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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  BULLETS DON’T ARGUE

  A PERLEY GATES 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

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 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: 978-0-7860-4366-8

  Electronic edition: October 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4367-5

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4367-9

  CHAPTER 1

  Emma Slocum paused, thinking she had heard something outside the cabin. She tucked the blanket back over the sleeping baby in the crib her husband had built. It was late, past time when she had expected her husband to be home. He was often late to come home at night, but this was later than usual. Pausing again when she heard what she was sure was the sound of a horse approaching the cabin, she went at once to the door. “Dan?” she called out, wondering why he didn’t go straight to the barn to unsaddle his horse as he usually did.

  “It ain’t Dan,” Possum Smith answered her, “and we got to get outta here just as fast as we can.”

  She recognized the rider then as he approached the cabin, leading two horses, one of them saddled. Confused by his alarming statement, she asked, “Possum? Where’s Dan?”

  “Dan’s been shot,” Possum said, as he stepped down from the saddle, “and we’ve got to get movin’, ’cause he’s comin’ after us.”

  Stunned by his frank and unemotional tone, she questioned, “What are you talkin’ about? Who’s comin’ after us? Possum, where’s my husband?”

  “Emma, he ain’t comin’ home. Dan’s dead, shot by that yellow, low-down dog, Jack Pitt. And you gotta get your stuff together while I hitch up the wagon! Just grab whatever you can’t do without, ’cause I don’t know how much time we’ve got before Pitt figures out where I went. Grab all your clothes and anything you need to cook with, ’cause we ain’t comin’ back.” Horrified, Emma was caught in a fit of shock, unable to move, while her brain struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. “Emma, you and your baby are in danger!” Possum pleaded when he saw her confusion. “You’ve got to move!”

  “Dan’s dead?” she gasped, not willing to accept it, even though she had feared this day might come. “It’s that damn money, isn’t it? Where are we going?” she asked frantically.

  “I don’t know,” Possum answered impatiently, “just away from here. Now hurry!” Pitt had never been to Dan’s cabin, but he knew it was somewhere along this creek, and it wouldn’t take him long to find it. Finally impacted by the gravity of the situation, Emma spun around quickly, trusting that he was telling her the truth. Fearing for her and her baby’s safety, she hurried to do as Possum had instructed with no time to grieve her husband’s death.

  Possum ran to the shed and corral that served as a barn and hitched the two horses there up to the wagon. When that was done, he took a pitchfork and went to work on a pile of hay in the corner of the shed until he uncovered a canvas bag. After a quick look inside it, to make sure the contents were still there, he shoved it under the wagon seat. Then he took another look around to see if there was anything else he might need. Nothing more than a coil of rope, an axe, and a short-handled shovel caught his eye, so he threw them in the wagon, as well as the canvas cover for the wagon bed. Unwilling to take any more time, he climbed up into the seat and drove the wagon up to the front door of the cabin. A pile of blankets and bedding told him that Emma was following his instructions. He jumped down from the seat and threw the items she had gathered into the wagon. Then he went inside to help her gather more. When they had loaded all the pots and pans and what food supplies she had, there was only room for one more item. It came down to a choice between the one rocking chair and the baby’s crib. She was reluctant to leave the crib that Dan had built, but on Possum’s advice, she decided to take the rocking chair. “That young’un’s gonna grow outta that crib before you turn around twice, and you can rock him to sleep in that chair,” Possum said.

  He helped her up on the wagon seat, then handed the baby up to her. Before leaving, he went back inside to make sure the fire in the fireplace was dying out. As he explained to Emma when he climbed up into the wagon, it was an abandoned shack when Dan had found it. So he thought it only right to make sure it was still standing when the next drifter found it. With his two horses and Dan’s extra horse tied to the back of the wagon, Possum gave the horses a slap of the reins and they crossed over the shallow creek and headed out toward the road, a quarter mile away.

  A big full moon had already lifted above the far horizon by the time they struck the road to Dodge City. Possum was anxious to head south on the road in case Jack Pitt decided he might have gone to Dan’s cabin instead of his own shack east of town. Right now, he wasn’t sure if he was happy to see a full moon or not. It made it easier to avoid some of the rough spots on the well-travele
d road, but it might also make it easier for Pitt to pick out his tracks, if he did come this way, looking for them. He glanced over at the frightened young woman frequently, somewhat amazed that she was now quietly accepting this nightmarish interruption in her evening.

  Even though she had seemingly accepted this invasion into her home, Emma was not at all ready to dismiss her husband’s sudden death so easily. She and Dan had not known Possum Smith for very long, but she trusted the usually mild-mannered old man, who had been part of a three-man partnership with her husband and Jack Pitt. Possum was certainly older than either of his two partners, but it was difficult to guess his age, and he never volunteered it. From the age lines in his weathered face, and the long gray braid of hair resting between his shoulder blades, it was obvious that he had ridden many trails in his life. She trusted him because Dan had trusted him. It was Jack Pitt that both Dan and Possum had been wary of, and now their distrust had evidently been justified. From the very beginning, Emma had feared that the money was going to bring bad luck in some form, but she was not prepared to deal with it when now it had arrived in the form of her husband’s death. “Should we have turned the money over to the authorities?” she suddenly asked Possum. “Maybe we should do it now.”

  “No, no,” Possum was quick to reply. “It’s been too long, and we’d be held accountable for our share and Pitt’s share, too. We shoulda known Pitt wouldn’t keep our agreement not to spend any of that money till it had all blown over. Now he’s wantin’ to take our share. I knew it was bound to happen. Dan did, too. We both shoulda skipped town as soon as we found it.” He turned his head toward her and added, “Besides, you’re gonna need that money now that Dan’s gone. And the bank ain’t gonna miss it.”

  He turned his attention back to the horses, encouraging them to maintain the pace he had called for. Should have known better, he thought, trying to help the law. He thought back on that day when the bank was robbed, and he had volunteered to join the sheriff’s posse. He and Dan had decided, “What the hell . . .” They sure as hell weren’t busy doing anything else, so they joined half a dozen other volunteers and chased after the two bank robbers. West along the banks of the Arkansas River, they had raced, steadily closing the distance between them and the outlaws until they split up. He and Dan and another man, Jack Pitt, broke off and chased the robber south of the river. They caught up with the outlaw when his horse stumbled over a small gully and broke a leg. The rider was tossed, landing on his back. When the three possemen pulled up to him, he was still flat on his back. Possum ordered him to put his hands up, but before he had gotten the last word out, Jack Pitt shot him. “He was goin’ for his gun,” Possum remembered Pitt saying. That was his introduction to Pitt. He knew now that it should have been a warning as to the kind of man he was. There was a long moment of conscience upon finding the canvas money bag. With no one to witness it, Pitt immediately suggested they should keep it. “We can say there wasn’t no money on him,” he said. “Ain’t no way anybody can say there was.”

  Possum remembered the glances he and Dan had exchanged. It was obvious that both of them were hesitant to go along with Pitt’s suggestion. After all, it would make them as guilty of robbery as the man Pitt had just killed. At the time, however, a sack full of money was too much to turn their backs on. Times were tight and money was scarce. There was also the possibility of getting the same medicine the dead outlaw had received from Pitt, had they not agreed to his proposition. So they had hidden the money and carried the outlaw’s body back to join up with the sheriff and the rest of the posse.

  Pitt did most of the talking when they reported back to the posse, telling the sheriff that they had been forced to shoot the outlaw when he refused to surrender. He told him that the man they chased wasn’t carrying any bank money. And when they found out that the second outlaw had been killed as well, Dan and Possum were even more encouraged to keep quiet about the money they had hidden. A canvas bag, filled with money, was found with the man the sheriff had killed, so they assumed it was the whole sum stolen. Possum remembered the grin on Pitt’s face when they realized there was no one to say the outlaws had two sacks of money, no matter what the bank said.

  The three-way partnership started out all right, with all three men riding back together to the spot south of the Arkansas where they had buried the money. The money was counted and divided into three separate piles of eleven thousand, three hundred dollars each, more money than any of the three could imagine earning by honest means. They agreed then to go their separate ways, but to refrain from spending any of the cash until there was time for the robbery to become old news. Feeling a trusting kinship with young Dan Slocum, Possum had decided to hide his share of the robbery with Dan’s. They agreed it a good idea to avoid Jack Pitt, especially since witnessing his lack of hesitation in killing the helpless outlaw. It wasn’t long, however, until Pitt sought them out.

  Thinking back on it now, as he kept the horses to a fast walk, Possum blamed himself for possibly causing Dan’s death. The fault lay in the easy friendship that had resulted between them, when it might have been better had they not associated with each other at all. Had they not been sitting at a table in The Trail Driver, having a drink, they would not have run into Jack Pitt. And Dan would still be alive. It had been this feeling of guilt, and not his share of the money, that had caused him to come for Emma and the little one. The decision to be made now was, where should he go? He decided he would talk it over with Emma when they stopped to rest the horses.

  * * *

  As near as he could estimate, they had traveled close to ten miles, maybe a little more, when they came to a small creek. Thinking he would not likely find a better place to rest, he drove the horses about forty yards up the creek where he stopped the wagon. While Emma took care of the baby, Possum unhitched the horses and led them down to water. He left them to graze on the grassy bank of the creek while he gathered some limbs for a fire. He had a healthy flame going when he looked up to see Emma coming back from the trees after having answered nature’s call. “We’ll have to rest these horses for a little while,” he announced when she approached the fire. “I thought a little fire might go good right now, and I’ve got some coffee in my packs, if you want some.”

  “That would be good,” Emma said. “Tell me about Dan,” she was finally able to ask.

  “Well, it was just bad luck,” Possum said. “We was just havin’ a drink while we talked about startin’ us up a cattle ranch somewhere away from here, now that we had some money. Jack Pitt walked in. We wasn’t expectin’ to run into him. He said he was gonna head for Wichita, so we didn’t know he was still in Dodge. He was half drunk and talkin’ crazy about me and Dan takin’ more’n our share of the money. Well, Dan told him to quit shootin’ his mouth off about the money before somebody heard him.” Possum paused, as if reluctant to go on. “It was just like it was with that outlaw we caught up with, Pitt drew his .44 and shot Dan, without any warnin’ a-tall. I reckon he realized what he had done then, so he ran out the door.” He shook his head slowly. “I’m powerful sorry, Emma, I reckon Dan had no business foolin’ with people like me. He shoulda been home with his family.”

  Emma sat, calmly listening to Possom’s accounting of her husband’s death. It was a sad, heartbreaking story to hear, but there were no tears in her eyes, just a feeling of sorrow that she had become accustomed to. Her life had been defined by bad choices, choices that seemed to always result in disappointment and regret. She had never truly loved Dan Slocum. He was a good man and had stepped up to take her out of a bad situation. She gratefully said yes to his proposal of marriage. Dan was the youngest son of Zachary Slocum, owner of one of the biggest cattle ranches in North Texas, so she gladly accepted the opportunity for a good life for her away from Butcher Bottom. It was not to be, however, for Zachary Slocum was not happy when his youngest son wanted to wed a girl from Butcher Bottom, a small settlement of poor farmers. There resulted a clash between father and son that
ended with Dan and his bride striking out for Kansas. “I reckon we’d best decide where we’re headed,” Possum said, breaking her silence.

  She had no place to go, other than to return to her home. She had Dan’s share of the stolen bank money, but she had no idea what to do with it. “I don’t know of anyplace I can go except Butcher Bottom,” she said. “That’s the only place where I know anybody.”

  “Butcher Bottom,” Possum repeated, “that’s in Texas, ain’t it?” He had heard Dan refer to it, but not in a complimentary way. “Well,” he sighed, “if that’s where you need to go, I reckon I’ll try to get you there in one piece. Or maybe two pieces,” he added, with a glance at the baby.

  “You ain’t got no obligation to take me all the way to Texas,” Emma said. “I reckon I’ll just have to drive this wagon myself.”

  “No such a thing,” Possum replied at once. “I can’t let you start out all that way by yourself. What if you broke a wheel or somethin’? No, ma’am, I’d best take you to Texas.” He wasn’t all that enthusiastic about the idea, especially since they would be carrying all that money, but he couldn’t escape the feeling of guilt he had for Dan’s death. “I might not know exactly how to find Butcher Bottom, but Dan’s talked some about what part of Texas it’s in. We’ll get there, all right.” He shrugged. “I reckon we can just follow the Western Cattle Trail back down to Texas, then somebody oughta know where Butcher Bottom is. If they don’t know that, they might know where your daddy-in-law’s ranch is, if it’s as big as you say.”