A Mass Murderer - Blood for blood (ADDITIONAL BOOK INCLUDED ) (2 page)

The two men had just passed his seat and were entering another coach which also happened to be the last coach supposed to be a smokers area.

Moving with easy grace Klyne slid out of his seat, making his way to the end of the coach, edging the door open on the platform between the carriages. A cloud of dust blew in, making him blink, but by keeping his face to the narrow gap, he was able to see the two men.  He closed the door gently so that only the thinnest slit of light showed through.

There he was. The hatchet-face, even beneath its pulled up collar. The eyes seeming to glow in the shadow of the hat, turning this way and that, as restless as a feeding cougar. Klyne’s hand dropped to his shoulder holster to reach for his gun as the eyes semed to burn right through the gap, eating into him, but they passed on.

Klyne planted himself blocking the passage, the hit man had his back turned. Drawing his gun he spoke to the two men. “I don’t know who you are and what interest you have in trailing us. I don’t care who hired you. I have no grouse with you so I don’t want to kill you but if you ever cross my path again I’ll kill you….. now get off the train and do it fast.” Klyne told the hit-man.

“But how?” the man asked.

“Jump, it’s better than you deserve,” he said placing a foot on the small of the hit-man’s back and showing him off the moving train.

The man fell off the speeding train and went rolling quite a distance to lay unceremoniously on his back motionless but unharmed.

The slight distraction made the other man go into action. Dipping his hand to his jacket pocket the man brought his own gun into view and was trying to line it on the moving back of Klyne.

There was a loud roar from the door and a couple of bright flashes which was drowned by the loud hoot and whistle of the train. “So long, you bastard, give my regards to your bastard friends in Hell.” Bates said standing by the door with his smoking gun and pumping two more shots at Barry Barton as four red spots appeared on his jacket and he slipped down between the platform to fall on to the track and getting severed in two by the moving wheels of the train.

“That’s the second time I saved your ass.” Bates said grinning at Klyne. “I think that bastard will have a long ride to Hell.”

“Well thanks.” Klyne said.

“And you still insist on doing it alone?” Bates asked his friend.

“No change in my plane.” Klyne said.

Three hours later they were in Phoenix having disposed the fourth killer.

Rebecca hadn’t changed all that much to look at in the days since her mother died. She was still several months away from her birthday, when she would be eighteen. She wore a plain dress of dark blue and her brown hair hung neatly in twin plaits, swinging gaily as she ran along the platform to meet her uncle and Roy Klyne.

She flung her arms round Bill and kissed him, but he pushed her away, embarrassed by the emotional scene. Klyne bent down and kissed her solemnly on the cheek, then on the other cheek, feeling the softness of her young skin and fresh smell of her.

“Hey Rebecca, you are all grown up now and looking pretty.” Klyne complimented her.

She wanted to tell them about how her mother had passed on, and what her life had been like and how had they been and what had they been doing and where were they going and a thousand other questions.

“Will you shut up for a while, girl, and tell us what’s a good cheap hotel.” Bates asked.

“The one over there, “Blue sky”  She said. “I have been staying there for the last five days.”

It was a decent family hotel, clean, pleasant and cheap, and Klyne approved it as the sort of place that he’d like to see his daughter in, If he’d ever had a daughter. The owner was a smiling little Englishman. He was glad to see them, though Klyne sensed an air of disapproval at the unshaven and whisky-smelling appearance of Rebecca’s uncle.

After they’d signed in, Bates went up to the room he had insisted on having alone at the front, while Klyne had the room nearly opposite and Rebecca kept the room she’d had all along, down the end of the hallway. Klyne flopped out on the bed, lying back on the soft mattress, resting his head on his hands.

1. Hitting the Wrong Trail
   

There was a gentle knock on the door.

“Come in.”

Rebecca walked in, looking unhappy, and pushed the door shut behind her. Klyne grinned at her, but she looked stubbornly away and went and stared out of the window at the side street which was beginning to bustle with early evening activities of the town.

“Where’s your Uncle? Is he coming to have supper with us?”

“Gone out. Didn’t even wait and see what I wanted to do, or talk to me at all. Mister Klyn, what’s happening, Uncle’s so different and so are you.”

“How’s he changed? He’s still the same old Bill Bates,” he lied. “I didn’t know I’d changed at all.” And that was another lie.

“I’m not a girl any more, Mister Klyne, not really. I’m near eighteen, and I have to help look after Uncle, Bill.” She paused and stood up, walking with a coltish grace to join him at the window. “And maybe I could look after you as well, Mister Klyne, if you like.”

“Cut out this ‘Mister Klyne’ stuff, Rebecca. My name’s Roy and that’s what my friends call me. And that’s what I expect you to call me.”

Without answering him she said. You’re killing the men who killed Aunt Becky and your wife, aren’t you?”

“Well…”

“Roy, I know that I’m not very old but you don’t have to hide things from me. I guessed that’s why you seem different, because you’re Klyne the Hunter again. Your late wife used to talk about those times.”

“Never to me. What did she say? How ashamed she was about me in those days?”

“No. She was kind of proud of you. If I married a man. I’d be awful proud that he was the finest cop and all that ever lived. And that all the underworld me  were scared of him.”

“Rebecca. That is not the sort of talk I want to hear from a young woman like you.

They found a good clean place to eat, and the evening passed easily, until he took her back to the hotel and saw her to her room.

Klyne would have slept a whole lot less easily if he could have seen Bates during that evening and night.

As soon as he left the hotel, Bates went off, his roll padding out to look for action in town, he knew where some of the hot spots were, and he quickly found his way to the ‘Silver Wheel’.

Being a thrill seeking care free man Bates was simply attracted to a card table like iron filings to a magnet. He watched the progress of the game for a while and then decided to join in.

The game was five card poker, and the stakes weren’t all that high. Not many of the patrons who drifted into the ‘Silver Wheel’ had that sort of bankroll. But when you’d been playing for a couple of hours, and losing steadily, then it was a shock to find how little you had left.

But some time round three in the morning, Bates got the big one he was looking for, and took the others for nearly eight hundred dollars with a full house, aces on top. While the game was going on there were two silent observers keeping a very keen eye on Bates.

“Come on; you won some, now it’s my turn. Maybe you’ll get it back tomorrow, but right now I need my beauty sleep so I’m going to quit.” Bates said collecting all his chips and getting ready to leave.

The men round the green table sat back and relaxed, taking pleasure in hearing some real tall tales they knew whenever a game was going on.

With his winnings intact Bates made his way towards his hotel and soon after made his exit there were two others who followed him. He was now approaching a dimly lit alley when the men following him jumped him.

“Get the bastard now, Luke,” one of them shouted drawing a hide-away gun and pointed it in the direction of Bates while the other had already drawn his gun and blocked the passage.

Just as the two assailants were bringing pressure on their trigger fingers there was flash of light with a loud bang and Luke dropped to the ground instantly with a bullet on his head.

“You sure aren’t much of a gentleman, Luke, two against one is bad odds.” Said a man tall man with dark clothes, standing with a smoking gun.

No sooner than Luke fell than the other guy turned around and let loose his gun firing three rapid shots at the flash of light.

There was a sound of boots halting on the end of the alley and another flash of light that followed an instant after the three rapid shots and one more dark stranger made his presence with his smoking gun.

There were grunts and groans from the ground as two men fell, One fell with a grunt like a stuffed animal while the other groaned. Within a span of two or three minutes three men lay on the ground with Bates standing like a showroom dummy with his mouth open, in shock.

“Are you okay, Bill?” he heard the voice of Klyne, who approached him with a watchful eye and a smoking gun.

“I…..Yeah, I’m okay.” Bates said, “Roy, is that you? And what brought you here?”

“Yeah, it’s me, and I came to see you because your, niece, Rebecca was worried about you and sent me to check on you.”

All of a sudden Bates seemed to be cold sober now, “thanks, Roy, you sure showed up just in time.”

“Don’t thank me, you should thank your niece, Rebecca….. by the way let’s see who these guys are.” Klyne said as he heard a gargling noise from one of the fallen men which seemed to sound quite familiar to Klyne’s ears.

Fishing a lighter from his pocket Bates stuck it and in a flash Klyne recognized the groaning man on the ground. “My God, it’s John Dalton!” he gasped in shock.

“Yeah, Roy, It’s me, I think I’ve had it and those two bastards are the Stanley brothers, Luke and Mark, I think they are both dead and one of them got me.” John groaned in agony.

“Roy, do you know this guy?” Bates asked looking at Klyne and then at the fallen man.

Before Klyne could reply, John Dalton spoke, “I’m sorry, Roy, I was hired by that kid’s father, senator Nathan to get both of you. At the time he hired me, I didn’t know the background of the whole story, and hired myself like a blooming idiot.” He coughed and spat out a lot of blood that was clogging his throat. “But when I got to your home town I gathered what had happened, how that kid and his bastard friends killed your wife and that other woman, so I laid low and just kept following you to see how you tackled things.”

“Let me help you John,” Klyne said trying to help the injured man.

“No, Roy, my time’s come, let me be. You two beat it from here before the cops come crowding and nab you. I’ll cover up and tell them that I had a shoot out with these two bastards.”

“But John….”

“No, buts, Roy, beat it, I’m a dying man, even if the cops nab me I won’t last another day, go now and get out of town fast, there are others dogging you. And watch your back pal.” John said shaking Klyne’s hand.

Klyne and Bates trotted unsteadily back to their hotel rooms, glad to be out of the scene of crime. Rebecca was waiting for them in her room. Bates was real good to her this time. It was very quiet out there. The sky was overcast, masking the moon, and they couldn’t hear anybody moving at that late hour when all the honest folks of the hotel were safely in their beds.

“I tell you that this isn’t the sort of place to keep a young girl like Rebecca. Move out, Bill, take her far away from here.” Klyne told his friend.

“And I tell you to mind your own business, Roy. She’s my Niece , not yours. And I do what I like with her. With two more bastards gone there’s just one more left to be taken care of, I’ll decide what to do.”

“Okay, do as you please.” Klyne said.

“Then….well, we’ll see. Maybe we go west. Maybe we stay here a while. But don’t let that bother you, Roy, my old friend and neighbor, because you’re going to be off by tomorrow, like you said. Off and running again after the last bastard. Right?”

It was right.

When he woke up that afternoon, after the disturbance of Bates’s return, Klyne had felt a great sense of relief that he was now free of the worry of having to keep part of his mind tuned to look after someone else. Now he was really going to be on his own again.

1. The Final Kill
   

Although he was bitterly unhappy about Rebecca’s future, she was his friend’s Niece, and that was that. From what Bates had been saying, she had no other living relative, so there was no way of knowing who’d look after her if anything ever happened to her Uncle.

Just as Klyne was trying to exit himself from the room, it was pushed back with force and a man with a gun in hand entered.

A glance in the mirror showed him a tall, dark-haired man, dressed in a green shirt and black trousers. With a cold revolver held in his right hand.

“Sit sit, Bates! And don’t nobody make a move else you get it!” the man said.

“Who the hell are you? To come barging in like this.” The young girl screamed.

The man at the door grinned exposing a dirty set of teeth. “Larry Hailey, from Carson City, the man that these two bastards are looking for.” He said. “I know you’ll be looking for me so I saved you a lot of trouble hunting for me and came here to pay my respects to you.” There was a terrifying hatred in the man’s voice.