They Came to Kill Read online

  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

  Matt Jensen

  MacCallister

  The Red Ryan Westerns

  Perley Gates

  Have Brides, Will Travel

  The Hank Fallon Westerns

  Will Tanner, Deputy U.S. Marshal

  Shotgun Johnny

  The Chuckwagon Trail

  The Jackals

  The Slash and Pecos Westerns

  The Texas Moonshiners

  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  THEY CAME TO KILL

  A PREACHER & MACCALLISTER WESTERN

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and 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

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  Teaser chapter

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 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: 978-0-7860-4418-4

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4419-1 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4419-5 (e-book)

  CHAPTER 1

  Somewhere west of El Paso, 1850

  The sweating men, pale under their sunburns, were about to die, and they knew it. They crouched in a shallow gully that ran along a sharp sandstone rise too steep to climb. Twenty men now, because two of their number lay out there some thirty yards in front of the gully, their corpses baking in the blistering midday sun. Numerous arrows stuck up from the backs of their blue uniform jackets. They had been the slowest of foot when it came to running for cover, and they had paid the price.

  Lieutenant Damon Charlton sat with his back against the side of the gully and worked the cork out of the neck of his canteen. He tipped his head back and took a long swallow of the tepid water. No point in worrying about saving it now.

  “Lieutenant, w-what are we gonna do?” one of the men asked.

  Charlton thought his name was Weatherbee, Wellington, something like that.

  What are we going to do, Private Weatherbee or Wellington or whatever in bloody blue blazes your name is? We’re going to die, that’s what we’re going to do. Quickly and relatively painlessly if we’re fortunate. Screaming in agony if we aren’t.

  But of course he couldn’t say that, so Charlton responded, “This is a good defensive position, Private. We’ll continue to hold it until the hostiles tire of this and depart.”

  “But . . . but our horses, sir. Our horses ran away. The Apaches must have ’em by now. We’re at least eighty miles from El Paso. We’ll never make it back there on foot.”

  Knowing what he did of the Apaches, Charlton thought it likely most of those army horses would wind up in the savages’ stewpots. They were a nomadic people but didn’t travel much by horseback. He had been told by an old-timer that the Apaches trusted their own legs not to give out more than they trusted those of horses. They could run all day when they needed to.

  Trying to keep his voice level and calm, the lieutenant said, “We’ll deal with that when the time comes, Private. Right now, the most important thing is to hold our position, as I said.”

  He heard grumbling along the line and knew some of the men were angry with him. To their way of thinking, he had led them into this deathtrap, and they weren’t wrong.

  But he’d had no choice. His orders had been to take this patrol into the wasteland west of the western tip of Texas, into what had been the Mexican territory of Nuevo Mexico until the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo a couple of years earlier, following the end of yet another war.

  Officially it was New Mexico Territory, owned and controlled by the United States, although the boundaries were fuzzy. Some Texans thought it should be part of that state. The Mexicans still claimed territory in the southern part of the region. But those were just words in documents and lines on maps that could not be pointed to out where the sun beat down and rattlesnakes and red savages lurked behind every rock.

  The politicians in Washington, Mexico City, and Austin squabbled over those words and map lines, while soldiers rode out into the harsh landscape to meet death.

  Charlton corked the canteen. He had no idea how long the Apaches would take in getting around to killing all of them. He supposed he might have time to get thirsty again later, so he might as well save some of the water after all.

  He heard a low, monotonous sound and realized that one of the men was praying. He almost snapped then, almost shouted at the man that prayer wasn’t going to do any good, that there was no one to hear it in this de
solation, but Charlton swallowed the words at the last second. Losing his temper wouldn’t do any real harm—after all, their situation couldn’t get any worse, could it?—but it wouldn’t accomplish any good, either. So why waste his breath?

  He leaned his head back against the sandstone and closed his eyes. The sun was so bright that didn’t make much difference, but his eyelids cut the glare a little. As soon as he did that, however, the same images played out in his mind’s eye.

  The patrol had stopped to rest the horses, when suddenly arrows began to come seemingly out of nowhere. Several of them struck horses and the animals went down screaming. Charlton had spotted the gully and recognized it as cover, so he ran toward it, knowing that they didn’t have time to mount up. Besides, where would they go? It seemed like the hostiles were everywhere around them, judging by the way so many arrows filled the air, coming from every direction . . .

  Even though he hadn’t shouted any orders, the rest of the men had streamed after him and followed his example in leaping into the gully, all except the two who didn’t make it and lay there feathered with arrows. Shots blasted, the echoes rolling across the arid landscape, although the men had fired blindly, unable to contain the reaction to being attacked by invisible foes. The gunfire died away as the arrows stopped coming . . .

  It seemed as if hours had passed since then, although Charlton knew that in reality it was more like half an hour. He didn’t see any reason to pull out his pocket watch and check the time. It hadn’t taken him long to understand what a bad fix they were in. The horses that hadn’t been killed in the ambush had run off, spooked by the gunfire and the smell of blood. What kind of army mounts were those, he had asked himself bitterly. On foot, unable to venture out from the scant cover, all the patrol could do was wait. Maybe . . . maybe there would be a miracle. Maybe the Apaches would tire of this standoff and leave. Maybe another patrol would come along. Maybe—

  With a harsh, incoherent yell, one of the soldiers suddenly scrambled up out of the gully and sprinted across the flats. Another man cried, “Come back here, you fool!”

  The running man jerked his head around and called over his shoulder, “I’ll get the horse—”

  An ugly, guttural sound interrupted that declaration of vain hope as an arrow skewered the man’s neck from right to left. He stumbled, twisted, turned all the way around so he was facing back toward the gully. Crouched there, the men saw the torrent of blood that flooded from the soldier’s open mouth. Another arrow struck him from behind and drove all the way through his body so the flint head erupted from his chest.

  That was wasteful. The neck wound was already fatal. That wild thought careened through Lieutenant Damon Charlton’s mind, then he told himself it didn’t matter. No doubt the Apaches would retrieve all their arrows once every member of the patrol was dead—which might not be much longer.

  Shrill, yipping war cries came from left and right. The Apaches who had crawled up, unseen, until they were within a few yards of the gully leaped up and charged. Brandishing knives, they dived into the gully.

  Earlier, Charlton had taken his Colt Dragoon revolver from its holster and placed it on the ground beside him so it would be handy. That saved him the few seconds it would have taken to withdraw the weapon from the flapped holster. He dropped the canteen, snatched up the Dragoon, and eared back the hammer. With the blood thundering through his veins, he didn’t even notice the Dragoon’s cumbersome weight as he aimed it at the closest Apache and pulled the trigger.

  The cap-and-ball’s heavy boom hammered Charlton’s ears. Powder smoke gushed from the muzzle, and for a second he couldn’t see the charging Indian. Then the view cleared enough for him to spot the Apache, stumbling as blood welled from the hole in the middle of his chest. The man’s momentum carried him a couple more steps before he pitched forward and landed facedown on the very lip of the gully. His arm hung over the edge. His hand still clutched the knife he’d intended to bury in Charlton’s flesh, but as the lieutenant watched, the man’s nerves stopped working, the muscles relaxed, and the knife slipped from the Apache’s grip, dropping to the sandy ground.

  All that happened in a heartbeat. Charlton cocked the Dragoon again as he shifted his aim. Another Apache came in from the left. Charlton fired. He was a little high this time. Instead of striking the Indian in the chest, the .44 round blew away a fist-sized chunk of his head. That dead man landed on the ground beside the first Apache Charlton had killed.

  Elsewhere in the gully, several soldiers had managed to fire their muskets, but the weapons were unwieldy and not well suited for close work. They were actually better as clubs when it came to hand-to-hand fighting so the men used them that way as they battled frantically for their lives. A few of the Apaches went down with shattered skulls.

  But there were too many of the savages. They plunged their knives into the soldiers again and again. Men screamed as blood darkened their already dark blue uniforms even more. Some had their throats cut, causing crimson fountains to geyser out from the gaping wounds. The gruesome melee spread along the gully.

  Lieutenant Charlton twisted to his right. A few feet away, one of the Indians had hold of a soldier’s throat with his left hand while he used the knife in his right to stab the luckless trooper in the chest. The Apache was enjoying this brutal murder too much. He didn’t notice Charlton aiming at him until it was too late. The Apache turned his head toward the lieutenant just in time to receive the bullet through his open, yelling mouth. It threw him backward in a lifeless sprawl.

  Instinct turned Charlton back to the left. The Dragoon roared again, and a savage doubled over as the slug punched deep into his guts.

  The revolver’s cylinder held two more rounds. Charlton had an extra, loaded cylinder in his pocket, but he knew he would never have time to switch them out. He started to tremble with the knowledge of his impending death. But he still had those two rounds, he reminded himself. It took two hands to control the weapon, but he cocked and lifted the Dragoon and shot another savage in the chest. The man flew backward with arms and legs flailing.

  Five shots, five dead hostiles, Charlton thought. He probably would have gotten a medal for this, if anyone had ever known about it. If he hadn’t been destined to have his bones bleach in the pitiless sun, his fate unknown and therefore not mourned.

  The Apaches were notorious for torturing captives, he reminded himself. He had one round left in the Dragoon, and the time had come for him to put it to its best use.

  He pressed the muzzle against his throat, under his chin. His thumb fumbled for the hammer.

  Something crashed into him from the right, and the Dragoon flew out of his hand. As he lay on his side, he cried out and reached for the revolver where it landed on the ground a few feet away, but strong hands pulled him away and rolled him onto his back. A dark shape loomed over him, blotting out the sun. The man drove a knee into Charlton’s belly, sickening him and pinning him to the ground. His pulse boomed inside his head like a drum as he watched the Apache lift a knife above his head. The weapon hung there for a second, poised for a killing stroke.

  In that heartbeat, which seemed to stretch out for an eternity, Charlton tasted the dirt in his mouth, felt its gritty sting in his eyes. He heard the shrieks of his men as they were slaughtered. He saw the sun reflect off the knife blade, took note of the brass hilt, the bit of bone handle showing where the Apache’s sinewy fingers weren’t wrapped around it, the round brass pommel on the end.

  That wasn’t a crude knife fashioned by some primitive, he thought. It was a white man’s blade, doubtless taken from some corpse. And it was going to claim another life.

  Instead, the Apache suddenly reversed the knife as he brought it down, and the brass pommel struck Lieutenant Damon Charlton between the eyes rather than the blade sheathing itself in his heart. The impact was like an explosion in Charlton’s brain, a burst of red that flared brighter than the sun before fading quickly into an all-encompassing black.

  CHAPTER
2

  MacCallister’s Valley, Colorado, 1852

  Jamie Ian MacCallister brought the Sharps rifle smoothly to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The rifle’s thunderous boom blended with the big cat’s scream as it launched itself toward Jamie from the rocky knob above him.

  The heavy-caliber bullet caught the mountain lion in the chest, but even though it was a killing shot, it wasn’t enough to deflect the beast’s flight. Jamie was a big man, but not big enough to withstand the impact of well over a hundred pounds of killer cat. The hurtling body crashed into Jamie and knocked him backward off the ledge.

  Claws ripped through Jamie’s sheepskin coat and raked his flesh. Dying jaws snapped together well short of his throat, instead of ripping it out as the mountain lion had intended. As man and cat both tumbled down the rocky slope, Jamie got his hands against the beast’s bloody chest and shoved it away from him. He rolled a few more yards before he was able to grab hold of something and stop his out-of-control plunge.

  It was a good thing he did. Less than ten feet away, a cliff dropped off sheer. The mountain lion’s body slid over the brink and plummeted a hundred feet to crash through the pine branches below.

  Breathing a little hard, Jamie clung to the rock he had grabbed, looked around for a second handhold, and got a grip on another outcropping. The slope was steep, but once he caught his breath, he climbed it without much trouble, heading up toward the ledge he’d been moving along when the big cat jumped him. He ignored the burning from the scratches the claws had left on his broad, powerful chest.

  His Sharps had caught on the rough ground not far from where he’d dropped it when the mountain lion knocked him off his feet. He was glad to see that. He wouldn’t have to climb all the way around to that lower level to retrieve it, as he would have if it had gone over the cliff. A fall from that height might well have damaged the rifle beyond repair, too.