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  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  and J. A. JOHNSTONE

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  AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS

  GOLD MINE MASSACRE

  THE JENSEN BRAND

  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

  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: 978-0-7860-4729-1

  Electronic edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4730-7 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4730-5 (e-book)

  CHAPTER 1

  Denise Nicole Jensen’s head snapped around as she heard screams coming from somewhere along the main street of Big Rock, Colorado. Denny had just stepped out the front door of Goldstein’s Emporium and had three paper-wrapped bundles in her arms. Since the packages didn’t have anything breakable in them, she didn’t hesitate to toss them into the back of the wagon parked in front of the store and bound down the steps from the high porch and run toward the commotion.

  She was a sight to behold—a tall, well-built young woman in a man’s soft flannel shirt and denim trousers that hugged the curves of her legs and hips. Wheat-colored curls cascaded to her shoulders and down her back from under the brown Stetson with its strap taut under her fine chin.

  She carried a holstered Colt .38 Lightning on her right hip. In these modern and enlightened times, early in the twentieth century, fewer and fewer men carried guns on a daily basis, especially in town, and practically no women did. But as the daughter of Smoke Jensen, Denny was no ordinary woman.

  Smoke was famous throughout the West—throughout the whole country, really—as one of the fastest men with a gun who had ever lived on the frontier. Maybe the fastest.

  Early in his adventurous career, he’d had a reputation as a gunfighter, even as an outlaw, although the charges leveled against him had been bogus ones whipped up by his enemies. In the past two and a half decades, since marrying Sally Reynolds, he had gained a different sort of reputation, that of one of the most successful ranchers in Colorado.

  During that time, he and Sally had also had two children, the twins Denise Nicole and Louis Arthur, along with several unofficially adopted siblings who had been part of the family for a while before striking out on their own.

  Denny and Louis had spent most of their childhood in Europe with Sally’s parents. The medical problems Louis had been born with had required the attention of the best doctors in Europe. But they had visited their parents often, and in young adulthood had returned to the Sugarloaf, the Jensen ranch, to stay.

  Louis was back east, with his new wife and stepson, while he attended law school. Denny, a Western girl at heart despite having spent so much time across the Atlantic, was just fine with staying on the Sugarloaf, which, in the back of her mind, she already planned on running one of these days, when her father was ready to take it easy.

  Knowing Smoke Jensen, that might be a long time yet!

  Denny had been mixed up in a number of scrapes and adventures of her own since returning to Colorado. She had inherited Smoke’s natural ability for gun handling, and she didn’t mind using a gun when she had to.

  It might be one of those times, judging by the frightened cries coming from up ahead somewhere.

  She slowed as she saw four men in the street in front of the bank. Each had a bandanna tied around the lower half of his face and wore a long duster and a pulled-down hat. They brandished guns, and two of them had taken hostages. One man had his left arm wrapped around the neck of a middle-aged woman, while another had picked up a boy about eight years old and held the boy in front of himself like a human shield.

  The other two men carried canvas bank bags in their left hands. All four bank robbers—no doubt what they were—backed slowly toward horses tied at a nearby hitch rack.

  “Jeremy!” A woman sobbed on the boardwalk. She held out her arms toward the boy, who was kicking his legs and waving his arms frantically as the outlaw clutched him.

  The kid’s mother, thought Denny as she skidded to a halt in the dusty street. She didn’t recognize the woman, but plenty of
people she didn’t know lived in Big Rock.

  Such as the man who stood on the sidewalk beside the bank’s open doors, his hands lifted halfway to show that he wasn’t a threat. That was pretty obvious, anyway, given his expensive black suit, the fancy cravat, the glittering watch chain, the carefully shaven chin with a slight cleft in it, and the silver band on the flat-crowned black hat that sat on his sandy hair.

  Denny knew a dude when she saw one, even though she barely glanced at the man. Nearly all of her attention was focused on the quartet of bank robbers.

  Sheriff Monte Carson or some of his deputies ought to be there soon, but they might not arrive in time to stop the outlaws from fleeing. And when the outlaws lit out, they might take the hostages with them. That wouldn’t be good, so somebody had to stop them.

  As far as Denny could see, that was up to her.

  “Hold it right there!” she called in a clear, powerful voice that was just a bit husky for a woman.

  The four men stopped backing away, evidently surprised not only to be challenged but also because a woman was doing the challenging.

  “You came to rob the bank in Big Rock?” Denny said. “Big Rock? Don’t you know you could have run into Smoke Jensen here? Don’t you know how many would-be bank robbers have wound up propped on boards in front of the undertaking parlor while folks pose for photographs with the carcasses?”

  “Girl, you’re loco!” shouted an outlaw as he jabbed his gun in her direction. “Shut up your yammerin’!”

  “I ain’t sure that’s a girl,” another said. “She’s got long hair, but she’s dressed like a man.”

  “Yeah, but she ain’t a man,” put in a third outlaw. “You can tell that by the way she fills out that shirt.”

  All four of them, in fact, were looking at Denny quite intently.

  She wondered, fleetingly, if she should have unbuttoned her shirt before confronting them. That would have riveted their attention even more. Nailed them right to the ground, she thought.

  That might have made what was coming a little easier.

  “If you let that poor woman and the little boy go, you might just live through this,” she said. “If you don’t—”

  “What are you gonna do?” sneered the man still holding the squirming boy.

  Remembering what the boy’s mother had called him, Denny said, quietly but intensely, “Jeremy, listen to me. You’re going to be all right, but you need to stop wiggling around. Can you do that, Jeremy? Can you be very still?”

  He stopped trying to get away from his captor. As soon as his arms and legs weren’t waving around and his head wasn’t jerking back and forth, Denny struck.

  Her right hand swept down and up, moving too fast for the eye to follow. The Lightning’s grips were smooth against her palm as the gun came level and she squeezed the trigger. The double-action revolver barked. The .38 slug hit the outlaw’s right eyeball, popped it like a grape, and bored on into his brain. He dropped straight to the ground as if a giant had slammed a sledgehammer down on the top of his head.

  The little boy tumbled free.

  His feet hadn’t hit the street by the time Denny pivoted slightly and fired again. Her target was the outlaw holding the female hostage. He twisted a little just as the bullet reached him, so instead of hitting the center of his throat and clipping his spine, as Denny had intended, it tore a bloody, painful tunnel through his neck. He let out a gurgling yell and staggered, but he didn’t let go of the woman.

  With the hostage still mostly in the way, Denny couldn’t rush a third shot. As a heartbeat ticked past while she lined her sights, Denny knew the other two outlaws would have time to pull their triggers. She stood a good chance of dying, but at least she would save the hostages.

  The Lightning spat flame again, and the slug went in the bank robber’s mouth as he opened it to howl a curse while pawing at the wound in his neck. As he let go of the hostage and crumpled, Denny expected to hear the roar of the other two outlaws’ guns, steeled herself for the bullets that were about to smash into her.

  She heard two shots slam out so fast they blended together, but she didn’t feel anything hit her. One of the remaining bandits flipped backward like a bug flicked away by a finger, and the other swayed for a second before toppling like a tree. Neither of them moved once they hit the ground.

  Denny looked over at the sidewalk. The dude she had seen earlier, the stranger with the fancy hatband, stood with a gun in his hand. A few wisps of powder smoke curled from the muzzle.

  Knowing how close she had just come to dying, Denny couldn’t speak for a second. Finding her voice again, she said, “That was some pretty good shooting. I’m obliged to you, Mister . . . ?”

  The man slipped the revolver back into a cross-draw rig under his coat, smiled at her, pinched the brim of his hat, and said in a voice with a surprising hint of a Western drawl in it, “You’re welcome, miss. The name’s Morgan. Conrad Morgan.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Running footsteps and labored breathing behind her made Denny look over her shoulder. She saw Sheriff Monte Carson approaching with a shotgun in his hands.

  He came to a stop, gazed past her at the bodies sprawled in the street, and said, “Blast it, Denny, couldn’t you have left at least one of ’em alive so I could question him?”

  “Don’t blame me for all of them, Sheriff. I only killed the two who had grabbed hostages.” She nodded toward the boy named Jeremy, who was wrapped up in his sobbing mother’s arms, and the middle-aged woman, who leaned against a hitch rack with a hand pressed to her bosom as she breathed deeply, trying to recover from her fright. Several strands of her graying brown hair had come loose from their pins and dangled around her pale face.

  “Then who gunned down the other two?” Monte wanted to know.

  “That would be me, Sheriff,” the stranger said as he stepped down from the boardwalk and strolled in their direction. “My name is Conrad Morgan.”

  “New in town, aren’t you?”

  “Got off the train less than half an hour ago,” Morgan confirmed with a smile and a nod. He was a handsome man probably in his late twenties.

  As Denny looked at him, she realized she had been wrong to dismiss him so cavalierly in that quick glance earlier, just because he was well-dressed. His gaze was cool and steady, and he moved with an easy grace reminiscent of a big cat.

  Denny recognized those attributes. She had seen them often enough in her own father.

  Monte Carson nodded toward the dead outlaws and said to the newcomer, “You shot two of those fellas?”

  “I had no choice. They were about to shoot this young woman.” Morgan cocked his head slightly to the side as he looked at Denny and added, “Miss . . . ?”

  “Jensen,” she said.

  “They were about to shoot Miss Jensen,” Morgan continued. “So I did the only thing I could.” He shrugged. “Unless you think I should have tried to merely wound them and spare their lives. But to my way of thinking, after they robbed the bank and then endangered innocent citizens, they forfeited any right to such consideration.”

  “Yeah, you did the right thing blowing holes in them,” agreed Monte. “It’s just that I would’ve liked to know if the four of them were the only ones trying to pull this robbery or if there might be more of their gang lurking around.” The lawman shrugged and went on. “But if somebody’s bound and determined to make trouble, I reckon I’ll find out about it sooner or later.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’m getting too old to be running up and down the street in the hot sun, though.”

  “Are you all right, Sheriff?” asked Denny with a note of concern in her voice. She knew he was one of her father’s oldest and best friends, and he was like an uncle to her and her brother Louis.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Monte replied with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about me.”

  A man wearing spectacles stepped out of the bank. Slender, dark-haired, and dapper, Charles Barnhart was the bank president, which accounted for
the look on his face when he saw the dead outlaws lying in the street, as well as the two canvas money bags they had dropped when Conrad Morgan shot them.

  “Thank heavens,” Barnhart said. “I was afraid they might have gotten away. Did you shoot them, Sheriff?”

  “No, Miss Jensen and Mr. Morgan get the credit for that. Did they hurt anybody in there, Mr. Barnhart?”

  The banker shook his head. “No, and I’m very thankful for that, as well. They just tied up me, the two tellers, and the three customers who were in the bank when they came in. It took me a few minutes to work my bonds loose.”

  “Any of them call the others by name, or say anything else to indicate who they are?”

  “Not that I recall. They just cursed and gave orders and waved their guns around.”

  Monte grunted. “I’ll look through their pockets, maybe find something to tell me who they are. I can check the wanted posters in my office, too. And I’ll want to talk to the other folks who were in there, but that can wait. Better see first about getting these four down to the undertaking parlor.”

  “I told them that’s where they’d wind up,” Denny said dryly.

  The sheriff started to turn away, then paused. “Mr. Morgan, I didn’t think to ask you what brings you to Big Rock?”

  “I’m here on business,” Conrad Morgan replied. He looked at the bank president. “Would you be Mr. Barnhart?”

  “That’s right. Have we met, sir?”

  “No, but we’ve corresponded.” Morgan held out his hand. “I’m Conrad Morgan. I was on my way into the bank to see about opening an account with you when those four holdup men came busting out.”

  “Mr. Morgan, of course.” Barnhart shook the man’s hand eagerly. “Come in, come in. After that disruption, it’ll be a pleasure to do some actual banking business.”