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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  THE EDGE OF VIOLENCE

  A TIM COLTER WESTERN

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  AN ARIZONA CHRISTMAS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 J. A. 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.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  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.”

  PINNACLE BOOKS, the Pinnacle logo, and the WWJ steer head logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-3939-5

  First Kensington hardcover printing: October 2016

  First Pinnacle paperback printing: October 2017

  First electronic edition: October 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3950-0

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-3950-7

  CHAPTER 1

  Decades ago—by Jupiter, a lifetime, an eternity—Jed Reno had laughed at Jim Bridger. When the old (by mountain-man standards) fur trapper, scout, and guide had teamed up with Louis Vasquez to build a trading post on the Blacks Fork of the Green River, Jed Reno had jokingly told Bridger that Bridger’s nerves had finally frayed. That Bridger was selling out. That he was calling it quits. That, pushing forty years old, he was too long in the tooth to be traipsing over the Rocky Mountains, trapping beaver and fighting the weather, the wilds, and the Indians. While sharing a jug of Taos Lightning or some other forty-rod whiskey seasoned with snakeheads, tobacco, and strychnine, Reno had slapped Bridger on the back, and told him, “Well, you just enjoy your life of leisure. I’m sure you’ll be richer than a St. Louis whiskey drummer with this here venture of yours.”

  “Runnin’ a store, ol’ hoss,” Bridger had told him, “ain’t as easy as you think it is.”

  “Balderdash,” Reno had said.

  Damnation, if Jim Bridger wasn’t right.

  As a bullet blew apart the copper-lined tin corn boiler, Reno ducked beneath the somersaulting axe handle that smashed the shelves behind him, sending metal-backed mirrors, salt and pepper shakers, scissors, axe blades, lanterns, baskets, jugs, matches, soaps, knives, forks, beads, containers of linseed oil, pine tar, and tins of tobacco flying every which way. He landed on the pile of pillow-ticking fabric and the woolen blankets he had not gotten around to stacking on the shelves, and he had to be thankful for that. At seventy years old, or something like that (Reno kept bragging that he had stopped counting after fifty) , the onetime fur trapper wasn’t as game as he used to be.

  Which is why he had followed in Bridger’s footsteps, and set up his own trading post about a dozen or so years ago on Clear Creek.

  “You done a smart thing,” Bridger had told him. “Make some money. Watch people go by. Drink whiskey. Smoke yer pipe. Easy livin’.”

  A hatchet fell with the axe handle, and the blade almost cut off Reno’s left ear. A brass percussion capper bounced off his eyebrow. His good eye. An inch lower, and Jed Reno figured he might be wearing leather patches over both eyes.

  Easy livin’? A body could get killed running a store.

  He heard boots thudding across the packed earthen floor. His left hand reached up, found the handle to the hatchet that had almost split his head open, and jerked it free from the blankets and bolts of pillow ticking just as the bearded figure appeared on the other side of the counter.

  A big man, bigger than even Reno, wearing fringed buckskin britches, black boots like those a dragoon or horse soldier might be wearing, collarless shirt of hunter green poplin, garnet waistcoat, and a battered black hat, flat-brimmed and flat-crowned. He also wore a brace of flintlock pistols in a yellow sash around his belly. One of those pistols was in his right hand.

  Reno saw the hammer strike forward just as he flung the hatchet. Powder flashed in the pistol’s pan, the barrel belched flame and smoke, and a .54-caliber lead ball embedded itself in the brown trade blanket rolled up on Reno’s right.

  “Horatio!” a voice yelled. Reno could just make out the voice as he sprang up, fell forward, and crawled toward the soon-to-be-dead Horatio, whose only replies were gurgles as he lay on his back as blood spurted from his neck like water from an artesian well.

  The voice swore, and then barked at the third man who had entered Reno’s trading post: “Sam, he’s goin’ fer Horatio’s pistols. Get’m. Quick.”

  This time, Jed Reno heard clearly. The ringing from Horatio’s pistol shot had died in Reno’s ears. He dived the last couple of feet, ignoring the lake of blood that was ruining toothbrushes and staining wrapped bars of soap and the beads a Shoshone woman kept bringing him to trade for pork and flour, which, in turn, Reno sold to wayfarers from New Y
ork and Pennsylvania and Ohio and even Massachusetts who had been traveling so far that many of the ladies thought those beads from Prussia or someplace were prettier than rubies and garnets.

  Reno jerked the second pistol from the dead man’s sash. Horatio, Reno knew, was dead now because the blood no longer pulsed, but merely coagulated. Footsteps pounded, but not only coming from Sam’s direction. The Voice was charging, too, and Jed Reno had only one shot in the flintlock he had jerked from Horatio’s body. His left hand gripped the butt of the .54 Horatio had fired just moments before.

  Sam appeared on the other side of the counter, where Reno had been refilling a barrel with pickled pig’s feet when the three men entered his store.

  Sam was the oldest of the rogues, with silver hair, a coonskin cap, and dark-colored, drop-front broadfall britches—which must have gone out of fashion back when Reno was a boy in Bowling Green, Kentucky—muslin shirt, red stockings, and ugly shoes. A man would have guessed him to be a schoolmaster or some dandy if not for the double-barrel shotgun he held at his hips.

  The flintlock bucked in Reno’s right hand, and just before the eruption of white smoke obscured Reno’s vision, he saw the shocked look on Sam’s face as the bullet hit him plumb center, just below his rib cage. With a gasp, Sam instantly pitched backward as if his feet had slipped on one of the bar-pullers, tompions, nuts, bolts, and vent and nipple picks that lay scattered on the floor. He touched off both barrels of the shotgun.

  One barrel had been loaded with buckshot, the other with birdshot—as if he had been going out hunting for either deer or quail—and the blast blew a hole through the sod roof, and dirt and grass and at least one mouse began pouring through the opening, dirtying and eventually covering the ugly city shoes the now-dead Sam wore on his feet.

  Reno rolled over, just as The Voice leaped onto the top of the counter. The pistol in Reno’s left hand—the one he had jerked off the floor near the blood-soaked corpse of Horatio—sailed and struck The Voice in his nose. Reno caught only a glimpse of the revolving pistol The Voice held, because as soon as the flintlock crashed against the bandit’s face, blood was spurting, The Voice was cursing, and then he was disappearing, crashing against the floor on the other side of the counter. Reno came up, hurdled the counter, and caught an axe handle on his ankles.

  This time, Reno cursed, hit the floor hard, and rolled over, but not fast enough, for The Voice jumped on top of him and locked both hands around Jed Reno’s throat.

  Now that he had a close look at the gent, The Voice had more than just a rich baritone.

  He had the look of a man-killer. Scars pockmarked his bronzed face, clean-shaven except for long Dundreary whiskers, and his eyes were a pale, lifeless blue. Those eyes bulged, and the man ground his tobacco-stained teeth. The nose had been busted two or three times, including just seconds ago by Horatio’s empty .54-caliber pistol. Blood poured from both nostrils and the gash on the nose’s bridge. One of The Voice’s earlobes was missing—as if it had been bitten off in a fight. He seemed a wiry man, all sinew, no fat, and his hands were rock-hard, the fingers like iron, clasping, pushing down against his throat, and cutting off any air.

  He wore short moccasins, high-waisted britches of blue canvas with pewter buttons for suspenders that he did not don; a red-checked flannel shirt that was mostly covered by the double-breasted sailor’s jacket with two rows of brass buttons on the front and three on the cuffs. The black top hat The Voice had worn had fallen off at some point during the scuffle.

  But he was a little man, no taller than five-two, and a stiff wind—which was predictably normal in this country—would likely blow him over.

  Jed Reno figured he was forty years older than The Voice, but he had more than a foot on the murdering cuss, and probably seventy pounds. Jed kept rolling over, and The Voice rolled with him. They rolled like the pickle barrel Sam had knocked over with his right arm as he fell to the floor in a heap and ruined the store’s roof. Rolled against an overturned keg of nails and knocked over the brooms until they hit the spare wagon wheels leaning against the wall.

  The Voice came up, pushing off one wagon wheel, then flinging another at Reno, who blocked it with his forearm, and sat up, slid over, and leaped to his feet.

  Staggering back toward the sacks of flour, beans, and coffee, The Voice wiped his mouth. The lower lip had been split. Reno tasted blood on his lips, but he didn’t know if it belonged to him, The Voice, or the late Horatio.

  “You one-eyed bastard.” The Voice had lost much of its musical tone. More of a wheeze. But the little man was game.

  He jerked a bowie knife that must have been sheathed behind his back. The blade slashed out, but Reno leaped back. Again. The Voice was driving him, until Reno found himself against another counter.

  The Voice’s lips stretched into a gruesome, bloody smile.

  The knife’s massive, razor-sharp blade ripped through the flannel shirt; and had Reno not sucked in his stomach, he would be bleeding more than The Voice about this time. The blade began slashing back, but Reno had found the chains—those he sold to emigrants for their wagon boxes—and slashed one like a blacksnake whip. Somehow, it caught The Voice’s arm between wrist and elbow, and The Voice wailed as the bones in the arm snapped, and the big knife thudded on the floor.

  As The Voice staggered back, Reno felt the chain slip from his hand. He was tuckered out, too, and, well, it had been several moons since he had engaged in a tussle like this one.

  The chain rattled as it fell to the floor, and The Voice turned and ran for the door.

  Sucking in air, Reno charged, lowered his head and shoulder, and slammed into the thin man’s side. They went through the open doorway, over what passed as a porch, and smashed through the pole where the bandits had tied their horses. Those geldings whinnied, reared, whined, and pounded at the two men’s bodies. One, a black gelding, pulled loose the rest of the smashed piece of pine and galloped toward the creek. One fell in the dirt, rolled over, came up—and ran north, leaving its reins in the dirt and wrapped around the broken pole. The other backed up, reared, fell over, and came up. Reno couldn’t tell which way he ran.

  He was on his knees, spitting out dirt and blood, while wiping his eyes. He tried to stand, to find The Voice, when he tasted dirt and leather and sinew and felt his head snap back. Down he went, realizing that The Voice had kicked him. He landed, rolled, was trying to come up, when The Voice turned his body into a missile. His head caught Reno right in the stomach. Breath left his lungs. He caught a glimpse of the cabin he called a store flash past him as he was driven into the column that held up the covering over the porch.

  The railing snapped. The covering collapsed, spilling more earth, debris, two rats, and a bird’s nest. The two men kept moving. Past the cabin. Over dried horse apples. A fist caught Reno in the jaw. Then another. The Voice packed a wallop. Reno brought up his arms in a defensive maneuver, leaving his midsection open. A fist—it had to be The Voice’s left, for his right arm was busted—hit twice. Three times. Reno fell against the woodpile, rolled over, hit the chopping block, and wondered if he had just busted a couple of ribs.

  “Son of a bitch!” The Voice roared.

  Reno blinked away sweat, blood, dirt, and dust. He saw the bandit standing next to the pile of firewood. He had a sizable chunk of wood in his left hand and, stepping forward, raised the club over his head.

  Reno found the axe buried in the chopping block. Jerking it free, he flung it as he dived out of the way of the descending piece of wood.

  He lay there, panting, played out, wondering why the devil The Voice didn’t just finish him off. But that instant of defeatism vanished quickly. Reno rolled over, came up, and spit. He looked left, and then right, and saw his cabin, saw the woodpile, and finally his eyes focused on the moccasins and the ends of the blue pants on the dirt.

  Neither the feet nor the legs were moving.

  Wiping the blood and grime from his face, Reno limped to the pile. He had to lean against
the wood for support, and breathing heavily, he looked down at The Voice, and the axe, and the blood.

  “You . . . horse’s . . . arse . . .” Jed Reno wheezed, and made a painful gesture at what remained of his trading post. “All three . . . of you . . . curs . . . dead . . . burnin’in . . . Hell.... Means . . . I gotta . . . clean this . . . mess . . . up . . . myself.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Jed Reno salvaged what he could from the three dead men. The guns he could resell, even the two flintlock pistols, a matched set of A. Waters pistols with walnut grips—antiquated as they were. Reno also found a nice key-wind watch, and wondered who the dead man stole that from, but decided that the odds highly unfavored the victim—if the victim hadn’t been murdered—coming into Reno’s store and seeing his watch for sale. The boots and shoes might bring a bit of a profit, or he could trade them to the Shoshone woman for some more beads, along with the hats. Not much use with the clothes, especially now that they were all pretty much hardened and stained with dried blood. Reno was lucky. He even found a few gold coins and some silver in the outlaws’ pockets. He was alive, and figured he had made a pretty good trade with the three dead men.

  It was shaping up to be one passable, profitable day. But Reno certainly didn’t look forward to cleaning up the mess.

  He loaded the corpses onto his pack mule, saddled his bay gelding, and led his cargo away from the post, crossing the tracks of the iron horse. He looked east at the town, still mostly tents, although a few sod houses and frame buildings had been put up. Then he looked west, following the iron rails and wooden crossties laid by the Irishmen working for the Union Pacific Railway. He could see black smoke puffing out of the stacks of a locomotive down the line. Back east, he heard the screeching and ugly hissing and saw more black smoke as another train made its way through the settlement, hauling more spikes, rails, crossties, fishplates, sledgehammers, and maybe even a few more workers.