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  Fallon felt a little sorry for the ex-convict. After all, Holderman had slipped Fallon that pocket pistol before he went out to Peckerwood Hill in Huntsville. Aaron Holderman couldn’t help it that he had mush for brains, and no sound judgment, and that he was likely just following Sean MacGregor’s orders when he back-shot those other Justice men and took a wagon filled with money north to San Antonio, where he bought a ticket to Chicago to deliver roughly two hundred thousand dollars to the president of the American Detective Agency.

  He had paid for the ticket with a freshly minted double eagle. That’s what had led the Pinkertons—Fallon couldn’t wait to hear that at MacGregor’s trial—to Chicago. It hadn’t taken much pressure for Holderman to talk.

  The little man kept screaming even as the marshals led him away.

  * * *

  Dressed in a new suit—and not the kind they give you when you walk out of Joliet—Harry Fallon sat on the bench at the train station. His shoulder didn’t hurt much these days, and the autumn breeze felt really good. Over the past few months, he had slept well at the boardinghouse where he was supposed to have been living for several months. He had shared nice suppers with the wheelwright who was supposed to have been his boss. Now it was time to leave Chicago.

  He looked up to find Christina Whitney walking toward him. Beside her strode Dan MacGregor. Fallon stood, removed his new hat, and waited.

  MacGregor shook Fallon’s hand.

  “Congratulations,” the new president of the American Detective Agency said.

  “Thanks, Dan.”

  “I need to thank you,” MacGregor said.

  Fallon shrugged. “Just run a legal operation.” He pulled back his coat, revealing the badge pinned on the lapel of his vest. “Otherwise, I might have to pay you a visit.”

  Dan MacGregor laughed and handed a few business cards to Fallon. “In case,” he said, “you need a good detective agency to help you out West. Take care, Harry.”

  “Call me Hank,” Fallon said, and shook the young man’s hand again.

  MacGregor laughed as he walked away. He called out to Christina, “Are you coming?” But he did not stop to hear her answer. She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  Christina moved closer to Fallon and looked at the badge.

  “United States marshal,” she whispered. “Not deputy.”

  Fallon shrugged. “It’s a political appointment. Republicans get back in office, I’ll likely be out of a job.”

  “But impressive . . . for an ex-convict.”

  “I’ve been pardoned,” Fallon said with a smile.

  He motioned at the bench. She sat. Fallon slid his grip out of the way and found a place next to her.

  “What’s Cheyenne like?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Fallon said. “I’ve never been to Wyoming.”

  “It probably gets cold.”

  “So does Illinois. And after Yuma, Jeff City, and Texas, cold sounds nice.”

  She laughed.

  “Got any interesting cases going on?” Fallon asked.

  “I resigned,” she said.

  “Too bad. Dan lost a good operative.” He realized he still held MacGregor’s business cards, so he slipped them inside his coat pocket.

  A woman walked by, pushing a baby in a stroller.

  Christina stared after it for a long time.

  “I hear women can vote in Wyoming,” she said.

  Fallon nodded. “I hear that, too.”

  A man in a striped suit and scuffed gaiters, carrying two grips, stumbled down the steps and slid to a stop in front of their bench. Panting, his face flushed, hair plastered on his forehead, he gasped, “Excuse . . . me . . . Has the . . . four-oh-nine . . . left yet? Westbound. Headin’ . . .”

  “No,” both Fallon and Christina answered simultaneously.

  “It’s late,” Fallon said.

  “Won’t be here for another twenty minutes,” Christina added.

  “Oh, wonderful . . . what a relief.” Stress left the man’s face. “Thought for sure . . . I’d miss it . . . want to . . . see my family . . . in . . . Omaha.” He adjusted his straw hat, thanked them again, and carried his baggage toward a man selling peanuts at the corner.

  Fallon reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew his ticket. Christina opened her purse and looked at hers.

  “Four-oh-nine?” Fallon asked.

  “Four-oh-nine,” Christina said.

  “Runs all the way to Sacramento,” Fallon said.

  “I’m not going that far,” Christina said.

  Fallon returned his ticket, and Christina slipped hers back into the purse.

  He wet his lips, closed his eyes, and saw Renee. She was holding Rachel and nodding at him. She looked so beautiful, so understanding. Her lips parted, and he could hear her say, It’s all right, Hank. It’s all right. You’re not in prison anymore, darling. Open your heart, dear, and live your life. Everything will be fine. We’ll always love you.

  His eyes still closed, Fallon said, “I’m glad.”

  A moment later, he felt Christina’s slender fingers come into his hand, which he closed around hers.

  Keep reading for a special excerpt . . .

  NATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE

  SHOTGUN JOHNNY

  NO ONE MESSES WITH SHOTGUN JOHNNY.

  It takes a brave man to ride shotgun for the Reverend’s Temptation Gold Mine in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It takes an even braver man to try to rob a coach of bullion when the shotgun rider is Johnny Greenway. Armed with his weapons of choice—two sawed-off double-barreled shotguns in custom-made holsters for pistol-quick draws—Shotgun Johnny ain’t stopping for no one . . .

  NOT UNLESS THEY WANT TO DIE.

  Johnny Greenway was once a family man. A well-respected marshal who always played fair. Then his wife and son were killed by cutthroats. Johnny killed the killers. And hung up his badge—and picked up a bottle. Now a shadow of his former self, he has nothing much to live for. But when he singlehandedly stops a bank robbery, he catches the eye of the banker’s daughter. She’s impressed by Johnny’s gun skills and offers him a job riding shotgun. First he’ll have to stop drinking and clean up his act. But that’s not all that needs cleaning.

  The mountain trail to the mine hides the filthiest, dirtiest gang in the territory.

  They’re gunning for the gold.

  But Shotgun Johnny will be gunning for them . . .

  Look for Shotgun Johnny, on sale now.

  “Ouch!” said “Rocky Mountain” Vernon Wade.

  “What’d you do?” asked his partner, Pete Devries, with a snort of laughter.

  “Burned myself.” Wade winced as he shifted his hot coffee cup in his hands. “Think it’s funny?”

  Devries shrugged and sipped from his own hot cup. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Why is my burning my hand so funny to you, Pete?” Wade asked, glaring across a corner of their low fire at his partner, Devries.

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know,” Devries said. He was tall and sandy-haired, and the brim of his Boss of the Plains Stetson was pulled low over his gray-blue eyes. “I reckon it was funny cause you otherwise act so tough. Forget it, Vernon. Stand down. I just chuckled at somethin’ I thought was funny, that’s all. I didn’t mean to give offense.”

  “You did give offense.”

  “Well, then, for that I apologize.”

  “I am tough, Pete.” Wade glared darkly. “And don’t you forget it.”

  “Okay, I won’t forget it.” Devries looked off into the darkness of the Sierra Nevada mountain night.

  “There you go again, laughin’.”

  Devries looked back at Wade, who was dark and solidly built with a thick beard he hardly ever washed and certainly never ran a comb through. On a previous bullion run he’d pulled a tick out of it the size of a sewing thimble but only because Devries had noticed it and mentioned it. Otherwise, it might still be there, suckin
g blood out of the humorless killer’s cheek.

  “What’d you laugh at that time, Pete?” Wade wanted to know.

  “Oh, hell, Vernon!”

  “Stop callin’ me Vernon, Pete. Folks call me Rocky Mountain or nothin’ at all. Folks call me Vernon only when they want to disrespect me, an’ you don’t want to do that, Pete. You really don’t want to do that!”

  “All right, all right, Vern . . . er, I mean, Rocky Mountain. I apologize for callin’ you Vernon and for any and all other sundry ways I might have given offense during our time workin’ together!”

  “In case you’re at all interested in anything except snickerin’ like some twin-braided schoolgirl, I jerked with a start because I got distracted by a sound I heard out there.” Wade pointed his chin to indicate the heavy darkness beyond the flickering orange light of the fire. “And, while I was silently opinin’ on the source of the sound and the possible nature of the threat, if the sound’s origin is in fact a threat, I let the cup tip a little too far to one side. So I was, in fact, reactin’ as much to the sound as to the hot coffee washin’ onto my fingers.”

  “Well, now that we got that all straightened out,” Devries said, trying very hard not to give another wry snort, “what sound did you hear or think you heard?”

  “I heard it, all right.” Wade set his cup on a rock ringing the fire. He grabbed his Henry repeating rifle, rose from where he’d been sitting back against the wooly underside of his saddle, and walked over to stand by a tall fir tree at the edge of the encampment. One of the three horses, tied to a picket line nearby, gave a low whicker. “I got the hearin’ of a desert jackrabbit, an’ I heard somethin’, all right. I’m just not sure what it was.”

  “Why don’t you take a guess?”

  Again, Wade turned a dull, hateful stare at his partner. “You don’t believe me? Or you think I’m just actin’ like some fearful old widder woman, hearin’ things?”

  Devries looked at the Henry. Wade held the sixteen-shot repeater in his right hand, partly aimed, threateningly, in Devries’ direction. That was no accident. Wade wanted Devries to feel the threat. Devries knew that it was entirely likely that Rocky Mountain Vernon Wade would kill him for no more reason than because he felt Devries had insulted him, which Devries supposed he had though he’d mostly just been funning around.

  Before they’d started working together, hauling bullion down out of the mountains from the Reverend’s Temptation Gold Mine to the bank in Hallelujah Junction, Devries had heard that Wade was thin-skinned and hot-tempered. He’d also heard that Wade had killed men for little more reason than he’d taken offense at how they’d glanced at him, or for something someone had said in passing likely not even meant as an insult.

  Now Devries realized those stories were true, and he made a mental note to tread a little more cautiously from here on . . .

  “No, no, Vern . . . er, I mean, Rocky Mountain!” Devries said. “Will you please get your shorts out of the twist they seem to be in? I do not think you were acting like no widder woman. I believe that you in fact heard something, and I was just thinking that if you can’t pinpoint exactly what that something was, maybe you could just opine aloud on it.”

  Wade studied him skeptically from over his shoulder.

  Devries heart quickened. Jesus, he did not need this. Life was too short to be guarding gold with some sorehead with a hair trigger. And as loco as an owl in a lightning storm to boot!

  Wade turned his head forward suddenly, sucking a sharp, shallow breath. “There it was again.”

  Devries pricked his ears. All he could hear was the snapping and crackling of their low fire and the infrequent stomps and shifts of the two horses and pack mule picketed twenty feet away. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Well, I heard it.”

  Devries set down his coffee and rose from the log he’d been sitting on. He grabbed his Winchester and walked over to stand near Wade. Devries stared out into the darkness beyond their camp here in Henry’s Hollow, not far from the South Fork of the Avalanche River and Grizzly Falls. He held his breath as he listened, squinting into the darkness, blinking, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light over here.

  Normally, only fools and tinhorns would build a fire when they thought there was a chance they were being stalked. But neither Devries nor Wade had thought anyone would be fool enough to shadow them—two gunmen of significant reputations in this neck of California and Nevada. No man was fool enough to think they could swipe the bullion out from under Pete Devries and Rocky Mountain Vernon Wade.

  Devries had thought so before, and, not hearing anything except the hooting of a distant owl and the soft scuttles of some burrowing creatures, he still thought so.

  Maybe Wade was not only crazy. Maybe he was like some fearful old “widder” woman—hearing things.

  Best not allude to the possibility, Devries silently admonished himself. Or at least do so in a roundabout way . . .

  “Hard to believe anyone would fool with us, Rocky Mountain,” he said softly, staring into the darkness. “I mean you alone carry one hell of a reputation on them broad shoulders of yours. How many men have you killed, anyway?”

  “I stopped countin’ when I was twelve.”

  Devries snapped a disbelieving look at the big man standing to his right.

  Wade felt it was his turn to snort. He turned to Devries with a crooked smile inside his black beard. “Just foolin’ with ya, Peter. I think I stopped countin’ when I was thirteen and a half.” His smile grew wider.

  Devries smiled then, too, thinking it was all right since Wade had made a joke.

  Was it a joke?

  Not that Devries was all that impressed or afraid of Vernon Wade. Devries had been a gunslinger and regulator of some renown for half a dozen years, before he’d ended up in the Texas pen for killing a barman in Nacogdoches. His attorney had gotten him out early when he’d discovered that the prosecutor had bought guilty verdict votes from three jury members. Devries hadn’t been out of the pen for more than two days before he’d broken into the prosecutor’s home one night and slit the man’s throat while the man had been sound asleep beside his wife, who’d woken up screaming when she’d heard her husband choking on his own blood.

  In other words, Devries’ past was as impressive as Vernon Wade’s. Pete just wasn’t the blowhard Vernon was. Yes, Vernon. Devries might call the man “Rocky Mountain” to his face, just to keep things civil between them, but in his own mind he’d forever know him as Vernon. Or maybe even Vernie. The only reason Pete didn’t put a bullet through the blowhard’s left ear right here and now was because this bullion run they were on, from the Reverend’s Temptation to Hallelujah Junction, was one of the most perilous runs in all the Sierra Nevadas. The Temptation was a rich mine, and every owlhoot in California and Nevada knew it. There might be a handful just stupid enough to make a play for the gold, maybe not knowing who was guarding it.

  The way Devries saw it, four eyes were better than two. Best to keep the peace.

  Besides, Devries didn’t want to ruffle the feathers of his comely employer, Miss Sheila Bonner, the young lady who’d taken over the Bank & Trust in Hallelujah Junction from her father, who’d also owned the Reverend’s Temptation Mine. Miss Bonner was quite the looker, maybe the prettiest woman Devries had ever laid eyes on. She filled out her fine, if overly conservative, frocks just the way a dress was meant to be filled out. Pete was figuring to make a play for the woman. Not to marry, of course. Devries was not the apron-strings sort. But he purely would like to see what Miss Bonner looked like under all them fancy trappings, and, most of all, how she’d treat a fella after the lamps were turned down in her deceased father’s stylish digs on a nice shady lot in Hallelujah Junction.

  Devries didn’t want to do anything that might spoil his prospects for a conquest. Shooting his partner, he supposed, might do just that. He’d put up with only so much, however. He could always shoot dim-witted Vernie, and blame it on a bushwhacking o
wlhoot making a play for the bullion.

  He stifled a laugh then jumped with a little start when Wade leaned toward him and said quietly, “I’m gonna wander on over this way. What I heard came from over there. You head that way. We’ll circle around, check it out.”

  Devries’ hackles rose a little at being given orders by one so cow-stupid not to mention ugly and with the hygiene of a hyena, but what the hell? “All right,” he said, rolling his eyes. He still hadn’t heard anything and was beginning to believe his partner really was as jumpy as that “widder” woman.

  Vernie strode into the darkness to Devries’ right. Devries stood looking around and listening a while longer. When he still hadn’t heard a damn thing except the soft crunch of Vernie’s boot in the dead leaves and pine needles, he indulged in another acidic snort then moved out into the darkness to his left.

  “Big dummy,” he muttered under his breath, and chuckled.

  He stepped over a log, pushed through some shrubs, and stopped to look around and listen again.

  Nothing.

  He turned to his left and headed along the camp’s eastern periphery, maybe ten feet beyond the reach of the fire’s dwindling umber glow. When he was off the camp’s northeastern corner, exactly opposite from where he and Vernie had separated, he stopped and listened again.

  Not a damn thing. Hell, even the owl had stopped hooting.

  Pete yawned, raked a hand down his face. They’d had a long day on the trail in the high-altitude wind and burning sunshine. He was tired, wind- and sunburned, and he was ready to roll into his soogan. They’d rig up the horses and pack mule and set out again on the trail that led down out of the mountains soon after first light.

  He turned to look back over his left shoulder, across the encampment toward where Vernie must be stumbling around in the darkness, chasing the shadows of ghosts. Pete had just opened his mouth to call out to his partner, when Wade himself yelled suddenly, “Stop! Stop! I see you, dammit! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Wade’s Henry thundered—a loud booming report that made Devries leap with a start, his heels coming up off the ground.