Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels Read online

  BLAZE!

  Western Series Boxed Set

  Stephen Mertz

  Robert J. Randisi

  Wayne D. Dundee

  Jackson Lowry

  Michael Newton

  Blaze! Boxed Set

  Copyright 2017 by Rough Edges Press

  Blaze! copyright 2014 by Stephen Mertz

  Blaze! The Deadly Guns text copyright 2014 by Robert J. Randisi

  Blaze! Bitter Valley text copyright 2015 by Wayne D. Dundee

  Blaze! Six-Gun Wedding text copyright 2015 by Robert E. Vardeman

  Blaze! Ambushed text copyright 2015 by Michael Newton

  Blaze! Zombies Over Yonder copyright 2015 by Stephen Mertz

  Series Concept and Characters Copyright by Stephen Mertz

  Cover Design by Livia Reasoner

  A Rough Edges Press Book

  www.roughedgespress.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BLAZE!

  THE DEADLY GUNS

  BITTER VALLEY

  SIX-GUN WEDDING

  AMBUSHED

  ZOMBIES OVER YONDER

  BLAZE!

  Stephen Mertz

  Chapter 1

  They held the high ground.

  Below a natural citadel, formed by a ring of boulders, a steep drop-off of several hundred feet made for an eminently defensible position. The outcrop of boulders was flanked to the rear by a rocky incline, a clearing of murky shadows before a stand of conifers.

  J.D. Blaze crouched, his Winchester at the ready, scanning, through a narrow break between the boulders, what he could see of the moon-washed base of this towering rock formation. He discerned no movement down there.

  A gentle breeze sighed through the pines. There was the muted crackle of insects and somewhere nearby an owl hooted. Otherwise, there was only the stillness of night beneath a quarter moon and an infinity of winking stars.

  A few braves had tried to scale the rock citadel during fierce daylight fighting. Their bodies were sprawled across jagged rocks below.

  "What time is it?" asked Kate.

  She knelt on one knee beside J.D., behind an adjacent boulder, her eyes and her Winchester scanning the uphill clearing.

  He could have brought out his watch and read the time easily by the moonlight, but a glance at the moon's position was enough.

  "It's three o'clock, or just after."

  She sighed with exhaustion, apprehension, defeat. "I can't remember the last time I slept, but I don't feel tired at all."

  "That's nature's way of giving you a fighting chance," said Blaze. "It's because we're surrounded by hostiles who want to kill us."

  She was a few years younger than her husband. Kate had intelligent brown eyes that highlighted a face of high cheekbones and saucy, full lips. Her shoulder-length blond hair was tied back beneath a flat-brimmed black hat. She wore a man's blue work shirt, a leather vest, a denim skirt with a silver concho belt around her trim waist, and riding boots.

  "Nothing's happened since sunset," she noted. "It's so quiet, J.D. Do you think they're out there?"

  J.D. was dark-haired, well muscled. A big man, he wore a weathered, wide-brimmed hat, a lightweight pullover shirt with a neckerchief, Levi's and well-worn boots. A holstered Remington .44-40 revolver was on his left hip, butt forward for quick cross-draw. A cap box holding his cartridges was on his right hip. Criss-crossed bandoleers held ammunition for the rifles.

  "They're out there," he said. "These fellas don't give up. They just don't cotton to doing things at night."

  J.D. and Kate Blaze were the only husband and wife team of gunfighters-for-hire that Blaze had ever heard tell of. If you hired Blaze, who had earned a reputation across the states and territories as a man more than fast and capable with any sort of gun, you also got peppery Kate in the bargain. They'd had a justice of the peace marry them two days after they met in El Paso, and that was five years ago. Ever since, they'd worked as a team from Canada to Mexico, from San Francisco to Omaha, hiring out their gun skills to ranchers, the railroad, bank syndicates, anyone in need of the best shootists for hire—who just happened to be husband and wife—if the client was willing to meet their price. They never rode the outlaw trail. They had never spent a night apart.

  They had seen and fought their way through practically every situation imaginable...except being surrounded by Indians, vastly outnumbered, with those Indians presently biding their time in the dark of this night, patiently awaiting the first light of dawn when they would overrun and slaughter this man and woman crouched together behind the boulders.

  The ambush had been well staged. J.D. and Kate were pulling up out of an arroyo, which they'd had to traverse, when gunfire opened up on them from rock formations on both sides. The braves had emerged from concealment, ferocious apparitions wearing bandoleers of ammunition and everything from Civil War ex-military garb to breechcloth, bandanas wrapped about their heads, wearing knee-high moccasins, armed with knives and rifles. But before they could close in, the Blazes had sent their horses scrambling up the steep rocks to this defensible position. A misstep would have been fatal, but they had made it. In the light that had remained yesterday, they had stood off wave after wave of attacking hostiles.

  But J.D. didn't kid himself. It was luck alone that had spared them thus far.

  Bullets had whistled and ricocheted from below and from the trees across the clearing behind them. A flying chip of rock from a ricochet left a razor thin slash across Blaze's left cheekbone, but the droplets of blood had congealed and that was the only wound sustained by them thus far.

  "Well," said Kate, "we gave it our best shot and we almost made it. How far is it to the border?"

  "About fifteen miles to Naco," he said. "And one of us can still make it."

  They'd been on their way to Mexico with ten thousand dollars stuffed in their saddlebags.

  "What do you mean, one of us can still make it?"

  "It's a few hours until dawn," he estimated. "That's when they'll attack."

  "If we left the horses, we could slip past them on foot in the dark. It could be done."

  "Maybe, but that's not what I have in mind. As soon as they overrun this position and find us both gone, they'll track us down easy. They'll be on horseback, and we'll be on foot. They'd kill us and take our money."

  She frowned. "You said one of us could make it."

  "Uh huh. I think I can get us out of here. I'll lead you to the river." He handed her the saddlebags. "You take these. When we get to the river, we'll split up. Follow the river south. I'll come back up here and hold them off, and give you a chance to get away. I'll catch up with you in Mexico."

  Her frown deepened. "What the hell are you talking about, Blaze?"

  "Just follow the San Pedro," he said. "It will take you into Mexico, and there you can buy transportation first class to anywhere."

  "If I got there before you," she said, "I'd wait, thanks. But just out of curiosity, what about you, after I've merrily traipsed off with our life savings over my shoulder? What will you do?"

  "I told you. I'll slip back and be right here when dawn breaks, like they expect. Don
't you see? If we're both gone, they'll track us down and we're both dead. I've got enough ammunition to thin their ranks and make the survivors want to be someplace else. Then I'll catch up with you and we'll live happily ever after."

  She shook her head. "I don't know, J.D. Right now, braves from their village are on their way here to be part of this and avenge those we killed."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  She studied him in the moonlight. "You're a gallant man, did you know that?" She sighed again. "Very well. I'll be an obedient wife. Your way does make sense."

  He blinked. He hadn't expected convincing her to be quite so easy.

  "Uh, all right then. I reckon we'd better head out."

  "There is one thing before we go."

  He paused. "What's that?"

  "Well, first off, are you sure these people who want to kill us won't attack us during the hours of darkness, like you said?"

  "I reckon I'm as sure about that as I am about anything,"

  "Good," she whispered huskily. "Because, J.D., I'm sorry as hell but all of this insanity, this violence and bloodshed and us maybe about to die...J.D., I need something to make me feel alive before we say good-bye. Do you understand?" She chuckled. There was a trace of lewdness to the pleasant, softly rippling sound. "Big man, I'm not saying goodbye until I get some of what I like best about you."

  J.D. said, "Huh?"

  "Darling," said Kate, her whisper breathy in the closeness between them, "it's your turn to be an obedient husband and give me what I need."

  Well hell, thought J.D.. It seemed only right that their last goodbye should be their best.

  And so, there on the ground, beneath cover of the boulders in the stillness of the night, he drew her to him, and drew her lips to his. Their kiss pulsated, her tongue slithering in and out of his mouth, hot and wet.

  He eased his free hand up to caress her breasts, cupping first one and then the other the way she liked, his thumb lightly brushing alternately across the nipples. When the kiss broke, she arched back her head with a sigh, revealing the curve of her throat. He lowered his lips to her throat. She moaned when he kissed her there, the fingers of one of her hands drifting across his chest and abdomen, lower to close around his hardening shaft. She stroked him through the Levi's, a loose-fisted, sensuous up and down jerking motion. Their lips clenched again, fiery. His hands slid down her waist, to her rump. He grabbed hold of its firmness, yanking her up to him. Their loins met through the material of their clothing and began a primal grinding.

  Kate gasped. "Take me, baby! Here! Now!"

  "My pleasure," said J.D.

  The heated immediacy of the moment made the world beyond them, and the danger in it, vanish in a surge of the lust that had sparked them since the day they met.

  Easing a hand up each of her smooth thighs, he lifted the hem of her skirt to around her waist and lowered her undergarments. Her legs were bent at the knee, slightly spread. She undid his Levi's and brought them down to mid-thigh. She guided him into her, and they each emitted a drawn-out groan. His callused hands tightened on her smooth, naked bottom and their hip-thrusts met, hard and fast. Kate crossed her ankles behind Blaze's driving hips. Her head whipped back and forth, her hair splayed out upon the ground, eyes clamped shut, her mouth open and twisting with silent moans. Her fists hammered his back.

  She came again and again.

  When her spasmodic bucking subsided, J.D. eased up on his pace but did not stop. His hips rolled from side to side, and before long her pelvis was jerking again, uncontrollably.

  "Oh! Oh my goodness, honey." She gasped close to his ear. "You're making it happen again!"

  This time he let himself release and their bodies quaked together, as one.

  Chapter 2

  With the coming of dawn, gray light slowly revealed the valley beyond the base of the boulders.

  Blaze viewed the scene along the length of his Winchester, which rested in a notch between two boulders overlooking the drop-off. The high vantage point provided him with a wide field of vision.

  The course of the river in the distance was marked by a wending line of cottonwoods, their bright green a striking contrast to the drab flatness of the landscape beyond this southern-most tip of the Mule Mountains. Arid, wide-open prairie stretched south to mountains that shimmered in the distance, in Mexico.

  The air retained the nip of night, which would not dissipate, J.D. knew, until the rising sun crested the mountains behind him.

  By that time, he expected to be dead.

  He hoped Kate believed his rosy picture of a reunion. But she was right about the hostiles bringing in more braves during the night. And so, after their lovemaking, they had gathered themselves and Blaze led the way from this position, cautiously, through the night.

  They froze in their tracks, at one point, for a full five minutes. Indians had passed within fifteen feet of their place of concealment. Then they continued on, and eventually reached the banks of the river that flowed placidly beneath the cottonwoods, sparkling in the moonlight like diamonds on black glass.

  After a prolonged embrace, after kisses and vows of endearment and Kate's tears, she left, walking stoically away, along the river, heading south. She would reach Naco by midday, sooner if she found a horse. He could see her yet in his mind's eye, his last view of her before she rounded a bend in the river and disappeared from his sight.

  Her Winchester was over one shoulder and over the other had rested the saddlebags that held five years of their savings, the result of severe budgeting by Kate as they'd traveled, working jobs, getting paid. She kept the books. They'd finished their last job, safeguarding a shipment for a mining company out of Silver City a week earlier. It was said that gunslingers never died of old age. It was their intention to prove themselves the exception to that rule, to peacefully live out the rest of their days as gringo ranchers, far from the sound of gunfire. But there had been no way to reach the border without crossing Indian land...

  Watching her go, J.D. had tried to ignore the lump in his throat, the empty feeling in his heart.

  He'd retraced his route back to this position, encountering two separate groups of hostiles during the return trip, remaining undetected. They were indeed beefing up for a full-scale assault. As he worked his way back, he rethought his decision and the reasons for making it, time and again with his every stealthy step. But he could think of no alternative, considering that his only priority was to see Kate removed from harm's way.

  So now here he was, back amid his citadel of boulders, his ammunition dwindled, the enemy reinforced, poised to attack.

  A single rifle shot cracked, flat and clear, from below, a signal that heralded a barrage of fire from below and from the trees across the clearing.

  He fired through the notch between the boulders, levered another round into the Winchester's chamber and sent that one down at where the base of his citadel remained shrouded in the half-light of pre-dawn. He saw no one, and so fired at the saffron muzzle flashes of their rifle fire.

  Rounds ricocheted off boulders and geysered up clumps of earth close to where he flattened himself to the ground, making a minimal target. At the base of the drop-off, braves were scaling the rocks, starting up at him.

  The hairs at the back of his neck curled, and he rolled over onto his back, swinging the Winchester around in time to spot a pair of braves advancing across the clearing. They saw him roll over and opened fire. He returned fire and saw one drop. He lever-actioned another round.

  His right arm suddenly felt as if slammed by a hammer and stabbed with a hot poker at the same time, and even as the shot from his rifle dropped the second Indian in the clearing, he knew he'd been hit.

  He tried to chamber another round. But he was right-handed, and his right hand would not respond. Warm moistness started to soak his shirt around the wound.

  Two more braves popped up onto the boulders, having scaled up. They saw him sprawled there with his useless rifle and wo
unded right arm. They emitted blood-curdling cries, drew wide-bladed knives, and crouched to spring on him.

  J.D. summoned strength from his left arm and used it to fling the rifle at the closest brave, the rifle stock striking right where he aimed it, in the Indian's crotch. The warrior grunted and folded, then lost his balance and disappeared from sight over the edge of the boulder. His body could be heard hitting the rocks.

  A rifle shot sounded from behind J.D.

  A bullet blew away the top of the second Indian's head.

  Gunfire continued from the trees, across the clearing. And, of course, more braves would soon be scaling the rocks. Bullets whizzed everywhere.

  He scuttled, crab-like, across the ground toward the inky shadow of a mesquite tree where its low branches would provide some concealment. As he moved, he twisted his left hand and drew his revolver. The .44-40 would be good for close-in fighting, and that would come soon enough. Halfway to the tree, he saw two more braves start across the clearing, well beyond accurate range of his pistol.

  Another rifle shot, from nearby.

  One of the braves was kicked off his feet as if punched by an invisible giant fist. The second turned to retreat, but was dropped by another rifle shot.

  J.D. gained the mesquite tree at the same time as Kate.

  A chinstrap held her flat-brimmed hat behind her blond hair. Her eyes burned like embers. Smoke curled from the barrel of her Winchester.

  J.D. said, "Well hello, darlin'."

  There was an abrupt lull in the gunfire and war-whooping from below and from across the clearing.

  Kate started to embrace him, then saw his wound. "You've been hit!" She rushed to examine his wound, muttering an unladylike curse.

  He said, "I don't know why I'm not surprised to see you."

  "You didn't think for a minute that I'd run out on you, did you?" she snapped tartly. "If I'd said I was coming back, you would have made trouble. The main thing was to get our money out of here. We don't want these sons of bitches to get their hands on it. By the way, we've got to stop this bleeding." She tore at her shirt and used the material to bandage his wound. "There," she said. "You won't die from that."