The Killing Blow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  Man Killer

  Once the bear caught sight of Clint and Ordell, it thundered toward them more powerfully than ever.

  “Just stay where you are,” Ordell said under his breath as the ground beneath him shook with the approaching bear’s steps.

  Clint leaned against the tree and watched the bear draw closer.

  Ordell let out a slow breath and squeezed his trigger. His rifle let out a single blast, which rolled through the air like a clap of thunder. The barrel jumped up, kicking Ordell on the shoulder as black smoke poured from one end.

  The bear kept running toward the tree as Ordell slowly lowered his rifle. He didn’t even bother going through the motions of reloading the weapon since he and Clint would both be killed three times over before he was halfway done.

  Clint leaned back and gritted his teeth. At that moment, he saw the cold emptiness in the bear’s eyes . . .

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE KILLING BLOW

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / January 2007

  Copyright © 2007 by Robert J. Randisi.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

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  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-0-515-14244-0

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  ONE

  Clint brought the rifle up to his shoulder and sighted along the top of the barrel. Although his heart was pounding in his chest so hard that it made his eyes waver a bit, he did his best to push through that and stay focused on the task at hand.

  There wasn’t any room to make a mistake. Even a small one. When he pulled his trigger, he needed to do it at the right time and with just the right amount of pressure. Otherwise, he could make a mistake. Considering the fact that there was a black bear at the other end of his barrel, Clint knew he couldn’t afford to make many mistakes.

  Even waiting for half a second too long might be enough to get his throat opened and every limb torn from his body.

  Clint pulled his trigger and felt the rifle kick against his shoulder.

  The bear howled angrily and shuddered as the hot lead thumped into his chest. Although he staggered for a moment, the bear recovered as quickly as if he’d just been stung by a bee and wheeled around to get a look at where that bee had come from.

  “Damn,” Clint muttered under his breath as he levered in another round.

  He’d seen more than his share of tense moments, many of which had forced him to look straight down the wrong end of a gun barrel. None of those moments, however, sent a chill under Clint’s skin as when he saw that bear look straight at him and let out a hungry roar.

  As much as he tried to keep his movements steady, Clint couldn’t help but take his next shot in a hurry. The bear had started moving toward him, picking up speed like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain, moving unbelievably fast for something that size.

  It seemed to take forever for the rifle’s lever to complete its short set of movements. When Clint heard the mechanism click into place, he aimed from the hip and pulled the rifle’s trigger
again.

  The bear had just launched the front half of its body into the air after slamming its front paws against the packed earth. While still moving forward like a derailed train, it reared halfway up and splayed out its forepaws to show Clint the huge claws that were about to rip him into pieces.

  With his second shot still ringing in his ears, Clint worked the lever and fired again. He could barely hear the shot, but he could see a patch of the bear’s fur twitch as hot lead thumped into a wall of solid muscle.

  Clint’s reflexes were barely sharp enough to cut through his instinctual panic and get his entire body moving to one side. He pushed off with both legs, not caring where he was going or how gracefully he could get there. All he wanted to do was get away from those incoming claws before he felt them up close and personally.

  Although Clint wasn’t able to land on his legs or outstretched arms, he managed to avoid those claws. The bear’s paws slammed in quick succession against the ground, sending tremors through the dirt right beneath Clint’s body.

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the air.

  For a moment, Clint wasn’t even aware of the noise since the blood was coursing so powerfully through his head. The bear heard it, which was enough to divert its attention just long enough for Clint to roll another few yards away from the angry beast.

  When he righted himself, Clint took a quick breath and looked in the direction of those screams. The woman was still in the same spot she’d been when Clint had first spotted her: huddled against an overturned wagon with her arms wrapped around a small child. Her dress was torn off one shoulder and her face was smeared with dirt as well as a bit of blood. The child appeared to be a boy, but Clint couldn’t be certain since the little one’s face was buried in the woman’s arms.

  It had only been a few minutes since Clint had arrived at the clearing where the wagon had overturned, but it seemed like years ago. Of course, with the huge black bear coming at him like a monster from a bad dream, a man tended to savor every second as if it were his last.

  “Get away from there!” Clint shouted.

  The sound of the woman’s desperate breathing could be heard even over the bear’s snarls and the rush of blood through Clint’s ears. She looked back and forth between Clint and the bear, only to stay where she was and clutch her child even tighter.

  “I can’t . . .” she gasped. “I can’t move.”

  “Think about that child and get moving,” Clint shouted. “I can help, but not if you’re too scared to move.”

  “I can’t move,” she repeated. “The wagon’s pinning me down.”

  The bear was on all fours, swaying its head back and forth to look at the people around him. Although the talking seemed to be distracting it for the moment, the animal’s patience was obviously wearing thin.

  Clint got back to his feet and took a moment to replace the spent ammunition in his rifle. Patting his side quickly was enough to tell him that his modified Colt was still right where it should be. Craning his neck to get a better look at the woman, Clint saw the spot where the frame of the wagon was leaning down on top of her leg.

  As if picking up on the scent of the woman’s fear, the bear turned more in her direction and lowered its head while stalking forward. Each step made a heavy crunching sound as branches and rocks were ground beneath its weight. Lines of saliva started dripping from the corners of its mouth as rumbling breaths issued from within its massive frame.

  At that moment, as if she were reading the worst fears going through Clint’s mind, the woman started kicking and batting at the wagon in a flurry of motion. Even though he was no expert on animals, Clint figured that was the worst possible thing she could have done.

  He was right.

  The bear let out an aggressive snarl and reared up in response to the movement it saw. While it was still on its hind legs and pawing at the sky, another stinging pain lanced through its torso.

  Clint fired off a shot from his rifle and followed it up with another one. “Come on you big bastard!” he shouted. “Look over here!”

  The bear’s roar took on a bit of a pained tone, but that was pretty much the only reaction it gave to being shot. As far as the bullet wounds were concerned, all Clint could see were some slick spots in the bear’s fur.

  Since the woman didn’t look like she was going to tire out or stop trying to get free anytime soon, Clint pulled in a breath, put all common sense aside and ran into the bear’s field of vision. After waving his arms a bit, Clint saw the bear’s massive head swing toward him as the animal’s eyes locked onto this new distraction.

  “That’s it,” Clint said. “Come to me.”

  And that’s exactly what the bear did.

  In fact, the bear rushed toward Clint so quickly that it forced Clint to fire his next shot wildly past the bear’s head rather than through it. Hearing the angry hiss of that bullet whip past its ear stoked the fire in the bear’s belly and got it thundering toward Clint with renewed vigor.

  Even though Clint’s mind was telling him to take another shot and put the bear down, every muscle in his body was telling him to run.

  And so he ran.

  Clint ran faster than he’d ever thought possible.

  Even with his legs pumping furiously beneath him and the wind whistling through his ears, he started to doubt if it would be enough.

  TWO

  Clint’s first thought was to get the bear away from the woman and her child. Now that he’d accomplished that much, Clint was just trying to stay alive as he bolted for the trees with the bear hot on his heels.

  Having left the trail behind him, Clint found himself in a thick tangle of trees and fallen logs. If he wasn’t jumping to one side to avoid one, he was forced to jump at odd intervals to avoid the other. All the while, the bear plowed through everything in its path as it stormed closer and closer to Clint’s back.

  Suddenly, Clint felt himself getting pulled off balance. He thought he’d gotten his foot caught under something or twisted his knee, but quickly realized he was literally being pulled. The hand that had clamped onto his shoulder was nearly as big as the bear’s paw and it yanked Clint to one side like a child picking up a rag doll.

  The bear let out a growl and stomped past the big tree where Clint and another man were now hiding.

  “You don’t hunt bears much, do you mister?” the other man asked.

  Clint took a moment to catch his breath and get a look at where he was. He’d been pulled behind a tree that was just thick enough to keep from being knocked over by the rampaging bear. Leaning against the trunk, wearing an amused grin on his face, was a man who seemed to be just as scarred as the battered tree itself.

  The man looked to be in his late fifties, but could have actually been ten years in either direction of that age. He was barrel-chested and wore thick layers of tanned hides on his back, which were crudely held together by leather laces.

  Grinning through a thick layer of gray beard, the man nodded a quick greeting to Clint before letting go of his shoulder and tipping his hat. “Name’s Mark Ordell. You after that big fella?”

  “No,” Clint said. “Just trying to get it away from some folks back there trapped under an overturned wagon.”

  Ordell craned his neck to look around the tree. He barely seemed to notice the angry snarls of the bear as it skidded on the ground and struggled to get its massive frame turned back around. “Oh, I see it,” Ordell said. “You know them folks?”

  “No, I just—”

  “Then you must’ve ridden in on that black Darley Arabian over there. That’s one hell of a nice horse.”

  “Do you know that bear’s coming back?”

  “Oh, sure. It’ll take it a little while to get situated and then catch sight of us, though. That’s why you shouldn’t run away from a monster like that in a straight line. Damn thing could outrun a stagecoach once it gets moving.”

  “Very interesting,” Clint said. “Do you have a good way to kill it?”

 
; Ordell grinned and nodded as he lifted a rifle so caked with dirt it resembled a tree branch. “I believe I’ve got just the thing.”

  The bear loped in a circle less than ten paces from the tree where Clint and Ordell were hiding. Its eyes were still flaring with rage and every one of its moves were filled with raw power.

  “That there’s not just any bear,” Ordell said as he raised his rifle and placed its narrow stock against his shoulder. “He’s famous.”

  Even though Clint wasn’t a trapper by trade, he knew every kind of rifle that had been made. The one in Ordell’s hands wasn’t anything that could be bought in a store. It was most definitely cobbled together from some very old pieces.

  “You’re a trapper?” Clint asked.

  Sighting along a barrel that was longer than Clint’s arm, Ordell said, “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re after that bear?”

  “Yep.”>

  “Any reason why you couldn’t have shot it before it nearly killed me as well as that woman and her child?”

  The grin hadn’t disappeared from the older man’s face, but it did widen a bit as he leaned against the stock of his rifle. “Because I didn’t know exactly where he was until you were kind enough to get him to holler for me.”

  “Glad to be a help.”

  “You want to help again? Why don’t you take another shot at him with that pop gun of yours?”

  Clint looked down at the rifle as if making sure that’s what the older man was referring to. Actually, compared to the oversized musket in Ordell’s hands, Clint’s rifle did resemble a toy. “I already tried it,” Clint said. “You saw how well that worked. You’ve got to be more ready for this than I am.”

  “True enough, but I only got one shot at a time. That means I kind of need to make them count.”

  Clint couldn’t take his eyes away from the bear as it lumbered to bring itself around and sniff hungrily at the air. For the moment, its attention seemed to be focused on the spot Clint should have been instead of where he was.