CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Food and a soft bed for the night, preferably with a plump woman.

Donny Bryson figured his needs were few, and the isolated farmhouse a few miles east of Fredericksburg might just provide them.

He sat his horse in a patch of wild oak and studied the cabin. He was a tall, round-shouldered man in his early thirties with a great beak of a nose and the golden, predatory eyes of a hawk. He was dressed all in black: black shirt, black pants tucked into black boots, a black hat, black gunbelt with two holstered, black-handled Colts. And a black heart. A cautious, organized psychopath, Donny Bryson killed men for challenging him or simply getting in his way. But women were a different matter. He enjoyed using, abusing, and then murdering the female sex. When he was younger, his victims had been mostly whores and older woman. He’d gain their trust and then rape and torture them. As he grew older, Donny branched out, expanding the field of his endeavors to include respectable matrons he kidnapped, married women in isolated farms and ranches, and their daughters and any other women from runaway wives to stagecoach and train passengers that crossed his path. And all the time, the tally of men he killed grew, and Donny became a named man, acknowledged to be one of the West’s premier shootists.

In the words of Texas Ranger and United States Marshal John Barclay Armstrong, “Donny Bryson was fast on the draw and shoot, but he was an evil off-scouring of society, filth so vile his very shadow polluted the earth he walked on.”

Vicious beyond reason, a man without a conscience, Donny was a creature of darkness, and he melted into the night, man and murk becoming one.

The cabin didn’t look like much, a rickety structure held together with baling wire and twine. The roof swayed badly, and the whole structure leaned to one side. There was no corral or any other building to be seen. Donny’s hopes fell. There was little chance a desirable woman would live in such a place . . . or any kind of woman.

A soft bed for the night? Maybe.

There was only one window to the front of the shack, and it was roughly boarded over, but the orange glow of an oil lamp showed between the gaps of the timbers, and smoke rose straight as a string from the iron chimney, so there was somebody to home. Donny kneed his horse forward and moved like a wraith toward the cabin.

At that time in the West it was customary to announce oneself when approaching a stranger’s dwelling. For politeness’s sake, Donny should have sat his horse and called out, “Hello, the cabin!” But then, he was not a polite man. His method of entry was simple . . . kick the door in.

It took two swift boots to the door before it splintered free of its rawhide hinges and crashed flat inside. Then things happened very quickly. The old man standing at the stove inside had time to register a look of horror before he turned and made a play for the holstered old Walker Colt hanging in its holster from a nail in the far wall.

Donny knew he had to act fast . . . the eggs and bacon cooking in the frypan might burn. For the sake of speed, he shot the man in the back of his gray head and before he hit the ground, Donny grabbed the pan from the heat of the stove. Hallelujah! The bacon was sputtering and the edges of the egg whites were crispy black, but tonight’s supper was safe.

Donny scouted around, found a spoon, and stepped outside with the frypan, away from the sweat and pipe smoke stench of the cabin’s interior. He ate quickly, not wanting the eggs to get cold. To his surprise the food was good, pepper and salt, everything seasoned and nicely fried, the bacon just right. He turned his head and said, “You done good, old man.”

But the dead have no voice, and there was no answer.

Donny finished eating, tossed the spoon and pan away, went back in the shack, and stepped over the sprawled body. There was a smelly, unmade bunk, a fireplace with an ashy, cold log and on the mantel a tintype of a scantily clad woman in a silver frame. She’d written on the picture, but the ink had faded, and all Donny could make out was, M . . . favori . . . wboy . . . Ellswor . . . 872 . . . Rox . . .

Donny took the tintype from the frame and stuck it in his pants pocket. A further search of the cabin turned up twenty-seven dollars in a rusty peach can, a nickel railroad watch, a Barlow folding knife, coffee, a small poke of sugar, and a plug of Star of Virginia chewing tobacco. Donny took it all and kicked the dead man in the ribs on his way out. “Not much to show for a life, you old skinflint,” he said.

* * *

That night Donny Bryson spread his blankets under the stars, his newly acquired watch telling him the time was ten-thirty. No soft bed, no soft woman, but all in all it had been a successful evening. He’d made a profit of twenty-seven dollars, ate a good meal, and that made a man slumber peacefully o’ nights. A night bird called in the distance, and insects made their small sound in the brush as he closed his eyes and let sleep take him.