Dreamgivers (Wells Fargo Trail Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - James Walker

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104 pages

English

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Book 1 in the American West fiction series, The Wells Fargo TrailIn The Dreamgivers, Zac Cobb investigates a series of stagecoach robberies that he suspects have been engineered by the railroad, but finds himself an unwitting participant in the struggle for control of the opium trade. Jeff Bridger, the local sheriff, and Jenny Hays, a young woman who owns the town's restaurant, also become involved. Whoever has been supplying the railroad with Chinese workers and opium is more than willing to kill anyone who gets in the way.A desert ambush of a stagecoach that Zac had sworn to protect the young boy who is left without a father, the discovery of the opium connections, and the kidnapping of Jenny lead Zac and Sheriff Bridger on a desperate mission of rescue. But hired assassins and powerful underworld figures await them.Men and women readers who enjoy action while getting to know the characters will love this story.

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 mars 1994
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441261908
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Books by Jim Walker
Husbands Who Won’t Lead and Wives Who Won’t Follow
T HE W ELLS F ARGO T RAIL
The Dreamgivers
The Nightriders
The Rail Kings
The Rawhiders
The Desert Hawks
The Oyster Pirates
The Warriors
The Ice Princess
The Wells Fargo Trail, Book 1
The Dreamgivers
Jim Walker
© 1994 by Jim Walker
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
eISBN 978-1-4412-6190-8
To Joel A man I greatly admire, my friend, and my son.
JIM WALKER is a staff member with the Navigators and has written Husbands Who Won’t Lead and Wives Who Won’t Follow. He received an M.Div. from Talbot Theological Seminary and has been a pastor with an Evangelical Free church. Jim, his wife Joyce, and their three children, Joel, Jennifer, and Julie, live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Contents
Cover
Books by Jim Walker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 1
The body lay face down in the shallows. From the edge of the road, the men watched the surge of the tide begin to move it out to sea.
“I’ll get him. Fetch me a rope from the back of the buggy and bring it, pronto.” Zac Cobb slipped off his gun belt and let it drop to the floor of the buckboard. His boots dug into the soft sand. Stopping in his tracks, he wrenched them off, and then continued his sprint toward the water. A skittering crowd of sandpipers retreated in all directions as he ran past them.
Without looking back, he plunged into the icy water, diving headfirst under the oncoming waves. Breaking the surface, he blinked back the salt water from his eyes and tossed his head, straining to see. He could feel the pull of the tide and the strong current and knew that if it was moving him out to sea, it was also towing the man he and Talbot had sighted from the beach. Unable to spot the floating body, but assuming it was hidden by the swells, Zac began to swim toward open water to get into position to intercept it. He knew he had to hurry before the cold water had its effect.
There he was! Zac gyrated toward the rising swell and submerged. Surfacing, he swam in the direction of the drifting man. With several powerful kicks, he drew closer and, reaching out, grabbed the man’s ankle and swung him around. The lifeless body was dressed in black silk clothing. Straining against the tide, Zac began to slowly tow it back to shore.
“Zac! Zac! I found the line.” Race Talbot, a longboat whaler, had shaped a loop and was spinning it over his head. Wading into the surf, he stood in front of the shore break and shouted over the breakers, “I’ll get it to you! The surf is pretty strong and that current will take you out.” He took a few more steps and hollered, “Swim parallel to the beach, try to get closer and I’ll get this to you.”
Zac turned the body over and placed his arm around the man. He didn’t take the time to look over the remains, but he noticed the pigtail. The man’s black hair had been laced tightly and knotted into a row. Zac drew him closer to get better control. Most white people wouldn’t even come close to a Chinaman, but now Zac was risking his neck to recover a cadaver. He didn’t even think about it, he just pulled harder, gulping brine with every wave.
It was laborious to swim against the tide with only one arm, but soon he saw Race spinning the loop off to his right. The line uncurled in the air and dropped smoothly across his path. He hooked the coil around his lifeless companion’s head and shoulder and then swam straight for the shore.
Zac crawled out of the surf and collapsed, exhausted and chilled to the bone, on the warm, wet sand. After a moment, he looked up to see Talbot pulling the body into the shore break, and watched as the silk-covered foreigner coasted onto the beach. Talbot used his might to pull the body still farther onto the wet sand, and Zac got up to take a closer look.
“Looky here, Zac. This feller didn’t drown, now that’s for sure.” Talbot suddenly stood up and walked away from the body, staring up the beach.
Bending down, Zac studied the corpse. The single gunshot wound to the man’s chest cavity and a large area of powder burns caught his attention first. He lifted the man’s small frame from the sand and saw the size of the exit wound. Zac could see that the murder weapon had been a large caliber gun fired at close range.
Leveling the body back down on the sand, Zac lifted the man’s arm. He could tell by the subtlety of movement in the limb that the man hadn’t been dead long. Whoever had done this was still close by.
He looked up to see Talbot still staring in the opposite direction. “You know this man, Race?”
“No, sir, can’t ’zackly say I do.”
“Well, this whale oil of yours is going to a Chinese market in San Luis, isn’t it?”
“True enough, but that don’t mean I know this feller.” Talbot turned to face Cobb, who was still stooped over the dead man. “’Sides, him being Chinese and all, I might have seen him a hundred times and still couldn’t say for sure. For the life of me, I don’t know how they tell each other apart.”
“Well, let’s get him into town. Maybe one of those customers of yours will recognize him.”
The two men carried the corpse to the wagon. They then strapped some oat bags on, for the mules to feed, and sat down in the sun to dry off and eat their lunch.
Zac watched a snow-white crane gliding toward the beach near some trees farther along the road. Unexpectedly, it swerved from its graceful path and flew away. A twinkle of distant sunlight from the same stand of trees brought the hair on the back of Zac’s neck to attention.
Memories of Virginia recollections of three years spent watching the reflections of brass buttons, gun barrels, and binoculars made him instantly wary of the sudden flash of light. Squinting, he pulled his gray felt hat lower to block out the glare of the sunlight on the water and studied the tree line for movement.
“Put your lunch up, Race, I think we got company.”
The long-boater stopped chewing and his jaw dropped open.
“Is there something you’re not telling me, Talbot?”
The whaler gulped, then quickly shook his head.
Zac always made it a point to be more prepared than any opposition he might face. He knew the whaling season had finished and the road was well-traveled by dead-broke seamen. Instinctively, he unfastened the leather thong on his Peacemaker’s hammer. Since the apprehension of bandits for Wells Fargo was his stock-in-trade, he was not about to become a victim of one. He kept this part of his life quietly concealed in town while maintaining his own life as a rancher, biding his time until the company called.
He put what remained of the sandwich his old German cook, Hans, had packed for him back into the leather bag and, deciding not to light his pipe, he reached under the seat for the flour sack he carried. Through the rough material, he felt for the hammers of his sawed-off Meteor ten-gauge and cocked both barrels. At close quarters this was the ultimate equalizer. It always had the final say. He’d heard the old saying, “Buckshot means burying,” and believed it to be true.
He looked at Talbot and noted the fear that appeared in the man’s eyes when he heard the two hammers cock under the cloth. “Pays to be prepared,” he said. Laying the hand howitzer on the seat with the muzzle pointed away, he eased the buckboard back to the sandy trail and slapped the reins.
Minutes later, he saw three men walk out from the trees that hugged the shoreline. He didn’t recognize them, but he saw the strangers for what they were, sailors on the uncertain deck of dry land.
He slowed and walked the team cautiously forward as the men stepped out into the bright sun. A man with a red beard carried the looking glass in one hand and a Barns .50 caliber boot pistol suspended around his neck and shoulder by a rope lanyard. It looked to be just the sort of weapon that could have made the hole in the man they had just saved from the fish. The other two black-bearded men carried Colt Navies tucked behind wide leather belts.
Zac swung the buckboard to the left to try to put the mules out of harm’s way, giving him a free field of fire to his right, should it become necessary. The tense black-bearded men in their pea coats raked their eyes over the two of them sitting stone still in the buckboard, their careful glances taking note of Zac’s Colt with the thong lifted from the hammer. Talbot, Zac had noticed earlier in the day, had been carrying a sidearm. Now the weapon was hidden under his tightly buttoned coat.
“Goot morning to ye, goot sirs,” the redbeard spouted in a booming brogue. “Might me mates and I be having a lift into that fine town up ahead?”
Talbot nervously turned his head to Zac, and in a barely audible tone said, “Let’s just drive on.” Ignoring him, Zac silently continued to look the strangers over, his agate-colored eyes measuring every inch of the men, evaluating every twitch and each nervous glance. For him, confrontation was a living science, the discipline of staying alive. Not that he enjoyed confrontation, but he was always ready for it. He dropped his chin, using the brim of his hat to shield his eyes.
“Don’t know if you boys will want to ride with us. We got the body of a man we fished out