wait to meet him, although by n
ow that screaming infant was almost five years old.

  The young woman traced her finger over the face of Matthew Wilcox, her auntie’s husband. As always, two things struck her simultaneously. First, Matthew Wilcox was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen. Second, he was one of the most frightening men she had ever laid eyes on. She had heard, of course, about the “Granville Stand-off” and she had even read about what her Uncle Matthew had done to stop Top Hat and his gang of thugs six years ago in a penny-dreadful.

  Maybe that is what made her see such menace in his handsome countenance but Amelia didn’t think so. Although he stood tall and straight and had a fine, strong body, there was something about the look in his eyes and the set of his lips that made her blood run cold. She had no way of knowing what color those wide, pretty eyes were or what made his stare so fierce despite his grin, but there seemed to be a sort of gloom about him… a dark shadow.

  Amelia shivered and prayed she never gave him reason to be angry with her; she also prayed that he was not too strict when she moved into his home. But Iris had written and said that she couldn’t be happier with her husband so Amelia felt confident that this hard-faced man was kind at heart…at least she hoped so. Still, she jumped a little in her chair as a tray of tea was set down on the table along with some milk, butter and a small plate of muffins.

  “Well, it’s about time, I say!” Mrs. Jones grumbled. “I was beginning to think the train would leave before we had time to eat lunch.” She eagerly plucked a muffin from the plate and grabbed a knife.

  Amelia was famished as well but she could ignore her bladder no longer. Regretfully, she pushed her chair back and said, “I must use the facilities, Mrs. Jones. I won’t be long.”

  The stout woman glanced her way and muttered, “I will come with you if you like…”

  Amelia saw the look of frustrated hunger in her companion’s eyes as she held her butter-laden knife in the air and she shook her head. “No, that’s alright, ma’am. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Stepping outside, Amelia moved down the boardwalk toward the outhouse. She plucked at the lace of her shirtwaist as sweat sprang up on her skin and trickled between her breasts. It is the middle of September and still hot as blazes, she thought and then stifled a gasp as a man came around the corner of the building and bumped into her, causing her to back up a step.

  The tall, barrel-chested man grabbed her by the upper arm and said, “Pardon me, miss…didn’t see you standing there.”

  Amelia tried looking up into his face but the sun was directly behind him so his features were silhouetted in darkness.

  Yet there was no harm done and she really needed to relieve herself, so she smiled up at the stranger and said, “That’s quite all right, sir. Excuse me, please.”

  He released her arm and she stepped off the sidewalk onto a dirt path and into the outhouse that she observed with approval. Unlike the train, this building seemed spanking clean with a private stall, a deep basin sink sitting next to a water barrel with its own hand pump, and a cracked but serviceable mirror.

  Amelia stepped into the cubicle, heaved up her skirt, unbuttoned the lower part of her corset, pulled down her petticoat and sighed with relief. Watching an industrious spider spin a web by the ceiling, she heard the door to the outhouse open and then water being drawn into the sink.

  “I’ll be done in just a moment!” she called.

  A woman replied, “Take your time, m’dear. I’m just fetching some water.”

  The voice sounded foreign, perhaps Irish, and Amelia hastened to finish her business and get back to a couple of those muffins before Mrs. Jones ate them all. Corset buttoned, petticoat and skirt back in order, she stepped out of the stall and saw a very tall older lady standing by the sink.

  The woman might once have been pretty but now she looked hot, dusty, and tired. She had black hair liberally streaked with gray and slightly-slanted blue eyes; however, whatever beauty she might have once possessed was obscured by crow’s feet and bitter, downturned lips.

  There were a number of canteens and water receptacles lined up on a narrow shelf above the sink. Although Amelia wanted to wash her hands, she hesitated to disturb the woman’s task. As though sensing the girl’s discomfort, the woman—whose name was Margaret Donnelly—stepped away and said, “Please, help yourself.”

  Smiling, Amelia replied, “Thank you,” and pumped the lever for more water, washing her hands with a sliver of harsh lye soap from the shelf. Two rumpled towels hung from wooden nails by the sink and, as she stepped toward them, she glanced into the cracked mirror and saw the lady suddenly come up behind her.

  At five feet six inches, Amelia was tall for a seventeen-year-old girl. But as Margaret grabbed her from behind and wrapped her left arm around her chest, Amelia realized that the woman was huge…maybe six feet and frightfully strong.

  She squealed in alarm but Margaret placed a wet, smelly rag over her mouth. Panting in fear, Amelia locked eyes in the mirror with her captor; the older woman gazed back and smiled as the girl’s eyes grew dim and then closed.

  Placing her “catch” on the floor, Margaret stepped quickly to the door and hissed, “You there, Patrick?”

  “I am,” her brother answered. “You got her ready?”

  “Just about…hurry up, now!”

  Margaret Donnelly tied Amelia’s hands together and tucked the little bitch’s fancy reticule into her own carpetbag along with the water bottles. She heard the surrey pull around to the front of the building and then a quick two-tap on the wooden door. Unlatching the hook from the door, she let Patrick inside and watched as he grabbed the girl’s limp body from the floor and placed her in the back of their closed carriage.

  Margaret looked around, making sure that nothing of hers was left behind. Then she climbed into the back of the carriage with the girl. All the heavy canvas drapes were tied down so neither she nor her captive were visible. She felt Patrick step up onto the front bench and then heard him snap his whip above the rumps of the horses.

  Within moments, Patrick and Margaret Donnelly—along with their latest victim—were trotting down the dusty road. Taking her Da’s pocket watch out of her coat, Margaret checked the time. Eight minutes…a record!

  Of course, the brother and sister team had done this many times before and as Da always said, “Practice makes perfect.”

  Chapter 2

  Matthew and Iris

  “But, Mama, I really want to go with you!” Abigail wailed.

  Iris stared out the kitchen window, willing herself to be patient with her thirteen-year-old daughter…especially now that the girl had started her menses. Every little obstacle, every single frustration was amplified in her daughter’s mind lately and Abigail was not afraid to share her malcontent with everyone in the house.

  Turning to her red-cheeked offspring, Iris said, “Abby dear, you know that someone has to teach school today and that someone is you! Your father and I had planned on going to the train station alone to meet your cousin Amelia. The only reason your brother is going is to pick up the oats that are arriving on the train!”

  “Well, Sam always gets to go places while I’m stuck here at home!” Abby cried. The girl’s red curls were tousled and her pretty hazel eyes awash with tears. Still, she was a real beauty with a normally sweet disposition. Iris took two steps forward and wrapped her arms around her weeping daughter.

  “Please don’t cry so much, honey. You’ll make your eyes all puffy. Don’t you want Amelia to see you at your best? She will be so proud that you can run a classroom all by yourself but upset, I think, if she sees how much you resent it.”

  Abby stepped back a pace and angrily swiped the tears from her cheeks. “I do NOT resent teaching the children, Mother! I just…just…oh! Never mind!” She turned and ran down the hallway.

  A few moments later, Iris heard the sound of splashing water and knew that, for now, another teenage crisis had been averted. Walking back toward the kitchen window and the dish-fille
d sink underneath it, she sighed. Grabbing a washcloth, Iris thought about the day ahead.

  It was only a five-mile trek into town and the train station. Amelia would need a few minutes to freshen up and then she and Matthew would take her to Minnie’s Restaurant for luncheon, while fifteen-year-old Samuel and her ranch foreman Lenny Michaels, loaded the wagon with oats.

  Iris made a mental note to buy extra meat pies for Lenny and Samuel to eat on the way back home, and to visit the mercantile to see if the book she had ordered for Abby—“Mary Midthorn”—had arrived yet. She smiled. With its romance and derring-do, that novel would wipe the frown from her daughter’s face.

  Finishing the breakfast dishes, Iris opened the cold cellar and double-checked tonight’s supper preparations: German potato salad, pickled beets (Matthew’s favorite), fresh-baked dinner rolls and a succulent ham were all ready to serve. Iris knew that her good friend Louise Smithers was bringing a chocolate cake by for dessert and she nodded her head in satisfaction.

  Everything is as ready as it can be, except for me! She thought. The only clothing she wore now was her union suit, an ankle-length canvas milking skirt and apron. She started to step back when two large, warm hands cupped her breasts. Iris gasped at the familiar, warm flutter of passion that throbbed in her belly.

  “Is this how you’re going to greet your niece, wife?” Matthew’s soft voice tickled her right ear as his thumbs caressed her nipples, causing them to stand at attention like soldiers at the ready. She groaned and spun around, rising on her toes to meet his smiling lips with her own.