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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  BLOOD AND BULLETS

  A FIRCSTIGK WESTERN

  WILLIAM W. 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

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  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: 978-0-7860-4786-4

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4025-4 (eBook)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4025-4 (eBook)

  CHAPTER 1

  For eleven months out of the year, anyone who found themselves passing through Jepperd’s Ford might look around and wonder what needed to be “forded” in this godforsaken, sun-blistered corner of West Texas.

  The answer could be found only during the handful of days when the spring rains came hard and every gully and low-lying pocket of land for miles around was awash in muddy torrents except for the hump of rocky ground where the meager collection of ramshackle buildings stood.

  It was late on such a day when Charlie Gannon and Josh Stallworth rode into Jepperd’s Ford. With a black, boiling sky overhead and sheet after sheet of rain slicing into them, the sight of the gray, sodden structure that bore a faded SALOON sign above its entrance was a thing of beauty to the eyes of the two drifting cowpokes. After tying their horses to the hitch rail out front, they slogged hurriedly inside.

  “Close the damn door and skin outta them drippin’-wet slickers before you swamp the place! Why don’t you just carry in a couple bucketfuls of water and pour ’em all over while you’re at it!”

  This warm welcome came from a diminutive old crone behind the plank bar. She couldn’t have stood more than five feet tall, her chin only a few inches above the warped, cigarette-scorched planks nailed down over the tops of three wooden barrels. She had iron-gray hair pulled tightly back into a bun, eyes as black as two polished marbles set in a doughy face with a cruel slash of a mouth from which a corncob pipe poked out of one corner.

  She wore a faded blue man’s work shirt (or a boy’s, considering her small frame), tucked into tan corduroy trousers held up by red suspenders and in turn tucked into wine-colored cowboy boots. There was nothing feminine about the shape filling out these clothes; they could have been hung on a cedar log for the same effect.

  A gunbelt was buckled around her middle, with a black-handled Schofield revolver riding prominently in the holster.

  “There are wooden pegs on the wall there for hangin’ up your gear,” the crone pointed out, her tone mellowing somewhat. “Then come on over here and belly up. I expect you’ll be wantin’ a slug of something to warm your innards.”

  “Likely more than just a slug, Grandma,” said Charlie. “But you are definitely on the right track.”

  “I got rye, corn squeezin’s, tequila, and beer,” came the response. “And if you call me Grandma again, you pup, I got a wheelful of .45 caliber you can get a slug out of for free.”

  “Take it easy, take it easy,” Charlie said, holding up his hands, palms out, as he and Josh strode up to the bar. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “State your business then, and no sass.”

  “We’ll have rye. And you can leave the bottle,” said Josh.

  “A shot I’ll pour on trust. To put up a bottle, I’ll need to see some money.”

  Josh pulled a wad of damp bills from his pocket and laid them on the bar. “There you go. Take what you need.” He was a bandy-legged specimen, medium height, with a potbelly pushing the front of his shirt taut, a bulbous nose, and an unruly thatch of brown hair, some of which was always spilled out from under the front brim of his hat. He
was quick to flash a big, toothy smile, and the laugh crinkles around his deep-set blue eyes were testimony to this and to his generally good nature.

  The wad of bills on the bar top produced a smile of sorts from the crone, too, but hers was short-lived and neither bright nor toothy. After withdrawing proper payment, she set a bottle of rye whiskey and two glasses in front of the new arrivals.

  “There ya be. Wet your gullets. But don’t let that popskull cause you to go rowdy on me.”

  Charlie reached eagerly for the bottle and began filling the glasses, saying, “Gettin’ rowdy is the farthest thing from our minds.”

  Charlie was half a head taller than Josh, elongated and narrow all over—from his beanpole frame to his blade of a face dominated by a hatchet-sharp nose. He had suspicious little eyes, a weak chin, and limp blond hair that hung in greasy strands down the back of his neck and over his ears. When he tipped back his head to toss down a shot of red-eye, the oversized lump of his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his stringy throat like there was some kind of frantic bug or small wild animal running back and forth under the whisker-stubbled skin, trying to escape.

  The two cowpokes slapped their emptied glasses back down on the bar top in unison. This time it was Josh who reached for the bottle to pour some more.

  “If you don’t mind me askin’,” he said, filling each glass to the brim, “you got a name you’d rather be called than just ‘barkeep’?”

  The crone frowned, considering. “I can live with ‘barkeep. ’ But, if you’re gonna hang around a spell, reckon you might as well make it what most folks hereabouts call me. Ma. Ma Speckler.”

  Charlie paused with his drink raised partway to his mouth. “Wait a minute. I called you ‘Grandma’ a minute ago and you threatened to plant a slug in me. But now you’re sayin’ it’s okay for us—along with everybody else—to go ahead and call you ‘Ma’?”

  “I reckon that skinny head of yours don’t have room for a lot of thinkin’ before you run off at the mouth, is that your problem?” Ma said sharply. “In the first place, I might be old enough to be a mother to some of your kind who come through here. But that damn sure don’t make me old enough to be no grandmaw! In the second place, your pard there was courteous enough to ask before he started bein’ too forward. That makes a difference, if it ain’t too hard for that skinny head of yours to understand.”

  “He understands, Ma,” Josh was quick to assure her, throwing in one of his most charming smiles for good measure. “Ain’t that right, Charlie?”

  Charlie, who spent a lot of time being self-conscious about his narrow face and head and didn’t like being reminded of it by others, replied somewhat sullenly, “Like I said, we ain’t here to start no rowdiness.”

  “Well, see to it you don’t, then.”

  “I’ll tell you what is rowdy, though,” said Josh after tossing down his second drink, “and that’s the doggone weather out there. How long does a storm like this usually last hereabouts?”

  “This is the spring,” said Ma. “Could last the rest of the night, could last another day or two. Even if this one lets up, you can bet there’ll be another toad-strangler right on its heels. Then, after a couple, three weeks, it’ll all be over and everything will turn dryer than a fried coyote turd. A drop of rain, except for maybe during a little piece of winter, will be scarce as hen’s teeth until next spring again.”

  “In other words,” said Charlie, “ain’t much hope for us ridin’ outta here before tomorrow unless we can grow fins and teach our horses to swim.”

  “I wouldn’t even count too strong on tomorrow,” said Ma.

  “Damn the luck,” Charlie grumbled.

  “Hey, it could be a whole lot worse,” Josh reminded him. “Leastways we’re somewhere warm and dry. Wasn’t only an hour or so ago we were out there in the middle of nothing with no sign of shelter in sight and water rushin’ through every gully and low spot in any direction we looked.”

  “Where you fellas from, to allow yourselves to get caught in these empty parts in the middle of the rainy season?”

  “We been workin’ for a rancher up Oklahoma way for the past couple years,” Josh told her. “Nice-sized spread. Not too big, room to grow. But then, right after Christmas, the rancher got stomped powerful bad by an ornery ol’ bull. Left him ridin’ a bed for the rest of his days, which probably won’t be many. With him out of commission, his wife and kids wanted nothing to do with keepin’ the ranch goin’. So they sold it off in pieces to some surroundin’ ranchers who already had full crews of their own, leavin’ me and Charlie and a few other fellas all of a sudden out of jobs with no, whatyacall, prospects in the area. So that put us on the drift, lookin’ for a new spot to settle.”

  Ma’s expression soured. “Even through the rain, I expect you saw that there ain’t much in the way of decent ranchin’ to be found in these parts.”

  “To tell the truth, we wasn’t really payin’ attention,” Charlie told her. “You see, we’ve lately come to agreement on a particular destination we’re aimin’ for.”

  “Place about three days’ ride from here. We came through there one time in the past, back before we landed in Oklahoma,” Josh explained. “Peaceful little valley stretched out below the Vieja Mountains. A sprawl of good grassland with ranchin’ outfits that are growin’ bigger all the time. And they got a nice, quiet little town there, too, called Buffalo Peak . . .”

  CHAPTER 2

  It was storming in Buffalo Peak. Hard. It had been, on and off—mostly on—for the past three days. People used to clear skies, wide-open spaces, and plenty of elbow room were starting to feel hemmed in. Cramped and irritable. Nerves were raw and getting rawer.

  “I say it’s mostly on account of this blasted rain,” declared Malachi “Beartooth” Skinner as he tramped down Trail Street, the town’s main drag, keeping to the boardwalks as much as possible, covering the open, sloppy alleyways in long, hopping strides.

  “The rain sure as hell ain’t helpin’, I won’t argue that,” responded Elwood “Firestick” McQueen, striding along beside him.

  Both men wore black, shiny wet rain slickers and wide-brimmed, flat-crowned hats. Firestick was a powerfully built individual in his early fifties, a shade over six feet, square-jawed, with pale blue eyes and streaks of gray at his temples. On his feet he wore high moccasin boots with fringed cuffs. Beartooth was equally tall, a year or two younger, leaner of frame, with a wedge-shaped face, intense dark eyes, and a dimpled chin that served to somewhat offset the harder angles of his features.

  “But ever since Sterling brought in soiled doves and started makin’ ’em available at his place,” Firestick continued, “the outbreaks of trouble there have been steadily on the rise, rain or no rain. And his latest girl, especially—that strawberry blonde—is a trouble-causin’ little teaser who’s ratcheted everything up another notch strictly on her own.”

  “So you figure we’re gonna find she’s behind the trouble goin’ on there again tonight?” said Beartooth.

  Firestick grunted. “She’ll factor in somehow. I’d bet on it.”

  “A troublemakin’ tease and this damn endless rain,” muttered Beartooth as a low, lonely rumble of thunder rolled across the nighttime sky. “Not a good combination.”

  By this point they had stepped up onto the stretch of boardwalk that ran in front of a large two-story building with a tall sign that proclaimed in red-trimmed gold lettering: THE LONE STAR PALACE SALOON. The sign was propped on the lip of a narrow strip of shingled awning that jutted out over the entrance and extended across the front of the building. Huddled under this slice of protection, bunched to either side of the batwing doors, were half a dozen men wearing anxious expressions. A couple of them clenched half-empty mugs of beer in their fists.

  “You’re none too soon, Marshal,” said one of the mug holders. “There’s trouble brewin’ in there and it’s primed to bust wide open any second.”

  “Those High Point wranglers are drunk and riled an
d takin’ turns eggin’ each other on,” warned another.

  “Drunk and riled ain’t all those young rannies are,” somebody else added snidely. “They’re hump-backed for that new gal Sterling’s got in there, and they ain’t ready to back away without gettin’ a turn at what they came for.”

  “Well I ain’t drunk or hump-backed, neither one,” grumbled Firestick, “but I’m damn well riled at bein’ drug out in this rotten weather. So you fellas stay here out of the way and we’ll have this tamed down in short order.”

  Before pushing through the batwings, Firestick took a second to peel open his slicker, revealing the town marshal’s star pinned prominently to the front of his shirt. Beartooth did the same, revealing a deputy’s tin, as well as the fact he was carrying a double-barreled Greener twelve-gauge shotgun.

  The two lawmen entered the Palace in the same long, quick strides that had carried them down the street. Once in, they promptly fanned out, Firestick taking a couple steps toward the side of the room along which ran a rather ornate bar, Beartooth angling a little wider the other way, over toward where some round-topped gaming tables were spaced out.

  The scene froze for a moment as all eyes swept toward them. In that instant, Firestick and Beartooth were able to grasp the situation.

  Two of the gaming tables had card players seated at them, apprehension and varying degrees of concern showing on their faces. Behind the bar, Earl Sterling, the unflappable, always precisely groomed owner-proprietor of the Palace, stood with his hair uncharacteristically mussed and a trickle of blood leaking from one corner of his mouth.

  Also behind the bar, though a few steps down from Sterling, was Frenchy Fontaine, the cool French beauty who served as hostess/entertainer for the establishment and was generally presumed to be Sterling’s lover.

  At the far end of the room, near the bottom of the stairs that led up to the second floor, a man sprawled unconscious. His cleanly shaven bullet head and blocky build identified him as Arthur, the Palace’s main bartender and bouncer. Lying on the floor beside him was the thick-barreled billy club—its many dents and nicks signifying frequent use—that Arthur resorted to when things started to get out of hand. It looked like this time he hadn’t resorted to it quite soon enough.