Arizona Ambush - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Johnstone (ч. 3)

“Reckon everybody’s that way sometimes,” Stovepipe said.

Elizabeth started to hug Juan Pablo’s wife, but the woman turned away with her face as stoic as ever.

“Thank you anyway,” Elizabeth told her. “Thank you for everything. Gracias.”

The woman relented in her stiffness enough to give her a curt nod.

Sam, Stovepipe, and Elizabeth stepped outside. Sam stiffened as he saw Caballo Rojo standing there with a grim look on his face.

The headman leveled an arm toward the canyon mouth.

“Go,” he said simply.

“That’s where we’re headed,” Sam said. “You won’t see us again after this, Caballo Rojo.”

The Navajo looked like that would be just fine with him.

Chapter 37

The more Matt thought about it, the more he knew that he had to get to Flat Rock. He couldn’t afford to wait for Sam and Stovepipe to return. The ringleader of that gang was going to try something else.

“I’m gonna take one of those horses from the wagon team and head for town,” he told Wilbur. “You can stay here and keep an eye on those rifles.”

“You’re loco,” Wilbur responded heatedly. “Stovepipe and Two Wolves told us to stay here.”

“Once it gets light, you can fort up in these rocks and keep anybody who comes along away from the guns,” Matt argued. “My gut tells me the varmint behind all this isn’t finished yet.”

“Yeah, well, my gut tells me the same thing, and you’re hurt worse’n I am. If anybody goes, it ought to be me.”

“No offense, Wilbur, but you’re not exactly a gunfighter.”

Wilbur glared at him.

“You ever notice, when somebody says ‘no offense,’ they’re about to say somethin’ damned offensive?”

Matt was already unhitching one of the horses. He didn’t answer.

“Besides, you never even been to Flat Rock,” Wilbur went on. “You don’t even know how to get there.”

“Tell me the general direction. I can find it.”

“Why should I?”

Matt looked at his companion intently and said, “Because I’m the only one who stand a chance right now of stoppin’ that bunch from raising more hell.”

Wilbur glared, but he finally said with obvious reluctance, “Oh, all right.” He told Matt how to find the settlement. “But you’re gonna be outnumbered at least three to one. Don’t come complainin’ to me when you get yourself killed.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Matt said.

He cut lengths of rein off the wagon’s lines and attached them to the bit in the horse’s mouth. Then he climbed onto the animal and set off bareback toward Flat Rock, steering by the stars that were still bright in the night sky.

He couldn’t hope to reach the settlement before the members of the gang, since they had a good lead on him, but he pushed the horse as hard as he could so that maybe they wouldn’t have time to get up to too much mischief before he got there.

After an hour or so, the eastern sky began to lighten. Matt knew dawn wasn’t too far away. If he had still been a prisoner back in the canyon, the sands of his life would be running out right about now, since Juan Pablo had intended to execute all four captives when the sun came up.

But they had foiled that idea, and Matt hoped Sam and Stovepipe had been able to rescue Elizabeth as well. He was going to worry about her until he saw her again with his own eyes.

He spotted a few scattered lights up ahead. It was too early for very many people to be up and about in Flat Rock, but clearly some of the citizens were awake. Matt pushed his horse harder, anxious to get there.

He was still at least half a mile from the settlement when he spotted the three riders. They were just shadows in the graying light at first, but then he was able to make them out better.

He recognized the big, brawny shape of the man in the lead, who was carrying something draped over the saddle in front of him. Sensing that this was trouble in the offing, Matt veered his horse to intercept them.

Even over the pounding hoofbeats, he heard a shout of alarm from one of the men. They split up, the leader angling to the north, the other two charging straight at Matt with their guns spitting flame.

The big draft horse he was riding was slow and ungainly, but the animal had sand, Matt had to give it that. The horse didn’t spook from the racket of gunshots and the smell of powdersmoke, even when he filled his hands with both of his irons and cut loose.

Bullets sang around his head as he thundered toward the two would-be killers. His Colts roared and bucked. One of the outlaws suddenly cried out and slewed around in the saddle before toppling off his mount. The other rocked back as one of Matt’s slugs drove into his chest but stayed upright and kept firing. Matt triggered again as they swept past each other, and this time the man’s head jerked as a bullet tore through his throat and angled up into his brain. He had to be dead when he hit the ground.

Matt wheeled the horse and looked after the leader. He didn’t know if his horse could catch up to the man.

But then the boss outlaw’s horse broke stride, and as the dawn light spread over the landscape even more, Matt realized there were two people on the horse, not one.

And those two people were engaged in a desperate struggle.

Matt started after them, urging the horse underneath him to surrender every bit of speed and strength it possessed. The animal responded gallantly. As Matt closed the gap between him and his quarry, the second figure on the other horse suddenly broke free and either fell or jumped off.

The leader of the gun-runners hauled his mount around, but instead of going after the person who had escaped from him, he drew his gun and threw a shot at Matt. As Matt leaned forward over his horse’s neck, he barely took note of the fact that the person on the ground was a woman. Her long auburn hair was in disarray.

The boss outlaw fired again. Matt’s horse stumbled. He didn’t know how badly the animal was wounded, but the horse didn’t go down. It charged ahead, and now Matt straightened from his crouch with both Colts leveled.

The guns roared as he emptied them, and the hammerblows of the bullets striking the ringleader of the gang drove the man out of the saddle. He hit the ground hard, rolled over a couple of times, and lay still.

Using the makeshift reins, Matt pulled his horse to a stop and slid down from its back. He saw the crease on the horse’s shoulder and was glad that the animal wasn’t hurt any worse than that.

His right-hand Colt was empty, but the left-hand gun still had one round in it. Out of long habit, Matt had kept track of the shots he had fired. He pouched the right-hand iron but kept the other one ready as he approached the fallen ringleader.

The man wasn’t a threat anymore. He had dropped his gun, and the front of his shirt was sodden with blood from several bullet wounds. He pawed feebly at the crimson flow as he gasped for breath.

The man looked up at Matt and managed to say, “Who ... who ...?”

The two of them had never seen each other before close-up, Matt realized.

“I’m Matt Bodine,” he said. “Who’re you?”

“King ... king ...”

Matt thought that was the dying man’s name.

But then he said, “King ... of the ... Four Corners ...”

“Not hardly,” Matt said as the man’s final breath rattled in his throat.

Matt left the body there and turned back toward the woman. She ran to meet him, but before she could get there, his strength abruptly deserted him. His guns slipped from his fingers, and he fell to his knees.

“My God!” the woman exclaimed. “Are you hurt?”

Matt looked up at her, thinking that she was beautiful even in her disheveled state, and said, “You’ve got ... a British accent.”

“That’s because I’m from England.” She leaned over to take hold of his arm. “Let me help you, sir.”

“I like the way ... you folks talk.”

“That’s all well and good, but you seem to be injured—Oh!”

Her startled exclamation was the last thing he heard before the dawn light went away and darkness closed in around him.

When Sam, Stovepipe, and Elizabeth reached the wagon and found Wilbur there alone, Sam left the others behind and raced on into Flat Rock, arriving there at mid-morning.

Practically the first thing he saw was Matt sitting on a bench in front of the Buckingham Palace Saloon with Lady Augusta Winslow.

Matt grinned as Sam pulled up at the hitch rack and almost leaped from his saddle.

“Figured you’d be along directly,” Matt said. “Take it easy, I’m all right.”

“Yes, other than being addlepated for going off after that bunch by yourself,” Sam said. He nodded to the woman. “Lady Augusta. Good morning.”

“Yes, it is, thanks to your friend Matt,” she told him with a smile. “He rescued me, you know. Zack Jardine and two of his henchmen had kidnapped me.”

“Zack Jardine,” Sam repeated. He didn’t know the name.

“Big fella who was the leader of the bunch tryin’ to start a new war with the Navajo,” Matt explained. “Don’t worry, I didn’t know his name, either, until after I shot him.”

“He’s dead?”

Matt nodded.

“And so are the other two who got away when we busted up their attempt to deliver those rifles to the Indians.” A worried look appeared on Matt’s face. “You got Elizabeth away from Juan Pablo all right, didn’t you?”

“She’s fine,” Sam assured him. “And Juan Pablo won’t give any more trouble. His wife will see to that, along with Caballo Rojo.”

“Can’t help but think maybe it would’ve been better to shoot him,” Matt said. “I don’t cotton to somebody tellin’ me I’m gonna be shot at dawn. But I guess if they can keep him settled down, that’ll be all right.”

“Now the only one we have to worry about is poor Noah Reilly,” Lady Augusta said.

Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“The little fella who runs the general store?”

“That’s right,” the Englishwoman said. “He was found unconscious in front of the store early this morning. I think he must have seen Jardine and his men come into town and gotten suspicious of them. He may have confronted them before they came up the back stairs of the saloon and abducted me. Mr. Reilly appears to have been struck with a pistol.”

Sam shook his head.

“Poor little fella. Where is he?”

“I had him taken up to my room and put to bed there, in hopes that he’ll regain consciousness and recover.”

“Well, when he does wake up, he’ll be in a good place,” Matt said.

“Hush, Mr. Bodine,” Lady Augusta said with a smile. “You’re in no shape to be flirting with anyone. You only regained consciousness yourself a short time ago.”

“I was just a mite tired, that’s all. You said yourself those bullet holes in my side look like they’re still healin’ up just fine, ma’am.”

“Yes, but you’re going to need a great deal of rest before you’re back to normal.”

Matt might have had something to say about that, but before he could, one of the bartenders stepped through the batwings and told Lady Augusta, “Ma’am, that girl you had keepin’ an eye on Reilly just came down and said he’s awake. He’s all agitated, though, so I reckon you ought to go up there.”

“Of course,” she said as she got to her feet.

“I’ll come with you,” Sam said. “Noah was one of the first folks I met here in Flat Rock.”

Matt stood up.

“I’ll come, too. I want to hear what he’s got to say about what happened.”

The three of them went upstairs to Lady Augusta’s suite. They found Noah Reilly sitting up in bed, looking impatient while one of the saloon girls wiped his forehead with a wet cloth.

Reilly’s eyes widened for a second when he saw Sam.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His eyes flicked toward Matt. “And who’s this?”

“Don’t worry about that, Noah,” Sam said. “Are you all right? You got clouted pretty hard on the head, it looks like.”

Reilly closed his eyes for a second and winced.

“Yes, I ... I’m fine. I can’t believe those savages didn’t scalp me, or at least cut my throat.”

“Savages?” Matt repeated with a frown.

“Yes, the Indians I caught skulking around early this morning when I got to the store to open up. They looked like they were going to try to sneak into the saloon.” Reilly swallowed and looked up at Lady Augusta. “Are you all right? I knew your life would be in danger when I saw those Navajo.”

Matt and Sam exchanged a quick look. Sam said, “You’re sure it was some Navajo you saw, Noah?”

“What? Why, of course I’m sure! I’ve seen plenty of them around town in the past. I know a Navajo when I see one.”

Matt said, “And you got a good look at them?”

“I was close as I am to any of you. I had to be, for them to have hit me and knocked me out the way they did.” Reilly lifted a hand toward Lady Augusta. “Dear lady, did they harm you? How in the world did you escape from those red savages?”

Lady Augusta looked confused.

“I don’t understand, Mr. Reilly,” she said. “It wasn’t the Navajo who carried me off. It was Zack Jardine and two of his men.”

Reilly stiffened in alarm. Matt saw him start to reach for something under his coat. One of Matt’s Colts seemed to appear in his hand as if by magic.

“Whatever you’re reachin’ for, you’d better leave it right where it is, mister,” Matt said. “And while you’re at it, you can start explainin’ why the story you’re trying to tell us doesn’t match up with any of the facts.”

“Why, I ... I ...”

Sam sighed and shook his head. He had liked the little storekeeper.

“You should’ve kept your mouth shut and claimed you didn’t know what happened, Noah,” he said. “You probably would’ve gotten away with it, then. Now, though, it’s pretty obvious that you cooked up this whole deal with Jardine. Were the two of you partners?”

Reilly’s face hardened.

“Partners, hell!” he spat with such concentrated venom that it seemed impossible it could have come from such a mild-looking hombre. “The entire thing was my idea! And if we had pulled it off, I would have been the ruler of the whole Four Corners!”

Matt shook his head.

“This is America, mister. We don’t have kings.” He glanced at Lady Augusta and smiled. “No offense, Your Ladyship.”

“None taken, I assure you. Why do you think I came to America in the first place? I didn’t want a bloody king, either!”

By that evening, another wagon had gone out to pick up the crates of guns and returned with them. They were locked up at the moment in the back room of the now-closed general store.

Matt, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur sat on the bench in front of the saloon and watched the day’s light fade, taking with it some of the scorching heat.

The four of them had been over the whole thing, hashing out what they knew and what they could guess, and they were convinced that they had a pretty accurate picture. Noah Reilly hadn’t offered any sort of detailed confession after the things he had said that morning, but he was locked up, too.

A rider had carried word to Fort Defiance, and Matt and Sam expected an officer and a cavalry detail to show up in a day or two and take charge of everything, including the lone surviving member of the gang.

“Here’s what I can’t believe about the whole thing,” Wilbur said. “You weren’t in on the end of it, Stovepipe. I’m used to you bein’ the one who rounds up the head varmint.”

“I reckon I did my share,” Stovepipe said. He looked at Matt and Sam. “Couldn’t interest you boys in a job, could I? You seem to be good at gettin’ to the bottom of things. The Cattlemen’s Protective Association could use you.”

“Not a chance,” Matt said with a smile and a shake of his head. “Sam and I don’t cotton to workin’ for wages.”

“You just gonna keep on driftin’ like a pair of fiddle-footed cowboys?”

“That’s the plan,” Sam said.

“But not just yet,” Matt added. “I’m gonna go call on Miss Elizabeth Fleming and take her to supper at that café you fellas told me about.”

“And I’m gonna go talk to Lady Augusta,” Wilbur put in.

“You’ll get so tongue-tied and start sputterin’ so much she’s liable to think you got the hydrophobia,” Stovepipe told her partner.

“Dang it, there you go again, always tryin’ to interfere in my love life!”

“I’m just tryin’ to keep you from gettin’ your feelin’s hurt. Anyway, you can’t go makin’ calf-eyes at that gal. Soon as the army gets here and takes charge of them guns, you and I got more work to take care of.”

“More work? Where?”

“I dunno,” Stovepipe admitted. “We’ll have to find us a telegraph office and check in with the boss. But you know how it is, Wilbur ... hell’s always poppin’ somewhere.”

That was true, Sam thought. Hell was always popping somewhere, especially wherever the blood brothers went.

But that’s the way it was with brothers of the wolf.

And brothers of the gun.

Turn the page for an exciting preview of

SAVAGE TEXAS

An explosive new Western series by

William W. Johnstone

with J. A. Johnstone

America’s leading Western writer captures the most violent chapter in frontier history—in the saga of a Yankee with a rifle, an outlaw with a grudge, and a little slice of hell called ...

SAVAGE TEXAS

For renegades and pioneers, there is no place like Texas—as long as you have a gun and the guts to use it. Now, the Civil War is over. Carpetbaggers and scalawags rule Austin. Soldiers return to pillaged homes. Longhorns roam the wilds and the state is in a state of chaos. Especially a town called Hangtree.

Sam Heller and Johnny Cross are Hangtree’s newest citizens: Heller is a former Yankee soldier, a deadly shot, and a believer in right from wrong. Cross is a gun for hire with dark dreams of wealth and power—and at any cost. Hangtree, with its rich grazing land and nearby mineral deposits, soon erupts in murderous violence. By fate and by choice, these two strangers will find themselves on the opposite side of the law.

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“Texas ... Texas ...”

—Last words of Sam Houston, soldier, patriot, and founder and president of the Republic of Texas

Chapter 1

Some towns play out and fade away. Others die hard.

By midnight Midvale was ablaze. The light of its burning was a fire on a darkling plain.

It was a night in late March 1866. Early spring. The earth was quickening as Midvale was dying.

The well-watered grazing lands of Long Valley in north central Texas supported many widely scattered ranches. Midvale had come into being at a strategic site where key trails came together. The town supplied the needs of local ranchers and farmers for things they couldn’t make or grow but couldn’t do without.

A cluster of several square blocks of wooden frame buildings, it had a handful of shops and stores, several saloons, a small café, a boardinghouse or two, and a residential neighborhood.

Tonight Midvale had reached its end. Its passing was violent. The killers had come to usher it into extinction. Raiders they were, a band of cutthroats, savage and merciless. They came under cover of darkness and fell on the town like ravening wolves—gun wolves.

The folk of Midvale were no sheep for the slaughter. The Texas frontier is no place for weaklings. For a generation, settlers had fought Comanche, Kiowa, and Lipan Apache war parties, Mexican bandits and homegrown outlaws. The battle fury of the recent War Between the States had left this part of Texas untouched, but there was not a family in the valley that hadn’t given husbands and sons to the armies of the Confederacy. Few had returned.

The folk of Midvale were not weaklings. Not fools, either. They were undone by treachery, by a vicious attack that struck without warning, like a bolt out of the blue. By the time they knew what hit them, it was too late to mount any kind of defense.

Ringing the town, the raiders swooped down on it, shooting, stabbing, and slaying. No fight, this—it was a massacre.

After the killing came the plundering. Then the burning, as Midvale was put to the torch.

The scene was an inferno, as if a vent of hell had opened up, bursting out of the dark ground in a fiery gusher. Shots rang out, shrieks sounded, and hoofbeats drummed through the red night as the killers hunted down the scant few who’d survived the initial onslaught.

All were slain outright; all but the young women and children, boys and girls. Captives are wealth.

The church was the last of Midvale to burn. It stood apart from the rest of the town, a modest distance separating it from worldlier precincts. A handful of townsfolk had fled to it, huddling together at the foot of the pulpit.

That’s where the raiders found them. Their screams were silenced by hammering gunfire.

The church was set on fire, its bell tower spire a flaming dagger thrusting into night-black sky. Wooden beams gave, collapsing, sending the church bell tumbling down the shaft into the interior space.

It bounced around, clanging. Dull, heavy, leaden tones tolled Midvale’s death knell.

The marauders rode out, well satisfied with this night’s work. They left behind nearly a hundred dead men, women and children. It was a good start, but riper targets and richer pickings lay ahead.

The war had been over for almost a year, but there was no peace to be found on the Texas frontier. No peace short of the grave.

But for the ravagers and pillagers who scourge this earth, the mysterious and unseen workings of fate sometimes send a nemesis of righteous vengeance....

Chapter 2

From out of the north came a lone rider, trailing southwest across the hill country down into the prairie. A smiling stranger mounted on a tough, scrappy steel-dust stallion.

Man and mount were covered with trail dust from long days and nights of hard riding.

Texas is big and likes bigness. The stranger was no Texan but he was big. He was six feet, two inches tall, raw-boned and long-limbed, his broad shoulders axe-handle wide. A dark brown slouch hat topped a yellow-haired head with the face of a current-day Viking. He wore his hair long, shoulder-length, scout-style, a way of putting warlike Indians on notice that its owner had no fear of losing his scalp to them. A man of many ways, he’d been a scout before and might yet be again. The iciness of his sharp blue eyes was belied by the laugh lines nestled in their corners.

No ordinary gun would do for this yellow-haired wanderer. Strapped to his right hip was a cut-down Winchester repeating rifle with a sawed-off barrel and chopped stock: a “mule’s-leg,” as such a weapon was popularly known. It had a kick that could knock its recipient from this world clear into the next. It rested in a special long-sheath holster that reached from hip to below mid-thigh.

Bandoliers lined with cartridges for the sawed-off carbine were worn across the stranger’s torso in an X shape. A six-gun was tucked butt-out into his waistband on his left side. A Green River knife with a foot-long blade was sheathed on his left hip.

Some time around mid-morning, the rider came down off the edge of the Edwards plateau with its wooded hills and twisty ravines. Ahead lay a vast open expanse, the rolling plains of north central Texas.

No marker, no signpost noted that he had crossed a boundary, an invisible line. But indeed he had.

Sam Heller had come to Hangtree County.

Chapter 3

Monday noon, the first day of April 1866. A hot sun topped the cloudless blue sky. Below lay empty tableland, vast, covered with the bright green grass of early spring and broken by sparsely scattered stands of timber. A line of wooded hills rose some miles to the north.

The flat was divided by a dirt road running east-west. It ran as straight as if it had been drawn by a ruler. No other sign of human habitation presented itself as far as the eye could see.

An antlike blur of motion inched with painful slowness across that wide, sprawling plain. It was a man alone, afoot on the dirt road. A lurching, ragged scarecrow of a figure.

Texas is big. Big sky, big land. And no place for a walking man. Especially if he’s only got one leg.

Luke Pettigrew was that man, painfully and painstakingly making his way west along the road to Hangtown.

He was lean, weathered, with long, lank brown hair and a beard. His young-old face, carved with lines of suffering, was now stoically expressionless except for a certain grim determination.

He was dressed in gray, the gray of a soldier of the army of the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy was now defunct a few weeks short of a year ago, since General Robert E. Lee had signed the articles of surrender at the Appomatox courthouse. Texas had joined with the South in seceding from the Union, sending its sons to fight in the War Between the States. Many had fallen, never to return.

Luke Pettigrew had returned. Minus his left leg below the knee.

A crooked tree branch served him for a crutch. A stick with a Y-shaped fork at one end, said fork being jammed under his left arm and helping to keep him upright. Strips of shredded rags were wrapped around the fork to cushion it as best they could. Which wasn’t much. A clawlike left hand clutched the rough-barked shaft with a white-knuckled grip.

A battered, shapeless hat covered his head. It was faded to colorlessness by time and the elements. A bullet hole showed in the top of the crown and a few nicks marked the brim.

Luke wore his uniform, what was left of it. A gray tunic, unbuttoned and open, revealed a threadbare, sun-faded red flannel shirt beneath it. Baggy gray trousers were held in place by a brown leather belt whose dulled metal buckle bore the legend: CSA. Many extra holes had been punched in the belt to coincide with his weight loss. He was thin, half-starved.

His garments had seen much hard use. They were worn, tattered. His left trouser leg was knotted together below the knee, to keep the empty pant leg from getting in his way. His good right foot was shod by a rough, handmade rawhide moccasin.

Luke Pettigrew was unarmed, without rifle, pistol or knife. And Texas is no place for an unarmed man. But there he was, minus horse, gun—and the lower part of his left leg—doggedly closing on Hangtown.

The capital of Hangtree County is the town of Hangtree, known far and wide as Hangtown.

From head to toe, Luke was powdered with fine dust from the dirt road. Sweat cut sharp lines through the powder covering his face. Grimacing, grunting between clenched teeth, he advanced another step with the crutch.

How many hundreds, thousands of such steps had he taken on his solitary trek? How many more such steps must he take before reaching his destination? He didn’t know.

He was without a canteen. He’d been a long time without water under the hot Texas sun. Somewhere beyond the western horizon lay Swift Creek with its fresh, cool waters. On the far side of the creek: Hangtown.

Neither was yet in sight. Luke trudged on ahead. One thing he had plenty of was determination. Grit. The same doggedness that had seen him through battles without number in the war, endless forced marches, hunger, privation. It had kept him alive after the wound that took off the lower half of his left leg while others, far less seriously wounded, gave up the ghost and died.

That said, he sure was almighty sick and tired of walking.

Along came a rider, out of the east.

Absorbed with his own struggles, Luke was unaware of the newcomer’s approach until the other was quite near. The sound of hoofbeats gave him pause. Halting, he looked back over his shoulder.

The single rider advanced at an easy lope.

Luke walked in the middle of the road because there the danger of rocks, holes, and ditches was less than at the sidelines. A sound caught in his throat, something between a groan and a sigh, in anticipation of spending more of his meager reserves of energy in getting out of the way.

He angled toward the left-hand side of the road. It was a measure of the time and place that he unquestioningly accepted the likelihood of a perfect stranger riding down a crippled war veteran.

The rider was mounted on a chestnut horse. He slowed the animal to an easy walk, drawing abreast of Luke, keeping pace with him. Luke kept going, looking straight ahead, making a show of minding his own business in hopes that the newcomer would do the same.

“Howdy,” the rider said, his voice soft-spoken, with a Texas twang.

At least he wasn’t no damned Yankee, thought Luke. Not that that made much difference. His fellow Texans had given him plenty of grief lately. Luke grunted, acknowledging that the other had spoken and committing himself to no more than that acknowledgment.

“Long way to town,” the rider said. He sounded friendly enough, for whatever that was worth, Luke told himself.

“Room up here for two to ride,” the other said.

“I’m getting along, thanks,” muttered Luke, not wanting to be beholden to anybody.

The rider laughed, laughter that was free and easy with no malice in it. Still, the sound of it raced like wildfire along Luke’s strained nerves.

“You always was a hardheaded cuss, Luke Pettigrew,” the rider said.

Luke, stunned, looked to see who it was that was calling out his name.

The rider was about his age, in his early twenties. He still had his youth, though, what was left of it, unlike Luke, who felt himself prematurely aged, one of the oldest men alive.

Luke peered up at him. Something familiar in the other’s tone of voice ...

A dark, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat with a snakeskin hatband shadowed the rider’s face. The sun was behind him, in Luke’s eyes. Luke squinted, peering, at first unable to make out the other’s features. The rider tilted his head, causing the light to fall on his face.

“Good gawd!—Johnny Cross!” Luke’s outcry was a croak, his throat parched from lack of water.

“Long time no see, Luke,” Johnny Cross said.

“Well I’ll be good to gawd-damned! I never expected to see you again,” said Luke. “Huh! So you made it through the war.”

“Looks like. And you, too.”

“Mostly,” Luke said, indicating with a tilt of his head and a sour twist of his mouth his missing lower leg.

“Reckon we’re both going in the same direction. Climb on up,” Johnny Cross said. Gripping the saddle horn with his right hand, he leaned over and down, extending his left hand.

He was lean and wiry, with strength in him. He took hold of Luke’s right hand in an iron grip and hefted him up, swinging him onto the horse behind him. It helped that Luke didn’t weigh much.

Luke got himself settled. “I want to keep hold of this crutch for now,” he said.

“I’ll tie it to the saddle, leave you with both hands free,” Johnny said. He used a rawhide thong to lash the tree branch in place out of the way. A touch of Johnny’s boot heels to the chestnut’s flanks started the animal forward.

“Much obliged, Johnny.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

“What good would that do? I ain’t got no horse.”

“Man, things must be tough in Hangtree County.”

“Like always. Only more so since the war.”

They set out for Hangtown.

Johnny Cross was of medium height, compact, trim, athletic. He had black hair and clean-lined, well-formed features. His hazel eyes varied in color from brown to yellow depending on the light. He had a deep tan and a three-day beard. There was something catlike about him with his restless yellow eyes, self-contained alertness and lithe, easy way of moving.

He wore a sun-bleached maroon shirt, black jeans, and good boots. Two guns were strapped to his hips. Good guns.

Luke noticed several things right off. Johnny Cross had done some long, hard riding. His clothes were trail-worn, dusty; his guns, what Luke could see of them in their holsters, were clean, polished. Their inset dark wooden handles were smooth, well worn with use. A late-model carbine was sheathed in the saddle scabbard.

The chestnut horse was a fine-looking animal. Judging by its lines it was fast and strong, with plenty of endurance. The kind of mount favored by one on the dodge. One thing was sure: Johnny Cross was returning to Hangtree in better shape than when he’d left it.

The Cross family had always been dirt-poor, honest but penniless. Throughout his youth up till the time he went off to war, Johnny had worn mostly patched, outgrown clothes and gone shoeless for long periods of time.

Johnny Cross handed the other a canteen. “Here, Luke, cut the dust some.”

“Don’t mind if I do, thanks.” Luke fought to still the trembling in his hands as he took hold of the canteen and fumbled open the cap. The water was as warm as blood. He took a mouthful and held it there, letting the welcome wetness refresh the dust-dry inside of his mouth.

His throat was so dry that at first he had trouble swallowing. He took a couple of mouthfuls, stopping though still thirsty. He didn’t want to be a hog or show how great his need was. “Thank you kindly,” he said, returning the canteen.

Johnny put it away. “Sorry I don’t have something stronger.”

“That’s plenty fine,” Luke said.

“Been back long?”

“Since last fall.”

“How’s your folks, Luke?”

“Pa got drowned two years ago trying to cross the Liberty River when it was running high at flood time.”

“Sorry to hear that. He was a good man,” Johnny said.

Luke nodded. “Hardworking and God-fearing ... for all the good it done him.”

“Your brothers?”

“Finn joined up with Ben McCullough and got kilt at Pea Ridge. Heck got it in Chicamagua.”

“That’s a damned shame. They was good ol’ boys.”

“War kilt off a lot of good ol’ boys.”

“Ain’t it the truth.”

The two were silent for a spell.

“Sue Ellen’s married to a fellow over to Dennison way,” Luke went on. “Got two young’uns, a boy and a girl. Named the boy after Pa. Ma’s living with them.”

“Imagine that! Last time I saw Sue Ellen she was a pretty little slip of a thing, and now she’s got two young’uns of her own,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “Time sure does fly... .”

“Four years is a long time, Johnny.”

“How was your war, Luke?”

“I been around. I was with Hood’s Brigade.”

“Good outfit.”

Luke nodded. “We fought our way all over the South. Reckon we was in just about every big battle there was. I was with ’em right through almost to the finish at the front lines of Richmond, till a cannonball took off the bottom part of my leg.”

“That must’ve hurt some,” Johnny said.

“It didn’t tickle,” Luke deadpanned. “They patched me up in a Yankee prison camp where I set for a few months until after Appomatox in April of Sixty-Five, when they set us all a-loose. I made my way back here, walking most of the way.

“What about you, Johnny? Seems I heard something about you riding with Bill Anderson.”

“Did you? Well, you heard right.”

Hard-riding, hard-fighting Bill Anderson had led a band of fellow Texans up into Missouri to join up with William Clarke Quantrill, onetime schoolteacher turned leader of a ferociously effective mounted force of Confederate irregulars in the Border States. The fighting there was guerrilla warfare at its worst: an unending series of ambushes, raids, flight, pursuit, and counterattack—an ever-escalating spiral of brutalities and atrocities on both sides.

“We was with Quantrill,” Johnny Cross said.

“How was it?” Luke asked.

“We gave those Yankees pure hell,” Johnny said, smiling with his lips, a self-contained, secretive smile.

His alert, yellow-eyed gaze turned momentarily inward, bemused by cascading memories of hard riding and hard fighting. He tossed his head, as if physically shaking off the mood of reverie and returning to the present.

“Didn’t work out too well in the end, though,” Johnny said at last. “After Bill’s sister got killed—she and a bunch of women, children, and old folks was being held hostage by the Yanks in a house that collapsed on ’em—Bill went off the deep end. He always had a mean streak but after that he went plumb loco, kill crazy. That’s when they started calling him Bloody Bill.”

“You at Lawrence?” asked Luke.

Lawrence, Kansas, longtime abolitionist center and home base for Jim Lane’s Redlegs, a band of Yankee marauders who’d shot, hanged and burned their way through pro-Confederate counties in Missouri. In retaliation, Quantrill had led a raid on Lawrence that became one of the bloodiest and most notorious massacres of the war.

“It wasn’t good, Luke. I came to kill Yankee soldiers. This business of shooting down unarmed men—and boys—it ain’t sporting.”

“No more’n what the Redlegs done to our people.”

“I stuck with Quantrill until the end, long after Bill split off from him to lead his own bunch. They’re both dead now, shot down by the bluebellies.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that to yourself,” Johnny said, after a pause. “The Federals still got a grudge on about Quantrill and ain’t too keen on amnestying any of our bunch.”

“You one of them pistol-fighters, Johnny?”

Johnny shrugged. “I’m like you, just another Reb looking for a place to light.”

“You always was good with a gun. I see you’re toting a mighty fine-looking pair of the plow handles in that gunbelt,” Luke said.

“That’s about all I’ve got after four years of war, some good guns and a horse.”

Johnny cut an involuntary glance at the empty space below Luke’s left knee.

“Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” he added quickly.

“Hold on to them guns and keep ’em close. Now that you’re back, you’re gonna need ’em,” Luke said.

“Yanks been throwing their weight around?” Johnny asked.

Luke shook his head. “’T’ain’t the Yanks that’s the problem. Not yet, anyhow. They’s around some but they’re stretched kind of thin. There’s a company of them in Fort Pardee up in the Breaks.”

“They closed that at the start of the war, along with all them forts up and down the frontier line,” Johnny said.

“It’s up and running now, manned by a company of bluebelly horse soldiers. But that ain’t the problem—not that I got any truck with a bunch of damn Yankees,” Luke said.

“’Course not.”

“What with no cavalry around and most of the menfolk away during the war, no home guard and no Ranger companies, things have gone to rot and ruin hereabouts. The Indians have run wild, the Comanches and the Kiowas. Comanches, mostly. Wahtonka’s been spending pretty much half the year riding the warpaths between Kansas and Mexico. Sometimes as far east as Fort Worth and even Dallas.”

“Wahtonka? That ol’ devil ain’t dead yet?”

Luke shook his head. “Full of piss and vinegar and more ornery than ever. And then there’s Red Hand.”

“I recollect him. A troublemaker, a real bad ’un. He was just starting to make a name for himself when I went north.”

“He’s a big noise nowadays, Johnny. Got hisself a following among the young bucks of the tribe. Red Hand’s been raising holy hell for the last four years with no Army or Rangers to crack down on him. There’s some other smaller fry, but them two are the real hellbenders.

“But that’s not the least of it. The redskins raid and move on. But the white badmen just set. The county’s thick with ’em. Thicker’n flies swarming a manure pile in a cow pasture on a hot summer day. Deserters from both armies, renegades, outlaws. Comancheros selling guns and whiskey to the Indians. Backshooters, women-killers. The lowest. Bluecoats are too busy chasing the Indians to bother with them. Folks’re so broke that there ain’t hardly nothing left worth stealing any more, but that don’t matter to some hombres. They’s up to all kinds of devilments out of pure meanness.

“Hell, I got robbed right here on this road not more than a day ago. In broad daylight. I didn’t have nothing worth stealing but they took it anyhow. It’d been different if I’d had me a six-gun. Or a good double-barreled sawed-off.”

“Who done it, Luke?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. First off, I been living out at the old family place, what’s left of it,” Luke said. “Somebody put the torch to it while I was away. Burned down the ranch house and barn.”

“Yanks?” Johnny asked.

Luke shook his head. “Federals never got to Hangtree County during the war. Probably figured it wasn’t worth bothering with. No, the ranch must’ve been burned by some no-goods, probably just for the hell of it.

“Anyhow, I scrounged up enough unburnt planks and shacks to build me a little shack; I been living there since I come back. Place is thick with maverick cattle—the whole range is. Strays that have been gone wild during the war and now there’s hundreds, thousands of them running around loose. Every now and then I catch and kill me one for food. I’d’ve starved without.

“I had me some hides I’d cleaned and cured. I was bringing ’em into town to sell or barter at the general store. Some fishhooks, chaw of tobacco, seeds ...”

“And whiskey,” Johnny said.

“Hell, yes,” Luke said. “Had my old rifled musket and mule. Never made it to Hangtown—I got held up along the way. Bunch of no-accounts come up, got the drop on me. Five of them.”

“Who?”

“Strangers, I never seen ’em before. But when I seen ’em again—Well, never mind about that now. Lot of outsiders horning in around here lately. I ain’t forgetting a one of ’em. Led by a mean son name of Monty.”

“Monty,” Johnny echoed, committing the name to memory.

“That’s what they called him, Monty. Big ol’ boy with a round fat face and little piggy eyes. Cornsilk hair so fine and pale it was white. Got him a gold front tooth a-shining and a-sparkling away in the middle of his mouth,” Luke said. “Him and his crowd gave me a whomping. Busted my musket against a tree. Shot my poor ol’ mule dead for the fun of it. Busted my crutch over my head. It hurt, too.”

Luke took off his hat, pointing out a big fat lump in the middle of his crown.

“That’s some goose egg. Like I said, you always was a hardheaded fellow. Lucky for you,” Johnny said.

“Yeh, lucky.” Luke put his hat back on, gingerly settling it on his head. “While I was out cold they stole everything I had: my hides, my knife, even my wooden leg. Can you beat that? Stealing a man’s wooden leg! Them things don’t grow on trees, you know. That’s what really hurt. I walked from hell to Texas on that leg. Yes, you could say I was attached to it.”

“You could. I wouldn’t.”

“When I come to, them owlhoots was talking about if ’n they should kill me or not. Only reason they didn’t gun me down on the spot is ’cause Monty thought it would be funny to leave me alive to go crawling across the countryside.”

“Yankees?”

“Hell no, they was Southerners just like us. Texans, some of ’em, from the way they talked,” said Luke.

His face set in lines of grim determination. “I’ll find ’em, I got time. When I do, I’ll even up with ’em. And then some. That gold tooth of Monty’s is gonna make me a good watch fob. Once I get me a watch.”

He waved a hand dismissively, shooing away the topic as if it were a troublesome insect. “Not that I want to bother you with my troubles. Just giving you the lay of the land, so to speak. And you, Johnny, what’re you doing back here?”

Johnny Cross shrugged. “I came home for a little peace and quiet, Luke. That’s all.”

“You come to the wrong place.”

“And to lay low. The Border States ain’t too healthy for any of Quantrill’s crowd.”

“You wanted, Johnny?”

“Not in Texas.” After a pause, he said, “Not in this part of Texas.”

“You could do worse. Hangtree’s a big county with lots of room to get lost in. The Yanks are quartered forty miles northwest at Fort Pardee in the Breaks. They don’t come to Hangtown much, and when they do they’s just passing through. They got their hands full chasing Indians.”

“They catch any?”

Luke laughed. “From what I hear, they got to look sharp to keep the Indians from catching them.”

“Good, that’ll keep ’em out of my hair.”

“What’re your plans, Johnny?”

“One thing I know is horses. Mustangs still running at Wild Horse Gulch?”

“More now than ever, since nobody was rounding ’em up during the war.”

“Figured I’d collect a string and sell ’em. Folks always need horses, even in hard times. Maybe I’ll sell ’em to those bluebellies at the fort.”

Luke was shocked. “You wouldn’t!”

“Gold’s gold and the Yanks are the ones that got it nowadays,” said Johnny Cross.

Something in the air made him look back. A dust cloud showed in the distance east on the road, a brown smudge on the lip of the blue bowl of sky. Johnny reined in, turning the horse to face back the way they came. “Company’s coming,” he said.

“Generally that means trouble in these parts,” Luke said.

“Ain’t necessarily so, but that’s the way to bet it,” he added.

Johnny Cross unfastened the catch of the saddlebag on his right-hand side, reaching in and pulling out a revolver. A big .44 front-loading cap-and-ball six-gun like the ones worn on his hips: new, clean and potent.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to Luke. “Take it,” he said when the other hesitated.

Luke took it. The gun had a satisfying heft and balance in his hand. “A six-gun! One of them repeating revolvers,” Luke marveled.

“Know how to use it?” Johnny asked.

“After four years with Hood’s Brigade?” Luke said in disbelief.

“In that case I’d better show you how it works, then. I wouldn’t want you shooting me or yourself by accident,” Johnny said, straight-faced.

Luke’s scowl broke into a twisted grin. “Shucks, you’re joshing me,” he said.

“I am? That’s news to me.”

“You’re still doing it, dang you.”

Johnny Cross flashed him a quick grin, strong white teeth gleaming, laugh-lines curling up around the corners of his hazel eyes. A boyish grin, likable somehow, with nothing mean in it.

Sure, Johnny was funning Luke. Hood’s Brigade of Texans was one of the hardest-fighting outfits of the Confederacy, whose army had been distinguished by a host of fierce and valiant fighters.

Johnny turned the horse’s head, pointing it west, urging it forward into a fast walk.

Luke stuck the pistol into the top of his waistband on his left side, butt-out. “It’s good to have something to fill the hand with. Been feeling half-nekkid without one,” he said.

“With what’s left of that uniform, you are half-nekkid,” Johnny said.

“How many more of them ventilators you got tucked in them saddlebags?”

“Never enough.”

“You must have been traveling in some fast company, Johnny. I heard Quantrill’s men rode into battle with a half-dozen guns or more. That true?”

“And more. Reloading takes time. A fellow wants a gun to hand when he wants it.”

Luke was enthusiastic. “Man, what we couldn’t have done with a brace of these for every man in the old outfit!”

“If only,” Johnny said flatly. His eyes were hard, cold.

A couple of hundred yards farther west, a stand of timber grew on the left side of the road. A grove of cottonwood trees.

East, the brown dust cloud grew. “Fair amount of riders from the dust they’re kicking up. Coming pretty fast, too,” said Luke, looking back.

“Wouldn’t it be something if it was that bunch who cleaned you out?”

“It sure would. Any chance it’s somebody on your trail, Johnny?”

“I ain’t been back long enough.”

Luke laughed. “Don’t feel bad about it, hoss,” he said. “It’s early yet.”

Johnny Cross turned the horse left, off the dirt road into the cottonwood grove. The shade felt good, thin though it was. The Texas sun was plenty fierce, even at the start of spring. Sunlight shining through spaces in the canopy of trees dappled the ground with a mosaic of light and shade. A wild hare started, springing across the glade for the cover of tall grass.

Johnny took the horse in deep behind a concealing screen of brush. “We’ll just let these rannies have the right of way so we can get a looksee at ’em.”

Luke was serious, in dead earnest. “Johnny—if it is that pack that tore into me—Monty is mine.”

“Whoa, boy. Don’t go getting ahead of yourself, Luke. Even if it is your bunch—especially if it is—don’t throw down on ’em without my say-so. They’ll get what’s coming to ’em, I promise you that. But we’ll pick the time and place. Two men shooting off the back of one horse ain’t the most advantageous layout for a showdown.

“I know you got a hard head, but beware a hot one. It should have cooled some after four years of war,” Johnny said.

“Well—it ain’t,” said Luke.

Johnny grinned. “Me neither,” he said.

The blur at the base of the dust cloud sweeping west along the road resolved itself into a column of riders. About a dozen men or so.

They came in tandem: four pairs in front, then the wagon, then two horsemen bringing up the rear. Hard-bitten men doing some hard traveling, as indicated by the trail dust covering them and the sweat-streaked flanks of their horses. They wore civilian clothes, broad-brimmed hats, flannel shirts, denim pants. Each rider was armed with a holstered sidearm and a carbine in a saddle-scabbard.

A team of six horses yoked in tandem drew the wagon. Two men rode up front at the head of the wagon: the driver and a shotgun messenger. A freight wagon with an oblong-shaped hopper, it was ten feet long, four feet wide, and three feet high. A canvas tarpaulin tied down over the top of the hopper concealed its contents. Crates, judging by the shape of them under the tarp.

The column came along at a brisk pace, kicking up plenty of dust. There was the pounding of hoofbeats, the hard breathing of the horses, the creak of saddle leather. Wagon wheels rumbled, clattering.

The driver wore his hat teamster-style, with the brim turned up in front. The men of the escort were hard-eyed, grim-faced, wary. They glanced at the cottonwood grove but spotted no sign of the duo on horseback.

On they rode, dragging a plume of brown dirt in their wake. It obscured the scene long after its creators had departed it. Some of the dust drifted into the glade, fine powder falling on Johnny, Luke, and the horse. Some dust got in the chestnut’s nostrils and he sneezed.

Luke cleared his throat, hawked up a glob of phlegm, and spat. Johnny took a swig from his canteen to wash the dust out out of his mouth and throat, then passed the canteen to Luke. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

“You tell me,” Luke said.

“You’re the one who’s been back for a while.”

“I never saw that bunch before. But I don’t get into town much.”

“I’ll tell you this: they was loaded for bear.”

“They must’ve been Yankees.”

“How can you tell? They don’t wear signs, Luke.”

“They looked like they was doing all right. Well-fed, good guns and mounts, clothes that wasn’t rags. Only folks getting along in these parts are Yankees and outlaws.

“They was escorting the wagon, doing a job of work. Outlaws don’t work. So they must be Yanks, damn their eyes.”

“Could be.”

“They got the right idea, though. Nothing gets nowhere in Hangtree less’n it’s well-guarded,” said Luke. “Wonder what was in that wagon?”

“I wonder,” Johnny Cross said, thoughtfully stroking his chin. A hard, predatory gleam came to his narrowed eyes as they gazed in the direction where the convoy had gone.

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. This novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

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ISBN: 978-0-7860-2911-2