Savage Texas: The Stampeders Read Online Free PDF Page B

could not for the life of him remember, but whose image had for Otto become the single best visual embodiment of the pistol fighters of Missouri-Kansas.
    Otto Perkins had plans. He would be the creator of the finest library of photographs of the late war and the rebuilding and growth of the nation in the years following. Particularly the expansion into the West. And he would chronicle as his specialty the world of outlawry that was inevitably part of any expanding frontier. As he traveled the West seeking any way he could find for his camera to make him a dollar, he would in particular capture the images of the bad men and their victims, and someday it all would make him famous and envied, respected, rich, and remembered. Otto could feel it in his rather frail bones.
    And so, over time his life quest had attained an increasingly narrow focus, his routes and travels guided by rumors and hints and chatter he picked up along the way. He went where he believed he could find those who did not wish to be found, the ones who kept themselves in the places where civilization and law had yet to fully take root.
    He had to find them, after all, before he could have any hope of photographing them.
    It was his quest that drove him now toward the grubby Texas backwater of Hangtree. Following a trail of rumors and talk, in search of a particular human being.
     
     
    Otto’s awareness that he was not alone on this road came to him gradually, and when a look back around the side of his wagon confirmed the presence of a rider coming along behind, it merely verified something Otto had already sensed in some manner unknown even to himself. So there was no surprise involved.
    Except in regard to the appearance of the lone rider. The man gave the immediate impression of some ancient Norse warrior thrust forward in time. He was tall and broad-shouldered, muscled torso narrowing to a lean waist. His hair was flowing and mane-like, golden yellow, framing a weathered blue-eyed face both rugged and handsome. The kind of man who had intimidated Otto Perkins all his days.
    But also a man who visually embodied the rugged masculinity of the westerner to a degree seldom encountered. Otto had pointed his camera at enough lawmen and outlaws and brawlers and toughs to know that most did not even vaguely match the vision of America’s public of the quintessential man of the frontier. Yellow, broken teeth, skin weathered and sunned to the texture of over-abused leather, warts and scars and cauliflowered noses and squinted eyes, fingers resembling ill-bent twigs from long-past untended breaks . . . Otto had photographed hundreds of such, many of them outlaws and desperadoes.
    This man, though, this silent and unexpected fellow man of the road brought by fate to this point of meeting . . . such visually classic subjects as this one almost never came along.
    It was time to seize the moment. Otto pulled his wagon over to the side of the Hangtree Road and reined it to a halt. As expected, the gold-maned rider—who wore a sawed-down Winchester rifle holstered on his right thigh, rode over and halted beside the wagon.
    “Howdy,” said Otto, peering at the man through the thick lenses of his spectacles.
    “Howdy yourself,” said the other. “Having trouble with your wagon?”
    “No, sir, not at all. I’ve just stopped to get some grub out for a bite of lunch. Name’s Otto Perkins. Have you had aught to eat, stranger?”
    The horseman moved closer and thrust a leathery hand toward the wagoneer. They shook, Otto noticing the strength of the rider’s grip. “I’m Heller, Sam Heller, Mr. Perkins. Herd a few cattle and such as that around these parts.”
    “Call me Otto, sir.”
    “Call me Sam. What’s your game, friend? I believe you’re a newcomer.”
    “I am. If you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare I’ll put some meat on some bread and pour us some cider, and we can eat a bit and I’ll show you what I do.”
    “I hate to deprive a man of