Just picked up two pulp westerns by Holly Martins: DEATH AT DOUBLE-X RANCH and THE LONE RIDER OF SANTA FE (the latter with a cover that looks like it was drawn by an untalented ten-year old). They're pretty crude, but undeniably compelling. Essentially straightforward revenge tales, but packed full of interesting details (I never knew there were snake charmers in Texas).
Thanks to Brad Stevens for his interest in my books. I had fun writing them, even if I never got rich. As for that story about the police, someone else started that mallarky, and any book where a man gets bit by a parrot can't be much good.
It's clear you know what makes a good story here. For the first time in a long time, here's the first chapter of one of my out of print books. Guess they're even out of copyright now, too.
The Lone Rider of Santa Fe by Holly Martins
Chapter One
Rain of Death
The sky was like a purple blanket hanging behind the mountains. Rips and tears in it showed the first stars. Jake moseyed down the cliff path, leading his horse aways. They’d been on the trail since sunup and it was time to find a sheltered spot to spend the night.
Santa Fe was a thriving town, dirty and bustling, but Jake preferred trail dust and the sky over his head. The wide streets and tall buildings had soon disappeared and then the land had opened out like a promise in a woman’s heart and as Jake made his way across it he felt his spirits lifting. This was man’s country. And no matter how big a man was, he’d find space enough here.
But even then, he reflected, there were some owlhoots who wanted more than their share.
Unconsciously his hand caressed the heavy gun at his side.
He was entering a dell at the cliff’s foot now and a screen of trees rose up around him. With the cliff rising up behind, he knew he couldn’t have asked for a more sheltered place. He passed under a place where the rock overhung. He stood there in the silence, his horse whickering softly.
“Easy, boy. Time to unpack a bedroll and put on a nosebag.” He let go the reins and watched the beast wander away. Then he heard what he guessed the animal had heard before his own dull ears had identified the sound. Water. Trickling over rocks, splashing into a pool.
In a little while he had a small fire going and a kettle bubbling on some stones, and after washing the trail dust from his throat with strong black coffee he lay back, resting his head on his saddle as he smoked and watched more stars wink in the blanket as it turned from purple to black.
He was awoken by thunder. The sound echoed across the plain like monsters rolling enormous bowling balls down the biggest alley on earth. The rumbling seemed to be getting nearer and he wished he’d found a cave to shelter from the deluge which was certainly imminent. These desert storms came out of nowhere and would hit a man in the open and flatten him to the ground. At the edge of the clearing he heard his horse whickering again, this time sounding nervous and uncertain. The thunder continued to grow louder and he got up and wished he’d paid more attention to his immediate surroundings before bedding down for the night.
Then as the sound grew to a deafening crescendo, he looked up. Far above, clouds were rolling out from the brow of the cliff. And something else was moving there, too. Small shapes, blacker than the clouds, twisting and jerking in the air. Shapes seeming to fly, then rush down towards him. He stared aghast, then saw what they were.
Cattle!
The herd was stampeding to its doom over the cliff!
He got his legs under him and began to leg it across the dell. He took a flying leap for his horse and the beast reared then kicked itself forward.
Almost immediately he rolled off the horse again and dragged it close to him, up against the rock face, under the rocky overhang - as the first of the doomed herd crashed to its destruction where moments before he had laid stretched on his blanket on the grass.
It seemed to go on all night, that terrible avalanche. He guessed that the herd was probably stretched across miles of clifftop, and all along it giant bellowing shapes were spinning out into empty air to come crashing down far below onto the hard, unforgiving earth.
Dawn came.
It was silent now, because the stampede and the hellish avalanche had ended sometime in the night.
The sun hung like a battered eye in the dirty clouds that were now spilling harmlessly from the cliff.
Jake eased himself out from his shelter. Moving uncertainly among the pulverised brown shapes, he knuckled his eyes, then pressed the palms of his hands into his aching lower back and stretched. As he did that, his gaze moved upwards to the top of the cliff.
There was a shape there.
Silhouetted against the grey sky was the shape of a lone rider.
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