Never seen deader, p.1
Never Seen Deader, page 1
Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
and J. A. JOHNSTONE
The Mountain Man
Preacher: The First Mountain Man
Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter
Those Jensen Boys!
The Jensen Brand
Matt Jensen
MacCallister
The Red Ryan Westerns
Perley Gates
Have Brides, Will Travel
The Hank Fallon Westerns
Will Tanner, Deputy U.S. Marshal
Shotgun Johnny
The Chuckwagon Trail
The Jackals
The Slash and Pecos Westerns
The Texas Moonshiners
AVAILABLE FROM PINNACLE BOOKS
NEVER SEEN DEADER
A SAWBONES 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
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 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: 978-0-7860-4705-5
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4021-6 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4021-1 (e-book)
CHAPTER 1
Dr. Samuel Knight flopped on his belly and stared at the dusty, bleak New Mexico Territory back trail, hunting for any sign his pursuers were sneaking up on him. He lifted the spyglass he had found alongside the road a few days earlier and started to peer through the cracked lens, then stopped and lowered it again. He used a thumbnail to scrape dried blood off the eyepiece to get a clearer view. Who had dropped the spyglass remained a mystery since he hadn’t overtaken any rider on the lonely trail and none had passed him riding east.
He blinked twice, pressed his right eye into the lens, and slowly scanned the heat-distorted horizon. The burning desert sun caused his eye to water as he tried to penetrate the shimmering, silvery curtain of mirage. He pulled away, drew out the tube to its full length, and anxiously focused on a green spot south of the road. His study was so intense that he suddenly gasped, having held his breath without realizing it.
There were riders in the stand of cottonwoods.
Several riders.
Knight swallowed hard, rolled onto his back, and stared up at the cloudless sky so he could draw his revolver, hold it at arm’s length, and check the load in the Colt Navy’s cylinder. Every chamber was full.
Riding with the hammer resting on an empty chamber kept accidents from happening. Otherwise, the constant bouncing of a horse sometimes caused a round to discharge. But Knight preferred to take the risk so he had an extra bullet in a shoot-out.
Just in case.
That caution summed up his life ever since he’d been released from the Yankee prisoner of war camp at Elmira, New York. He had been captured after the Battle of the Wilderness and sent to a hellhole where one in five prisoners died from disease, abuse, and all too often, their own hand when life became unbearable. His skills as a doctor had been pushed to the limits of his endurance, but he had saved the lives of dozens of his fellow Johnny Rebs using nothing more than stolen spoons sharpened into crude surgical instruments and water boiled over fires better used for staying warm during the fierce northern winter.
His life had been a living hell—he was not the only one calling the Yankee prison camp Hellmira—but all that should have changed when General Lee surrendered and he and the others were released. On his own, on foot, with nothing but the clothes on his back, he had nearly frozen and starved to death as he made his way home to Pine Knob, Texas, and his loving wife Victoria.
If his life as a prisoner had been horrific, what he’d found in the town where he was born and raised proved worse. A lot worse. His wife had remarried without first divorcing him. Adding insult to injury, she hadn’t even picked one of the local boys. She had married a carpetbagger from Boston who had come to Pine Knob to rob the citizens and steal as much as he could, all in the name of Reconstruction. Why she had given Gerald Donnelly the time of day, much less her hand in marriage, still puzzled Knight, but she had. She had married the Yankee and had rejected Knight when he returned.
Knight smiled grimly. Gerald Donnelly had plenty of reason to send his hired gunmen after the rebel doctor after getting his Achilles tendon severed and his trigger finger shot off, both done with Knight’s surgical precision.
The Federal cavalry officer in command of the garrison in Pine Knob had reason to come after him, too. Stolen horses, dead soldiers, shouted insults—it was as personal with Captain Norwood as it was with Donnelly.
And it wasn’t just the trouble in Pine Knob that Knight fled.
He didn’t even want to think about all the folks in Buffalo Springs who might want his scalp after the saloon got burned down to the ground, the town shot up, and bodies left all over. Then there was Amelia Parker...
Knight’s guilt about abandoning the lovely woman the way he had tore at him like ants chewing away his very soul. But there hadn’t been a choice, not after he had killed half an outlaw gang comprised of his old friends, some former inmates at Elmira who once upon a time had saved his life, and then shot up a band of Texas State Police Donnelly had sent to kill him.
His life swirled with death and double dealing, and it made him sick to his stomach.
He tried to push that feeling away as he pouched the iron and rolled over to study his back trail again. Nervous fingers slid back and forth along the slick brass tube of the spyglass as he tried to make sense of the blurred image from the stand of trees. Two miles behind him? Maybe less.
They had to be after him. When he thought he would go blind staring at the treetops swaying in the sluggish desert wind, not seeing another hint of movement, he realized he was fleeing ghosts. There hadn’t been anyone behind him for more than a week. He had left Buffalo Springs in the middle of the night and ridden until his horse threatened to collapse from exhaustion.
That forced him to rest, but he pressed on when he could, heading westward into New Mexico Territory. So many of the men from Buffalo Springs had come this way to find their fortunes in gold and silver strikes that he expected the road to be crowded. Instead, the vast desert had afforded lonely traveling for him and his tired horse. He’d appreciated that solitude more and more as he rode.
After he’d passed a range of mountains to the north of Paso del Norte, he had slowed his pace. Watering holes were scarce. From what he had heard in the past, the Apaches roaming these barren lands were the only ones who knew where to find water that was fit to drink. Even the river he had crossed had been mostly dry.
“The Rio Grande,” he had scoffed aloud. It had been misnamed, though the banks were wide, hinting that vast amounts of water sometimes raged between them. Not this year. Not so he could do more than find small holes in the sandy bottom filled with enough water for his horse and him.
He considered following the dry bed south until he reached Paso del Norte a
“West.” He pushed to his feet, collapsed the spyglass, and squinted once more along the road he had traveled earlier that day. A small dust devil swirled around and danced across the trail. Nothing else moved out there, not even circling buzzards.
Knight trudged to where he had left his horse nibbling at a patch of grass. He stashed the spyglass in his saddlebags and put his foot into the stirrup to mount.
Distant gunfire made him freeze. Trailing the gunshots came the swift pounding of horses’ hooves. He pulled himself up and settled into the saddle before tugging down the broad, floppy brim of his hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. The stand of cottonwoods still looked like it had a few seconds earlier, but the commotion steadily grew louder. Slowly turning, Knight searched for the origin of those sounds of battle.
Directly south of him, loud whoops suddenly rang out. He edged his horse in that direction, alert for a trap. When he caught sight of the drama playing out across the desert, he almost wheeled around and rode off.
Two Indians rode with their heads down, firing arrows at a cowboy not twenty yards ahead of them. The cowboy swung from side to side, thrusting his revolver out and getting off wild shots that did nothing to slow the pursuit.
Knight knew that hitting anything while firing from horseback was difficult. Shooting over a shoulder as he galloped from two Apaches trying to turn him into a pincushion presented the cowboy an impossible task. He might get lucky and score with one of those wild shots . . . but from where Knight sat, the man being pursued so aggressively had chased off Lady Luck a lot earlier.
Knight drew his rifle from the saddle sheath, levered a round into the chamber, and snugged the weapon to his shoulder. He held his horse steady with his knees as he swung smoothly from behind the Indians and then past them in a slow arc. When he came even with the lead Indian, he squeezed the trigger but kept swinging to be sure he didn’t pull the shot.
His round missed the lead rider but hit the second, jolting him halfway around even though he didn’t fall from the racing pony. Knight shook his head. The cowboy was out of luck, but Knight’s was damned good at the moment. He had only winged the Apache, but that was enough to cause the warrior to veer away from the chase.
Although he’d evened the odds, leaving the cowboy only one adversary, Knight realized the luck still rested with him. The fleeing cowboy’s gun clicked on empty cylinders. The Apache still had a quiver filled with arrows. Judging by the smooth pluck, draw, and fire, the warrior had a good chance to skewer his quarry.
Knight reacted without thinking. He spurred his horse down the sandy slope and across the sunbaked desert in pursuit. Trying to fire his rifle while riding would only waste ammunition. Head down, riding like the wind, he closed the gap between him and the Indian. At some point the Apache realized he had a decision to make. He either kept chasing the defenseless cowboy and got shot in the back—or he whirled around and confronted his new attacker.
As he galloped closer, Knight saw this was no young buck on his first raid. He was facing a grizzled veteran of too many ambushes and battles. The Indian brought his horse to a dead halt, drew back on his bow, and let fly an arrow. It spun a little as it flew toward Knight.
That saved him. The fletching on one side was torn off and the unstable flight sent the arrow angling to the right, away from him.
Knight hauled back on the reins, his horse kicking up a cloud of dust as he duplicated the Indian’s ploy. On a stationary mount he had a better chance of making a killing shot. As he fired, the dust blew off to one side, giving him a distorted glimpse of the Apache.
For an instant he thought he had made a clean miss. Then he saw fortune still favored him. The rifle slug tore through the Apache’s head and knocked him clean off his horse.
Knight levered in another round as he heard a horse galloping for him. He lowered the rifle when he saw the frantic cowboy waving at him.
“Behind you! Damn, there’s the other one behind you!”
Knight jerked forward, bending at the waist as an arrow sailed past. His horse began crow-hopping, forcing him to fight to keep his seat. If he got thrown, the horse would race off and leave him stranded—and at the mercy of the Indian he had already wounded.
By the time he got his horse under control, the cowboy had flashed past, screaming like a madman at the top of his lungs and waving his empty pistol over his head. Knight brought up his rifle but couldn’t fire without hitting the cowboy.
The young man launched himself from his horse and crashed into the charging Apache. He brought his revolver down hard on the warrior’s shoulder. The crack sounded loud enough to convince Knight that the collarbone had broken under the blow. Cowboy and Indian crashed to the ground. Knight had trouble maneuvering his horse around to get a clear shot as the two men wrestled desperately with each other.
In spite of the broken bone and what had to be intense pain, the Apache fought like ten men. He kicked out and forced the cowboy away. A silver-bladed knife flashed in the sunlight. His grip weak in his right hand, the Apache dropped the knife, bent, and picked it up with his left just as the cowboy surged forward. He swung his gun again, aiming for the warrior’s skull.
He missed and lost his balance as the Indian twisted out of the way. The cowboy sprawled facedown to the ground. The Apache reared above him, the knife clumsy in his hand but still potentially lethal. In spite of the pain and weak grip, the man prepared to deliver a death blow.
Knight’s bullet reached him first. The Apache took a half step back, stunned by the impact. His right arm twitched. He tried to touch the red flower blossoming on his chest with his left hand. Unexpectedly, he threw back his head and unleashed an ululation that chilled Knight.
Then he toppled backwards like a felled tree, dead when he hit the ground. Stretched out on his back, he didn’t even give a small twitch or tremor.
The cowboy got shakily to his feet, still holding his revolver. He stared at the fallen warrior and shook his head. Then he looked up at Knight. “I got a lot to thank you for, mister. You saved my life.”
“You probably saved mine, too, from that one.” Knight pointed with the muzzle of his rifle to the sprawled Apache. “I never heard him coming up behind me.”
“You winged him when he was chasing me. See?” The cowboy nudged the body with the toe of his boot, lifting slightly to show where Knight’s first bullet had cut through the man’s rib cage. “Went in and bored clean through, came out the back. Didn’t even hardly slow this red bastard none.”
The cowboy began reloading his revolver.
“How’d you get them on your trail?” Knight slid his rifle back into the scabbard and then swung down from the saddle. He cared less about the cowboy’s story than getting on his way, but he felt he owed the young man something for coming to his aid the way he had. Hearing his story would take care of that obligation.
The cowboy was barely twenty, if that. He had a short, dark stubble on his lean jaw that might have taken a week or two for him to grow. He wore a green vest with two buttons popped off, a shirt that had been white at one time, and blue denim pants worn white in patches. A gun belt was strapped around his hips, but Knight doubted the boy was a gunslinger. He held his weapon with authority but not the arrogance of a killer. Though Knight couldn’t be sure, he thought the cowboy’s hands shook just a mite.
He was sure of that tremor when the cowboy pulled his battered hat up from behind where it hung by a chin strap around his neck. Likely, the youngster was no more than a down-on-his-luck wrangler caught on the range by a pair of Apaches who mistook him for easy prey.
“Just more bad luck,” he said in answer to Knight’s question as he reloaded his pistol. ”I lost a spare horse and gear coming up from Big Bend, following the river. Down south there’s plenty of water. Not so much up here.“ The cowboy looked around and snorted in disgust. ”The Journey of Death they call this stretch all the way up to Socorro or maybe Albuquerque. El Jornado del Muerto. Not hardly anybody calls it the King’s Highway, not even the Mexicans that named it.“
