Wolf Creek 5: Showdown at Demon's Drop

The lead is flying in Wolf Creek Kansas once again!

Volume 5 is brought to you by (alphabetically):

Bill Crider
Wayne Dundee
L. J. Martin
Cheryl Pierson
Robert J. Randisi
Troy D. Smith

This one is a sequel of sorts to Wolf Creek 1: Bloody Trail.  Here's the blurb:

The brutal Danby gang paid dearly for their raid on Wolf Creek. But some of them escaped, and their new leader Clark Davis is hungry for revenge -on the town, and on the man that he believes betrayed the gang, Derrick McCain. Seminole scout Charley Blackfeather, meanwhile, wants his own revenge on Davis for his actions in the war...at the Centralia Massacre.

Blood is going to flow..

WC 5 is available for kindle at AMAZON, and for virtually all other digital platforms at SMASHWORDS.COM  [NOTE: if the Amazon link is not live yet -they're slower than usual this time around for some reason -smashwords sells ebooks for both the Kindle and the Nook] ...it'll be at B&N soon, and will be in paperback in a couple of weeks or so (we'll keep you posted.)

Here's a preview, courtesy of Bill Crider:

People had been a bit suspicious of Cora Sloane when she’d arrived in Wolf Creek to take over the job of teaching school after the death of the previous teacher, and Cora couldn’t have that. She didn’t want anybody looking into her background too closely.  So she’d done what she could to fit in and become a part of the community. 

Was someone ill? Cora would take some fried chicken to the family. Was there a death in the house? Chicken again, and maybe some fresh-baked bread.

And Cora was in church every Sunday, which had led her to become a part of the quilting group that met on Tuesday evenings in a little room just off the narthex of the church. Cora had learned to quilt from her mother, and she was so good at it that the other women accepted her into the group immediately and were glad to have her.

One of the women that Cora liked best was the preacher’s wife, Kathleen Hyder. She was tall and pretty, kind and compassionate, and Cora thought it was a shame that she was married to Pastor Hyder, who was, to Cora’s way of thinking, a real prig.

Each Tuesday, Kathleen stayed after the others had left to clean up and put the little quilting room back in order. Cora had begun staying to help her, as it gave them a chance to talk. This evening Ruthie Mae Simkins, a sweet, matronly woman who’d taken a liking to Cora, had also stayed.

As they tidied up, Cora watched Kathleen, who hadn’t seemed herself the whole time. She was usually calm and cheerful, but this evening she’d been jittery, twitching at little noises, her eyes darting to the window and the door.

Ruthie Mae had noticed it, too, and she was the one who asked about it.

“Kathleen, dear, you seem nervous tonight.  Is anything wrong?”

Kathleen placed a quilt on a frame.  The quilt was a red-on-white Irish chain pattern, and Kathleen smoothed it with one slender hand.  “I’m not sure,” she said.

“Not sure?” Cora said.  “Is Pastor Hyder all right?”

Kathleen smiled for the first time that evening.  It wasn’t a happy smile.

“He’s always doing just fine,” she said.

“Then what is it?” Cora asked.

“I wish I knew.  I’ve had an odd feeling about things for more than a week.  It’s as if someone’s been watching me.  Sometimes I feel as if a bug is crawling over my skin.  I’ve never seen anyone watching, but now and then out of the corner of my eye I get just a glimpse of someone moving away around a corner. I just can’t shake off the feeling that something strange is going on.”

“Oh, my,” Ruthie Mae said.

Cora walked to Kathleen and put a hand on her arm.  “Have you told Pastor Hyder about this?”

Another sad smile.  “Oh, yes, I’ve told him.  We have no secrets, the pastor and I.  He just smiled and quoted scripture to me.”

“Scripture?”

Kathleen nodded.  “From one of the psalms.  ‘He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber.’  That was supposed to be a comfort to me, that God is watching us all the time. But I don’t believe it’s God who’s been watching.”

“Then who could it possibly be?” Ruthie Mae asked.

Kathleen shook her head.  “It felt more like the devil than God, but it’s probably no one.  I told Derrick about it, too, and he just laughed at me. He said I was spooked by the bank robbery.”

Cora had met Derrick, Kathleen’s brother, but that was the extent of their contact.  He seemed much nicer than Kathleen’s husband, that was for sure.

“We were all spooked by the robbery,” Ruthie Mae said, “but I don’t feel like I’ve been watched.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Kathleen told her.  “I’m just being silly. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

Ruthie Mae came over and patted her arm.  “You don’t have to worry about anyone watching tonight.  It’s just the three of us here, and there’s no one peeking in the windows.”

Cora wasn’t so sure that there was nothing in what Kathleen had said. Cora had some experience with being watched, and she knew the feeling all too well. That was why her embroidered cotton workbag, which contained the usual needles and thread and scissors, also held something that not too many women carried with them when they went quilting: a heavy cap-and-ball revolver. And it was loaded.

Cora looked across the room to where the workbag sat on a chair near the door.  The colorful embroidered flowers of red and yellow comforted her. Or maybe it was the thought of what was inside the bag that did the trick.

“We should finish here,” Kathleen said. “We’ve already stayed later than usual.”

There wasn’t much more to be done, and as they turned to straighten the chairs and pick up a few remnants of cloth, they heard the outer door of the church creak open.

“That’s probably Dill,” Kathleen said, “come to walk me home.”

If it was the preacher, Cora thought, it would be the first time he’d come for his wife. Maybe her feeling had meant something to him, after all.

“I’ll get the door for him,” Ruthie Mae said, starting in that direction.

She didn’t have a chance.  The door opened hard and slammed into her.  She staggered back, knocking over a quilting frame, as two men crowded through the doorway and into the room. One was tall.  The other was stocky. Both held pistols in their hands. Cora saw other men out in the narthex.  She didn’t know how many.  One of them looked very young.

The taller of the two inside the room said, “Goddammit, Davis, there’s three of them.”

The stocky man pointed to Kathleen with his pistol. “She’s the one we want.”

Ruthie Mae stepped in front of Kathleen. “You can’t have her.”

Davis covered the short distance between them in three steps and clubbed Ruthie Mae on the side of her head with his pistol barrel. Her eyes rolled up and she hit the floor like a sack of feed.

Kathleen screamed as Davis grabbed her arm. She tried to jerk free without success. 

The taller man said, “Keep quiet or you’ll get hit, too.”

Neither man was looking at Cora, so she moved quickly to her workbag and pulled out the big revolver.  She held the pistol in both hands and cocked the hammer with her right thumb.

But she didn’t fire. She was afraid she might hit Kathleen, who was still struggling with the two men.

“Run, Cora!” Kathleen cried.  “Get help!”

Cora didn’t know how she could get past the men in the narthex, but she decided to try.  She turned to the doorway, but they’d seen her get the gun.  They had their own guns out and they were pointed at Cora.

Cora wasn’t afraid. She’d had guns pointed at her before, and now that there was no danger of hitting Kathleen, she pulled the trigger.

C'mon... you've GOTTA find out what happens next!

Better read it now, Book 6 will be out in one short month...