CHAPTER ONE

“Looks like easy pickin’s to me,” Brint Chulo said as he reined to a halt beside his older brother, Marcus, in the wide main street of Thanody.

“Sure as hell does,” Billy, the youngest of the Chulo clan, added, drawing up on Marcus’ left side. “Bet they’re all nice and pure, too.”

Marcus cast his youngest brother a sideways glance and a peculiar expression drifted onto his lips. Not quite a smile, but something damn close, just a mite darker. He could almost smell the musk of innocent women in the dust-flavored air.

“You got that right, Billy boy.” Marcus leaned a forearm on the saddle horn, his scuffed-brown eyes wandering over the street’s circular layout. “Bet they’ll scream even louder than them other women we visited ourselves upon.” A laugh came from Brint, his brown eyes narrowing. “Sure as hell hope so, but I hear tell the women here just do whatever their menfolk tell them to do and don’t say a goddamn word. Hate to think they wouldn’t put up some kinda fight. Reckon I right like my women scratchin’ and bitin’. Never any goddamn fun when they just give in.”

“You got a black soul, Brint.” Marcus shifted in the saddle, uttered a chuckle, then went back to studying his surroundings. 

Thanody, Colorado. Some sort of religious community, he’d heard tell. Peaceful. Rumor had it they abhorred violence. Well, they sure as hell were gonna get their craw jammed full of it today.

His gaze swept to the boardwalks and the numerous simple clapboard, brick and thatched-roof buildings lining the street. He noted the lack of a saloon, but this time it didn’t rightly matter. He was gettin’ sick to hell of bargals and their filthy ways.

He spotted a number of women strolling along the boardwalk, heading into stores or carrying baskets. Clothed in heavy woolen dresses and white bonnets pulled low on their foreheads, they weren’t much to look at, least in the way a bar whore was, but he bet underneath it all they was hell in the sack just the same. And not as like to be passin’ on the crotch jiggers, way that tramp in the last town they’d visited had done. The itchin’ still drove him plumb loco at night.

He noted none of the men, all of whom wore heavy brown trousers, simple white shirts and flat hats, carried guns and that pleased him all the more. Easy pickin’s, indeed.

A number of the fellas flashed them broad smiles and a tip of their hats as they sauntered by, but the women walked with their heads down, their gazes glued to the boardwalks, as if looking at strangers, especially men, was some sort of a sin. Hell, he supposed in this town it probably was.

He’d show them what true sin was like before the day was through. “Queer as hell, ain’t it?” Billy asked, puzzlement in his tone. Billy shook his head, his dull black hair straggling out from beneath his battered hat, touching his shoulders.

“What is?” Marcus’ gaze went back to the women.

“Way these folks jest smile like they got one foot in Heaven or some such.” Marcus laughed, pushed up his hat and with a forearm mopped sweat from his lined brow. The mid-morning sun highlighted his mixed Mexican features and glinted from his eyes. His face might have been considered handsome had it not carried the look of a predator. Cruelness made the lines about his mouth and eyes harsher than they should have been. Someone had once told him cruelty leaked from a black soul. He reckoned that was true, and that each of the Chulo brothers had inherited that trait from their father, Miguel. Marcus couldn’t damn well recollect a day that man had offered his wife a kind word or hadn’t beaten the hell out of all three boys for some perceived wrong. But that upbringing had made them tough, had learned them well just what respect women folk deserved. Most would say the boys had taken it to entirely new levels, and those same folks would be like to admit there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it. The Chulo brothers were a product of their cold compassionless father and upbringing, but they held all the advantages power and money could bring, the protection.

They operated with impunity in these parts, complete freedom, and lived a life without want—but that life came with a price: boredom. And an ever-growing addiction to satisfy cravings that seemed insatiable.

That price drove the Chulo brothers to deeds few dared speak of and even fewer dared challenge.

That price had brought them to Thanody.

“Yeah, reckon it is a mite peculiar at that,” Marcus said, letting out a sigh. “Reminds me of the way this damn dog looked at me once, all waggly and goddamn happylike, right before I took an axe to him.”

Brint let out a laugh. “I recollect that. Never heard such a pitiful howl come out of a critter. Goddamn funny. Hope some of these women yowl that way.” Billy laughed, his brown eyes going duller, the evidence of laudanum masking some of the meanness they normally showed.

“Lookee that tree yonder.” Marcus ducked his chin to a large cottonwood dead center of town. Sunlight glinted off its leaves and the warm spring breeze made a shushing sound through its branches.

“Right convenient place to hang our flags, don’t you figger?” Brint said. “Reckon it’ll be a fine remembrance for the ladies of this town.”

“Menfolk, too,” Billy said, a snake of drool slithering from the corner of his mouth.

“You really oughta lay off that stuff a mite, Billy boy,” Marcus said. “If it don’t kill ya by its lonesome, it’ll shorely get ya killed one of these days.”

Billy laughed and stared straight ahead, at a young woman crossing the street. “I want me that one.”

“‘Cause she’s blonde?” Brint asked.

“‘Cause she’s skinny. I like ‘em skinny.” Billy grinned and drool dripped onto his stained bibshirt.

Marcus uttered a strained laugh. “You never did have a lick of taste. Shore you wouldn’t fancy one of the menfolk?”

“You got no call sayin’ that, Marcus!” Billy’s irritation bled into his tone, but something else came with it, Marcus recognized—indignation over a fact denied but accurate.

Marcus flashed Billy a look that warned him not to push his luck, then dismounted. He guided his horse to a hitchrail and tethered the reins, while his brothers followed suit.

“Mornin’ strangers,” a man said, approaching them from the boardwalk and stepping into the street. The man had a short beard without a mustache and proffered his hand. Marcus noted with disgust the flop-eating smile plastered to the fellow’s face. “Welcome to Thanody, friends.”

Marcus matched the grin. “Welcome, indeed, but we ain’t no friends of yours.”His fist lashed up, taking the man flush on the jaw. The grin vanished from the man’s pulped lips and blood spattered Marcus’ fist.

The man flew backwards and down, slammed into the boardwalk, to lay half on, half off, groaning.

Marcus surveyed him and his brothers’ laughter, as well as the sight of the fallen man, brought sudden wide-eyed stares from other men walking the boardwalks. The women stopped, peering up from beneath bonnets without lifting their heads.

Marcus bent, grabbed two handfuls of the man’s shirt and hauled the fellow to his feet. He pressed his face close to the other’s, gaze locking on the man’s watery eyes.

“Wh-why?” the man stammered through bloody lips.

“‘Cause I’m a downright mean sonofabitch, I s’pose.” He smiled. “And ‘cause it was just plain fun.”

“What do…do you want?” the man’s eyes tried to focus on Marcus, but one of them seemed inclined to travel sideways in its socket.

“I hear tell you’re a town without violence. I hear right?”

The man nodded. “We are a godly town, mister. All are welcome in peace.”

“Reckon then we’ll have ourselves some fun with some of your women, if you got no objection?”

Stark terror and disgust washed across the man’s face. But with it came the answer Marcus wanted: nobody here would lift a finger to stop them.

Marcus flung the man backward, slamming him against a support post. The impact shuddered through the man and he almost lost consciousness. His legs started to buckle. Marcus hit him again, harder, and the man’s head bounced off the beam, leaving a bloody smear and strands of hair embedded into the wood. The man slid to the ground, his body oddly ragged, his eyes remaining open, staring.

“He won’t be back-talking you no more, Marcus,” Brint said, his eyes glassy with bloodlust.

“Reckon he won’t at that.” Marcus’ gaze traveled to the others staring at them from the boardwalks. “Any of you got a notion to object to what’s ‘bout to happen here?”

Nobody made a move. Shock, horror and fear played on their faces.

“Takin’ candy from a baby…” he whispered.

Billy was already traipsing towards the slim woman he’d picked out and Brint followed only a step behind him, heading for an auburn-haired woman on the opposite boardwalk. They might be peaceful folk but they still screamed as they were dragged into buildings. Those screams didn’t stop for quite a spell.

It struck Marcus as downright peculiar, the way the menfolk just watched while he and his brothers had their fill of Thanody’s women. Damn peculiar. No one lifted a finger against them, no one went for a shotgun or marshal. Fact, he
doubted there was even any type of law in this town. He wondered as he grabbed a dark-haired woman heavy of breast and wide of hip and dragged her towards a small house how the hell a town such as this had managed to survive out here
in the wilds of Colorado Territory. Seems like at least Injuns would have butchered every soul in it by now. Nothing to stop them, or any hardcase for that matter, from ridin’ in and takin’ whatever the hell they wanted.

The only problem with the whole set-up was by the time he finished he reckoned he carried a hell of a measure of disappointment. It reminded him some of his life, how everything that came so easy wasn’t worth a goddamn. The struggle was the most exciting part and though these women screamed they put up no fight when it came to surrenderin’ their womanly charms.

And that was a goddamn shame.

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