The Kiowa Killer by Jackson Cole

Book Details

There are a lot of snakes in Brasada County, both reptile and human. The Kiowa Killer is the human kind. Jim Hatfield, Lone Wolf Ranger, goes to Brasada County to find the killer of a half dozen people – before the killer finds him.

The Kiowa Killer – Like a rattler, this evil dealer in death gives warning of his approach—and his grim deeds terrorize Brasada County until the fighting Lone Wolf Ranger takes over!
Chapter I – Third Victim
Chapter II – Lone Wolf Ranger
Chapter III – X Marks the Killer
Chapter IV – Five Thousand Dollars Bounty
Chapter V – Knife in the Dark
Chapter VI – Marked for Boot Hill
Chapter VII – Sunrise in Brasada
Chapter VIII – Challenge
Chapter IX – Coroner’s Verdict
Chapter X – Ambush on the Pecos
Chapter XI – Tracks of the Kiowa Killer
Chapter XII – Injun Jim
Chapter XIII – Blind Man’s Hunch
Chapter XIV – Riddle in Type
Chapter XV – At the Dry Camp
Chapter XVI – Sixth Warning
Chapter XVII – “Leave Town, Jim!”
Chapter XVIII – Vigil in Room Thirteen
Chapter XIX – “There’s Your Killer!”
Chapter XX – Hatfield Explains

Jackson Cole was one of the pen names of Peter B. Germano (1913-1983).

The Kiowa Killer has 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. kiowaKiller.epub

Excerpt: The Kiowa Killer

Chapter I

Third Victim

AT LEAST twenty people must have seen Sheriff Todd Kramer seated at his checkerboard in the jail office, including old friends who waved and called a greeting to the grizzled Texas lawman as they passed the open door of the Brasada County Jail. Yet not one of them paused to wonder why Kramer didn’t look up or answer them, or guessed the reason.

Sheriff Todd Kramer was dead.

Hunkered over his checker layout, spurred boot heels hooked over the scuffed rung of his ancient cane-bottomed chair, one elbow on the table, his gnarled fist cupped under a lean jaw, rheumy eyes studying the checkers with blinkless concentration, Sheriff Todd Kramer’s corpse looked lifelike enough.

Kramer had worn the law badge of Brasada County across a span of two generations, ever since the little cow-town had taken root at the old trail crossing on the Pecos. The advancing years had crooked his spine and filmed his eyes, but his gun hand was as sure as ever, and in Brasada County the cowfolk who cast the ballots required only nerve and gunslick in their sheriffs. Kramer had both.

So it was understandable why the fact of Kramer’s killing went undetected, though his corpse sat in plain view of the traffic passing on the wheel-rutted main street. He was deaf in his off ear, which would account for his ignoring the calls of passing friends; and when Todd Kramer concentrated on a knotty checkerboard problem, you could fire a twelve-gauge shotgun under his nose without disturbing him.

The whole county knew about the sheriff’s checker tournament with his deputy, “Boojum” Vozar, and “Red Jack” Skellet, the blind man who ran the locksmith and saddle shop on Tres Cruces Street. The three contestants had wagered their most cherished possessions on the outcome of the tournament.

Skellet was already out of the running, but not because he was blind. He had once held the checker championship of the Cherokee Strip against all comers, in the days before a bandit’s bullet had destroyed his eyesight. He had wagered a handsome turnip watch that struck the hours and told the days of the month and the phases of the moon.

BOOJUM Vozar had bet a pair of silver dueling pistols which had come from England and dated back into medieval times. Sheriff Todd Kramer was staking a treasure he had guarded since his youth—a jewel-handled- Mexican bayonet which Kramer had won on the battlefield at San Jacinto less than two months after the historic fall of the Alamo in San Antone.

The play-off between Kramer and his deputy had been raging for ten days now, with the score even up at eleven games each. The first player to achieve a dozen victories, not counting the innumerable draw games, would rake in the prizes.

As a result, Sheriff Todd Kramer had taken to spending his noon hours concocting new openings with which to match Boojum Vozar’s prowess. All three contestants were past masters at the various standard openings which had come down through the centuries—the Ayrshire Lassie, the Dyke, Laird and Lady, the Old Fourteenth, the Switcher. It would take something new, something too original to be in the books, to save the San Jacinto bayonet and win Skellet’s gold watch and Vozar’s dueling pieces. And Kramer thought he had figured out a tricky opening which would defeat Boojum Vozar on this very day when death had struck him down—an opening which Kramer boastfully dubbed the Surefire.

Traffic moved along the main street of Brasada, unaware that tragedy had struck. A string of tandem-hitched mud wagons operating under the Big Seven Freighters franchise splashed across the chemical-bitter waters of the Pecos and drew up in front of the syndicate warehouses across the street from the jail-house.

Cowboys from outlying ranches cantered into town, arriving early for their Saturday night spree at Brasada’s saloons and gambling houses. The weekly Wells-Fargo stage for Lordsburg rumbled past the sheriff’s office, its high yellow wheels throwing a cloud of dust which settled on Todd Kramer’s fixed, glassy eyeballs and covered the checkerboard before him.

The rusty gears of the courthouse clock were clattering into position to chime the twelve strokes of high noon when Boojum Vozar, the deputy sheriff, called at Red Jack Skellet’s shop where the blind man was waiting under the mammoth key which served as his signboard.

“I seen Todd studying his checkerboard on my way over, Red Jack,” chuckled the moon-faced deputy, linking his hand through the blind locksmith’s arm.

Skellet was perfectly capable of making his way about the cowtown, from past memory of its landmarks and the uncanny skill which blind men acquire as a result of their affliction. He made faster time, however, if a guiding hand was ready to steer him past unsuspected chuckholes or away from unruly horses.

“Me, I’m neutral, Boojum,” assured Red Jack. “But watch out for the sheriff’s new openin’ moves. If it’s the shorefire thing he claims it is, yuh’re goin’ to get yore king row busted wide open before yuh know it.”

Boojum Vozar laughed as they made their way up the spur-splintered board sidewalk toward the jail building. He had known Red Jack Skellet before that bushwhacker’s slug had grazed his skull and damaged the optic nerve. But Skellet’s courage had licked his affliction and increased the town’s liking for the locksmith.

A rugged man crowding forty, with a leonine mane of iron-gray hair and cheeks like ripe pippins, Red Jack Skellet had formerly been a muleskinner for the Big Seven Freight Syndicate whose wagons operated on a spider web of roads radiating out from Brasada. Outlaws had attacked a Big Seven wagon train in the Guadalupes, and Skellet had been the sole survivor among the wagoneers—but had paid for his life with the loss of his eyesight.

“Here we are,” Vozar announced, as they turned in at the jail office. “There’s the sheriff, still a-studyin’ his layout. The old fakearoo must not be as shore of his new openin’ as he brags he is, Red Jack.”

Vozar and Skellet paused on the threshold of the sheriff’s office, expecting the grizzled old star-toter at the table to make some profane comment in answer to Vozar’s jibe. Instead, he kept staring at the dust-covered checkerboard, not even brushing away the bluebottle flies which crawled unheeded over his handlebar mustache and hawk-beak nose. “Hey, Sheriff!” Vozar said in a loud voice. “Wake up, dang yore mangy hide! Red Jack’s here to see me skin the pants off’n yuh in our final game. I already got hooks put in the wall over at my place for that San Jacinto bayonet of yore’n.”

Vozar’s voice trailed off into a shocked whisper. Texas sun rays, shafting in through the open doorway, caught a ruby droplet which fell like a dropping bead from a necklace to land on the splintery floor behind the sheriff’s chair.

Staring, Boojum Vozar saw a little puddle of scarlet there, with flies feeding at its rim. It was blood!

Excerpt From: Jackson Cole. “The Kiowa Killer.”