Devils gulch, p.1
Devil's Gulch, page 1
Look for these exciting Western series from bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone
The Mountain Man
Luke Jensen: Bounty Hunter
Brannigan’s Land
The Jensen Brand
Preacher and MacCallister
Fort Misery
The Fighting O’Neils
Perley Gates
MacCoole and Boone
Guns of the Vigilantes
Shotgun Johnny
The Chuckwagon Trail
The Jackals
The Slash and Pecos Westerns
The Texas Moonshiners
Stoneface Finnegan Westerns
Ben Savage: Saloon Ranger
The Buck Trammel Westerns
The Death and Texas Westerns
The Hunter Buchanon Westerns
Will Tanner: U.S. Deputy Marshal
DEVIL’S GULCH
A Devil’s Gulch Western
WILLIAM W.
JOHNSTONE
AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1 - OUTSIDE DEVIL’S GULCH
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
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2023 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 authors’ 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.
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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.”
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-4973-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4977-6 (eBook)
CHAPTER 1
OUTSIDE DEVIL’S GULCH
1868
John Holt looked up from his campfire when his roan started fussing.
He knew the animal could see and hear things in the darkness. It could be an animal attracted to the smell of the bacon he was cooking up as his supper. Maybe a wolf attracted to the scent of his horse.
But Holt knew there was a good chance it was a critter of the two-legged variety drawn by his campfire in the hopes of a meal or something worse.
That was what he hoped, anyway. It was why he had camped out on the outskirts of town rather than riding in and spending the night in the warm bed of a hotel.
Holt drew the Remington .44 from his belt and wrapped his blanket tightly around his shoulders. No reason to show whatever—or whoever—was approaching what he had waiting for them.
His answer came in the form of a shout from the darkness.
“Hello, the camp!” a man’s voice shouted. “We’d like to come in.”
Holt smiled to himself. His trap had worked. “Come ahead, then. Nice and slow with your hands empty.”
“We can do slow,” the man responded, “but we ain’t got slings for our rifles so we won’t come in empty. Can come in holding them by the barrel if that’ll suit you.”
Playing games already. A bad sign. “Sounds like it’ll have to be. Come ahead.”
Holt’s roan fussed and pulled against her rope as the men drew closer and broke into the clearing. Slow and easy as they had promised. He looked back at the mare and told her to be easy.
Holt watched two men as they entered the weak circle of light thrown off by his campfire. He had learned a man could tell you a lot about himself before he even opened his mouth if you took the time to let him.
Their appearance spoke volumes to him now.
He judged the two men to be in their early twenties. They both had a fair complexion and sandy colored hair, so Holt took them for relations, maybe even brothers. One favored their father while the other favored the mother, though it was impossible for Holt to tell which was which. They looked like the better parts of two different people, which confirmed they were blood. Their clothes were damp and dusty and hadn’t seen a good washing in a while, if ever.
Their pants were tattered and torn, but their boots were in reasonably good condition. Neither man had seen a bath or a shave in some time, but the small amount of stubble on their faces showed there was hardly enough reason to put effort into lathering up in the first place.
No, it wasn’t their appearance that put John Holt on edge.
It was their eyes.
Eyes that should have been youthful but could not hide what they had beheld. Eyes that had seen the worst of what men could do to each other when they had no other choice. Eyes that reminded Holt of his own.
The war had done that to him and, by his reckoning, had done the same to these boys too. He could not tell which side they had fought for, not that it mattered. Blood and horror had left its mark on men who had worn either blue or gray.
He watched the young men approach the campfire holding their rifles by the barrels with the stocks forward.
Holt kept his pistol beneath his blanket. He bided his time until he knew who they were.
“Evening, mister.” The taller of the two young men smiled. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“Nothing to thank me for yet,” Holt said as he continued to eye his new guests. Their clothes might be ratty, but they had taken good care of their rifles. He judged the pistols holstered on their hips to be in good condition too.
His mare fussed again, and Holt told her to be quiet.
“Your animal’s a might touchy, mister,” the other one said. “If you don’t mind my saying.”
“I don’t mind, and neither does she.” Holt tried a smile. “She’s never taken kindly to strangers. Guess we have that in common.”
The taller of the two nodded down at the coffeepot he had set next to the fire and the pan of bacon beginning to sizzle. “We’d sure appreciate a cup of coffee if you can spare it, mister. We’d be indebted to you.”
Holt said, “I’ve only got the one cup to spare, unless you boys brought your own. There’s four of you, aren’t there?”
The shorter of the two froze while the taller used his smile as his shield. “Four? Why there’s just two of us, mister, standing here as plain as day. Are you seeing double?”
“I’m seeing just fine.” Holt nodded back toward the mare still pulling against her line. “Not as good as her, of course, especially at night. She hears better than me no matter the time of day, so I know enough to pay attention when she fusses, which she’s doing now. Plain as day, as you said. That tells me you boys have a friend out there somewhere in the darkness trying to flank me at this very moment.”
The shorter of the two swallowed.
The taller of the two kept smiling. “Mister, you’ve got a mighty distrustful nature.”
“And you boys have got a choice,” Holt said. “Either call him in here—and tell him to be nice and slow about it—or there’s going to be a misunderstanding.”
The taller man was not smiling any longer. “Come on out, Cleat. He’s safe. Come to us, not behind him.”
“Smart boy.” Holt told the taller man. “That fourth fella can keep tending the horses. I want to keep this a small affair for now.”
The shorter of the brothers stammered, “H-h-how’d you know we had horses?”
Holt decided there was no harm in telling him. “Your boots don’t look like you’ve been walking all day and you’re not carrying any gear for outdoor living. That tells me you’ve been riding a
He did not tell them how he really knew there were four of them. That could come later.
Cleat entered through the darkness on his right side. His rifle in hand but aimed down at the ground. Holt did not have to look at him to know exactly where he was.
“Could’ve hobbled them,” the taller man said. “Or tied them to a tree.”
“If you had, that fourth man would be with you, but he’s not.” Holt’s eyes moved slowly from the shorter brother, then to the taller one, and finally to Cleat. He resembled the two brothers, but the similarities were distant. If he was blood, he was a cousin. He was also a follower. The taller of the three was clearly the leader.
“Which has me wondering,” Holt went on, “why you’d leave him out there all alone instead of bringing the horses with you?”
His eyes moved back to the taller man. If trouble started, it would start with him. “So how about it, boy? What’re you hiding on those horses of yours?”
The tall man’s smile was gone now. The flickering firelight revealed the true nature of the youngster before him. “You ask a lot of questions, mister.”
“My fire,” Holt said. “My grub. My privilege.” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be hiding anything that might be draped across your saddles, would you, boy? Something you wouldn’t like me seeing?”
The shorter brother took a step back. He might have run away if his brother had not been there. But Holt knew that if it had not been for his brother, the shorter man would not have been there at all. And neither would Cleat.
Holt forced the issue while the taller man glared at him from across the fire. “If I were to walk back there and find those horses, I wouldn’t find any money bags from the First National Bank in Devil’s Gulch, would I, boy?”
“You wouldn’t make it that far,” the taller man told him. “And I ain’t nobody’s boy.”
It was Holt’s turn to smile. “Then I guess that would make you three big rats, now wouldn’t it.”
As the taller man dropped his rifle and went for the pistol on his hip, Holt raised his Remington and shot him in the chest.
Cleat was bringing up his rifle when Holt’s second shot punched through his belly. The rifle went off and a bullet struck the fire as Cleat doubled over and dropped the rifle to the ground.
Holt was already on his feet, his blanket shucked from his shoulders, his pistol aimed at the shorter brother who was still making up his mind about what to do next.
“Careful, son,” Holt cautioned. “You don’t have to die tonight. Just drop the rifle and throw up your hands.”
Holt did not know if the younger man had heard him. He was looking down at the bodies of the two Holt had just killed. Thin streams of vapor rose from their wounds in the cold night air. He had seen such sights before—of that, Holt was certain—but not these men. They had already lived through so much. They had escaped death’s grip for four blood-soaked years, yet there they were, lying dead on the cold ground around the campfire of a stranger.
It did not seem possible, but there they were.
And here he was. The only one left to do something about it.
Holt knew the look that appeared on his face all too well. The look of resignation.
“Don’t do it, boy,” Holt warned. “Don’t make me kill you.”
The shorter man looked at him. The fire casting ugly shadows on his face, making him look older than a man so young had any right to be.
“You in the war, mister?”
Holt nodded. “So were you, I take it.”
“Manassas Junction,” he said. “Both times.”
Holt was not surprised. “So was I.”
The young survivor’s expression did not change. He was committed. He was just working himself up to it. “Which side?”
“Does it matter?”
The man took a deep breath. “No. I guess it don’t.”
He tossed the rifle at Holt, who fired as soon as he saw his shoulder flinch. The rifle tilted into the fire. The man hit the ground with a bullet through his head.
He fell to the ground. His pistol still in his hand.
Holt kicked the rifle free from the flames and walked toward Cleat, who was clutching his belly with one hand while he pawed for his rifle with the other. Holt grabbed the rifle and tossed it on the far side of the fire.
Cleat looked up at him. Defeated. “You at Manassas too?”
“My side called it Bull Run.”
“I’m surprised.” The dying man’s eyes narrowed. “You got a bit of Old Virginia in your voice.”
“You got good ears, son.” He aimed the Remington down at him. “That belly wound is mighty bad. I’ll end it if you want.”
Cleat tried to keep his head from shaking as he nodded. His voice quivered as he said, “Looks like we picked the wrong campfire.”
Holt thumbed back the hammer. “Looks like.”
Then, he granted Cleat his last wish.
* * *
Holt did not try to conceal himself as he walked through the overgrowth toward the horses. He had an easy time finding them in the darkness. Whoever the dead men had left behind to watch them was having a tough time keeping them under control. The gunfire and the smell of death had spooked them.
The clouds that had been covering the half-moon for most of the night slowly parted and showed Holt a young man he judged to still be in his teens on foot, grappling with four horses pulling away from him.
They were rearing back, eyes wide, and thinking about kicking out with their forelegs.
He could read First National Bank of Devil’s Gulch stamped on the satchels around their saddle horns.
“You’re covered, son,” Holt said as he stepped out of the overgrowth. “Keep your hands where I can see them, and you might just live through this night.”
But the boy was too preoccupied with the horses to pay him much mind. “If you shoot, you’d be doing me a favor. You can wrestle with these damned things for once.”
Holt kept his pistol on the boy while he held his left hand out to the largest of the four horses. “Easy, boy, easy. It’s all over now.”
The animal reluctantly stopped fussing and its nostrils flared to smell the air. It backed away from Holt’s hand as he gently laid it upon its muzzle. “There you go. See that? Nothing to be afraid of. That’s a good boy.”
The horse blew air and scrapped at the ground but calmed under Holt’s touch. The other three did the same.
The boy gave the reins some slack as the fight slowly went out of the mounts. “You know how to handle horses, mister.”
“Pistols too.” Holt pulled the boy’s Colt from his holster and tucked it into this belt. “You’d do well to remember that while you bring this bunch over toward the fire.”
The boy did not turn to face him as he got the other animals under control. “You kill them?”
“I did.”
“Cleat too?”
“Had no choice.”
The boy turned on him and found himself looking down the barrel of the Remington.
“You think that scares me?” Tears streamed down the boy’s face, but his voice was steady. “You’ve just killed all the kin I’ve got in this world, mister. What makes you think I’ve got anything to live for?”
Holt admired the boy’s courage, but not enough to let him speak to him that way. He brought the barrel across his nose, breaking it easily.
The boy dropped to the ground, both hands to his bleeding nose.
The horses’ reins were free, but they did not move.
