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  The MORGANS

  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

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by J. A. Johnstone

  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.

  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: 978-0-7860-4787-1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4031-5 (eBook)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4031-9 (eBook)

  Chapter 1

  Arizona Territory

  The sudden hush that fell inside the cantina told Frank Morgan that something was about to happen. Long years of experience told him it wouldn’t be anything good.

  He lifted the cup of coffee in his left hand and took a sip. Most people who came into a cantina ordered tequila, mescal, or pulque. Whiskey, maybe. Beer, at the very least. Frank wasn’t much of a drinking man, though, and never had been. He preferred a phosphate or a good cup of coffee.

  This brew wasn’t particularly good, but it was recognizably coffee, and Frank had smiled and nodded to the fat, moon-faced bartender who’d poured it for him. The man had smiled, pleased by the acknowledgment.

  Now, wide-eyed with anxiety, he peered past Frank toward the arched entrance door that had a curtain of beads hanging over it to diffuse the hot sunlight and keep out at least a few of the flies.

  Unlike bigger saloons, a cantina like this didn’t have a mirror behind the bar, only shelves where bottles and jugs of liquor sat. So Frank couldn’t check out the reflection to see what had happened. The beads had clicked together for a moment, though, like a miniature set of castanets, so he knew someone had come into the cantina. The sudden quiet in the place told him it was someone who frightened the other customers.

  He set the coffee cup on the bar and half turned to his left so he could look over that shoulder. The move put his right hand and the holstered Colt on his right hip out of the view of whoever had just come in.

  Actually, two men had just strolled into the cantina, Frank saw, and as he watched, that pair split apart and a third man came in between them, almost as lean as an ax blade against the sun.

  Frank recognized what had just happened here. The first two had stepped into the cantina to check the place and make sure no imminent threat waited for the third man, who hadn’t come in until one of the others gave him the word. That made him the boss. Maybe the most dangerous of the trio. Hard to say at this point.

  All three wore gray, steeple-crowned sombreros, charro jackets, and tight pants. They might have been vaqueros, but vaqueros didn’t dress quite that well.

  “You know those hombres, amigo?” Frank asked the bartender, quietly enough that his voice didn’t travel far.

  “Sí, señor.” The moon-faced man swallowed hard. “The man in the middle is El Serpiente. The famous gunman.”

  “El Serpiente,” Frank repeated softly. The Snake. Probably because he was both quick and deadly, or at least fancied himself so. El Serpiente might be famous in the vicinity of this small settlement in the border country, but Frank had never heard of him.

  The lean gunman sauntered forward, flanked by the two burlier hombres. He asked in English, “Who owns that ugly dog outside?”—then repeated the question in Spanish.

  Frank stiffened at the mention of a dog. One of his trail partners was a big, wolflike cur who answered only to the name of Dog. Frank had left him outside the cantina along with his two saddle mounts, Goldy and Stormy, and the packhorse that carried his supplies.

  “That sounds like my dog,” he raised his voice in answer to El Serpiente’s question. From the corner of his eye, he saw the beads of sweat that suddenly popped out on the bartender’s round face.

  El Serpiente turned slightly so he faced Frank head-on as he said, “Eh, so, señor. I would like to buy the beast from you.”

  That surprised Frank a little. He said, “He’s not for sale, but why would you want to do that?”

  “The creature growled at me.”

  “You must have gotten too close to the horses,” Frank said. “They’re old friends, and he’s a mite protective of them.”

  El Serpiente’s chin lifted in defiance and anger.
r />   “I was merely examining the golden sorrel. He is a fine-looking animal, and I gave thought to buying him. Then the cur threatened me.”

  “Goldy’s not for sale, either,” Frank said, “but I apologize for Dog growling at you.” He made it a habit not to look for trouble. A mild word sometimes turned away hard feelings and prevented a killing. Frank had seen enough killing in his life.

  El Serpiente made a curt gesture with his left hand. His right hovered near the butt of the low-slung revolver he wore.

  “It is not enough! I must buy the animal. You see, señor, I respect other people’s property. I intend to shoot the beast, but first I would pay you a fair price for him.”

  Frank drew in a slow, deep breath, then said, “You’d shoot a dog for growling at you?”

  “No one is allowed to disrespect El Serpiente. Not even a dog. Now, name your price, señor, so we may proceed. But I warn you, I will make this offer only once. Refuse it, and the dog will die anyway, and you will have nothing.”

  Frank didn’t have any more mild words in him. His voice was hard as flint now as he said, “Dog’s not for sale.”

  El Serpiente took a deep, angry breath, too, at being defied this way. In Spanish, he snapped at his companions, “Watch this old fool. I will deal with the dog. If he tries anything, do not kill him. Save him for me.”

  Frank’s Spanish was fluent enough for him to understand what the gunman said. In English, he said, “Move and I’ll kill you, snake.”

  El Serpiente’s minions had been smiling and chuckling at the idea of the stranger at the bar trying anything. True, Frank Morgan was a big man, tall and broad shouldered, but his face was weathered and considerable gray streaked the dark hair under his brown Stetson. He had the look of an old saddle tramp who had been riding the grub lines for more than thirty years.

  Actually, it had been more than thirty-five years since Frank Morgan had come home to Texas following the Civil War, and he had spent nearly all of that time drifting. He had seen all there was to see of the West, from below the Rio Grande all the way up to the snowy wastes of Alaska, from the vast, slow-moving waters of the Mississippi to the pounding waves of the Pacific under rocky, tree-topped cliffs.

  His restless nature had led some to call him the Drifter. He had another name, though, given to him because of his blinding speed and deadly accuracy with the Colt Peacemaker he wore, and because so few of his breed still lived, here in the early days of the twentieth century.

  The Last Gunfighter.

  El Serpiente and his men knew none of that. All they knew was that some foolish viejo had challenged them, and therefore he must be killed swiftly and mercilessly, so none of the other sheep around here would get the idea that they might stand up to El Serpiente, too.

  The three men clawed for the guns on their hips.

  Since El Serpiente was the one with the reputation, Frank figured he was probably the fastest member of the trio. So as he palmed out the Colt and finished his turn, he brought the gun up and triggered it just as it came to bear on El Serpiente’s slender form. To Frank’s keenly honed senses, he didn’t seem to move all that fast, but the gun in his hand bucked and roared just as El Serpiente’s weapon cleared leather.

  The bullet punched into the Mexican gunman’s chest and knocked him backward with such force that he flew through the entrance and caused the strings of beads that formed the curtain to swing wildly. The frantic clicking provided a counterpoint to Frank’s next two shots, one for each of El Serpiente’s companions. They had managed to get their guns out, but, like their leader, they had no chance to raise and fire the weapons before Frank’s lead ripped through their bodies.

  One man folded up and collapsed immediately. The other did a jittery little dance on tiptoes that lasted for a couple of seconds before his knees buckled and he pitched forward to land facedown on the cantina’s hard-packed dirt floor.

  Frank stalked forward, Colt poised and ready if he needed to fire again, but it took him only a moment to see that that wasn’t going to be necessary. He used a boot toe to roll the two men inside onto their backs and saw their sightlessly staring eyes.

  El Serpiente’s thin, bloody chest rose and fell spasmodically as he lay on his back, mostly in the sun. His arms were flung out limply at his sides. Labored breath rasped in his throat. He wasn’t long for this world, Frank knew.

  He was coherent enough to stare up at Frank and gasp, “This . . . this is not right! You are . . . an old man . . .”

  “How do you reckon I got to be this old?” Frank said.

  El Serpiente didn’t answer. He sighed, the gush of air turning into a grotesque rattle as it came out, and he was gone.

  Frank replaced the three rounds he had fired from the Colt and then pouched the iron. As he turned and stepped toward the bar, he saw the bartender and the other half-dozen patrons in the cantina staring at him with a mixture of awe and horror on their faces. Frank had seen that expression too many times in his life. His skill with a gun couldn’t help but impress people, but the thought of human lives being snuffed out so swiftly and easily made their stomachs go cold and queasy.

  “This El Serpiente . . . he was a bad man? I’m not talking about his gun-handling, but rather the way he conducted himself.”

  The bartender’s head bobbed up and down as he said, “Sí, señor, a very bad man. Un hombre mucho malo. And the other two, they were no better. El Serpiente, he would goad men into fights they had no chance of winning. He and his men took what they wanted . . . food, drink, supplies . . . women . . . and girls. They never cared who they might hurt.”

  Frank smiled faintly.

  “Reckon I won’t lose any sleep over killing them, then.”

  “Oh no, no, señor,” the bartender bubbled. “No one will mourn them. In more than one house tonight, prayers of thanksgiving that they are gone will ascend to the Lord.”

  Frank said, “I’m obliged to you for the coffee,” and started to reach into his pocket for a coin to pay for it.

  The bartender held up his pudgy-fingered hands and waved them back and forth.

  “No, señor, no. Your money, she is no good here. Not today, and not ever again, as long as you remain here among us.”

  “Afraid that won’t be very long. I’m just passing through on my way to Tucson.” Frank lifted a finger to the brim of his hat. “Adios.”

  When he stepped back outside, the big, wolflike cur was sniffing around the body of El Serpiente.

  “Always know I can trust you to be a good judge of human nature, Dog,” Frank told the shaggy animal. “I’m glad you didn’t bite that fella, though. If you had, you might’ve come down with hydrophobia.”

  He untied the reins of the three horses and swung up into the saddle, which at the moment was on the back of the big golden sorrel. With Dog bounding out ahead, Frank rode northwest toward Tucson to answer the summons that was taking him there.

  Chapter 2

  San Francisco

  Not for the first time, Conrad Browning thought what a shame it was that beating the hell out of somebody wasn’t considered a proper tactic for business negotiations.

  Some people sure had it coming, whether he was allowed to give it to them or not.

  “We’ll shut down the docks, by God,” Raymond Moffatt said as he clenched his right hand into a fist and slammed it down on Conrad’s desk. “Then your ships can’t unload at all, you fancy-pants young scalawag! What do you think of that?”

  Coolly, Conrad said, “I think if you do that, the families of a lot of the men you claim to represent will go hungry.”

  “Claim to represent?” Moffatt repeated. “What in blazes do you mean by that?”

  “There is no . . . what do they call it? No federation or union of dockworkers. You walk in here, start issuing demands, and claim that the men have gotten together and elected you to speak for them, but what means do I have of knowing whether or not that’s true?”

  “Are you callin’ me a liar?” Moffatt sa
id with a murderous scowl on his face. Both hands were clenched into fists now as he loomed over Conrad’s desk. Over on one side of the room, at a smaller desk, Conrad’s secretary watched with a frightened expression on his face. He looked like he wanted to bolt out of the office.

  Conrad put his hands flat on the desk and pushed himself to his feet. Standing, he was several inches taller than Moffatt, and although it was difficult to tell in the elegantly tailored brown tweed suit he wore, he was powerfully built as well, although the burly older man probably outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds.

  “I’m not saying you’re a liar, Mr. Moffatt, but I’m saying I’d like confirmation of your bona fides.” The sandy-haired young man smiled. “That’s why I’m going down to the docks to talk to the men myself.” He nodded to the secretary. “Phillip, apologize to anyone who has an appointment with me this afternoon and tell them that I’ll return as soon as possible.”

  Moffatt stared at Conrad in apparent disbelief and said, “You’re goin’ down to the docks?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? The company owns several warehouses in the district, and our cargo ships tie up there frequently, as you just pointed out yourself.”

  Moffatt sneered and shook his head.

  “A fella like you in a place like that . . . well, that’s just askin’ for trouble, Browning. Real workin’ men don’t like it when soft-handed pencil pushers come around botherin’ ’em with a lot of foolish questions.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Conrad said as he snagged a dark brown homburg hat from the hat tree just inside the office door. The recently crowned English king, Edward VII, had made that particular style of headgear popular when he was still a prince. Conrad didn’t like it as well as a Stetson, but it was more suitable as business attire.

  And he had made himself a promise that he would try to be “suitable.” There had been a time in his life when nothing had been more important than being stylish and proper.