Excerpt from

DEATH ON THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY

By Josh Lockwood

Copyright 2011 by Josh Lockwood

Auggie had nothing against the deputy---didn’t even know him, really---it was just that he was wearing regular clothes and had that big Colt Peacemaker riding low on his hip.

He didn’t seem like a bad guy as far as U. S. Marshals went, he just had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He pulled the tumbleweed wagon off the road into the shadow of some split red rocks just east of the Gila Mountains, stepped down from the driver’s seat, and Auggie watched him through the bars of the cage as he put together a small fire of mesquite branches and dry ocotillo wands.

“I’ve got to pee, deputy,” he mumbled from the tiny cage.

“Pee your pants.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, man,” he groused, clutching the bars. “You’re taking me back there to hang by the neck until dead in front of half the damned town and you know it. Leave me a little dignity, will you?”

Raley studied him through the bars for a long minute then, considering it, and finally nodded his head.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said evenly. “A man shouldn’t have to die smelling like stale piss.”

He fished the heavy key ring out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and motioned for Auggie to clamber down.

“What about us?” Melnick grumbled through the bars.

“You can wait.” He locked the cage door shut again, turned back to Auggie, and nodded toward the flats. “Over there in the sage where I can see you.”

Auggie snorted loudly at his words and held his manacled hands up for the deputy to see. “What?” he asked insolently. “You think I’m going to run?”

“Just get on with it.”

He shuffled a few steps away, into the sage and teddy bear cholla, not quite believing the deputy had actually let him out of the cage, and, as far as he was concerned, that was the deputy’s mistake.

If you couldn’t read a bluff as obvious as his had been, you shouldn’t be buying chips.

Especially not in a game where a man was playing for his life.

He waited silently while Raley staked the long-legged sorrel in a thin patch of mesquite, leaving her to forage for the fat tornillo beans on her own, and set a coffee pot down on the rocks next to the fire to heat up.

Without a word Auggie hitched his black and grey striped prison-issue trousers back up, doubled the shackle chain that dangled so noisily between his wrists, and swung it hard at the back of the deputy’s head.

It wasn’t a killing blow, he knew that, still the man wilted as if he’d been pole-axed.

He hadn’t liked doing it that way, but then again he had no desire to test the business end of a hangman’s noose, either.

Wasting no time, he rolled the deputy onto his back, knelt over him, and fished the heavy key ring out of his pocket again.

It took him a few minutes of trying different keys before he found the right ones and he set to work removing the shackles. The cuffs came off first, then the leg irons that had been clapped so tightly around his ankles, and he was free.

“Turn us loose, Kellerman,” Davis growled through the bars. “You can’t just leave us sitting here like this.”

“I can,” he said, “but I won’t.”

He tossed the ring of keys into the cage and narrowed his eyes at the other two. “Turn yourselves loose. I’ve got my own problems.”

He set the deputy’s gun belt to one side, tugged his trousers off one leg at a time, a little surprised he was wearing long johns in this kind of heat, then stripped him of the faded maroon shirt and his sweat-stained hat.

“What about him?” Melnick asked, climbing down from the bed of the wagon and nodding toward the deputy.

“What about him?” Auggie countered.

“We’ve got to take him out to give ourselves a little time.”

He shook his head glancing up at them. “No, we’re not doing that.”

“Why not? He’s nothing to us.”

“No, he’s not,” Auggie agreed, “but he hasn’t done anything wrong, either. Just doing his job.”

The half-breed picked a chunk of broken rock up from the desert floor then and paced forward toward the fallen marshal with a murderous look working its way across his face.

“Nobody asked you,” he rasped raising the rock.

Without a second’s hesitation, Auggie slid the marshal’s Peacemaker out of its worn holster and lifted it toward Davis. “I said we’re not doing that.”

He waited long enough for Davis to lower the rock, then continued. “You two can unhitch the team if you want and ride out of here on them. I’m keeping the sorrel.”

“Why do you get the sorrel?” Melnick asked angrily.

“Very simple, big guy ... I’ve got the gun.”

“You just made yourself some enemies, Kellerman. The kind that won’t forget who’s side you’re on.”

“I’ll worry about that when the time comes,” he replied.

“I’ve got a bad habit of holding a grudge for a long time.”

“And I’ve got a bad habit of fighting back.”