Shotgun johnny, p.1
Shotgun Johnny, page 1
LOOK FOR THESE EXCITING WESTERN SERIES FROM BEST-SELLING AUTHORS WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
The Mountain Man
Luke Jensen: Bounty Hunter
Brannigan’s Land
The Jensen Brand
Smoke Jensen: The Early Years
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: US Deputy Marshal
Old Cowboys Never Die
Go West, Young Man
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
SHOTGUN JHONNY
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
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
CHAPTER 37
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2020 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.
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-4849-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4849-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4852-6 (eBook)
CHAPTER 1
“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, sucking 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 woolly 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’s 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’s 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
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’s 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 owlhoot 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’s 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’s 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 boots 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.
He jerked again when the Henry spoke again . . . again . . . and again.
The sound of running footsteps sounded on the far side of the camp, maybe two hundred feet away, beyond the horses that were nickering and prancing around in fear, the mule doing the same, braying softly, all three tugging on their picket line.
“What is it?” Devries yelled, his heart pounding. “What do you see, Vern . . . I mean, Rocky Mountain?”
The running footsteps stopped suddenly.
Wade said something too softly, or maybe he was too far away, for Devries to hear.
Pete did hear the sudden gasp, however. It was loud as gasps go and it was followed by what sounded like a strangling sigh. The sigh was followed by a shrill, “Ahh . . . ohhh . . . ohhhh, gawd! Oh, you dirty, low-down . . .”
There was a light thump.
“What is it, Wade?”
Devries ran toward the sound of the commotion. He sprinted through the weak light thrown by the fire and then out of the light again and into the darkness near the whickering, skitter-hopping horses and mule. A deadfall pulled his right foot out from under him, and he hit the ground hard.
He lifted his head, sweating, his heart thundering in his ears. “What is it, Rocky Mountain?”
He stared into the darkness, breathing hard from the short run and the fear that verged on panic.
Footsteps rose on his left. Devries whipped his head in that direction. Someone was moving toward him, taking heavy, lunging strides. He saw the man’s thick shadow.
“Wade?” he called. “Rocky Mountain, that you?”
No reply except for the heavy, lunging steps. The thick man’s shadow moved through the forest, crouched slightly forward.
“Wade?” he called again, panic a living beast inside of him.
He looked around quickly, not hearing anything but the big man’s approach. Still, he had the sense that he was surrounded and that men were tightening their positions around him.
He turned again toward the camp. The light from the fire began to reach the approaching man. Devries swung around from the darkness and, squeezing his cocked Winchester in both hands, hurried back into the camp just as the thick figure stepped up to the fire on the camp’s opposite side.
