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  Bounty Hunter

  ( Luke Jensen - 1 )

  William W. Johnstone

  J. A. Johnstone

  The last days of the Civil War. With Richmond under siege, Confederate soldier Luke Jensen is assigned the task of smuggling gold out of the city before the Yankees get their hands on it - when he is ambushed and robbed by four deserters, shot in the back, and left for dead. Taken in by a Georgia farmer and his beautiful daughter, Luke is nursed back to health. Though crippled, he hopes to reunite with his long-lost brother Smoke, but a growing romance keeps him on the farm. Then fate takes a tragic turn. Ruthless carpetbaggers arrive and - in a storm of bullets and bloodshed - Luke is forced to strike out on his own. Searching for a new life. Hunting down the baddest of the bad...to become the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived.

  LUKE JENSEN, BOUNTY HUNTER

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE WITH J. A. JOHNSTONE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  PROLOGUE

  A rifle bullet smacked off the top of the log and sprayed splinters toward Luke Smith’s face. He dropped his head quickly so the brim of his battered black hat protected his eyes. A splinter stung his cheek close to his neatly trimmed black mustache.

  Luke looked into the sightless, staring eyes of the dead man who lay next to him. “Those amigos of yours are getting closer with their shots, José. Too bad for you that you’re not alive to watch them kill me. Reckon you probably would’ve enjoyed that.”

  José Cardona didn’t say anything. A bullet hole from one of Luke’s Remingtons lay in the middle of his forehead, surrounded by powder burns. Most of the back of his head was gone where the slug had exploded out.

  More shots rang out from the cabin about a hundred yards away, next to the little creek at the bottom of the slope. The sturdy log structure had been built for defense, with thick walls and numerous loopholes where rifle barrels could be stuck out and fired.

  Luke had no idea who had built the cabin. Probably some old fur trapper or prospector. Those mountains in New Mexico Territory had seen their fair share of both.

  Currently, it was being used as a hideout for the Solomon Burke gang. Luke had been on the trail of Burke and his bunch for several weeks. There was a $1,500 bounty on Burke’s head and lesser amounts posted on the half-dozen owlhoots who rode with him. If Luke was able to bring in all of them, it would be a mighty nice payoff for him.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t look like things were going to work out that way. Luke had tracked the gang to the cabin and had been crouched in the timber up on the hill overlooking the creek, trying to figure out his next move, when someone tackled him from behind, knocking him out into the open. They rolled down the hill together, locked in a desperate struggle, even as the man screeched a warning to the others at the top of his lungs.

  The big log, which had also rolled about twenty feet down the hill when it toppled sometime in the past, brought the two men to an abrupt halt as they slammed into it. Luke barely had time to recognize the bandito as Cardona from drawings he had seen on wanted posters when he realized the man was about to bring a knife almost as big as a machete down on his head and split his skull wide open.

  Without having to think about what he was doing, Luke palmed out one of his Remingtons, eared back the hammer as he jammed the muzzle against Cardona’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

  The point-blank shot blew Cardona away from him, and the dead outlaw flopped onto the ground behind the log. Luke had rolled over and started to get up when a bullet had whipped past his ear. Instinct made him drop belly down behind the log. A second later, more rifles opened up from the cabin and a volley of high-powered slugs smashed into the fallen tree. If it hadn’t been there to give him cover, Luke would have been shot to pieces.

  As it was, he was pinned down on the slope. The trees above him were too far away. If he stood up and made a dash for them, Burke and the others in the cabin would riddle him with rifle fire. Trying to crawl up there would make him an even easier target. The grass was too short to conceal him.

  He was stuck with a dead man for company, and it was only a matter of time until some of those varmints slipped out of the cabin and circled around to catch him in a crossfire. Luke’s craggy face was grim, in spite of the ghost of a smile lurking around his mouth.

  In plenty of tight spots during the years he’d spent as a bounty hunter, he had always pulled through somehow. But he had known his luck was bound to run out someday.

  After all, he had already cheated certain death once. A man didn’t get too many breaks like that.

  From time to time, he rose up long enough to throw a couple shots at the cabin, but not really expecting to do any damage—too long range for a handgun. His nature wouldn’t let him die without a fight, though. He could put up a better one, if his Winchester wasn’t still in the saddle boot strapped to his horse, a good hundred feet upslope. Might as well have been a hundred miles.

  “Blast it, José, I must be getting old, to let a clumsy galoot like you sneak up on me,” Luke said, keeping his eyes on the cabin.

  Cardona had been a big, burly man, built along the lines of a black bear. Like all the other men in Solomon Burke’s gang, he’d had a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty. He had killed seven men that Luke knew of during various bank and train robberies, and was probably responsible for more deaths in addition to those. But he wouldn’t be killing anybody else.

  Luke took some small comfort from that. He tracked down outlaws mostly for the bounties posted on them, and he wasn’t going to lie about it to himself or anybody else. It pleased him to know, because of him, men such as Cardona were no longer around to spread suffering and death across the frontier.

  More bullets pounded into the log. One tore all the way through it and struck a rock lying on the slope, causing the bullet to whine off in a ricochet and bringing a thoughtful frown to Luke’s face. He realized the log had been lying there long enough to be half-rotten in places. He holstered the Remington he was still holding and drew a heavy-bladed knife from its sheath on his left hip. Attacking the log with the blade, he hacked and dug at the soft wood.

  It didn’t take him long to break through and see what he’d been hoping to see. The log was partially hollow. Luke began enlarging the opening he had made and soon realized the hollow part ran all the way to one end of the log. He could see sunlight shining through it.

  It took fifteen minutes of hard work to carve out a big enough hole for him to fit his head and shoulders through. By the time he was finished, sweat was dripping down his face.

  He sheathed his knife and looked over at Cardona. “Adiós, José. If I see you again, I reckon it’ll probably be in hell.”

  Luke wormed his way through the opening into the hollow log. Down below in the cabin, the outlaws hadn’t been able to see what he was doing. He could only hope none of them had snuck around to where they could observe him. If they had, he was as good as dead.

  He began shifting his weight back and forth as much as he could in those close confines. He felt insects crawling on him. His nerves twanged, taut as bowstrings. The log began to rock back and forth slightly. Bunching his muscles, he threw himself hard against the wood surrounding him. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard a faint grating sound as the log shifted.

  Suddenly, it was rolling.

  He let out a startled yell, even though rolling the log down the hill was exactly what he’d been trying to do. Up and down switched places rapidly.

  With nothing between the log and the cabin to stop it, the crazy, bouncing, spin
ning, dizzying ride lasted only a few seconds.

  The log crashed into the side of the cabin with a loud cracking sound just as he had counted on. Luke bulled his way out of the broken trunk, pulling both Remingtons from their cross-draw holsters as he did so.

  He was on his feet when one of the outlaws appeared in the doorway, unwisely rushing out to see what had happened.

  Luke shot him in the chest with the left-hand Remington. The slug drove the owlhoot back, making him fall. His body tangled with the feet of the man behind him. Luke blasted that hombre with the right-hand gun, then pressed himself against the cabin wall and waited. The men inside couldn’t bring their guns to bear on him from those loopholes, and the log walls were too thick to shoot through. If anybody tried to rush out through the door, he was in position to gun them down. And, if the door was the only way out, he had them bottled up.

  Of course, he couldn’t go anywhere, either. But a stalemate was better than being stuck behind that log and his enemies having all the advantage.

  As the echoes of the shots rolled away through the mountain valleys, a charged silence settled over the area. Luke thought he heard harsh breathing coming from inside the cabin.

  After a few tense minutes, a man called out. “Who are you, mister?”

  “Name’s Luke Smith.” He wasn’t giving anything away by replying. They already knew where he was.

  “I’ve heard of you. You’re a bounty hunter!”

  “Am I talking to Solomon Burke?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who are the two boys I killed in there?”

  Burke didn’t answer for a moment. “How do you know they’re dead?” he finally asked.

  “Wasn’t time for anything fancy. They’re dead, all right.”

  Again Burke hesitated before saying, “Phil Gaylord and Oscar Montrose.”

  “José Cardona’s dead up on the hillside. I blew his brains out. That’s nearly half your bunch gone over the divide, Burke. Why don’t you throw your guns out and surrender before I have to kill the rest of you?”

  That brought a hoot of derisive laughter from inside.

  “Mighty big talk, Smith. You step away from that wall and you’ll be full of lead in a hurry. How in blazes are you gonna kill anybody else?”

  “I’ve got my ways.” Luke looked along the wall next to him. One of the loopholes, empty now, was within reach.

  “We’ve got food, water, and plenty of ammunition. What do you have?”

  “Got a cigar.”

  “Well, go ahead and smoke it, then,” Burke told him. “It’ll be the last one you ever do.”

  Luke kept his left-hand gun trained on the doorway. He pouched the right-hand iron and reached under his coat, bringing out a thin, black cigar. He bit off the end, spit it out, and clamped the cylinder of tobacco between his teeth. Fishing a lucifer from his pocket, he snapped it to life with his thumbnail. He held the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed until it was burning good. “Smell that?”

  “Whoo-eee!” Burke mocked. “Smells like you set a wet dog on fire.”

  “It tastes good, though,” Luke said. “I’ve got something else.”

  “What might that be?” Burke asked.

  Luke took another cylinder from under his coat. Longer and thicker than the cigar, it was wrapped tightly in dark red paper. A short length of fuse dangled from one end. Luke puffed on the cigar until the end was glowing bright red, then held the fuse to it.

  “This,” he said around the cigar as the fuse began to sputter and spit sparks. He leaned over and shoved the cylinder through the empty loophole. It clattered on the puncheon floor inside the cabin.

  One of the other men howled a curse and yelled, “Look out! That’s dynamite!”

  Luke drew his second gun and swung away from the wall as he extended the revolvers and squared himself up. As the outlaws tumbled through the door, trying to get away before the dynamite exploded, he started firing.

  They shot back, of course, even as Luke’s lead tore through them and knocked them off their feet. He felt the impact as a bullet struck him, then another. But he stayed upright and the Remingtons in his hands continued to roar.

  Solomon Burke, a fox-faced, red-haired man, went down with his guts shot to pieces. Dour, sallow Lane Hutton stumbled and fell as blood from his bullet-torn throat cascaded down the front of his shirt. Young Billy Wells died with half his jaw shot away. Paco Hernandez stayed on his feet the longest and got a final shot off even as he collapsed with blood welling from two holes in his chest.

  That last bullet rocked Luke. He swayed and spit out the cigar, but didn’t fall. His vision was foggy, because he’d been shot three times or because clouds of powder smoke were swirling around him, he couldn’t tell. The Remingtons seemed to weigh a thousand pounds apiece, but he didn’t let them droop until he was certain all the outlaws were dead.

  Then he couldn’t hold the guns up anymore. They slipped from his blood-slick fingers and thudded to the ground at his feet.

  I might not live to collect the bounty on these men, but at least they won’t hurt anybody else, he thought as he stumbled through the cabin door. The single room inside was dim and shadowy.

  The cylinder he had shoved through the loophole lay on the floor near a table. The fuse had burned out harmlessly. The blasting cap on the end was just clay and the “dynamite” was nothing more than a piece of wood with red paper wrapped around it. Luke had used it a number of times before. Outlaws tended to panic when they thought they were about to be blown to kingdom come.

  Ignoring the fake dynamite, he stumbled across the room. Sitting on the table was the thing he had hoped to find inside.

  It took him a couple tries before he was able to snag the neck of the whiskey bottle and lift it to his mouth. Some of the liquor spilled over his chin and throat, but he got enough of the fiery stuff down his throat to brace himself.

  He leaned on the rough-hewn table and tried to take stock of his injuries. He’d been hit low on his left side. There was a lot of blood. A bullet had torn a furrow along his left forearm, too, and blood ran down and dripped from his fingers. The bullet hole high on his chest was starting to make his right arm and shoulder go numb.

  He needed to stop the bleeding before he did anything else. With little time before his hands quit working, he pulled the bandanna from around his neck and used his teeth to start a rip in it. He tore it in half and managed to pour some whiskey on the pieces. He pulled up his shirt, felt around until he found the hole in his side, and shoved one wadded-up piece of the whiskey-soaked bandanna into the hole.

  But that was just where the bullet had gone in. Wincing in pain, he located the exit wound and pushed the other piece of bandanna into it.

  That left the hole in his chest. All the gun thunder had deafened him for a few moments, but his hearing was starting to come back. He listened intently as he breathed, but didn’t hear any whistling or sucking sounds. The slug hadn’t pierced his lung, he decided. That was good.

  The bullet hadn’t come out, either. It was still in there somewhere. Not good, he thought. Fumbling, he pulled his knife from its sheath and used the blade to cut a piece from his shirttail. Lucky he didn’t slice off a finger or two in the process. He upended the bottle and poured whiskey right over the wound, then bit back a scream as he crammed the piece of cloth into the hole.

  That was all he could do. His muscles refused to work the way he wanted them to. He had to lie down. He took an unsteady step toward one of the bunks built against the side walls. The world suddenly spun crazily around him. The floor seemed to tilt under his feet. His balance deserted him, and he crashed down on the puncheons, sending fresh jolts of pain stabbing through him.

  He felt consciousness slipping away from him and knew if he passed out, he probably wouldn’t wake up again. He tried to hold on, but a black tide swept over him.

  That black surge didn’t just wash him away from his primitive surroundings. To his already fevered mind
, it seemed to lift him and carry him back, back, a bit of human flotsam swept along by a raging torrent, to an earlier time and a different place. The darkness surrounding him was shot through with red flashes, like artillery shells bursting in the night.

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  The bombardment sounded like the worst thunderstorm in the history of the world, but unlike a thunderstorm, it went on and on and on. For long days, that devil Ulysses S. Grant and his Yankee army had squatted outside Richmond, pounding away at the capital city of the Confederacy with their big guns. Half the buildings in town had been reduced to rubble, and untold numbers of Richmond’s citizens were dead, killed in the endless barrages.

  And still the guns continued to roar.

  Rangy, rawboned Luke Jensen felt the floor shake under his feet as shells fell not far from the building where he stood. It had been one of Richmond’s genteel mansions, not far from the capital itself, but recently it had been taken over by the government. One particular part of the government, in fact: the Confederate treasury.

  Luke was one of eight men summoned tonight for reasons unknown to them. They were waiting in what had been the parlor before the comfortable, overstuffed furniture was shoved aside and replaced by desks and tables.

  In the light of a couple smoky lamps, he glanced around at the other men. Some of them he knew, and some he didn’t. The faces of all bore the same weary, haggard look, the expression of men who had been at war for too long and suffered too many defeats despite their best efforts.

  Luke knew that look all too well. He saw it in the mirror every time he got a chance to shave, which wasn’t very often these days.

  For nearly four long years, he had worn Confederate gray—ever since the day he had walked away from the hardscrabble farm tucked into the Ozark Mountains of southwestern Missouri and enlisted. Behind him he’d left his father Emmett and his little brother Kirby, along with his mother and sister.