Marshal of Hel Dorado

Marshal of Hel Dorado

Published by:

Heather Long

120 E. FM 544 Ste 72

P.O. Box 338

Murphy, Texas 75094

Marshal of Hel Dorado

Copyright © 2011
Heather Long

Kindle Edition

Cover Art by
Dawn
Charles

ISBN: 978-1-4524-4172-6

 
    
All rights reserved. eBooks are
not
transferable and can not be given
away, sold or shared.

 
    
No portion of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
photocopying, faxing, forwarded by email, recording or by any information
retrieval and storage system without permission of the publisher, except where
permitted by law, as this is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
Brief quotations within reviews or articles are acceptable.
 

 
    
Author’s
Note
: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to a person or
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely
coincidental.

First electronic publication: November 2011

Visit Heather Long on the Internet at
http://www.heatherlong.net Heather Long

Marshal of Hel Dorado

Fevered
Hearts #1

By
Heather Long

Dedication:

For my girls, each and every one of you.

http://www.heatherlong.net

Acknowledgements:

 
    
E
very
book is a labor of love, commitment, sweat and tears. This book in particular
began as a novella and began to sprawl like the old west. I guess you really
can't take the Texas out of the girl. Thanks to Patti who read every chapter,
to Ruthie who couldn't wait to meet Sam, to Jaime who is dying for more Cody
and Kid and to Kim who is a great critique partner and cheerleader and finally
to Nikki who answered every question...even the stupid ones.

 
March 21, 1831

 
Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas

 
    
 
“R
ead it back to me.” The officer stood at the
window, his ramrod stiff posture a gift of
his West Point education. An education that had left him ill-prepared
for the past week’s
horrors.

 
    
 
“Yes, sir. Beyond the walls of Leavenworth,
plumes of grayish-black smoke paint the
Kansas
skies. Per orders, the fort gates were sealed when the fever was discovered.
Three
soldiers, all enlisted, were
sickened and left to be tended in the town. The disease ravaged
townsfolk succumbed to nearly the last man.
Of those that survived, many took their own lives,
maddened by grief. The disease steals the children first, families with
five and six children,
buried them
all, before they too succumbed. Per orders, we allowed the Indian, Quanto, to
enter
the town. He tended the sick
and burned the dead. Soldiers put the town remains to the torch
today, scorching the earth and the hellish
spirit fever with it. Of Quanto, there is no sign. But the
watchman reported seeing him ride south with
the morning light, a small bundle in his arms.”

 
    
 
“I did not dictate that last line.”

 
    
 
“No, sir. But it’s here in the reports.”

 
    
 
“Strike it from the record.”

 
    
 
“Sir?”

 
    
 
“Private, I am not in the custom of
repeating myself. You have your orders.”

 
    
 
“But what if there was a survivor?”

 
    
 
“No.” The Colonel returned to his
observation of the smoking rising, a poor substitute
for the funeral his people deserved. “Spirit fever leaves no survivors,
God rest their souls.”

 
    
 
“Yes, sir.”

 
    
T
he
town of Dorado swelled like a festering boil fifty miles west of nowhere in the
Texas territory. Founded during the conflicts with Mexico in the early 1830s,
the town’s insular nature and heavy ranch population defended it in the
subsequent battles, many sons losing their lives in the battles of the Alamo,
Nagodoches and Rue Hidalgo. Following Zachary Taylor’s Mexican invasion in
1846, the nation of Texas submitted to the United States, gaining entry to the
Union as a state. Dorado didn’t much mind the independence, the annexation to
the United States or the war with Mexico. Life in Dorado continued much as it
had with Anglo ranchers, Tejano residents and even a portion of the remaining
Caddos, Comanche and Woppatoma tribes getting along peaceably.

 
    
Incorporated in 1833, the Kane family
served as the town’s official law enforcers. The ranchers agreeing to the laws
set forth by the town ombudsman Jebediah Kane. Jebediah’s four sons continued
his work, the eldest, Sam serving as the town Marshal. Marshal Kane had a fair
reputation in the county. He kept a firm hand on the goings on, kicking the
drunk hands back to their employers for discipline, listening to the complaints
of the Church ladies every Sunday picnic, keeping a stern eye on Miss
Pontfour’s bordello and her six girls, all the while, making the rounds of the
town.

 
    
Marshal Kane liked a quiet town, a
controlled town, a place where the ladies could step out in the evening and the
roughnecks knew better than to unstrap their pistols while within the town’s
limits. The occasional drifter wandered through, intent on kicking up the dust,
but a couple of nights in jail and the business end of Sam’s colt often
resolved the issue.

     
That was
what kept Sam in town on the moonless night, past nine when the saloon was
shutting down and Miss Pontfour was sending the last of the ‘gentlemen’ callers
home. Dorado rolled up shop by ten, shuttering the windows and dimming the
kerosene lamps.

 
    
Riders from Laramie warned of a shifty
group of bank robbers hitting gold shipments up and down the line. Despite the
Compromise of 1850, the Union Army maintained a presence throughout the state
and the Federal Gold Depository had sent a series of shipments to banks
throughout Texas to handle their paydays.

 
    
Dorado had one bank and one shipment sitting
in their vault. Most of the ranchers didn’t give a hoot about the Union gold,
but Sam drew a paycheck from the Federal government along with the town elders.
His tin star read Marshal, not Sheriff, even if he served both masters. So he
watched the bank, leaning back in the shadows of the double story wooden
structure that housed the town jail and his office, the brim of his Stetson low
over his eyes.

 
    
The bank was set in the middle of Dorado’s
rutted main street. A scatter of corrals and sheds made up the western end of
the town while a cluster of frame houses huddled on the eastern slope. Miss
Pontfour’s was tucked behind the saloon, where everyone knew its location but
the town ladies could pretend it wasn’t. A livery stable, funeral home, gunsmith,
barbershop, bathhouse made up the rest of Main Street in addition to a solitary
restaurant favored by the ladies who didn’t dare step between the batwings of
the saloon. Dorado even boasted a hotel, opened the year before, but the
struggling hotelkeeper added a post office and lured in the stagecoach from
distant Laredo.

 
    
The bank was silent. Run by an Easterner,
the doors opened smartly at nine, closed for thirty minutes at noon, reopened
at twelve-thirty and closed promptly at five, five days a week, no exceptions
save Christmas. Sam watched the building, contemplating the cigarillos in his
pocket. He could stand to smoke one with a cool glass of bourbon, kicked back
on the porch of his office, but an itch between his shoulder blades urged him
to stay put.

 
    
He’d set his younger brother to idling,
playing the part of the Marshal’s standard evening routine. A drink, a smoke,
and a doze while his town rested. Dorado expected him to be there, so he put
Kid in his place. In the dark, the younger man looked enough like Sam to
fulfill expectations.

     
A flash
of light, so brief, illuminated the shaded bank windows. Sam’s eyes narrowed,
his hand dropping down to rest on the pearl handled colt. A second flash
assured him that the first wasn’t a hallucination. The bank’s front doors stood
closed. No one had approached them.

 
    
The bank didn’t have a back door or back
windows. The only thing located in the back was the vault, shipped out in a
train of long racks because of the weight.

 
    
A third flash of light and Sam moved,
striding out of the shadows and across the rutted street, avoiding the horse
pies scattered like litter by buckboard and buggy wheels. He stepped up onto
the boardwalk, boots shushing silently as he made his way to the doors. Key in
one hand, gun in the other, he paused to listen.