Blood Bond Read online

  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 laters, 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 Names 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

  Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man

  Luke Jensen: Bounty Hunter

  Those Jensen Boys!

  The Family Jensen

  MacCallister

  Flintlock

  The Brothers O’Brien

  The Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

  Sixkiller: US Marshal

  Hell’s Half Acre

  Texas John Slaughter

  Will Tanner, Deputy U.S. Marshall

  The Eagles

  The Frontiersman

  Savage Texas

  The Trail West

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  BLOOD BOND

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Praise

  Dedication

  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

  AFTERWORD - Notes from the Old West

  Teaser chapter

  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.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund- raising, and educational or institutional use.

  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.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager:

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

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

  First Electronic Edition: February 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4448-1

  eISBN-10: 0-7860-4448-9

  First Print Edition: January 2006

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-1757-7

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-1757-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long.

  —Robert Burton

  Dedicated to my blood brother, Bob Van Dunk. When you read this one, Bob, read it with the Sioux eye open and the Crow eye closed.

  Chapter 1

  The body was still warm, and Matt Bodine’s eyes did not linger long on the hideously tortured flesh of the man. The man’s bare feet were still in the smoldering fire. One look at the expression frozen on his dead face told him that the man had died long and hard.

  Bodine stood up and carefully swept his surroundings with his eyes, missing nothing. He watched as a bird flew in and landed on a branch. The bird began preening itself and Bodine relaxed. A squirrel came down the side of a tree and began searching the ground for food. Had there been more people around, the animals would not be so careless.

  Bodine walked back to his horse and picked up the reins where he’d ground-reined the big line-back dun stallion and tied the reins to a low branch.

  Then the man squatted down and pulled the makings out of his vest pocket and rolled a smoke, licking the tube tight and lighting up. He smoked and pondered the situation, not liking any of it.

  This act of torture was supposed to look like the work of Indians. But after only a hasty look-around, Bodine knew it was not. The men who had done this all wore moccasins, but they didn’t walk like Indians; they walked like what they were: white men. They had also stepped on a couple of branches, breaking them. No Indian would have done that, unless he was drunk. And there was no smell of whiskey in the air.

  Bodine finished his smoke and stood up. A tall, lean young man, with much of his weight in his chest and shoulders and arms. Just a shade over six feet and weighing one-ninety. A good-looking young man, in his mid-twenties. He wore walnut-handled .44 Colts, the handles worn smooth from use. In the boot, a Winchester .44, loaded full up with 17 rounds. Bodine carried a long-bladed bowie knife in a sheath behind the right-hand Colt, sharpened to a fare-thee-well. He shaved with it most of the time.

  He wore faded jeans, scuffed boots, and a buckskin shirt made for him by a squaw in his adopted Cheyenne tribe. They adopted him—in a way—when Bodine was just a young boy. He also wore a necklace of three multi-colored rocks around his neck, pierced by a leather thong.

  Bodine again looked at the body. He knew what he had to do and he didn’t want to do it. With a silent sigh, Bodine ground out his cigarette under the heel of a boot and stood up, walking to the body and pulling the naked man away from the nearly dead fire. He looked around, found the man’s clothing, and was just starting to go through them when he heard the horses coming.

  That would be the Army patrol he was scouting for. He waited until they came into view and waved them to a halt, walking over to them so they would not trample any sign he might pick up later.

&nb
sp; “Damned heathens!” Lieutenant Gerry spat the words. Gerry was new to the West, having been posted in Montana only a few months back. But it hadn’t taken him long to hate the Indians.

  “It wasn’t Indians,” Bodine told him. “White men did this.”

  “What!”

  “The scalping is all wrong. It was very carefully done. Indians usually just cut a line and then tear the scalp loose. And those aren’t Indian moccasin prints over there.” He pointed. ‘White men were in those moccasins. I haven’t started looking for other signs.”

  Gerry dismounted and walked to Bodine’s side. He glanced over at the tortured man and swallowed a couple of times. “Know him?”

  “No. But I know this . . .” Gerry looked at the scout.

  “Somebody didn’t like him very much.”

  Gerry looked hard at Bodine to see if the scout was kidding. He couldn’t tell. Bodine’s face was always impossible to read. Just like a damned Indian. And tanned just about as dark.

  Gerry had been briefed about Bodine on his first day at the fort. Colonel Travers had both complimented and cursed Bodine. “Bodine doesn’t have to work for us, Lieutenant. Although,” he was quick to add, “I’m glad he does. Bodine has money. His father owns probably the largest ranch in Wyoming Territory. Down on the Crazy Woman. Bodine has his own spread and runs his own cattle. His spread is on the Powder and butts into his father’s ranch.” Travers punched a large wall map with a finger. “Right there. Together, they control thousands and thousands of acres. Not only that, but they own it! They filed on some, proved it up and staked it out. They bought the rest and hold legitimate deeds.”

  “If he’s so wealthy, why does he work for the Army for fifty dollars a month?”

  “Best answer I can give you is this: because he wants to. I give Bodine very few orders. I suggest a lot of things to him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to do it. My adjutant, Major Dawson, gave Bodine a direct order one time. Bodine told him to stick it in his hat. He refuses to sign a contract with the Army.”

  “Maybe he can’t write?” Gerry suggested.

  Travers chuckled. “Bodine’s mother was trained as a schoolteacher, Gerry. He’s very well educated for a man raised on the frontier. He’s also an adopted member of the Cheyenne tribe. A blood brother to Two Wolves, who is the son of Medicine Horse.” He smiled at the startled expression on the young lieutenant’s face. “Yes, Gerry, that Medicine Horse. No one knows this country like Bodine. No one.”

  “But we’re at war with the Cheyenne!”

  “We’re at war with certain elements within the tribe. We are not at war with Medicine Horse, and I pray to God we never will be. Medicine Horse was educated back east; married a white woman from Vermont. They had one son before she died of fever. Two Wolves. Sam August Webster Two Wolves. His mother died when he was about nine. He can read and write and speak English, although he prefers his father’s tongue. He’s also a damned trouble-maker.”

  That prior conversation rolled through Gerry’s head as he watched Bodine cast for signs, walking in slow, seemingly aimless circles around the small clearing. He disappeared into the brush and moments later popped back out behind the cavalry, startling Gerry. Man could move like a ghost.

  “All their horses were shod. Which doesn’t mean a whole lot. Lots of Indians ride shod horses they’ve stolen.”

  “Murdering thieves,” the lieutenant said, before he thought.

  “It’s a game to them, Lieutenant,” Bodine corrected. “The taking of horses. And before the white man came along, many Indians didn’t kill unless forced to it. They counted coups. With a stick or club. And Indians didn’t invent scalping. The white man did. Bear that in mind. Toss the dead man across a saddle and come on. His horse is over there.”

  Bodine was on his mean-eyed stallion and gone before Gerry could mount up. It irked him. Lots of things irked Gerry about Bodine. He was supposed to be giving orders to the scout, not the other way around. Bodine would listen politely and attentively when Gerry outlined what they would do in the field. And then Bodine would do exactly the opposite.

  It was irritating! After all, Gerry was a West Point man. Which, he reflected sourly, meant about as much to Bodine as the hole you leave when you stick your finger in a stream.

  * * *

  The trail, which half the time Gerry could not see, led to a small settlement on the still ill-defined Montana/Wyoming border. The town, according to Colonel Travers, was a den of iniquity, populated by ladies best described as soiled doves, gamblers, thieves, foot pads, rustlers, murderers, and the like.

  Gerry had never been to the town of Cutter. Tell the truth, he was sort of looking forward to it.

  To say that Gerry was naive was understating it.

  The small patrol rode down the wide street, all the men conscious of eyes on them, and most of the eyes were anything but friendly.

  “We’ll lose the trail here,” Bodine said. “We might find the horses, we might even find the men. But that won’t give us anything that would stand up in any court of law. They’ll just say they found the body and came into town to report it. There is no law in Cutter, Gerry. None. So watch yourself.”

  “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Bodine,” the lieutenant answered testily.

  “Right.”

  A woman seated on the second-floor balcony of a saloon called the Kittycat called out to Gerry, suggesting some things she’d like to do with and for him.

  Lieutenant Gerry’s neck and face turned as red as the sun and Sergeant Tom Simmons, a grizzled veteran of many years on the frontier, had to struggle to keep from laughing out loud.

  “See!” a man yelled, pointing to the horse with the body of the tortured man lashed across the saddle. “I told you all what we seen.”

  “It’s that damn murderin’ half-breed and his bunch that did this!” another shouted.

  “They’re talking about Two Wolves?” Gerry asked.

  “Yes. And someone at the fort has been talking, as well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever set this thing up had to know the area we would be patrolling so we could find the body. Think about it.”

  “Everybody on the post knew. It might not have been deliberate.”

  “That’s true. I’m just wondering what Two Wolves has done this time to get everybody so stirred up.”

  They reined up in front of the combination dentist/barber/ undertaker’s building and dismounted. The same man filled all three jobs. A crowd began to gather, and they were a surly and profane lot.

  “Your show, Lieutenant,” Bodine said softly.

  “Anybody here know this man?” Gerry asked, raising his voice to be heard as Sergeant Simmons lifted the dead man’s bloody head with a gloved hand. He couldn’t lift him by the hair—he didn’t have any.

  “I seen him around a time or two,” a citizen said. “He drifted in here from Idaho, I think. Called hisself George.”

  “Any last name?”

  “Not that I ever heard.”

  The undertaker pushed his way through the crowd. “Does he have any coins in his pockets?”

  Gerry looked at Bodine. “A few greenbacks.”

  “That’ll do for a simple buryin’. Some of you boys get him into the back.”

  “You soldier boys come to get Two Wolves?” another asked.

  “We don’t know that Two Wolves had anything to do with this,” Gerry said. “We were on routine patrol when Bodine found the body.”

  Eyes shifted from the lieutenant to the scout. Not being a terribly talkative man, Bodine could spend several days in a town and leave without anyone knowing his name.

  But all knew his reputation. And it was no different in the rip-roaring, wide-open town of Cutter.

  Matt Bodine had killed his first man when he was fourteen. The man’s brothers came after the boy when he was fifteen. They got lead in Bodine, but when the gunsmoke cleared, Bodine was standing over their bodies. At sixteen, ru
stlers struck his father’s ranch the night before a trail drive was to start. Bodine’s guns put two more men in the ground and wounded another two. The drive went on as scheduled. At seventeen, Bodine was a man grown and went off to live with the Cheyenne for a year. He’d been spending forbidden time with them—sometimes weeks at a time—since he was just a boy.

  At eighteen he was riding shotgun for gold shipments. Four more men were buried after two unsuccessful attempts to rob the shipments. At nineteen, he began part-time scouting for the Army. That was in ’68, when everyone with any sense knew the white men were going to break the treaty with the Sioux. But to be fair, both sides violated the treaty.

  Between nineteen and twenty-five, the guns of Matt Bodine became legend in the west. But not just his guns, for Bodine’s fists were just as feared. He knew Indian-wrestling, boxing, and plain ol’ barroom brawling.

  “You Bodine, huh?” a man asked, sticking his unshaven jaw out belligerently.

  “That’s right.”

  “My name’s Simon Bull.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?” Bodine had heard of Bull. He was a fast gun and was just as good as his reputation.

  “It might someday.” Bull said mysteriously, then turned and stomped up the boardwalk, disappearing into a saloon.

  “You always try that hard to make friends?” Gerry asked Bodine.

  “See you sometime tomorrow,” was Bodine’s reply. Before Gerry could lift a hand, Bodine was in the saddle and gone.

  “Damn the man!” Gerry said. “His orders were to stay with the patrol.”

  “Did you hear them orders put like that personal, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Simmons asked.

  “Well . . . no.”

  “Bodine’s orders is usually to scout for the patrol. I ’spect that’s what he’s gone off to do.”