Savage Thunder

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The Callan Ranch was silent that summer day except for the ominous crack of a whip. More than a half-dozen men were gathered in the grass-patched front yard of the ranch house, but not one made a sound as they watched Ramsay Pratt wield the whip with the expertise he was known for. An ex-bullwhacker, as stock drivers were frequently called, Pratt loved to show off his skills. He could knock the revolver out of a gunman's hand with the flick of his wrist, or a fly off the rear end of a horse without touching the hide. Where other men carried guns on their hips Pratt carried a twelve-foot-long bullwhip coiled on his. But this demonstration today was a mite different from his usual tricks. This one was stripping the flesh off a man's back.

Ramsay did it at Walter Callan's behest, but he derived a good deal of pleasure from it, for it wasn't the first time he had whipped a man to death, or found that he enjoyed doing it, though no one, here in Wyoming knew that. He didn't have it easy the way gun-men did. If they wanted to kill a man, they could pick a fight that would be over in a matter of seconds, then claim self-defense after the smoke cleared. But with Ramsay's choice of weapons, he had to disarm a man first, then proceed to whip the life out of him. Not too many people bought self-defense in that case. But in this case, he was following the boss's orders, and the victim was a no-account half-breed anyway, so no one would care.

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