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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  BY THE NECK

  A STONEFACE FINNEGAN 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 ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 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: 978-0-7860-4605-8

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4606-5 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4606-6 (e-book)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rollie Finnegan, two-decade veteran of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, almost chuckled as he descended the broad stone steps of the county courthouse. Not an hour before, he’d taken no small pleasure in seeing the arched eyebrows of the jury men when he’d been called to the stand.

  He suspected it would be a long time before the defendant’s city-bred whelp of a lawyer would drag him up on the stand again. Finnegan had seen even more surprise on the pocked face of the inbred mess that was Chance Filbert, defendant and self-proclaimed “Lord of the Rails.”

  Trouble was, “Lord” Filbert was gifted with bravado and little else. He also liked to swill tanglefoot, and at Corkins’ Bar he’d yammered about his impending robbery of the short-run mail train from Mason’s Bluff to Randolph. It hadn’t worked out that way.

  Chance had managed to clamber aboard the train with the help of a fat cohort named Kahlil, who’d somehow mounted the rumbling car’s fore platform first. Not receiving any response to their rapping on the door of the mail car—the train was by then cranking along on a flat, the grinding steel pounding for all it was worth and the men inside didn’t hear the ruckus—Chance sent two shots at the door handle.

  One bullet managed to free up the lock. The second found its way into the right temple of little Sue-Sue Campbell, who had been obeying her harried father, Arvin, one of the two workers sorting mail. He’d had no choice but to take her along on the run that morning, because her mother was deep in the agonies of pushing out a little brother for sweet Sue-Sue, who until then had been an only child. And so would her brother, Arvin Jr., be thanks to Chance Filbert and his eagerness to avoid a legal occupation.

  Filbert’s greasy, snaky head had entered the car before the rest of him, and though he didn’t see the slumped girl to his left, he did see two men in the midst of sorting the mail. With hands full of letters, their jaws dropped, and they stared at the appearance of the homely man and the fat, long-haired one behind him, both with guns leveled.

  In court, Rollie wore his twenty-dollar pinstriped, storm-gray boiled-wool suit, and capped it with a matching gray topper, what he referred to as his city hat. He recalled when the salesman had set it on his head while standing before the tall looking glass how much like his long-dead father he looked. He also had to admit that the salesman had been correct—the hat made the suit, and the entire affair looked damn good on him.

  Though he’d rather tug on his old fawn Boss of the Plains, like he did most every day, Stoneface Finnegan did not ever miss a court date. He had vowed long ago to always see a case through, from top to bottom, front to back, and inside out. He knew, not unlike his old man once more, if he didn’t do everything in his ability to nail shut the door on each and every lawbreaker and miscreant he nabbed, he’d be setting himself up for a month’s worth of sleepless nights, all the while grinding down his molars and enduring his ticked-off-with-himself attitude. And at fifty-four, he didn’t need that crap in his life anymore.

  If wearing a fancy suit and shaving himself close and pink and oiling his hair and waxing his mustache (which he did each morning anyway) helped the prosecuting attorneys send the devils to the prison or the gallows, then he’d tug on the suit and do the job.

  There had been ample and irrefutable damning evidence and painful, tearful testimony from the dead girl’s parents. There had also been the precise recounting of events by A
gent Rollie Finnegan. Despite this, in a last-minute courtroom effort, Moe Chesterton, attorney-at-law for Chance Filbert (and closet dice roller, much to the detriment of his anemic bank balance, had stood before the assemblage, red-faced and thumbing his lapels in an effort to draw attention to what he hoped were persuasive words.

  He’d told the crowd stinking of sweat and the weary jury that Stoneface Finnegan had once more put his charge, in this instance Chance Filbert, in a most dire situation. Most dire, indeed. Yes, it was true, Chesterton nodded. And he could prove it. The lawyer’s pink jowls quivered and drooped suitably. “Hold up your hands, Mr. Filbert . . . if you are able.”

  With much effort, the smirking killer had managed to raise his palsied hands aloft. Soon, they dropped to the mahogany tabletop before him and his head bowed, exhausted from the strain.

  Rollie had rolled his eyes then, from his seat in the first aisle behind the prosecution. Not for the first time in the proceedings did he wish he had let his Schofield have its way with Chance when he’d finally caught up with him in that creekside cave in Dibney Flats. All that nonsense could have been avoided. Waste of time, waste of money.

  But the law, was the law, and Rollie told himself if he had wanted to break it, he should have taken the owlhoot trail instead of tracking scofflaws after the war. Or gone into politicking, making laws to suit his base whims like those oily rascals in capitol towns everywhere.

  Instead, on that thundering, wet morning in the cave two months before, after tracking the outlaws for a day and a night, the snout of Rollie’s Schofield parted the desiccated viny roots draping the entrance. It was then he’d seen Chance Filbert seated inside on a low boulder. He’d watched the oily man a moment, uncertain of Kahlil’s whereabouts in the dim hole. The close air, scented of warm muck, had forced thoughts of thick, slow snakes and crawling things.

  Rollie had seen Chance and fat Kahlil ride there with intent, then dismount, tie their horses, and enter the cave. They’d lugged in what they made off with from the train, a small arch-top wooden trunk and a squat strongbox wrapped in riveted strap steel. They’d left their horses lashed to a low, jutting branch, saddled and without reach of water. The poor beasts swished and nipped and stamped at a plague of biting flies.

  For minutes, Rollie had wondered if Chance was the only man alive in the cave. Of the two, Rollie had seen only Chance venture out with increasing frequency as the hours dragged by. He’d poked his malformed face between the mossy vines, then, satisfied he was not surrounded, would saunter out more loosely each time, limbered, no doubt, by drink. Of Kahlil, there had been no sight or sound.

  Unless the man had a steel bladder or there was a back entrance to the cave, which from Rollie’s reconnoiter of the region didn’t seem likely, he bet himself a bottle of Kentucky’s finest that Chance had knifed his slop-gutted partner.

  Rollie had won the bet when he’d looked inside and saw a massive, unmoving dark form off to the left. Not even snoring. To his right and babbling in a whiskey stupor, Chance sat atop that boulder before the flop-topped trunk, torn papers all about the muck-rock floor—intimate letters unlikely to make it to their destinations, orders for goods long saved for by some lonely bachelor dirt farmer or farmwife helpmate, or perhaps awaited countersigned deeds to land and goods—all pillaged for cash by the stunted, drunken Chance Filbert.

  The strongbox had fared better and appeared to be intact. Rollie hadn’t heard shots, Chance’s favored means of opening locked things. Maybe he had been afraid of a bullet whanging back at him, though Rollie had not credited the man with such forethought. Likely he was saving the strongbox for dessert and pilfering the easiest pickings first.

  Subduing the killer had been a simple matter of pushing his way through the clingy green vines and thumbing back the Schofield’s hammer. The hard, solid clicks would make a dead man rise. Except for Kahlil. Rollie had quickly inspected the dark shape enough to note it had indeed been slit open. He’d smelled the rank tang of blood mixed with the dank earth stink of the cave. He was glad he’d decided to keep his hat on his head, tugged low though it was, mashing his ears in an undignified manner. Beat having something with too many legs, or too few, squirming on his head and down the back of his shirt.

  “Who you?” said Chance when his vision and his head had together in a wobble.

  For a moment Rollie had considered replying, but he was not fond of excessive chatter. Why speak when you could act? The unspoken motto had served him well for years. He reckoned it was proven enough to keep on with. He stepped forward quick—one, two strides—while Chance made a sloppy grab for his own gun. His fingertips barely touched the nicked walnut grips as the butt of a Schofield mashed his hat into his head above the left ear.

  Chance knew no more until he found himself lashed over the saddle of Kahlil’s horse. The saddle and the horse under it smelled bad. Why was he on his dead pard’s horse? He could see his own, perfectly good horse, walking along, tied, behind this one. But hold on there. Fat Kahlil was tied to it, dripping all manner of black-looking goo and cultivating a cloud of bluebottles that rose and dipped together as if they were training for a stage presentation.

  But even that was the least of Chance Filbert’s concerns.

  He’d known for certain his head had somehow been cleaved in half and was leaking out what he was certain were the last of his precious brains onto the heat-puckered earth. Nothing less could account for the volleys of cannon fire thundering inside his skull.

  The pain doubled as the day had ground on, one pounding hoof step after another. He’d tried several times to speak to the vicious brute who’d ambushed him, but his strangled pleas, which came out as little more than gasps and coughs, brought new washes of agony that ended in his throbbing hands lashed behind his back.

  The man on the horse ahead showed him only his back, tree-trunk stiff and wide-shouldered. Who was he, and why did he think it was acceptable to bust in on a man when he’d been tucked away in a cave, tending his own business?

  The farther they walked, the angrier Chance became. He’d regained more control of his throat, but the lack of water, a desperate need at that point, rendered his usually loud voice to little more than a hoary whisper.

  Several yards ahead of Chance, Rollie had struck a match and set fire to the bowl of his briar pipe, packed full of his least favorite tobacco, a rank, black blend of what tasted like the leavings of an angry baby and a gut-sick drunkard. The thick clouds of smoke would drift back into Chance Filbert’s face and gag him. With hours to go yet, Rollie had two pouches of this special blend. He had smiled then, for a brief moment.

  In the courtroom two months later, Moe Chesterton had asked Rollie what he thought about the fact that Chance Filbert’s hands had been rendered all but useless by the too-tight restraints Rollie favored—smooth fence wire.

  “It’s a shame,” said Rollie.

  “A shame,” repeated the lawyer. “And, Mr. Finnegan, would you care to enlighten us as to why you feel this . . . this avoidable affront ... is a shame?”

  “A man without hands is near useless.”

  “Near useless, but not wholly useless? Hmm. I wonder what you could mean by that.”

  Rollie looked at Chance. “I assume he has his pecker. I guess he could be of use to somebody. Likely will in prison.”

  That had caused a stir and Rollie had nearly smiled, but not quite. He knew that Judge Wahpeton, indulgent though he may be, was not inclined to tolerate uproar in his courtroom. His gavel rapped hard and his bushy eyebrows arched like the wings of some great, riled eagle. The courtroom hushed.

  “Any talk of prison will be of my own making, Agent Finnegan.” The judge surprised everyone by stepping down from his dais and walking across the front of the room. Without warning, he pivoted and lobbed a palm-size brass ashtray toward the sneering defendant. The man snatched it from the air with ease.

  Too late, Chance realized his mistake. He dropped the ashtray to the tabletop and fluttered his han
ds before him like two agitated sparrows.

  “I think not, Mr. Filbert,” said the judge as he mounted the steps to his dais and cleared his throat before proceeding to pass his commandments to the jury.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The jury took shy of five minutes to render its verdict.

  And so, with Judge Wahpeton’s final words, and then the mallet-strike echoing in his head and warming his heart, Rollie “Stoneface” Finnegan stood outside, waiting for a fringe topped surrey to pass by. It ferried a fetching woman wearing a long-feathered hat that looked to be more feather than hat, with a veil that didn’t hide the pretty smile he imagined was meant for him. He was tempted to wave her down, strike up a conversation perhaps.

  He crossed the street and recalled the reason he was walking west—yes, he could almost smell the heady aromas from Hazel’s Hash House. The eatery was two streets over and one lane back behind the courthouse. His nostrils twitched in anticipation of hot coffee and the singular pleasures of Hazel’s sticky, sweet pecan pie, a slice as wide as it was tall and deeper than the tines of a fork. He’d earned it, after all, helping cinch tight the legal noose on Chance Filbert’s pimpled neck.

  The bum’s death wouldn’t bring back the seven-year-old girl or even Kahlil, but it damn sure made Rollie’s day a good one. Then came the pretty lady in the surrey, and he was about to indulge in a slice of heavenly pie and a couple cups of hot coffee before tucking into his next assignment. Yes, the day was turning out to be one of the best Rollie Finnegan had had in years.

  He warbled a low, tuneless whistle as he angled down the alleyway that would cut off an extra block’s worth of walking.

  He never heard the quick figure catfoot up behind him, never felt the long, thin blade slide in. It pierced the new wool coat, the satin lining, the wool vest, the crisp white shirt, the undershirt, the pink skin. The blade was out, then in again for a second quick plunge into his back, high up, caroming off a rib and puncturing the left lung, before retreating for a third slide in.