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  That gave Luke an opening, and as he came up on one knee he shouted, “Finn!”

  Snarling, the gunman brought his revolver up and around and fired just as Luke triggered the Colt. Luke felt the heat of Finn’s slug as it whipped past his cheek. Finn rocked back, though, as blood welled from the hole in his chest where Luke had drilled him. The pistol slipped from nerveless fingers as his knees unhinged and dropped him to the ground.

  Luke surged to his feet. He lunged toward Glory, caught her arm, dragged her toward the house.

  “Whittaker!” he shouted. “This way!”

  The sheriff angled toward them at a run, the gun in his hand spouting flame as he did so. Elston’s men had scattered, taking cover wherever they could, and they kept up a sizzling return fire. The air in the ranch yard buzzed with bullets like a swarm of angry hornets had been let loose in it.

  Somehow Whittaker made it through that storm of lead and leaped onto the porch right behind Luke and Glory. Luke had emptied one gun and jerked out another. He used it to cover their retreat into the house. As he was the last of the trio to duck through the door, he slammed it behind him and thought fleetingly how lucky he was none of the guns tucked into his trousers had gone off when he fell from the widow’s walk. That would have been a good way to get something important shot off. He hadn’t broken any bones, either, as far as he could tell right now.

  “Get them!” Elston roared somewhere outside. “I don’t care how bad you have to shoot up the house! Just kill them all!”

  Bullet after bullet slammed into the walls and the front door. Every pane of glass in every window exploded inward from the onslaught. Luke, Glory, and Whittaker kept their heads down.

  “Glory, untie the sheriff,” Luke told her over the gun thunder. When she had done so, Luke handed one of the Colts to Whittaker, along with a handful of shells, and gave Glory a couple of the guns as well. Each of them was now armed with a pair of revolvers. They made sure all the chambers were filled.

  Some of the firing outside died away. In the relative quiet, Whittaker said, “They outnumber us by too much. If they rush us, we won’t be able to hold them off for very long, even with this many guns.”

  “Maybe not,” Luke said with a reckless grin, “but we can sure make them pay before we go down.”

  Glory said grimly, “If I can just get a shot at Whitey Singletary and settle the score for Sam, that’ll be enough for me.”

  Whittaker raised himself high enough to risk a glance through one of the shot-out windows and said, “You may be about to get your chance, Mrs. MacCrae. Looks like they’re getting ready to rush us!”

  “I’d rather meet them on my feet,” Luke said. He rose, kicked the door open, and went out with both guns blazing. Glory and Whittaker were right behind him, and their guns were roaring as well as they poured lead into the small army of gunmen charging the house.

  That was when nearly two dozen men on horseback came boiling around the corner of the barn and smashed into the killers, taking them totally by surprise. Elston’s men went down from the pounding lead of the newcomers’ guns and under the slashing, steel-shod hooves of their horses. Luke saw the tall, lanky, redheaded figure of Rusty Gimple leading the charge. Old Kaintuck guided his horse with his knees as he fired right and left with a brace of old cap-and-ball pistols. Even the two young wranglers, Ernie and Vince, were with the group.

  The MC cowboys couldn’t have won stand-up gunfights with Elston’s hired killers, but in this melee they crashed through and over the gun-wolves and wiped out most of them in a matter of seconds.

  Some of them escaped the lightninglike charge, though, and kept fighting. Whitey Singletary emerged from the roiling clouds of dust and gunsmoke that now obscured the ranch yard and lunged toward Luke, Glory, and Whittaker as the gun in his hand jetted flame.

  They fired back, the three shots so close together that they sounded like one, and Singletary was jolted to a stop by the slugs that crashed into his chest. He stood there for a second, swaying, his pale face twisted in lines of pure hatred, before his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he pitched forward to lie there in the stillness of death.

  That left Harry Elston. Holding a gun he had picked up, still dressed only in the long underwear, he walked out of the chaos and came toward Luke and the others. Elston stepped around Singletary’s body. The gun in his hand was pointed at the ground.

  “Elston, you’re under arrest,” Sheriff Whittaker called to him. “Drop that gun!”

  Elston shook his head and said, “No.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool, man,” Luke told him. “Even after all this, you won’t hang.”

  Elston smiled.

  “You think I intend to spend one day behind bars?” he asked. “A man like me who spent his life on the open sea?”

  Elston lifted the revolver, put the muzzle to his temple, and pulled the trigger.

  That was the last shot of the battle of the Lazy EO.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Rusty Gimple said. “After I told you about Miz MacCrae bein’ missin’, I didn’t have faith that you’d really come out here and make sure Elston didn’t have anything to do with it. So me and a few of the boys followed you.”

  Rusty and Whittaker were in the glass-littered parlor of Elston’s house, along with Luke and Glory. Outside, the rest of the MC crew was gathering up the bodies of the dead gunmen and keeping an eye on the wounded survivors.

  “I did ride out here, though,” Whittaker said. “I don’t like to admit it, but I took sides in what was going on around here . . . and it was the wrong side.”

  “You risked your life to try to help us,” Glory told him. “And you fought beside us this morning. I think that’s a start on making things right.”

  “I hope so,” Whittaker said with a nod. “I should have figured out sooner just how crooked Whitey really was, though.”

  “That was a mistake, all right,” Luke said. “But we all make them.”

  Rusty nodded and said, “Yeah, I sure did. When you rode up here and then didn’t come back, Sheriff, I was more convinced than ever that you were workin’ for Elston. So I sent one of the boys with me back to the MC to bring the whole crew. We were gonna bust in here this mornin’ and find the boss lady, even if we got shot up doin’ it.”

  “Instead, you got here just in time to save us,” Glory told him with a smile. “I won’t forget this, Rusty.” She sighed. “But I don’t know if it really matters. I won’t be running the MC much longer.”

  Rusty frowned and asked, “Why in blazes not?”

  Glory didn’t answer, so Luke said quietly, “Hugh Jennings.”

  “That’s right,” Glory said. “He’s locked in one of the rooms upstairs. Now that he knows where I am . . .”

  “He could stay locked up for a while,” Luke suggested. “Long enough for you to leave.”

  Without hesitation, Glory shook her head.

  “I’m through running,” she said. “I never did like the idea. It’s time to go back and face . . . whatever’s waiting for me.” She stood up. “I’m going to go turn him loose. Luke, will you come with me?”

  “Sure,” Luke said. He wondered if he could get away with shooting Jennings. The man didn’t deserve to live.

  But Luke knew he couldn’t do that. He was a bounty hunter—the lowest of the low, in the minds of a lot of people—but he wasn’t a murderer.

  Whittaker asked, “Who in blazes is this Jennings fella?”

  “It’s a long story, Sheriff,” Glory said. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  Whittaker looked like he wanted to argue and demand an explanation now, but he nodded and said, “All right. But I’ll hold you to that.”

  He and Rusty went outside to see how the mopping up was going, while Luke and Glory climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  “Do you know which room Hugh is in?” Glory asked as they started along the hallway.

  “No, I—” Luke stopped s
hort as he saw a door into one of the rooms hanging crookedly on its hinges. The doorjamb was splintered around the lock.

  Somebody had kicked that door open.

  That familiar cold prickle on the back of his neck warned him that someone was behind him. He stiffened and started to reach for the gun in his waistband when Hugh Jennings said, “Stop what you’re doing, Jensen. Another move and I’ll kill you.”

  “Hugh!” Glory started to jerk around, but Jennings stopped her with a harsh command.

  “Turn around, both of you, but slowly,” Jennings went on. “Jensen, lift your hands and keep them up.”

  Luke raised his arms and turned. Beside him, Glory turned around, too. Her face was taut with anger.

  “You broke the door down during all the shooting, didn’t you?” she said to Jennings. “Nobody heard you with that going on.”

  Jennings smirked over the revolver he pointed at them.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I found this gun, too, and now I’m going to use it to kill both of you.”

  “I thought you wanted to take me back and put me on trial for a murder that you committed.”

  Jennings cocked his head to the side and grinned. He said, “That’s the thing about trials. You can never guarantee how they’re going to come out. And I don’t need you going back to Baltimore and spreading a lot of wild stories about me. No, I think it’ll be much better if you’re dead . . . Mother. That way you’ll be just another fugitive that justice caught up to, and the whole affair with be over and done with, forever.”

  “And you will have gotten away with murder,” Luke said.

  Jennings laughed.

  “So what if I have? I’ve already gotten away with one, haven’t I?”

  “You mean Alfred,” Glory said, her voice cold with hate.

  “Of course. He should have known better than to threaten me. He was going to send me to jail over a measly hundred thousand dollars when losing it wouldn’t have hurt him. What other choice did I have but to kill him?”

  Luke said, “Reckon you could say that a little louder? I’m not sure Sheriff Whittaker heard it, standing down there at the bottom of the stairs like he is.”

  Jennings started to sneer again, the contempt evident on his face at what he must have thought was a trick, but then Whittaker said, “Oh, I heard every bit of it, clear as a bell.”

  Jennings’s head jerked to the side. The gun in his hand followed, pulling out of line with Luke and Glory for a split second. Luke’s left hand shot out and shoved Glory through the door Jennings had kicked open earlier, while his right flashed to the gun in his waistband. The Colt cleared and came up and roared just as Jennings jerked the trigger of his gun and sent a wild shot flying wide.

  Luke’s bullet struck Jennings in the chest and punched him backwards onto the stairs. His feet hit empty air and he fell, tumbling down out of control until his body came to a halt in a crumpled heap at the feet of Sheriff Jared Whittaker. Luke had seen Whittaker come in and approach the stairs. That was why he had goaded Jennings into confessing.

  The lawman looked up at Luke and Glory, now standing at the top of the stairs as a wisp of smoke curled from the muzzle of the gun in Luke’s hand, and said, “I reckon this has got something to do with that long story you were going to tell me, Mrs. MacCrae?”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Glory said.

  Whittaker nodded.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I heard plenty. You think the authorities back where you come from would take the word of a Texas sheriff about that confession this fella just spouted?”

  “I think they’d take the word of an honest Texas sheriff,” Glory said. “And I think that’s what we’re going to have in Painted Post from now on.”

  Several days later, Glory looked up at Luke as he sat on the back of the dun and said, “But you came all this way, did everything that you did, saved my ranch, saved my life . . . and you didn’t get anything out of it! You should at least let me give you the five thousand dollars you would have earned as a bounty if you’d taken me in.”

  Luke smiled and shook his head.

  “I got to eat my fill of Teresa’s fine food,” he said as he nodded and touched the brim of his hat in a salute to the little Mexican woman who stood in the doorway of the ranch house. “And I made some good friends.”

  He lifted a hand in a wave of farewell to Gabe Pendleton, Rusty Gimple, Kaintuck, Ernie Frazier, and Vince Halligan. The cowboys stood in front of the bunkhouse, Pendleton leaning on a cane since he was still weak from the gunshot wound he had suffered in town. He had insisted on coming back to the ranch, though, and was on the mend, anybody could see that.

  Quietly, Luke added, “And I got some smiles and kisses from one of the most beautiful, determined women I’ve ever met in my life.”

  “You could have a lot more than that, and you know it.”

  “Maybe . . . but that’s not the life I’ve made for myself.”

  “Isn’t it a lonely life, though?” Glory asked as she reached up to him. “It’s going to be a lonely life for me.”

  Luke clasped her hand and said, “I doubt that. I think you’ll have plenty of attention from Gabe and from Sheriff Whittaker. One of these days you’ll probably have to decide between them. Just let the loser down easy, if you can. He’ll be losing a lot.”

  “Luke . . .”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  With a sigh, she slipped her hand out of his. He turned the dun, heeled the horse into a trot, and waved again at the men in front of the bunkhouse as he rode away.

  For a long time, whenever he rode away from a pretty woman who would have been glad for him to stay, he had told himself that one of these days he would settle down. One of these days he would have a family and a home and put the life of a bounty hunter behind him. No more cold nights sleeping on the hard ground, no more danger lurking in every shadow, no more waking up in the morning with the smell of gunsmoke clinging to him. Yes, one of these days . . .

  But Luke Jensen knew that day would never come, so he put his eyes on the horizon and rode toward whatever was on the other side of it.

  Turn the page for an exciting preview!

  100 YEARS LATER, THE WAR FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM

  IS BEGINNING AGAIN

  THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITER

  OF THE 21ST CENTURY

  William Johnstone is acclaimed for his American frontier

  chronicles. A national bestseller, the legendary storyteller,

  along with J. A. Johnstone, has written a powerful new novel

  set in Texas—one century after the Revolutionary War. . . .

  LIBERTY—OR DIE FOR IT

  One hundred years ago, a thousand miles from Last Chance,

  Texas, American patriots picked up rifles and fought against

  British tyranny. That was Boston. This is Big Bend River

  country. There the enemy was King George III and his

  British troops. In Last Chance, it’s Abraham Hacker,

  a rich and powerful cattle baron who will slaughter anyone

  who tries to lay claim to the fertile land and everything on it.

  For Last Chance, freedom is one intolerable act at a time,

  until wounded Texas Ranger Hank Cannan arrives in

  Last Chance. Seeing the oppressed citizens, Cannan is

  ready to start a second revolution. It’s going to take a lot

  of guts. But one way or the other, Cannan is out to set Last

  Chance free—with bullets, blood, and a willingness

  to die—and kill—for the American right of freedom....

  DAY OF INDEPENDENCE

  by USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

  On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

  CHAPTER 1

  Texas Ranger Hank Cannan was in one hell of a fix.

  In fact, he told himself that very thing.
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br />   “Hank,” he said, “you’re in one hell of a fix.”

  He uttered that statement aloud, as is the way of men who often ride long and lonely trails.

  About ten minutes earlier—Cannan couldn’t pin down the exact time—a bullet had slammed into him just above his gun belt on his left side, and another had hit his right thigh.

  In addition, after his horse threw him, he’d slammed his head into a wagon wheel and now, for at least part of the time, he was seeing double.

  With so many miseries, Cannan reckoned that his future career prospects had taken a distinct downhill turn, especially since the bushwhacker somewhere out there in the hills was seeing single and was a pretty good marksman to boot.

  The rifleman had earlier stated his intentions clearly enough, but Cannan could not bring himself to agree to his terms.

  Yelling across a hundred yards of open ground, the man had demanded Cannan’s horse, saddle, guns, boots and spurs, his wallet, watch, and wedding ring, and whatever miscellaneous items of value he may have about his person.

  “And if I don’t?” Cannan called back.

  “Then I’ll kill you as dead as a rotten stump.”

  “You go to hell!” Cannan said.

  “Ladies first,” the bushwhacker yelled.

  Then he laughed.

  That exchange had happened a good five minutes ago, and since then . . . nothing.

  Between Cannan and the hidden rifleman lay flat, sandy ground, thick with cactus and mesquite, but here and there desert shrubs like tarbrush and ocotillo prospered mightily.

  The Texas sun scorched hot and drowsy insects that made their small music in the bunchgrass. There was no other sound, just a vast silence that had been scarred by rifle shots.

  Cannan, long past his first flush of youth, gingerly explored the wound on his side with the flat of his hand. It came away bloody.