The Adventures Of The Brothers Dent (The Mountain Men Book 3) Read online

  The next morning at daylight, they were awakened by the sounds of many horses approaching their cabin. Fearing a repeat of yesterday’s events and welcoming a chance at vengeance, they grabbed their rifles and burst out from the cabin ready to do battle. Only what they discovered were many of their grim-faced and heavily armed neighbors from across the far side of the valley looking back at them.

  “Boys, where are your folks?” asked their uncle John Dent with worry in his voice.

  Without a word, Gabriel pointed to a fresh mound of dirt and a cross under a great oak next to their cabin as tears once again flooded unashamedly across his eyes and down his cheeks.

  John Dent, brother to the boys’ father, just grunted under heavily furrowed eyebrows at the fresh mound of earth in final recognition as to what had happened to his brother and sister-in law. Then he said, “Boys, get your shooting irons, some jerky and mount up. We have a hard ride ahead of us that may be several days in the making. And a killin’ at the end of that, if we are successful in tracking these heathens to earth. They have killed and raped their ways across our county afore they got here. Now they deserve having the wrath of God drawn down upon their heads which me and the boys here will gladly do for our Maker.”

  Without a word hardly being spoken because of the other murders and rapes previously committed by the six horsemen throughout the frontier community as reported by their hardbitten uncle and the presence of the homespun posse, the boys saddled up. Then they turned out the rest of their livestock so they could feed and water at will. In the meantime, the rest of the men in the posse lit down and watered their horses and drank deeply from the Dent’s well themselves. For the next three days, the men scoured the countryside looking for the killers.

  Every homestead the posse ran across was contacted with the news as the hunt ruthlessly continued. However, after three days and with their horses now jaded, the men returned to their homes realizing the country had swallowed up the killers as the whale had once done to Jonah...

  ***

  Returning home, Josh and Gabe tried to pick up their shattered lives. There were livestock to care for as well as their remaining crops. But even in those hard labors, the boys shared an emptiness that seemed to manifest itself every time they turned a familiar comer of their lives. Everywhere they saw the hands and faces of their parents. And many times, those instances found the boys lost in teary grief over the losses in life they had recently suffered. That grief was made even more unbearable when they realized if they had been home instead of off raiding a bee tree, they might have made the difference in which one or both of their parents might have survived.

  That realization further hardened their hearts producing two very hard-bitten young men, which, unlike their gentle mother and soft-spoken father, could now kill or maim at the drop of a hat if unjustly riled. Suffice to say, they had now become hardened frontiersmen honed on the leavening fires of a frontier life that could be very deadly and unforgiving...

  The buck deer they had killed earlier had long since spoiled in their absence as they chased after the killers. Upon their return, it had been cut down, dragged off, and the cabin cleaned up. The fields were cared for, fences mended, stock cared for, gravesite tended, and winter wood cut. But in truth, Josh and Gabe were just going through the motions. Both young men were lost within themselves and life now seemed without meaningful purpose. With their recent family losses, the light had gone out in their souls...

  Sunrises were not seen nor were sunsets now appreciated as they had been in the recent past. The days just came and went and it seemed the boys were just marking time. Marking time until their lives took on some form of meaning. That marking of time was not long in coming, and it was soon to come from the outside once again, without warning and with a vengeance...

  CHAPTER TWO : UNCLE JOHN AND DESTINY CALLS

  One morning in the cool and quiet of the pre-dawn, the boys heard a single horse quietly approaching their cabin and then reining up in front of their hitching post.

  “Hello, the cabin. Now don’t go to shootin’ or getting trigger happy, you two. It is me, your Uncle John, and I have come to fetch you two lads.”

  Still not trusting an unseen voice, Josh and Gabe approached the front door of their cabin with caution and armed with their rifles. It was obvious their earlier lives of fun in the sun had now turned to ones of caution and strap steel toughness in their relationships with others of their kind. Stepping out into the morning’s cool, they observed their Uncle John quietly sitting on his favorite buckskin riding horse.

  “Morning, Boys. Your Aunt Kate says I am to fetch the two of you and your livestock to our home across the way. We have a large loft in our cabin and no children of our own. So, the two of you are all the kin we now have and are most welcome. Asides, I can always use two more strong backs and sets of hands in running our farm since it is larger than that of your folks and growing by the day. Especially so, as I clear and bum off more of the timber covering my lands. What say the two of you to that offer from me and your aunt?”

  Josh, taken aback by the proposal and needing more time to think on it, said, “Why don’t you light down and I can whip up some breakfast for all of us, such as it is.” With that, he turned, entered the cabin and rekindled the fire in the hearth while Gabe took his uncle’s horse to the barn to curry, water, and feed after its long early morning ride. Sitting at the table while Josh busied himself with making breakfast, John let his eyes wander about his dead brother’s sparse cabin. It quickly became obvious that those few items of value in the cabin had been taken by the killers leaving little for the boys in which to begin life anew. He later learned that even what little food and smoked meats his brother and sister-in-law had in their smokehouse had been taken by the brigands as well. Taken out of necessity, he thought, since the outlaws had been on the run and short on good grub after the terrible deeds they had committed across the other farmsteads in the county. Gabe returned and Josh served up what breakfast he could muster as the men ate in silence lost in their thoughts.

  Finishing breakfast and shoving his chair back from the table, John said, “What say you two boys? Do you want to come and live with your aunt and me? If you do, we could sell your pa’s farmstead and keep the money for whatever the two of you decide to do after the hurt has left your bodies over your losses. Plus, that would allow you to get your minds straight once again long down the road. I think that is what your ma and pa would have wanted.”

  Josh looked hard at Gabe calculating as to what they should do since he was now the oldest surviving family member and responsible for taking the lead. Without a word being spoken between the two very close brothers, but with an understanding that came from such closeness, Josh said, “Uncle John, we would be beholden to you and Aunt Kate for allowing us to live under your roof. It is a damn site lonely here every day, especially when the two of us run across a memory or past feeling from our lives about our folks before they was murdered. That is something we will carry to our graves. That and the feeling we will hunt down those killers until our dying day and, when we find then, will slaughter them as they did our folks! They had no right doing what they did, at least to our way of thinkin’. And they have no right to live, nor will they, if and when we find them and run them to ground.”

  Later that day after their wagon had been loaded with the last of their earthly goods and with the livestock rounded up and ready to go, the boys took one last trip to their parents’ grave. Realizing the enormity of the moment at hand, John left the boys to be alone with their innermost thoughts and feelings while at the gravesite. Kneeling at their parents’ fresh grave, both boys let their still-raw inner emotions overcome them once again as tears flooded from their eyes one last time. Both young men were wracked with the grief that only comes from losing dearly loved ones, especially in the manner in which their folks had been unseemly dispatched. Quietly, each in his own way placed in his heart’s deepest recesses the promise that what had oc
curred would be avenged. With or without God’s approval, no matter how long it took.

  After several long moments, the boys arose in unison and wiped their faces off on their buckskin sleeves, leaving many dark tear stains. Then they stepped away from their scene of great hurt. Without another word, one quietly mounting his horse and the other mounting onto the seat of their loaded wagon. Taking their leave, neither man looked back because, to their way of thinking, there was nothing left behind other than the devil following them with a grin over the evil he had created and the hell to follow for what the two young men had to do to the man on the black horse and his equally black-hearted minions...

  ***

  For the next year, Josh and Gabe worked hard with their uncle and aunt improving their farmstead. Trees were cleared, additional lands plowed, new barns raised, a stone springhouse built, stone fences raised, an irrigation system plowed from the creek into the south pasture, and a larger smokehouse constructed. In that year Josh and Gabe grew into two massively strong and taller than most for that era, young frontiersmen. Frontiersmen who now could shoot and track with the best of their neighboring, even more experienced counterparts.

  However, no matter how good a farmer or backwoodsman they became, there always lurked a demon in their souls that now continually pointed them towards adventures in the lands of the setting sun. A feeling only rivaled by a deadly, unfulfilled vision quest for revenge lying raw and open like a running sore in their hearts. An intense feeling that was constantly fed by rumors of the man on the black horse and his minions still lawlessly roaming the Missouri “Boot Heel” country, killing, raping and looting on a whim. And it seemed that no matter how hard the local law pursued those brigands, it was if the devil always guided their safe escapes and disappearances after each evil-inspired event.

  One morning, a lathered rider on a jaded horse stormed into their uncle’s yard as the family had just finished breakfast. “John!” the horseman yelled.

  Tumbling outside onto their porch, the family met John’s neighbor Cal Stepping from the farm over the adjacent ridge as he breathlessly ran up the cabin’s front steps.

  “They’re back! That killin’ son-of-a-bitch on the black horse and his bunch of killers is back! Jason, Bob Tragg’s son, was out ruffed grouse hunting this morning. As he returned, he spotted the riders, led by the man with the beard on a coal-black horse, ‘mas- sacree’ his folks in cold blood! He ran to our farm for help and I sent him and my family to our neighbors to the east for protection. Then I came riding for you and the boys for some help.”

  “Saddle up the horses, Boys!” yelled John. “Saddle up an extra one for Cal as well since his horse is spent. Kate, you lay us out some jerky and then you take the wagon, my scattergun for protection, and head for Cal’s neighbors over at Bill and Helen Morgan’s place. When you do, spread the word as fast as you can. Bill has several grown sons and woe be to anyone trying to raid, kill, and rape anyone on that farmstead now that the alarm is spread. Meanwhile, we will see if we can slow down them killin’ sons-a-bitches. That is until a posse can be organized and run this bunch of Missouri bushwhackers to ground and kill the lot iffen we don’t get to them first! Boys, grab our smoke sticks, powder, and shot, and let’s see if we can put an end to these sons of Satan. We must move fast, afore they vanish into the ground same as they have done so many times in the past,” he continued.

  Thirty minutes later, the four men reined up in front of Bob Tragg’s cabin. Bob laid across the doorstep, undoubtedly in the process of coming out of his cabin to extend his hospitality until a pistol ball ended his existence. Inside lay his wife Julia brutally beaten and obviously raped. A quick look inside the cabin showed it had been hurriedly ransacked and everything of value that could be easily packed on a horse had been removed. The same could be said for the meats in their smokehouse. A quick read of the number of horse tracks showed ten different animals. Six of them with deeper hoof prints—ridden—and four with shallower hoof prints—pack animals. Josh and Gabe, after taking a quick look at Bob’s wife, had flashbacks to the time they discovered their mother in a like condition. Therein arose such a venom in Josh and Gabe needing to kill those responsible, that it actually left a bitter, hard-to-swallow, metallic taste in the mouths of the two young men for hours to come.

  Taking no time to bury the couple, the men remounted and set off posthaste tracking the killers who appeared to be heading for the nearby Teller farmstead. Without a word, Josh, the better tracker, began quickly tracking from atop his horse as brother Gabe rode shotgun to prevent a potential ambush by the killers. John and Cal followed the boys with grim looks splashed across their faces and their rifles at the ready.

  Rounding a turn in a long wooded draw leading to the Teller farmstead, the trackers observed two unknown men a short distance away. They were totally unaware of the four riders’ approach as they hurriedly loaded up two packhorses with items from Gabriel Teller’s smokehouse. Gabriel and his wife were nowhere to be seen but it was apparent from all the items lying strewn about in their front yard that their cabin had already been ransacked by the killers.

  Josh and Gabe leapt off their horses and took off at a ground- eating pace toward the Teller’s smokehouse using adjacent woods for concealment. John and Cal quietly led the boys’ horses into the timber to hide them from view and then quickly followed on foot as well.

  “Hurry, Nick, afore the rest of the boys get too fer down the road,” said a large, heavily bearded man as he hefted two whole smoked hog hams off Teller’s smokehouse rafter hooks onto his shoulders. Struggling under such weight, he quickly staggered for the open doorway of the smokehouse. Exiting the doorway, he was struck squarely in the forehead by a tomahawk! A tomahawk swung by Josh with such force that the blow nearly carried off the top of the looter’s head in the process! The blow was so sudden and forceful that the man carrying the two stolen hams took another step before his body realized it was dead! Then he folded like a sack of dead skunks. The other man, carrying two full slabs of bacon in the smokehouse, upon hearing the groan of his partner, dropped them and ran hastily out the door. In that moment, he ran into the ironhanded grip of Gabe, a grip which grasped him so forcibly by the throat that it caused him to go into uncontrollable choking!

  “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” finally squeaked out the man, as Gabe’s grip tightened ever more forcefully around the man’s throat.

  Then jerking the man up off his feet, Gabe, in his pent-up fury over his late parents’ deaths by these same men and their partners in crime, tightened his death grip even further. All the man could do was kick his feet wildly and urinate all over himself as he was effectively being hung from Gabe’s outstretched, rock solid and powerful arm.

  Josh removed his tomahawk from the dead man’s head as the body quivered at his feet. Then he reached up to his brother’s rock solid outstretched arm. “Gabe, let him go. We need him to tell us who and where his murdering friends are.” Then Josh casually wiped the blood off the tomahawk on the still-quivering, almost headless, dead man’s buckskin shirt.

  Gabe hung on to the unfortunate man’s throat for another long moment before over riding his inner demons wanting the bush whacker killed. He dropped the man he had been strangling who was now hardly recognizable with his bulging eyes, huge blood veins sticking out from his forehead, hugely extended tongue, and grotesque ashen gray face.

  For the longest time, the man laid at Gabe’s feet trying to get his life back as John and Cal arrived at the smokehouse. “The Tellers must be alright,” said John. “They ain’t nowheres to be seen. Guess they was away when these scum struck,” he continued with a low-voiced growl.

  Lifting the man still struggling for air to his feet with his iron grip once again, Gabe asked, “Where are the Tellers, Little Man, and you had better tell us the truth or I swear I will tear you to pieces with my bare hands!”

  “I don’t know. When me and Jake here arrived, there weren’t no one around. So, we jest hepp
ed ourselves to what we could find here at the smokehouse jest like Bill said fer us to do,” he replied, obviously still trying to get his life back on even keel after almost being strangled to death. However, something in the tenor of his voice just didn’t ring right to John.

  “Cal, you go and check the hay barns,” said John, “and I will check the other outbuildings for any sign of the Tellers. In the meantime, Gabriel, don’t let this ‘doesn’t know he is dead yet’ piece of crap crawl away like the vermin he is.”

  As they left, Gabe lifted the man higher off the ground as if to emphasize his point once again saying, “What are the names of your partners and where did they go?”

  “Black Bill Jenkins is our leader. The other three in our group are his brothers Lem, Stilt and Clio from the Town of Gideon, down in the ‘Boot Heel’,” screeched out the terrified man. “Me and poor Jake Perkins here are cousins and were from the next two farms over from the Jenkins place. We have been neighbors for as long as I can remember. Bill and his kin came over some time back with an idea where we wouldn’t have to work no more. We was tired from scraping shit with the chickens and looking at the butt end of a mule all livelong day so we up and jest joined Black Bill and his kin. We was jest hepping ourselves, figgerin’ you folks over here in this neck of the woods livin’ on the richer farm lands had plenty to share. So, we figured we would jest hep ourselves to a little of the extra you folks had. But in the offin’ Black Bill and his kin took more than they should. Me and Jake there figured we had best go along with those four, or we would get some of the same hell and brimstone they was dishin’ out to all the local folks livin’ in this here neck of the woods.”