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  Dear Readers,

  Many years ago, when I was a kid, my father said to me, “Bill, it doesn’t really matter what you do in life. What’s important is to be the best William Johnstone you can be.”

  I’ve never forgotten those words. And now, many years and almost two hundred books later, I like to think that I am still trying to be the best William Johnstone I can be. Whether it’s Ben Raines in the Ashes series, or Frank Morgan, the last gunfighter, or Smoke Jensen, our intrepid mountain man, or John Barrone and his hardworking crew keeping America safe from terrorist lowlifes in the Code Name series, I want to make each new book better than the last and deliver powerful storytelling.

  Equally important, I try to create the kinds of believable characters that we can all identify with, real people who face tough challenges. When one of my creations blasts an enemy into the middle of next week, you can be damn sure he had a good reason.

  As a storyteller, my job is to entertain you, my readers, and to make sure that you get plenty of enjoyment from my books for your hard-earned money. This is not a job I take lightly. And I greatly appreciate your feedback—you are my gold, and your opinions do count. So please keep the letters and e-mails coming.

  Respectfully yours,

  William W. Johnstone

  Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

  The Mountain Man

  Preacher: The First Mountain Man

  Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter

  Those Jensen Boys!

  The Jensen Brand

  MacCallister

  Flintlock

  Perley Gates

  The Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

  Sixkiller, U.S. Marshal

  Texas John Slaughter

  Will Tanner, U.S. Deputy Marshal

  The Frontiersman

  Savage Texas

  The Trail West

  The Chuckwagon Trail

  Rattlesnake Wells, Wyoming

  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  BLOOD BOND

  BROTHERHOOD OF THE GUN

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  AFTERWORD - Notes from the Old West

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by William W. Johnstone

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  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.”

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Pinnacle and the P logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First electronic edition: July 2018

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-1758-4

  It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity,

  reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

  —Edmund Burke

  Chapter 1

  They were blood-brothers, bonded by the Cheyenne ritual that made them as one. And more importantly, they were Brothers of the Wolf.

  Two young men, Matt Bodine and Sam August Webster Two Wolves. The two men could and had, many times, passed as having the same mother, which they did not. Both possessed the same lean hips and heavy upper torso musculature. Sam’s eyes were black, Matt’s were blue. Sam’s hair was black, Bodine’s hair was dark brown. They were the same height and very nearly the same weight.

  Both wore the same type of three-stone necklace around their necks, the stones pierced by rawhide. Both were ruggedly handsome men.

  Both had gone through the Cheyenne Coming of Manhood, and each would carry the scars on his chest until death turned the soulless flesh into dust.

  They were both Onihomahan: Friends of the Wolf. Both revered the great Gray Wolf, and both had raised wolf cubs as boys. The Indians did not have the fear of the wolf that the white man possessed, probably because the Indians took the time to understand animal behavior. Matt had learned the white man never took the time—any animal he didn’t understand he wanted to kill.

  “Are we going to have to ride forever to reach Arizona?” Two Wolves asked, shifting in the saddle.

  “I think we are in the territory, brother. I also think we are being followed.”

  Neither one of them knew it, but they were already in Arizona, having crossed the border two days back.

  “You think? Hah! I have known about that for at least two hours.”

  “Nice of you to say something about it.”

  “I was waiting for you to dig the sand out of your eyes and ears and discover it yourself. You would have probably noticed something amiss just before they—whoever they might be—conked you on the head.”

  Matt grunted. “At least four of them, I figure. Maybe more.”

  “I would say four. But you’re right; maybe more.”

  “There are Apache here,” Matt said. “But there are a lot of Navajo and Zuni too. Hualapai and Kaibab are to the west of us.”

  “Those behind us are not Indians,” Sam said. “We’d probably have never spotted an Indian.” He smiled. “At least you wouldn’t have,” he needled his friend.

  Matt silently agreed with the first part of Sam’s statement. He ignored the second part. The blood-brothers were always sticking the needle into each other and had been for years. Neither took it seriously. Matt pulled his Winchester out of the boot, shucked a round into the chamber, eased the hammer down, and rode with the rifle laid across his saddle horn. Sam Two Wolves did the same.

  Sam pointed to the west and Matt cut his eyes. The ruins of an ancient pueblo could be seen. “Navajo?” he asked.

  Sam shrugged and gave the reply that most Indians of any tribe would. “Those who came before us.”

  “Let’s cut straight south,” Matt suggested. “Keep your eyes open for Los Gigantes Butte. We want to swing to the west of that.”

  “We’re running low on water. This would not be a good time for us to get caught up in a trap.”

  “Lukachuka Creek is south and west o
f the butte.” Then Matt remembered what a drifting cowboy had told him a long time back. “There’s supposed to be a tank in the rocks just up ahead,” he told Sam. “If the cowboy knew what he was talking about and it isn’t dry.”

  “Your words are so comforting, brother.”

  Matt twisted in the saddle, looking behind him. Those following them were no longer trying to hide their presence. The dust trail was clearly visible. “I don’t like it,” he stated.

  “Neither do I. Let’s find that tank and find it quick.”

  “And full,” Matt added.

  It wasn’t full, but there was more than enough water to fill their canteens, water the horses, fill a coffee pot, and still have enough for several days should they have to defend the place.

  The tank was located high in the rocks, with graze for the horses and good cover for both man and beast.

  Neither Matt nor Sam were too worried about the men following them. If anything, the men following should be worried about what would happen should they catch up with Matt and Sam. Matt’s reputation as a gunhandler had begun when he was just a boy. He killed his first man at age fourteen; the bully prodding the boy into a fight. The bully had not even managed to clear leather.

  Less than a year later, the bully’s brothers came after Matt Bodine. They got lead in the boy, but when the smoke drifted away, Bodine was standing over their bodies, his hands filled with Colts. When he was sixteen, rustlers hit his father’s ranch. Bodine’s guns put two more in the ground and left two others badly wounded and wishing they had taken up farming for a living.

  At seventeen, Bodine went off to live with the Cheyenne for a year. He’d been spending forbidden time with them since a boy—often for weeks at a time.

  At eighteen he was riding shotgun for gold shipments. Outlaws tried twice to take the shipment. Four more men were planted in unmarked graves.

  At nineteen, he began scouting for the Army.

  Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, the guns of Matt Bodine became legend in the west. His guns as well as his fists were much-feared. Bodine knew Indian wrestling, boxing, and down and dirty, kick and stomp barroom brawling.

  Bodine’s mother was a school-teacher and she saw to it that the boy was very well educated.

  Sam Two Wolves—a half-breed, his mother was from Vermont—did not have the name of a gunfighter, but he was still just as feared as Bodine and better educated, having been schooled at a university back east. His mother’s dying wish.

  Sam’s father was the famed war chief, Medicine Horse, who died on Last Stand Hill during the Custer fight. Medicine Horse rode up to Custer unarmed except for a coup stick, wishing to die rather than live in disgrace.

  Matt and Sam had witnessed the Custer fight, from atop a hill overlooking the valley of the Little Big Horn. And they would spend their lives trying to forget the awful sight.

  “I wonder who those guys following us are, and what they want?” Matt said, his back to a rock, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “If I had a crystal ball I’d tell you,” Sam replied, without opening his eyes. He was stretched out flat on his back, in the shade of a boulder.

  It was the fall of the year, and it was hot. Not the blistering heat of full summer, but still hot enough to kill a man if he wasn’t careful.

  A bullet whined wickedly off a rock and went howling off in another direction.

  Without opening his eyes or getting up from his prone position, Sam said, “Well, now we know what they want—us!”

  “Yeah. But why?” Matt had taken his rifle and moved to a guarded position where he could look out over the land below them.

  “I’m certain your sordid reputation has something to do with it. What would my poor mother think? Me keeping company with a notorious gunfighter?” Sam choked back laughter and rolled to his knees, picking up his rifle.

  “Very funny.” But Matt could not conceal his grin. “I can see it now.”

  “See what?”

  “The inscription on our single tombstone: Here lies the Injun and the white guy!”

  “Single tombstone! Ye Gods! You think I’m going to be buried with you?”

  Matt chuckled. “If we go out together, we probably won’t have much to say about it, right?”

  “What a dismal thought. Brother? What are we going to do about this slight problem facing us?”

  “How about us finding out what they want?”

  “What are you going to do: invite them up for coffee?”

  Matt ignored that. “Hey!” he shouted. “What’s the matter with you guys? What’s the idea of shootin’ at us?”

  A bullet was his reply.

  Matt tried again. “I think you people got the wrong guys. We haven’t done anything to you.”

  “Give us the gold and you can ride on!” the voice bounced around the rocks.

  “Gold?” Sam said. “What gold?”

  “We don’t have any gold!” Matt shouted. “I told you, you got the wrong people!”

  “You a damn liar. We been trailin’ you two all the way from Green River. You thought you’d throwed us off when you left the fork of the Walker just inside the Territory. But I want that poke you mined out. And we’ll take that woman with you, too, mister. Then you can ride on. We know she’s nothin’ but a stray. She ain’t worth dyin’ over.”

  Sam sat straight up, his back against the boulder. “Woman?”

  “I told you to cut your hair,” Matt said, grinning at him.

  “Idiot! My hair is no longer than yours.”

  “What woman?” Matt yelled. “There’s nobody up here but Sam and me.”

  “Have Sam sing out!”

  “What do you want, you nitwit?” Sam yelled.

  Silence for a few moments. “You boys show yourselves,” the man yelled. “If you ain’t Wellman and the girl, you can ride on out.”

  “You believe that, Matt?”

  “ ’Bout as much as I believe in fairy tales. They were going to rob those people, Sam.” Raising his voice, he yelled, “Hell with you, mister. I got no reason to take the word of a damn thief.”

  “Here we go,” Sam muttered. “Robin and his Hood strike another blow for the poor and downtrodden.”

  “We’ll starve you out!” the outlaw yelled.

  “Not likely,” Matt called. “We have plenty of food.”

  “You’ll die of thirst then!”

  “No, we won’t. The tank was full. But you boys are gonna get mighty thirsty if you hang around long.”

  Matt and Sam could hear cursing from below them.

  “We’ll make a deal with you!”

  “I don’t deal with scum.”

  “Then die, you bastards!”

  The air around Matt and Sam was suddenly and viciously filled with howling, whining lead. Both pulled their saddles over their upper torsos to help against any flattened ricochets and let the outlaws bang away. Their horses were just below them, in a small depression, safe from any stray bullets.

  They made no attempt to return the fire. The gunfire stopped and the sounds of galloping horses reached them. Both lifted up to where they could see and looked out. The outlaws were fogging it away from the rocks. Five of them, heading west.

  “They must have picked up our trail at the fork, thinking it was the man and the girl,” Sam said. “We took the east fork. Now those scum are heading west to pick up the trail.”

  Matt looked up at the sky. It would be dark in a couple of hours. “No point in taking off after them now. We might ride smack into an ambush. We’ll spend the night and pick up their trail in the morning.” He met Sam’s eyes. “If that’s all right with you, that is.”

  The half-breed smiled. “Oh, I think I’ll tag along with you. Somebody has to watch your back trail.”

  Matt reached down for the blackened coffee pot and began cussing. One of the outlaw’s slugs had torn the pot apart.

  “Now that irritates me,” Sam said. “Anybody who would deprive a man of his coffee is
just no damn good!”

  Chapter 2

  Both men were still griping as they saddled up and rode out the next morning. Western men like their coffee and they like it often. To wake up without a pot of coffee strong enough to dissolve a horseshoe was just a lousy way to start the day.

  “I get my hands on those damn thieving bums,” Matt said, “I’m gonna make them wish they’d never ridden up to that tank.”

  “I sure would like a cup of coffee,” Sam said wistfully. “Where do you suppose is the nearest town?”

  “The way we’re heading, there’s supposed to be a trading post just built. Some guy named Hubbell built it. But it’s a good ninety miles from here. Three days without coffee,” he added.

  Sam cussed in Cheyenne and then switched to English. He was very graphic in both languages.

  * * *

  They crossed Lukachuka Creek and made camp in Chinle Valley. They did not push their horses or themselves, for this was rugged country and they wanted to spare their horses. The tracks of the outlaws were easy to follow and from the way they were traveling, the thieves were also taking it easy, not wanting to come up with a lame horse and be set afoot in this country.

  They reached the trading post during the late afternoon of the third day. A number of horses were tied at the hitchrails in front of the long and low building. The place appeared to be full of customers. Odd for this sparsely populated land.

  Matt and Sam reined up in back of the building. Both men slipped the hammer thongs from their guns as soon as their boots touched the ground.

  Sam took one look at the hoof-chewed ground around the hitchrails and said, “Those are our people, all right. See the chipped out place on that shoe?”

  “Yeah. Come on. I want a drink first and then we’ll see about settling up for a new coffee pot.”

  The adobe and stone post bore the scars of many Indian attacks. The wooden support posts of the porch roof was embedded with arrow heads. Sam Two Wolves looked at the broken shank of one.