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  LAST STAGE TO EL PASO

  A RED RYAN 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

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Teaser chapter

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2022 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: 978-0-7860-4896-0

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the late summer of 1889, a six-horse team brought the Abbot and Morrison mail stage safely home to San Angelo . . . with two dead men in the box.

  “How many does that make?” Captain Anton Decker said.

  Long John Abbot looked miserable. Stunned. His bearded face ashen. “Six,” he said. He shook his head. “I can’t believe Phineas Doyle and Dewey Wilcox are dead. Just like that . . . dead.”

  “Believe it, they’re all shot to pieces,” Major Lewis Kane, the 10th Cavalry doctor, said. Gray-haired with a deeply lined face, he didn’t appear too old to be a doctor but was well past his prime as an army officer. He climbed down from the box, shook his head, and added, “There’s nothing I can do for them. They look like they’ve been dead for several hours.”

  Captain Decker, at twenty-seven, the youngest company commander in Fort Concho, was somewhat less than sympathetic. He badly wanted a name as an Indian fighter, but the Plains tribes were subdued and there was little glamour in fighting Apaches. “I’ll report the incident to Colonel Grierson but I’m sure he’ll agree that this is a civilian matter,” he said.

  “The army could help me round up the road agents that are responsible for my six dead,” Abbot said.

  “As I said, I believe it’s a strictly civilian matter,” Decker said. “Perhaps if your stages were carrying army payrolls we would’ve taken an interest, but since they were not, it’s unlikely Colonel Grierson will become involved, especially after the 10th Cavalry moved out and left us so undermanned.”

  “I’ll talk to the county sheriff,” Abbot said. “But he won’t do anything.”

  “Try him. He might round up a posse or something.”

  Abbot laid bleak eyes on the soldier. “He’ll sit in his chair with his feet on his desk, drink coffee, and give me sympathy, not a posse.”

  “That’s just too bad,” Decker said. He saluted smartly. “Your obedient servant, Mr. Abbot. Now, see to your dead.”

  * * *

  “Two more, Long John,” said Max Brewster, a small man dressed in buckskins, dwarfed by Abbot’s six foot six and maybe a little more height. “On the El Paso run like the other four.”

  Brewster had once been a first-rate whip until the rheumatism in both hands done for him. Now he wore a plug hat and his stained and ragged buckskins and helped around the Abbot and Morrison stage depot. He favored a pipe that belched smoke that smelled bad.

  “Phineas Doyle dead, murdered,” Abbot said, shaking his head. “He was the best whip in Texas, bar none.”

  “And afore him, it was me,” Brewster said. “Leastwise, that’s what folks said.”

  “I ain’t gonna dispute that, Max,” Abbot said. He was a slightly round-shouldered man wearing a sweat-stained hat, a white collarless shirt, narrow suspenders, and black pants tucked into mule-ear boots. A man who never carried a gun, h
e now had a Remington tucked into his waistband, a sure sign that the death of his men had shaken him to the core.

  “A gray stage,” Max Brewster said after a while. He shook his head. “Now, that’s unlucky. The Indians say like black, gray is no color at all and it can betoken loss and sadness. There are some Arapaho, and Utes as well, who would rather freeze to death than use a gray army blanket. It disturbs the hell out of them.”

  “So, what are the other drivers saying?” Abbot said.

  “I just left the Alamo saloon and it’s all folks are talking about,” Brewster said. “They’re saying three drivers and three messengers shot dead and not a bullet hole to be found anywhere in the stage is mighty strange. I reckon that’s why they’re calling the coach the Gray Ghost. Some say it’s haunted and it was the restless spirit of Phineas Doyle that drove it back here to the depot.”

  “That’s foolish talk,” Abbot said. “It’s a coach like any other.”

  “No, sir, it’s a coach like no other,” Brewster said. “It’s a death trap, just ask Frank Gordon and Mack Blair, Steve Tanner and Lone Wolf Ellis Bryant, and now Phineas Doyle and Dewey Wilcox.”

  “They’re all dead,” Abbot said, irritated. “I can’t ask them anything.”

  “And they’re all dead because of the Gray Ghost,” Brewster said. “Long John, it was your last stage to El Paso. You ain’t never gonna find another driver or shotgun guard to work for you.”

  Abbot watched as the undertaker and his assistant lowered the bodies from the seat of the coach, bloody corpses with blue faces, open eyes staring into nothingness. Phineas Doyle’s gray beard was stained with blood and there was a wound that looked like a blossoming rose smack in the middle of Dewey Wilcox’s forehead.

  The undertaker, a sprightly skeleton dressed in a broadcloth suit with narrow pants and a black top hat tied around with a wide taffeta ribbon, the ends hanging over his skinny shoulders, laid the corpses on a flat wagon and then said, his voice like a creaky gate, “Same as the other four deceased, Mr. Abbot?”

  “Yeah, Silas, board coffins but clean them fellers up nice for viewing,” Abbot said. “The womenfolk like that.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Silas Woods said. His eyes moved from Long John to the stage. “Gray,” he said. “Now, that’s unusual, a gray stage.”

  “I know,” Abbot said.

  “Gray as graveyard mist,” the undertaker said. “Why gray?”

  “A canceled order,” Abbot said. “I was told it was originally destined for a count in Transylvania, a country in eastern Europe somewhere. The coach is worth eighteen hundred dollars and I got it for fourteen hundred.”

  “You didn’t get yourself a bargain,” Woods said. He shook his head. “No, sir.”

  Abbot watched the undertaker’s wagon leave, drawn by a black mule. His great beak of a nose under arched black eyebrows gave Long John the look of a perpetually surprised owl. He turned and said to Brewster, “If I can’t find a driver, I’m out fourteen hundred dollars and out of business.” He thought for a moment and said, “What about Buttons Muldoon?”

  “He’s working for Abe Patterson,” Brewster said. “Muldoon’s messenger is a young feller by the name of Red Ryan who’s right handy with a gun and they say fear doesn’t enter into his thinking. But I don’t think those two will switch, and even if they did, they won’t come cheap.”

  “All I can afford is cheap, the cheaper the better,” Abbot said.

  Brewster gave the man a long, speculative look and then said, “By the way, Abe Patterson is in town. He’s over to his depot.”

  “What’s that to me?” Abbot said.

  Brewster smiled. “Long John, Patterson is made of money. Some folks say he’s so rich he’s got a half interest in the whole of creation.”

  “Made of money, huh?” Abbot said.

  “Got a big, turreted mansion house up San Angelo way and a young, high-yeller wife to go along with it. A lively-stepping filly like that costs a man plenty and ol’ Abe sure spends plenty on her.”

  Long John brightened. “Here . . . Max . . . you’ve given me an idea.”

  “I figured as much,” Brewster said.

  “Sure, Patterson is made of money. Like you said, everybody knows that. Hell, I can probably unload the stage. Abe won’t pass up a bargain like that.”

  “How much, Long John?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much are you willing to take for the Gray Ghost?”

  “I think maybe a thousand.”

  “Think again,” Brewster said. “How much?”

  “Nine hundred?” Abbot said, his face framing a question.

  “Seven hundred and fifty and let him talk you down to seven hundred,” Brewster said. “Abe will dicker and he’s good at it.”

  “That’s half what I paid for it,” Abbot said. A thin whine.

  Brewster smiled. “As the starving man said, Half a pie is better than no pie at all.”

  Abbot thought that through and said finally, “You think Abe will go for it?”

  “Damn right he will,” Brewster said. “A sharp businessman like Abe Patterson won’t pass up a new Concord stage for seven hundred dollars.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know it’s a bad luck coach,” Abbot said.

  “Long John, the whole town knows, and you can bet so does Abe,” Brewster said. “But he ain’t the superstitious type and to him a bargain, even if it’s on the creepy side, is still a bargain.”

  “I could go into another business with seven hundred dollars,” Abbot said. “I always figured I could prosper in hardware.”

  “There you go, Long John, selling pots and pans is just the thing for a man like you. Help you make your mark in the world.”

  “Right, I’ll go do a little hoss trading with Abe.”

  “Good luck, and don’t let him get you under seven hundred, mind,” Brewster said.

  * * *

  Long John Abbot poured another splash of whiskey into Abe Patterson’s glass. “Abe, seven-fifty, and I can go no lower than that without starving my wife and children,” he said. “Have a cigar.”

  Abe Patterson took a cigar from the proffered box and said, “I hope the cigar is better than your whiskey. And that wouldn’t be difficult.”

  “Two-cent Cubans,” Abbot said. “Top-notch.” He passed on commenting on the busthead that he bought by the jug.

  Patterson took his time lighting his cigar and behind a curtain of blue smoke said, “I’m thinking about it, Long John. Giving it my most serious consideration.”

  “Red leather seating, Abe,” Abbot said. “Now, that’s class. I mean, that’s big city.”

  “What about the sign on the doors?” Patterson said. “Some kind of fancy letter D.”

  “Ah, the coach was a canceled order from some count in Transylvania . . .”

  “Where?”

  “Transylvania. It’s a country in eastern Europe. I guess the gent’s name began with a D.”

  “Davy? Donny? Deacon?”

  “Something like that, I guess,” Abbot said. “Them foreigners have strange notions and stranger names.”

  “Seven hundred,” Patterson said. “I will go no higher. Hard times, Long John, with the railroads expanding an’ all, laying rails all over the place and taking a big chunk of my business. I just don’t have as much capital to invest as I once did.”

  Abbot pretended to consider Abe’s offer for a moment and then jumped to his feet.

  “Done and done,” he said. He extended his hand to Patterson, a feisty little banty rooster a foot smaller than himself. Abe took Abbot’s hand and said, “Have some of your men push or pull the thing to my depot as soon as the blood is washed off the driver’s seat. Then come over yourself and I’ll pay you.”

  “I’m glad you don’t believe all that loose talk about the stage being haunted and all,” Abbot said.

  Abe Patterson smiled. “If I did, I’d tell you to hitch up a team and have Phineas Doyle drive it over.”
>
  CHAPTER TWO

  “Phineas Doyle drove the stage back to the depot even though he was as dead as mutton,” Patrick “Buttons” Muldoon said, his blue eyes as round as coins. “His ghost was standing over his shot-up body, the ribbons in his hands. Ol’ Max Brewster says he seen that with his own two eyes and he says the coach was almost invisible, like a gray, graveyard mist.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Abe Patterson said.

  “And Max says that letter D on the doors stands for death,” Red Ryan said. “He says it must be a stage that carried the souls of the deceased and that’s why Long John Abbot got it cheap.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Abe Patterson said.

  “And, boss, you got it even cheaper, mind,” Buttons said. He was dressed in a blue sailor coat decorated with two rows of silver buttons that gave him his name. He and Red Ryan had just arrived at the depot after a short mail run to Abilene and were mostly dust-free. “Boss, they call the stage the Gray Ghost and they say it’s cursed,” Buttons continued. “It’s already been the death of six men and me and Red would make it eight.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Abe Patterson said.

  Red Ryan said, “Max Brewster says that over to the Alamo saloon, Lonesome Edna Vincent, she’s the redhead with the big . . .”

  “I know who she is, and whatever she said, I don’t believe it,” Abe Patterson said.

  “You haven’t heard what I have to say yet,” Red said. “Well, anyway, Max says that Edna says that she was asleep in her cot the very night the stage was delivered to Long John Abbot’s depot. Then, when all the clocks in town chimed at the same time, saying that it was two in the morning, a loud and terrible scream woke her.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Abe Patterson said.

  “Then Max says that Edna says she got up and looked out the window and then she heard the howls and wails of the damned coming from a gray coach. Max says that Edna says that the stage was rocking back and forth and seemed to be covered by an unholy blue fire. Max says that Edna says she got the fear of God in her and didn’t get another wink of sleep all night.”