Rockabye County 9 Read online

  On vacation in Mexico, Woman Deputy Alice Fayde and he partner Deputy Sheriff Bradford Counter hoped that they could forget crime for a few days. Giving a lift to an English girl, they found themselves involved with hired killers and entangled in the world of international espionage. And so they began a desperate run for the border. The deputies would need all their gun-skill, courage and intelligence if they hoped to reach Rockabye County alive.

  ROCKABYE COUNTY 9: RUN FOR THE BORDER

  By J. T. Edson

  First Published by Transworld Publishers in 1971

  Copyright © 1971, 2018 by J. T. Edson

  First Kindle Edition: December 2018

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover image © 2018 by Tony Masero

  Check out Tony’s work here

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

  For Pat Newman, who was one of the first to see the possibilities in the Rockabye County series.

  Chapter One

  Accompanied by two deputy sheriffs who had come from north of the Rio Grande, Don Eugenio Machados hunted a multiple killer through the rugged, broken, semi-arid hill country between the Rios Conchos and Urique. They traversed a rough, raw land that had never felt the touch of a plough and served man only as a grazing ground for half-domesticated longhorn cattle.

  Tall, slender, with a strong face burned almost oak-brown by long exposure to the Mexican sun, Don Eugenio looked a part of the land. Born and raised in it, he had a fame that stretched all through the State of Chihuahua and beyond. Men told many stories of his skill with weapons, or great courage, and about his implacable hatred for all who failed to respect his person or property.

  Sitting his fast bayo-cebrunos 1 stallion as if a part of it, he wore the plain, functional dress of a working vaquero. Slanting down to his right hip, a carefully-designed gunbelt carried an ivory-handled Colt Artillery Model Peacemaker in its fast-draw holster and supported a sheathed, long-bladed fighting knife on its left side. In his left hand, despite the hazardous nature of the terrain across which he urged his mount to gallop, he gripped the wrist of a lever-action Winchester carbine’s butt.

  Nothing in Machados’ appearance hinted at his true station in life. He could have been a leader of Pancho Villa’s revolutionaries, a member of Colonel Emilio Kosterliski’s fabled Guardia Rurales working in civilian clothing, an efficient bandido, a pistolero valiente who sold his gun to the highest bidder or one of the rancheros from whom Texas John Slaughter 2 had bought cattle with which to feed the miners around Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

  At first sight, one of the deputies might have passed as a trail hand for old Texas John, or been employed to help keep the peace in some wild, brawling, wide-open frontier town.

  Six foot three in height, the deputy had the muscular development of a Hercules, curly golden blond hair and tanned, almost classically handsome features. Perched at the traditional ‘jack-deuce’ angle on his head, a low-crowned, wide-brimmed white Stetson sported a leather band decorated with silver conchas. The tight-rolled green silk bandana trailed its long ends over the front of an open-necked tan-colored shirt which had obviously been tailored to fit his tremendous spread of shoulders, nineteen-inch biceps and slender waist. Hanging outside his boots, the cuffs of his Levi’s pants’ legs had been turned up to act as a repository for nails or other small objects while working on foot. He sat a low-horned, double-girthed Texas range saddle. In its boot at the left side, butt pointing to the rear, was a Winchester carbine of the kind which had helped to win the West. The gunbelt about his middle carried a Colt; another name long associated with the taming of the lands west of the Mississippi River.

  However such a gun, or holster, had never graced the hip of an Old-West pistolero. Skimpy of leather, steel-lined and forward-raked, the holster was a Bianchi Cooper-Combat bikini. In it, held securely by a long-tanged Elden Carl ‘fly-off’ safety-strap, rode a .45 caliber Colt 1911 Government Model automatic pistol instead of the Army, Navy or Peacemaker revolvers with which the legendary gunfighters had won their fame. No longer was the reserve ammunition carried exposed to the elements in loops on the belt. The deputy’s rig had a leather pouch at its left side, holding three spare magazines— each bearing seven bullets—ready for the pistol’s rapid reloading.

  The whole outfit would have gladdened the heart of any Old-West gunfighter capable of appreciating its finer points. Such a holster made possible speeds on the draw that a nineteenth-century pistolero could only dream about, while sighting techniques devised by modern combat-shooting masters gave accuracy at ranges where the old gunfighters had to rely upon a rifle to make a hit. To take full advantage of such techniques, and increase the already considerable fighting potential with which the automatic had left the Colt factory’s production lines, the deputy had had it ‘accurized’—its mechanism smoothed to a high degree, an adjustable rear sight fitted—by the Pachmayr Gun Works of Los Angeles, California.

  The gun and its holster stated clearly that their wearer belonged to a more recent era than Texas John Slaughter’s day and age. So did the last member of the party.

  Displaying considerable riding skill on a fast-moving tobiano gelding, capable and very efficient in all aspects of a peace officer’s work, the second deputy was a woman. In the gunfighting days of the 1800s, very few civic law enforcement agencies made regular use of female officers. Those which did confined them to being jail matrons, taking care of women prisoners.

  Woman Deputy Alice Fayde’s duties went far beyond that kind of work. After serving with various Divisions and Bureaus of the Gusher City Police Department, she had won a coveted promotion to the Sheriff’s Office. There she had become a member of an investigation team which handled homicide cases and those crimes—such as rape, train-wrecking, bigamy, for example—which might end in murder.

  A white Texas-style Stetson trailed by its storm-strap on to her back and left bare her red, medium-length, flip-style hair. She had an attractive face, without being exceptionally or erotically beautiful, that showed strength of will and character. Wearing a tartan blouse, washed-out blue jeans and calf-high brown boots set off her five-foot-seven, thirty-seven, twenty-five, thirty-five figure to its best advantage. It was a mature, firmly-fleshed, healthy body which required few artificial aids for its improvement.

  There would be few women who did not envy Alice over the partner with whom she had been assigned to work. Deputy Sheriff Bradford Counter possessed most of the attributes the average, normal female sought for in a man. Handsome, with a magnificently-developed giant frame in the ‘Mr. Universe’ mould, he was a bachelor and very rich.

  Instead of slipping into a position on the executive of the Counter family’s oil business, or one of its allied companies, Brad had elected to become a peace officer. Maybe he had inherited his interest in law enforcement, along with his tremendous strength and superlative skill in the use of firearms, from his paternal great-grandfather. In his day, Mark Counter had been a noted peace officer, a gunfighter with few peers, well able to hold up his end in a bare-handed rough-house brawl and—if legend did not lie—a better than fair hand with the ladies. 3

  As Alice might have testified, her partner r
ated high on all of his illustrious great-grandfather’s qualifications.

  Brought together by the successful hunt for the men who had killed Alice’s uncle and Brad’s previous partner, Deputy Sheriff Tom Cord, 4 they had welded into a smoothly-functioning team. At first Alice had supplied the practical experience which Brad lacked, for he had been employed as a deputy —in an experiment conducted by Sheriff Jack Tragg—without having first served in the Gusher City Police Department. A honor graduate in Police Science and Administration from the University of Southern Texas, Brad had also passed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s exacting police officers’ training course at Quantico. Contrary to several peace officers’ early expectations, he had managed—first with Tom Cord’s then Alice’s guidance—to carry out his duties in a satisfactory manner. He was now regarded by the other deputies as a competent, capable member of the Sheriff’s Office.

  Other cases had followed the Cord investigation; their most recent having involved them with a psychopath who, dressed and armed like an Old-West outlaw and able to draw a gun in twenty-one hundredths of a second, had terrorized couples necking on lovers’ lanes around Gusher City. 5

  Having brought the case to a conclusion, Alice and Brad had come into Mexico for a short vacation. Although it had been Alice’s declared intention to get right away from crime and criminals until their return, they had spent their time paying visits to various friends who were employed as peace officers south of the Rio Grande. Not that the deputies were having a busman’s holiday by studying law enforcement methods in Mexico, but the calls they made had served a practical purpose.

  A ‘leather-slap’ combat shooting match had been organized as a highlight of the celebrations in the forthcoming Rockabye County Frontier Week. Being a keen, almost fanatical exponent of the sport—from which had been learned many practical lessons about drawing and shooting a handgun that benefited peace officers—Brad had needed little urging by the sheriff’s wife to enter the contest. In a previous ‘leather-slap’, he had been beaten to first place by a Presidio County deputy sheriff after dropping a couple of points running the Mexican Defense Course section. Wanting to obtain his revenge on Sam Allardyce, Brad had come south of the border to put in some practice against acknowledged experts in that branch of his sport.

  On arriving at Nonoava that morning, the deputies had found Don Eugenio Machados—the senior police officer in Southern Chihuahua and Brad’s next opponent—about to set off alone and hunt down a smart, dangerous killer with at least a dozen known victims to his, or possibly her, credit. Naturally Alice and Brad had volunteered to help him. The big blond had been eager to lend a hand, for the previous year his father had assisted Machados on a similar assignment. Although she had not mentioned the fact, Alice also possessed a good reason for wanting to go along on the hunt. So far they had not received a sight of the multiple killer, but various sounds told them that he or she was not far in front of them.

  After riding the mass of loose, fine shale which slid down the steep slope, the killer sped across a stretch of level ground. The black rosettes liberally sprinkled over the pale buff, almost tawny colored, barrel-like body of the big male jaguar expanded and contracted to the play of its hide as it raced towards the sheer wall of a high cliff. If it could scale that almost perpendicular face, it might, in fact certainly would, escape from its pursuers.

  Not far behind, the eight Blue-Tick-Red-Bone-Walker cross trail-hounds came bounding and sliding down the slope. All the time, they continued to raise their bugle-voiced clamor. It was a sound which had rarely ceased, despite the heat or the distance they had covered, from the moment that they had located el tigre sleeping in the shade of a large rock while digesting the flesh which it had tom from its last victim’s body. Since then, no matter which way the one hundred and forty pounds representative of the species Felis Onca Arizonensis had turned, twisted, climbed or descended, those baying servants of the hated man creatures had followed. Two miles back, the jaguar had deliberately charged through and scattered a herd of javelinas. The flight of the little pigs had neither distracted the hounds nor diverted any of the pack from el tigre’s trail.

  If only the hounds would have closed in and fought, the jaguar could have speedily ended the pursuit. With the aid of its fangs and long, sharp claws, it would have killed, injured or driven off the whole pack as it had done on other occasions. Twice during the long chase it had stopped, with its back against some cover to prevent itself from being surrounded, challenging the hounds to combat. When hunted previously, the bolder members of the packs had taken up the gauntlet and suffered the consequences of such rash, misguided bravado. After seeing some of their number killed or mutilated, the remainder of the dogs had invariably withdrawn and allowed el tigre to go on its way unmolested.

  Bred and trained for hunting big-game, particularly jaguars, the latest pack to be sent after the cattle-killing el tigre had experience augmented by inborn instincts to guide their actions. The crossing of three noted hunting breeds had given them the qualities required to track down and deal with one of the third largest species of the cat family—only a lion or a tiger being bigger—and survive.

  Out of the Blue-Tick strain came size, rugged strength and the ability to fight. The Red-Bone blood produced a nose capable of following their prey’s scent-line whether it be hot or cold. No hound breed could excel the Walker for speed and some of this most desirable trait had been passed on to the pack, allowing them to overtake a fleeing jaguar despite any start it might have had when it first commenced running. 6

  So, unlike the half-hysterical mobs of hastily-assembled mongrels which had previously been el tigre’s adversaries, the trained big-game hounds had known better than go in too close when it faced them. Aware that the jaguar had picked its ground, they had hovered just clear of the sweeping claws and slashing teeth instead of rushing up to tackle it. All the time it had faced them, they continued to harass it and bellowed out their ‘treed’ call which would guide the following human beings to the spot.

  Having been hunted unsuccessfully, the jaguar had become what hound-dog men termed ‘spoiled’. In other words, it had learned what to expect in the course of the pursuit. Each time it had seen that the hounds did not intend to oblige by coming into killing range, it had resumed its flight before Don Eugenio Machados and the deputies could arrive. The moment it had rushed at them, the pack had wisely scattered and allowed it to go by. Then they had turned and taken up the chase once more.

  Almost eight foot long and standing nearly twenty-nine inches at the shoulder, the jaguar was in its prime and a sight to gladden any trophy-hunter’s heart. However, it had never been chased merely in the interests of sport. It had built up its great size, weight and strength on a diet of beef. Learning early that even half-domesticated cattle were easy victims, offering more food for less effort than could be obtained by stalking peccary, pronghorn antelope or whitetail deer, it had subsisted off various rancheros’ herds for several years.

  Once a jaguar started cattle-killing, it became a serious threat to the rancheros in its vicinity and, by losing its instinctive fear of man, might even endanger human lives. So it had frequently been hunted and pushed from district to district. It had never been followed so persistently, or with such dogged determination, as on that day between the Rios Conchos and Urique. Which figured, for it had made the mistake of invading the ranchero of Don Eugenio Machados and killing some of his stock. In addition to being a police captain, Machados owned land and cattle. He possessed the means to bring the cattle-killer’s reign to an end.

  The chase had been long, and hard. Built for hunting by a stealthy approach, then a sudden, short burst of speed, a big male jaguar could also cover a great distance at a fast pace should the need arise. Unlike a mountain lion faced with similar conditions, el tigre would only rarely climb into a tree. It either fought its way out of danger, or ran and sought for some other means to end the pursuit.

  If there had been a river
or lake of any size nearby, the cattle-killer might have tried to escape by swimming; the jaguar being one species of cat which readily takes to water Deprived of that means of eluding its pursuers, it made for the cliff. If it could scale the wall, the hounds would be unable to follow.

  Making full use of its flexible backbone, with the backing of the powerful muscles of the lumbar region and hind legs, the jaguar propelled itself into the air. It struck the face of the cliff almost ten feet above the ground, claws scrabbling desperately for a hold on the bare rock. Unable to get a footing, it tumbled backwards. Like all cats, it contrived to land on its feet. Swiveling to face the approaching dogs, the jaguar knew that they would be on to it before it could turn and make another leap.

  Running along the foot of the cliff, el tigre saw an opening ahead. In search of an avenue of escape, it swung through the entrance of what proved to be a blind canyon. Roughly U-shaped, the canyon extended little more than seventy-five yards. For most of that distance, the floor was barren, uneven rock. At the rear end grew a dense thicket of black chaparral and guajilla thorn bushes and beyond them the wall rose steeply. However, its surface offered sufficient footholds for a semi-arboreal predator like the jaguar to climb to the top. As if realizing that it had at last found an area where its pursuers could not follow it, the jaguar increased its pace.

  Throughout all the long, grueling chase, the pack had managed to hold in a bunch. That was a tribute to their owner’s summation of the situation. Having heard stories about that particular cattle-killer. Machados had selected the hounds with care. They were the pick of some thirty dogs and bitches which he kept at his ranchero, equally matched for stamina, speed and courage. That way he had hoped to avoid having stragglers, for the full fighting strength of all eight hounds would be needed if they were forced to tackle el tigre and bring it to bay.

  Slowly but surely, the hounds had been closing in on the jaguar. Its abortive attempt to scale the outside wall had delivered it to them. Hot on el tigre’s heels as it entered the blind canyon, the experienced strike-dog—leader of the pack —saw the danger of the area and also built up speed. Wild with excitement, the other hounds crowded forward. For the first time they were going to carry the fight to their enemy. If the pack let the jaguar reach the thicket, all their efforts would have been for nothing. In among that tangle of vicious-spined catclaw thorn bushes, protected from the spikes by its fur and thick hide, el tigre would have everything at its advantage. There would be no room for the pack to maneuver and fight as a team, which they must do if they wanted to stay alive. No single dog, even a seventy- to eighty-pound trained big-game hound could do better than finish a sorry second in a close-quarters fight with a jaguar.