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    Sundance 17: Man Hunt
    Sundance 17: Man Hunt
    Sundance 17: Man Hunt
    Ebook144 pages3 hours

    Sundance 17: Man Hunt

    By Peter McCurtin

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    Sundance was riding north from Arizona to Seattle at the request of an old friend. Several trappers had been murdered while setting out their winter lines. There were no clues except for an old piece of wood found near each body with one word, Carcajou, burnt into it.
    No sooner had Sundance set foot in town than he found himself in a tangle with a couple of gunmen aiming to see that he didn’t stick around long. But Sundance wasn’t the kind to get caught in a trap. Just before the two men died, one managed to utter a single word: Carcajou!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPiccadilly
    Release dateApr 30, 2017
    ISBN9781370587117
    Sundance 17: Man Hunt
    Author

    Peter McCurtin

    Peter J. McCurtin was born in Ireland on 15 October 1929, and immigrated to America when he was in his early twenties. Records also confirm that, in 1958, McCurtin co-edited the short-lived (one issue) New York Review with William Atkins. By the early 1960s, he was co-owner of a bookstore in Ogunquit, Maine, and often spent his summers there.McCurtin's first book, Mafioso (1970) was nominated for the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and filmed in 1973 as The Boss, with Henry Silva. More books in the same vein quickly followed, including Cosa Nostra (1971), Omerta (1972), The Syndicate (1972) and Escape From Devil's Island (1972). 1970 also saw the publication of his first "Carmody" western, Hangtown.Peter McCurtin died in New York on 27 January 1997. His westerns in particular are distinguished by unusual plots with neatly resolved conclusions, well-drawn secondary characters, regular bursts of action and tight, smooth writing. If you haven't already checked him out, you have quite a treat in store.McCurtin also wrote under the name of Jack Slade and Gene Curry.

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      Book preview

      Sundance 17 - Peter McCurtin

      The Home of Great Western Fiction!

      THERE WASN’T A MAN ALIVE WHO COULD TRAP SUNDANCE

      Sundance was riding north from Arizona to Seattle at the request of an old friend. Several trappers had been murdered while setting out their winter lines. There were no clues except for an old piece of wood found near each body with one word, Carcajou, burnt into it.

      No sooner had Sundance set foot in town than he found himself in a tangle with a couple of gunmen aiming to see that he didn’t stick around long. But Sundance wasn’t the kind to get caught in a trap. Just before the two men died, one managed to utter a single word: Carcajou!

      SUNDANCE 17: GUNBELT

      By John Benteen

      First published by Leisure Books in 1977

      Copyright © 1976, 2017 by John Benteen

      First Smashwords Edition: May 2017

      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 © 2017 by Tony Masero

      Check out Tony’s work here

      Text © Piccadilly Publishing

      Published by Arrangement with the Author Estate.

      Chapter One

      The man named Sundance had come a long, hard way. Arizona only three weeks ago had been blazing hot, but here on Puget Sound in Washington Territory, the wind off the water had the raw bite of coming winter in it, though it was still early in October. Sundance felt the difference in his bones, hunching down in the buffalo hide jacket, worn fleece in and cut short enough not to interfere with the butt of the Colt holstered low-slung on his thigh. Seattle, he thought: a tough, brawling town, especially this part of it south of the street men here called Skid Road.

      Head down against the wind, he walked on. The Lava Beds, they called this district of bars and cheap hotels and gambling hells and brothels, and it was as ugly and mean a place as he had ever been in: muddy streets, shabby wooden buildings, and everywhere the human vultures who preyed on lumberjacks and sailors. Now, at twilight, tinny music whanged from nearly every deadfall, there was high-pitched laughter, drunks lurched along the sidewalks or through the mud, and painted harpies shrilled invitations from doors and windows. Somewhere down here was a place called the Panther Bar, and that was where he was to meet MacDougal.

      Hudson’s Bay, he thought, pausing in the doorway of a pawnshop, out of the wind, to deftly roll a cigarette. He was a big man, better than six feet tall, his skin as bronze as an old penny, his hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned profile wholly that of a high-plains Indian. But his eyes were gray, the hair spilling thick and heavy to the collar of the jacket from beneath his sombrero the yellow of fresh-minted gold. He was a half-breed: his father had been English, his mother the daughter of a Cheyenne chieftain.

      Hudson’s Bay, the enormous trading company, controlled the fur trade all across Canada. MacDougal was manager of one of its biggest posts. His letter had reached Sundance at the San Carlos Apache reservation almost a month before.

      Maybe you will remember me. I was a friend of your father’s twenty years ago. I used to see you at the Cree camps when you were just a kid and Nick Sundance came there to trade. A lot of water’s gone down the river since then. Now I run the Storm River Factory–trading post–for the Hudson’s Bay Company. And you, I understand, are a man with a gun for hire. I’ve made some inquiries. They say you don’t come cheap, but you’re the best there is. I need the best there is, and I’m willing to pay. I’ll be in Seattle on the fifth of October. If you’re interested and can be there too, meet me at a place called the Panther Bar, in the district below Skid Road, either on the fifth or sixth at seven in the evening. Look for a man of sixty, about two hundred pounds, bald, gray mustache, brown suit and black tie. I’ll guarantee travel expenses and if we can deal, it’ll be worth your while.

      Sundance let smoke dribble from his nostrils. He remembered MacDougal, all right; the man had been with Hudson’s Bay even then, a roving trader buying furs and robes from the plains Cree tribes. Nick Sundance had been in the same business, and he and MacDougal had been rivals. But they had also been friends, and Sundance remembered the evenings when the two men had talked endlessly across the fire in the Sundance teepee, while the boy listened and his Cheyenne mother kept the coffee pot hot on the coals. MacDougal could be trusted. The Hudson’s Bay Company had money, lots of it. Sundance needed money, lots of it. So it had been worth the gamble of the long journey north.

      He waited a moment more, finished the cigarette, ground it out beneath a hard-soled moccasin. Hitching at his gunbelt, he was about to leave the doorway. Then he froze. Two men had stopped across the street to talk with a blowsy woman sitting on a bench behind a partly-opened window in a brothel over there. Blonde, she wore a low-cut skintight dress of red that hugged her plump body, revealing every curve. But it was not the woman Sundance was looking at. One of the men wore a fur cap made from the skin of a black beaver. He was tall and massive across the shoulders, with a barrel chest. The other, a half-breed like Sundance himself, was lean and lank, in the blue denims, pea jacket, and stocking cap of a sailor or a stevedore.

      Slowly, thoughtfully, Sundance took out his makings, rolled another smoke. He had first seen them up on Skid Road itself. Nearly an hour ago, when he had stopped at a store to buy this sack of tobacco, they had come in behind him. They’d still been there when he’d left. Then, coming down into the Lava Beds, he’d stopped at a cheap restaurant for a cup of rotten coffee. While he was drinking it at a table, they’d each had a cup at the counter. Now there they were again, killing time across the street. He clamped the cigarette between his lips, but he did not light it. A warning bell was sounding in his head. Maybe it was coincidence, only meaningless, but maybe …

      Jim Sundance was a fighting man by trade. In his younger days, he had been a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and after that, he had seen action with guerilla bands in the Civil War, He had been making his living with weapons –both those of white man and Indian– for a long time, now, and he had not survived more than three decades of hard, violent life from Canada to Mexico by being careless or taking anything for granted. In his line of work, one mistake was all it took. Now his hand moved unobtrusively, loosening the Colt in its holster, then doing the same with the long Bowie in its beaded sheath further back on his hip.

      Snapping a match on his thumbnail, he lit the cigarette, left the doorway, sauntered with seeming aimlessness two blocks farther down the street. When he turned to fling the butt of his smoke into the gutter, the man in the beaver hat and the half-breed were ten yards behind him and across the way, on the other sidewalk. Not breaking stride, Sundance went on.

      He turned a corner, walked a block, still sauntering, then turned another corner, made two more blocks, crossed the street. A few paces more and now he halted, as the blonde said from the window, Hi, good-lookin’. Want a good time?

      Sundance looked in at her. Her powdered, naked flesh was goose-pimpled from the cold breeze blowing through the gap in the open window. One front tooth was gold. She was about forty pounds too heavy for his taste, even if his taste had run to dollar whores. Maybe, he said. What’s your name?

      They call me Pearlie. And I sure do like dark men.

      Yeah, Sundance said. He could see their reflection in the window now. They were on the sidewalk across the street. Had, in fact, moved into the same pawnshop doorway, were rolling cigarettes. One of them pretended interest in a display of knives in the window. How much you charge? Sundance asked. Two bucks. But for a handsome guy like you, only one.

      Sorry, Sundance said, I only got fifty cents. He walked on. Behind him, the girl squawked, Why, you cheap Siwash! Sundance did not hear. All right, he thought, pulling out his watch. An hour until he met MacDougal. Okay, give them their chance. But he needed more fighting room than he had here. And he knew the layout of the town, now. It was not far down the bluff to the waterfront. And by the time he got there, it would be nearly dark.

      He crossed Skid Road: Yesler Way was its real name. He descended steep streets. Out in the anchorage, tall-masted sailing ships and clumsy-looking lumber schooners rode at anchor. Here and there paddle-wheeled steamers were crowded in at docks. Sundance did not look behind him; he knew they would be coming.

      Fog drifted in across Smith Cove. Now he was in a dimly lit district of great wooden warehouses, wharves and docks fingering out into the water, and at this time of day the area was nearly deserted. A couple of drunken longshoremen were coiling hawsers between nips at a bottle to ward off the chill; stray cats and gaunt dogs were small ghosts in the darkness. Then Sundance found what he sought: a vast lumberyard, stacked high with freshly-sawed Douglas fir. He seemed about to walk on past, then quickly dodged in among the towering piles of planks and beams. He ran quickly, lightly, down the aisle between them, that made a labyrinth, a complicated maze. Working deeper into the yard, he paused, held his breath.

      For a couple of seconds he heard nothing save the moaning of a ship’s whistle in the harbor. Then it came, a brief, high-pitched whistle. Sundance’s mouth thinned, warping in a grin like that of a snarling wolf. All right, they were doing more than just tailing him. They were out to get him; otherwise they would just have covered the gates of the fenced in yard. He had to count on it that they aimed to kill him; and so it was up to him to kill them first.

      His eyes darted around the yard; then he saw what he wanted: a huge pile of four-by-fours, stacked a full fifteen feet above the ground. He ran to it, went up its end like a cougar, his moccasins giving him sure foothold. On top of the pile of lumber, he stretched flat: and he drew his gun.

      From here, he could see across the yard. Looking toward the gate, he saw them, only blurs in gathering darkness, one working down each aisle. Again that whistle, as they

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