Mean and evil, p.1
Mean and Evil, page 1
Look for these exciting Western series
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MEAN AND EVIL
A BRANNIGAN’S LAND 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 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
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
19 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 Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-4870-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4871-7 (eBook)
CHAPTER 1
“I declare it’s darker’n the inside of a dead man’s boot out here!” exclaimed Dad Clawson.
“It ain’t dark over here by the fire,” countered Dad’s younger cow-punching partner, Pete Driscoll.
“No, but it sure is dark out here.” Dad—a short, bandy-legged, gray-bearded man in a bullet-crowned cream Stetson that had seen far better days a good twenty years ago—stood at the edge of the firelight, holding back a pine branch as he surveyed the night-cloaked, Bear Paw Mountain rangeland beyond him.
“If you’ve become afraid of the dark in your old age, Dad, why don’t you come on over here by the fire, take a load off, and pour a cup of coffee? I made a fresh pot. Thick as day-old cow plop, just like you like it. I’ll even pour some of my who-hit-John in it if you promise to stop caterwaulin’ like you’re about to be set upon by wolves.”
Dad stood silently scowling off into the star-capped distance. Turning his head a little to one side, he asked quietly in a raspy voice, “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That.” Dad turned his head a little more to one side. “There it was again.”
Driscoll—a tall, lean man in his mid-thirties and with a thick, dark-red mustache mantling his upper lip—stared across the steaming tin cup he held in both hands before him, pricking his ears, listening. A sharpened matchstick drooped from one corner of his mouth. “I didn’t hear a thing.”
Dad turned his craggy, bearded face toward the younger man, frowning. “You didn’t?”
“Not a dadgum thing, Dad.” Driscoll glowered at his partner from beneath the broad brim of his black Stetson.
He’d been paired with Clawson for over five years, since they’d both started working at the Stevens’ Kitchen Sink Ranch on Owlhoot Creek. In that time, they’d become as close as some old married couples, which meant they fought as much as some old married couples.
“What’s gotten into you? I’ve never known you to be afraid of the dark before.”
“I don’t know.” Dad gave his head a quick shake. “Somethin’s got my blood up.”
“What is it?”
Dad glowered over his shoulder at Driscoll. “If I knew that, my blood wouldn’t be up—now, would it?”
Driscoll blew ripples on his coffee and sipped. “I think you got old-timer’s disease. That’s what I think.” He sipped again, swallowed. “Hearin’ things out in the dark, gettin’ your drawers in a twist.”
Dad stood listening, staring out into the night. The stars shone brightly, guttering like candles in distant windows in small houses across the arching vault of the firmament. Finally, he released the pine bough; it danced back into place. He turned and, scowling and shaking his head, ambled back over to the fire. His spurs chinged softly. On a flat, pale rock near the dancing orange flames, his speckled tin coffeepot, which owned the dent of a bullet fired long ago by some cow-thieving Comanche bushwhacker in the Texas Panhandle, gurgled and steamed.
“Somethin’s out there—I’m tellin’ ya. Someone or something is movin’ around out there.” Dad grabbed his old Spencer repeating rifle from where it leaned against a tree then walked back around the fire to stand about six feet away from it, gazing out through the pines and into the night, holding the Spencer down low across his skinny thighs clad in ancient denims and brush-scarred, bull-hide chaps.
Driscoll glanced over his shoulder at where his and Dad’s hobbled horses contentedly cropped grass several yards back in the pines. “Horses ain’t nervy.”
Dad eased his ancient, leathery frame onto a pine log, still keeping his gaze away from the fire, not wanting to compromise his night vision. “Yeah, well, this old coot is savvier than any broomtail cayuse. Been out on the range longer than both of them and you put together, workin’ spreads from Old Mexico to Calvary in Alberta.” He shook his head slowly. “Coldest damn country I ever visited. Still got frost bite on my tired old behind from the two winters I spent up there workin’ for an ornery old widder.”
“Maybe you got frostbite on the brain, too, Dad.” Driscoll grinned.
“Sure, sure. Make fun. That’s the problem with you, Pete. You got no respect for your elders.”
“Ah, hell, Dad. Lighten up.” Driscoll set his cup down and rummaged around in his saddlebags. “Come on over here an’ let’s plays us some two-handed—” He cut himself off abruptly, sitting up, gazing out into the night, his eyes wider than they’d been two seconds ago.
Dad shot a cockeyed grin over his shoulder. “See?”
“What was that?”
Dad cast his gaze through the pines again, to the right of where he’d been gazing before. “Hard to say.”
“Hoot owl?”
“I don’t think so.”
The sound came again—very quiet but distinct in the night so quiet that Dad thought he could hear the crackling flames of the stars.
“Ah, sure,” Driscoll said. “A hoot owl. That’s all it was!” He chuckled. “Your nerves is right catching, Dad. You’re infecting my peaceable mind. Come on, now. Get your raggedy old behind over here and—” Again, a sound cut him off.
Driscoll gave an involuntary gasp then felt the rush of blood in his cheeks as they warmed with embarrassment. The sound was unlike anything Dad or Pete Driscoll had ever heard before. A screeching wail? Sort of catlike. But it hadn’t been a cat. At least, like no cat Dad had ever heard before, and he’d heard a few during his allotment. Night-hunting cats could sound pure loco and fill a man’s loins with dread. But this had been no cat.
Dad’s old heart thumped against his breastbone.
It thumped harder when a laugh vaulted out of the darkness. He swung his head sharply to the left, trying to peer through the branches of two tall Ponderosa pines over whose lime-green needles the dull, yellow, watery light of the fire shimmered.
“That was a woman,” Driscoll said quietly, his voice low with a building fear.
The laugh came again. Very quietly. But loudly enough for Dad to make out a woman’s laugh, all right. Sort of like the laugh of a frolicking employee in some house of ill repute in Cheyenne or Laramie, say. The laugh of a prostitute mildly drunk and engaged in a game of slap ‘n’ tickle with some drunken, frisky miner or track layer who’d paid downstairs and was swiping at the woman’s bodice with one hand while holding a bottle by the neck with his other hand.
Dad rose from his log. Driscoll rose from where he’d been leaning back against his saddle, reached for his saddle ring Winchester, and slowly, quietly levered a round into the action. He followed Dad over to the north edge of the camp.
Dad pushed through the pine branches, holding his own rifle in one hand, his heart still thumping heavily against his breastbone. His tongue was dry, and he felt a knot in his throat. That was fear.
He was not a fearful man. Leastways, he’d never considered himself a fearful man. But that was fear, all right. Fear like he’d known it only once before and that was when he’d been alone in Montana, tending a small herd for an English rancher, and a grizzly had been prowling around in the darkness beyond his fire, occasionally edging close enough so that the flames glowed in the beast’s eyes and reflected off its long, white, razor-edged teeth it had shown Dad as though a promise of imminent death and destruction.
The cows had been wailing fearfully, scattering themselves up and down the whole damn valley . . .
But the bear had seemed more intent on Dad himself.
That was a rare kind of fear. He’d never wanted to feel it again. But he felt it now, all right. Sure enough.
He stepped out away from the trees and cast his gaze down a long, gentle, sage-stippled slope and beyond a narrow creek that glistened like a snake’s skin in the starlight. He jerked with a start when he heard a spur trill very softly behind him and glanced to his right to see Driscoll step up beside him, a good half a foot taller than the stoop-shouldered Dad.
Driscoll gave a dry chuckle, but Dad knew Pete was as unnerved as he was.
Both men stood in silence, listening, staring straight off down the slope and across the water, toward where they’d heard the woman laugh.
Then it came again, louder. Only, this time it came from Dad’s left, beyond a bend in the stream.
Dad’s heart pumped harder. He squeezed his rifle in both sweating hands, bringing it up higher and slipping his right finger through the trigger guard, lightly caressing the trigger. The woman’s deep, throaty, hearty laugh echoed then faded. Then the echoes faded, as well.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Driscoll said. “I don’t see no campfire over that way.”
“Yeah, well, there’s no campfire straight out away from us, neither, and that’s where she was two minutes ago.”
Driscoll clucked his tongue in agreement.
The men could hear the faint sucking sounds of the stream down the slope to the north, fifty yards away. That was the only sound. No breeze. No birds. Not even the rustling, scratching sounds little animals made as they burrowed.
Not even the soft thump of a pinecone falling out of a tree.
It was as though the entire night was collectively holding its breath, anticipating something bad about to occur.
The silence was shattered by a loud yowling wail issuing from behind Dad and Driscoll. It was a yapping, coyote-like yodeling, only it wasn’t made by no coyote. No, no, no. Dad heard the voice of a man in that din. He heard the mocking laughter of a man in the cacophony as he and Driscoll turned quickly to stare back toward their fire and beyond it, their gazes cast with terror.
The crazy, mocking yodeling had come from the west, the opposite direction from the woman’s first laugh.
Dad felt a shiver in Driscoll’s right arm as it pressed up against Dad’s left one.
“Lord almighty,” his partner said. “They got us surrounded. Whoever they are!”
“Toyin’ with us,” Dad said, grimacing angrily.
Then the woman’s voice came again, issuing from its original direction, straight off down the slope and across the darkly glinting stream. Both men grunted their exasperation as they whipped around again and stared off toward the east.
“Sure as hell, they’re toyin’ with us!” Driscoll said tightly, angrily, his chest expanding and contracting as he breathed. “What the hell do they want?” He didn’t wait for Dad’s response. He stepped forward and, holding his cocked Winchester up high across his chest, shouted, “What the hell do you want?”
“Come on out an’ show yourselves!” Dad bellowed in a raspy voice brittle with terror.
Driscoll gave him a dubious look. “Sure we want ’em to do that?”
Dad only shrugged and continued turning his head this way and that, heart pounding as he looked for signs of movement in the deep, dark night around him.
“Hey, amigos,” a man’s deep, toneless voice said off Dad and Driscoll’s left flanks. “Over here!”
Both men whipped around with more startled grunts, extending their rifles out before them, aiming into the darkness right of their fire, looking for a target but not seeing one.
“That one’s close!” Driscoll said. “Damn close!”
Now the horses were stirring in the brush and trees beyond the fire, not far from where that cold, hollow voice had issued. They whickered and stumbled around, whipping their tails against their sides.
“That tears it!” Pete said. He moved forward, bulling through the pine boughs, angling toward the right of his and Dad’s fire which had burned down considerably, offering only a dull, flickering, red radiance.
“Hold on, Pete!” Dad said. “Hold on!”
But then Pete was gone, leaving only the pine boughs jostling behind him.
“Where are you, dammit?” Pete yelled, his own voice echoing. “Where the hell are you? Why don’t you come out an’ show yourselves?”
Dad shoved his left hand out, bending a pine branch back away from him. He stepped forward, seeing the fire flickering straight ahead of him, fifteen feet away. He quartered to the right of the fire, not wanting its dull light to outline him, to make him a target. He could hear Pete’s spurs ringing, his boots thudding and crackling in the pine needles ahead of him, near where the horses were whickering and prancing nervously.
“What the hell do you want?” Pete cried, his voice brittle with exasperation and fear. “Why don’t you show yourselves, darn it?” His boot thuds dwindled in volume as he moved farther away from the fire, spurs ringing more softly.
Dad jerked violently when Pete’s voice came again: “There you are! Stop or I’ll shoot, damn you!”
A rifle barked once, twice, three times.
“Stop—” Pete’s voice was drowned by another rifle blast, this one issuing from farther away than Pete’s had issued. And off to Dad’s left.
Straight out from Dad came an anguished cry.
“Pete!” Dad said, taking one quaking footstep forward, his heart hiccupping in his chest. “Pete!”
Pete cried out again. Running, stumbling footsteps sounded from the direction Pete had gone. Dad aimed the rifle, gazing in terror toward the sound of the footsteps growing louder and louder. A man-shaped silhouette grew before Dad, and then, just before he was about to squeeze the Spencer’s trigger, the last rays of the dying fire played across Pete’s sweaty face.
He was running hatless and without his rifle, his hands clamped over his belly.
“Pete!” Dad cried again, lowering the rifle.
“Dad!” Pete stopped and dropped to his knees before him. He looked up at the older man, his hair hanging in his eyes, his eyes creased with pain. “They’re comin’, Dad!” Then he sagged onto his left shoulder and lay groaning and writhing.
“Pete!” Dad cried, staring down in horror at his partner.
His friend’s name hadn’t entirely cleared his lips before something hot punched into his right side. The punch was followed by the wicked, ripping report of a rifle. He saw the flash in the darkness out before him and to the right.
