Snake Eyes (9781101552469) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  Berkley titles by Jory Sherman

  A Deadly Gaze

  “If you capture Schneck or kill him, I will pay you a bonus of five hundred dollars,” Mike said. “Just to you, Brad. Not to Mr. Pendergast.”

  “I hope I don’t have to kill him, Mike.”

  Garaboxosa reached over and picked up the shotgun.

  “Did you tell him the name of the gun, Harry?” he asked.

  “No, thought you might do that, Mike.”

  “The shotgun has a name?” Brad asked.

  “Harry and I named it this morning, when he showed it to me,” Garaboxosa said, a smile on his face.

  “Tell him its name, Mike,” Harry said.

  “Snake Eyes,” Garaboxosa said. “Look at the barrels.”

  He set the shotgun on the floor butt-first, and Brad stared at the twin muzzles. They were dark and ominous, like eyes that could kill.

  Berkley titles by Jory Sherman

  The Vigilante Novels

  THE VIGILANTE

  SIX-GUN LAW

  SANTA FE SHOWDOWN

  John Savage Novels

  THE SAVAGE GUN

  THE SAVAGE TRAIL

  THE SAVAGE CURSE

  SAVAGE HELLFIRE

  SAVAGE VENGEANCE

  The Sidewinder Novels

  SIDEWINDER

  DEATH RATTLE

  SNAKE EYES

  Other Novels

  THE DARK LAND

  SUNSET RIDER

  TEXAS DUST

  BLOOD RIVER

  THE SUNDOWN MAN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  SNAKE EYES

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / December 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Jory Sherman.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55246-9

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  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  For Michael Miller

  ONE

  Harry Pendergast, head of the Denver Detective Agency, located in a suite of the Brown Palace Hotel, looked up from the copy of the Rocky Mountain News when his secretary, Byron Lomax, entered his office without knocking. Byron was a small, thin man with skeletal features, and the skin on his face was stretched taut over a bony armature that gave him the gaunt look of a man who had missed too many meals.

  Pendergast looked up from his paper, a shadow of annoyance on his face. His coffee cup sat in front of him, within easy reach, small streamers of steam edging over its rim.

  “What is it, Lomax?” Pendergast said, his eyes floating above his tortoiseshell spectacles where they had slid to a point just behind the tip of his nose.

  “Sir, there is a man waiting to see you. He says it is very urgent. He is quite insistent.”

  “Everything is urgent, Byron. What’s his case?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He says he will only talk to you. The way he put it was he would only speak to my chief. He has an accent. He might be a Mexican.”

  “Well, does he look as if he has money?”

  “No, sir. He is wearing a suit, but it appears to be somewhat threadbare.”

  “Oh, all right, Byron, let him cool his heels for five minutes, then show him in. Did he tell you his name?”

  “He did, sir, but . . .”

  “Never mind. I’ll find out about him pretty quick.”

  “Yes, sir, you are the detective, after all.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me, Lomax.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lomax said, and he scurried from Pendergast’s office like some furtive animal.

  Pendergast lifted off his eyeglasses and set them atop the newspaper. He got out of his chair and stood up, walking to the round window behind his desk. He looked at the distant range of the Rocky Mountains, their peaks mantled in fresh snow, the foothills shining an emerald green in the sun. It was April and the mountain passes would still be blocked with snow, the spring runoff not yet swelling the South Platte, the Cache la Poudre, and the thousands of other streams that fed into the Arkansas and El Rio Grande del Norte.

  He looked at Longs Peak. Its massive face was a brilliant white, clear to its base, glistening like some majestic edifice built by some ancient god. Denver basked in the glory of the Rockies, its streets and avenues muddy from rain and filled with morning traffic, buggies, wagons, horses, people dressed warmly against the gusts that bore the frosty chill of spring zephyrs.

  Pendergast pulled on his watch fob, dipped it from his vest pocket. He cracked open the gold case and marked t
he time of day. He saw that four minutes had passed. He watched the second hand creep around the face and with five seconds left of the five minutes, he closed the lid and dropped the watch back into its pocket. He turned toward the door as it opened.

  Byron Lomax ushered in the client and announced in a businesslike tone: “Mr. Pendergast, this is Mr. Garaboxosa to see you.”

  “Very well, Lomax,” Pendergast said. “Please close the door.”

  Pendergast reached across his desk and held out his hand. Garaboxosa squeezed it so hard the blood vessels contracted and Pendergast winced. The swarthy man’s hand was rough with calluses and scars.

  “Have a chair, Mr. . . .”

  “I am called Garaboxosa. Mikel Garaboxosa. You can call me Mike.”

  Pendergast sat down and Mike scooted a chair up to the opposite side of the desk, facing the detective, and plopped into it.

  “What can I do for you, Mike?” Pendergast said, assuming an air of informality as he leaned back in his chair. He rubbed a hand over one cheek. His barber had scraped away his muttonchops the day before, and Pendergast was still unused to having a naked face.

  “I want to hire you to find an assassin,” Garaboxosa said. “There is a man who murdered my cousin, Eladio Zuniga.”

  “Isn’t this a matter for the police, Mike?”

  Garaboxosa shook his head, flaring his long dark locks that framed a moon face with a chin stippled with a two-day stubble of black-and-white beard. He wore a checkered woolen shirt under an unbuttoned sheepskin-lined leather jacket as well as a faded red cap with loose earflaps. His trousers were wrinkled and stained with dark unknown substances.

  “I have been to the police. They will not help me.”

  “Why?”

  “Ah, you ask the good question, Mr. Pendergast. When I tell them I am a rancher of sheep, they jump away from me as if I had leprosy.”

  “You’re a sheep rancher, then?”

  “Yes, from Wyoming. But we bring our flocks into the high country of Jefferson Territory where they can fatten on the good grass.”

  “So, who is the assassin of your cousin? Do you know who killed him? Do you have any proof?”

  “I know without knowing, Mr. Pendergast.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Garaboxosa.”

  “I did not see the one who murdered poor Eladio, but there was brutality after he was shot in the back.”

  “Brutality? On a corpse?” Pendergast picked up his eyeglasses, folded them up, and slipped them into the inside pocket of his coat. He drank more coffee as if to clear his mind.

  “When we found Eladio, his head was gone, cut off at the neck. In its place was the head of a sheep. We found the sheep and my cousin’s head was stuffed into its neck. It was plain to me who had assassinated my poor cousin.”

  “It was? I—I don’t understand how you could come to any conclusion concerning the murderer at all.”

  “In the valley where we graze our sheep, there is competition from cattle. In another valley, a man grazes a large herd of cattle. Some of these cattle stray into our valley. This man told me last year not to drive my herd of sheep into this valley. He said that if I did, it would mean war.”

  “War?”

  “That is the word that this man used, yes.”

  Garaboxosa touched a finger to a spot below his eye where a single tear had strayed. He wiped the moisture away and stiffened in his chair. His dark eyes narrowed and glowed like mirrored coals as the sunlight caught them in a snare of sprayed light.

  “Jefferson Territory, this place they are calling Colorado,” Pendergast said, “is cattle country. Sheep are a rarity, and I’m afraid there is deep hostility toward sheepmen among the cattle ranchers.”

  “That hostility has touched me and my fellows,” Garaboxosa said. His eyes widened and turned black with suppressed rage. “I found the valley first, Mr. Pendergast. For two years now, we have been grazing our sheep in that same place. We have made camps and we have put up houses below the valley. We have brought our wives and children to the mountains and we have lived in peace.”

  “It seems to me that this is a private matter between you and the cattlemen. I don’t see the need of a detective agency to solve your problem.”

  “This cattleman, the one who murdered Eladio, left a written note in my cousin’s pocket. It said that we would all die unless we removed our sheep from the mountains.”

  “Do you have the note?” Pendergast asked.

  Garaboxosa reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of wrinkled brown paper. He handed it across the desk to Pendergast.

  The note was written in red ink, ink the color of blood. Pendergast read the words of warning.

  “There is no signature,” he said. “What is that at the bottom? A drawing of some sort. It looks like a snake. A rattlesnake, I presume. Very crude.”

  “It is a drawing of a snake with rattles,” Garaboxosa said. “See the forked tongue, the swirls of the tail?”

  “Yes, I see those things.”

  “The man who threatened me is a German. His name is Otto Schneck. His men call him ‘Snake.’ ”

  “Snake?”

  “Yes, we have heard the cowboys call him by that name.”

  “What do you want my agency to do, Mr. Garaboxosa?”

  The Basque sheepman steeled his jaw and leaned forward in his chair.

  “I want you to follow this man and catch him, bring him to justice. I am prepared to pay with a generous sum of money. In advance.”

  Pendergast watched as Garaboxosa pulled an oblong wallet from his back pocket. The wallet was bulging with greenbacks.

  “Here is two thousand dollars,” Garaboxosa said and laid the stack of bills on Pendergast’s desk.

  Pendergast whistled when he saw the money. He picked it up and saw bills in two denominations: fifties and hundreds.

  “That’s a great deal of money, sir,” Pendergast said.

  “We are serious, Mr. Pendergast. We wish to hire you to remove this snake from our midst.”

  Pendergast leaned back in his chair. He fanned the bills and listened to the crisp rustle of money.

  “I might have just the man to investigate your case, Mr. Garaboxosa.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. His name is Brad Storm. He is a cattle rancher, but he is also a tough man who believes in justice. Funny thing is, they call him Sidewinder.”

  “What is this ‘sidewinder’ name?”

  “A sidewinder is a snake, sir. A rattlesnake.”

  Garaboxosa let out a breath of air.

  “Ah,” he said. “It sounds like justice. You send a rattlesnake to kill a rattlesnake, no?”

  Pendergast smiled and thumbed the money again. It made a sound like the whisper of a rattlesnake’s tail.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  TWO

  Brad Storm rode down to the foothills above Leadville in late afternoon. He wore buckskins over red flannel long johns to ward off the chill. The pale fire of the sun washed the bleak sky through thin scrims of high clouds. He headed for the wide, sheltered valley that had provided winter quarters for his cattle herd. He rode Ginger, a strawberry roan gelding with a white blaze flared on his forehead.

  There were still streamers and clumps of snow in the wind-stunted scrub pines that stood on tiptoe among the crags of limestone that bordered the valley. Water ran into a natural catch basin where some of the cattle were drinking. They made burbling sounds with their rubbery lips as they blew and chaffed with their noses and muzzles. On one side of the valley, a creek flashed diamonds in the sun from every wave crest as it hurtled downward from twelve thousand feet where the snows were deep but had begun to melt in the day’s sun.

  In the far reaches of the valley, some cattle were lying down, resting in the shade of the limestone outcroppings. Storm saw a man on horseback emerge from a shallow, brush-choked draw, driving a yearling calf ahead of him and his horse.

  Brad lifted a hand and waved. H
e recognized the horseman as his foreman, Julio Aragon. He prodded Ginger’s flanks with his blunt spurs and began closing the distance between them. Julio waved back and turned his horse.

  The two men met near the upper part of the valley. Ginger whickered and Julio’s horse, Chato, a pinto, nickered in reply.

  “Hola, Jefe, how did you find the ranch? Is there snow on the ground?”

  “You get right to the point, don’t you, Julio?”

  Julio grinned. He had the high cheekbones of the Indian race in his blood, the skin taut and faintly redolent of vermilion as if he bore the faint traces of war paint. His black eyes twinkled like sun-shot agates whenever he turned his head to catch the radiant streaks of the afternoon light. His hair was long and black, curly as ebony shavings from a carpenter’s plane.

  “The cattle, they look to the mountains every day. They wish to chew on long grass again.”

  Brad laughed.

  “Homesick cattle? Maybe,” he said. “Well, most of the snow has melted, and there is inch-high grass between the creeks. The creeks are running full and flowing onto the land on both sides. I think we can drive the herd back very soon. I saw elk heading for the high country, and you could count ribs under their hides.”

  “Then, we go as soon as we can get the men,” Julio said. “I will tell those who wait in town.”

  “A day or two ought to do it. I just hope there won’t be a late snow.”

  “It is not late for snow in the mountains, Brad.”

  “I know.”

  Julio stood up in the stirrups, looked over Brad’s head, toward the road to Leadville. His eyes widened, and he waved.

  Brad turned and saw a woman riding toward them.

  “How does a woman know?” he asked. “They must be born with some kind of sixth sense.”