A lamb to the slaughter, p.1
A Lamb to the Slaughter, 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
The Red Ryan Westerns
Perley Gates
Have Brides, Will Travel
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
Tinhorn
Will Tanner, Deputy US Marshal
A LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER
WILLIAM W. 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
Teaser chapter
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 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 are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-5115-1
Chapter 1
“I ain’t sure how much longer I can make it,” Bart McCoy gasped when Roy Tate reached up to help him out of the saddle. “I’m bleedin’ pretty bad.”
“You just hang on,” Roy told him. “We’ve gotta let these horses rest, or we’re gonna be tryin’ to make it to Tinhorn on foot. I’m gonna set you down under the trees. We’ll let the horses drink some water and rest a little, and I’ll see if I can tighten that bandage up some more. Accordin’ to that feller back at that store at the crossroads to Athens, we can’t be but about an hour’s ride from Tinhorn. That was almost four hours ago, so don’t cash in on me now. We’ve got plenty of time to get there before suppertime. Come on. Lean on over this way.”
Although wounded, Bart reluctantly did as asked and leaned over to let Roy catch his weight on his shoulders.
“I believe we lost that posse,” Roy said as he walked Bart over to settle him against a sweetgum tree while he took care of the horses. “I believe they went after Eli and the other boys. When I get back, I’ll build a small fire big enough to boil us a cup of coffee. That’ll buck you up a little.”
“I ’preciate it, Roy,” Bart forced out painfully. “You coulda left me back there at the fork and gone with Eli and the others. I ain’t never gonna forget that.”
“I couldn’ta just rode off and left you with a bullet in your side, like Eli and them did,” Roy declared.
“I wouldn’ta blamed you if you had gone with ’em, ’cause there ain’t no tellin’ if you’ll ever get your share of that money. Eli ain’t even gonna count it till they’re somewhere safe tonight.” Bart knew it wasn’t like Roy Tate to trust anyone with his share of a holdup. He also knew Eli Curry well enough to know he would hardly go to the trouble of finding them to give them their share of that Wells Fargo cash shipment. Eli was a loser all the way around.
Instead of his share of the cash, Bart got a bullet in his side. He never was a lucky individual, so he wasn’t surprised that of the six men, he was the only one the Wells Fargo guard shot before Eli shot down the guard. Bart’s only hope for the present was that there might be a doctor in the little town of Tinhorn. He was still in a mild state of shock at Roy Tate volunteering to stay with him to find a doctor before the money was split. It just wasn’t like him to let anybody ride off with his share of the money.
Almost as if he knew what Bart was thinking, Roy looked at him and smiled. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you. You’ll get your share of the money. We both will. See, when we was gettin’ ready to leave that first place we stopped to rest the horses . . . you remember that, right? And Eli was tellin’ you how sorry he was we was gonna have to leave you, ’cause we had to ride fast? Well, when he was tellin’ you that, I noticed nobody was payin’ any attention to those three money bags tied behind Eli’s saddle. I told myself, ‘them bags look uneven, one hangin’ on one side, and two hangin’ on the other’. So I thought it’d be a good idea to even ’em up a little. That black Morgan he rides oughta appreciate it, and this way, we don’t lose our share of the job.”
Bart was so shocked by Roy’s bold statement he almost forgot his pain for a few moments. “I swear,” he blurted. “Are you japin’ me?”
Roy shook his head.
“You took one of those bags offa Eli’s horse?”
Roy nodded, grinning all the while.
“You know he’ll be comin’ after us,” Bart warned.
“He don’t know where we went,” Roy said. “He didn’t ask me where I was gonna take you, so I didn’t even have to tell him a lie. If he had any notion of comin’ to find us and give us our share of the money, don’t you reckon he mighta asked me where we was headed?”
“He’s gonna be mad as hell when he stops for the night and finds out one of them bags is missin’,” Bart said. “If he don’t notice before that. When him and the other boys left us back on the other side of Tyler, and we started out, you cut back and changed directions so many times, I thought you were tryin’ to lose a posse. Then I thought you were just tryin’ to see if you could hurry me along, so I’d go ahead and bleed out, and you wouldn’t have to fool with me no more.”
Roy laughed. “No such a thing, partner. I was more concerned with not leavin’ a trail for Eli to follow, in case he discovered he was missin’ a bag before we got very far. I know he wanted to do the dividin’ up hisself, but I don’t figure we’re cheatin’ him or the other boys. There’s four of ’em and they’ve got two bags. That’s two shares to a bag. There’s two of us and we’ve got one bag. Seems fair to me. I ain’t never cheated a partner in this business.” He decided not to explain one of the reasons he didn’t want to leave a trail for Eli was because Bart’s condition left some question about whether or not he would make it. There was no sense in sharing Bart’s share with the others, if he failed to survive his wound.
They sure as hell didn’t offer any help to take care of him.
With Bart settled against a tree, Roy went to take care of the horses, and when he came back, he collected enough dry branches and limbs to build a fire. “You feel like you could drink a little coffee?”
“I reckon,” Bart answered. “A little bit, anyway. I don’t think I can eat anything right now.”
“That’s good ’cause I ain’t got anything to eat. We oughta find something to eat in Tinhorn. You ever been there?”
“Nope.” Bart gasped painfully when he tried to shift his position against the tree.
“Well, I hope they’ve got someplace to buy somethin’ to eat, since me and you can afford to buy us anything we want,” Roy boasted.
“How much you think is in that bag?” Bart asked, his curiosity stronger than his sense of pain at the moment.
“I don’t know, but Eli said the total shipment was fifty thousand dollars, and they had it in three separate bags. Them bags looked pretty much equal, so what’s three into fifty thousand?” He brushed the leaves away to expose some bare ground to use for a slate. “Too bad we ain’t
“How come nobody saw that bag after you took it off Eli’s saddle?” Bart asked, still amazed Roy had gotten away with it.
“I dropped it under the creekbank, just in case he did notice it was gone,” Roy said with a chuckle.
“Let’s go ahead and count it now,” Bart said. “It’s gonna drive me crazy till we do.”
Roy laughed. “It’s workin’ on my mind, too, so I’ll empty it out here on the ground and we’ll see how rich we are.” They carefully counted all the money in the sack. When they came up with a total of twenty thousand dollars they figured they must have miscounted, and counted it again. When they reached the same total the second time, they realized that pure luck had given them a sack with ten thousand dollars each.
“Them other two sacks was just holdin’ thirty thousand,” Roy exclaimed. “Damned if we didn’t skunk ’em on the money split, and we didn’t even know it!” He threw his head back and issued a real horse laugh. “He’s gonna be fit to be tied when he finds out we got ten thousand apiece.”
* * *
After the horses were rested, Roy got Bart back in the saddle again. Feeling wealthier than when they had stopped, they continued on to the town of Tinhorn. Coming in from the north, the most critical question in Bart’s mind was answered right away when Roy spotted the sign on the first house they saw. DOCTOR JOHN THOMAS BEARD it read.
“Well, danged if that ain’t convenient,” Roy declared. Looking up ahead, he could see the town was a little more than he had expected. The next building on the same side as the doctor’s was a hotel. “That’s convenient, too.” Although he couldn’t read nor write, he knew the word hotel, just like he knew saloon and doctor. “This place is bigger ’n I thought it was.” He turned his horse onto the path that led up to the doc’s office and living quarters.
“Looks like you got a patient coming in,” Doc’s wife, Birdie, informed him. “Two men on horseback. One of them bent over like he’s hurt. Want me to go see?”
“No,” Doc answered and put his coffee cup on the table. “I’ll go see what they need.” He got up from the kitchen table and walked to the front of the house, which served as his office. He arrived just as Roy was coming in through the front door.
“You the doctor?” Roy asked.
“I’m Dr. Beard. What can I do for you?”
“My partner’s got a gunshot wound, and he’s bleedin’ pretty bad,” Roy said. “Can you take a look at it?”
“Bring him on in here and we’ll see how bad it is. Can he walk? Do you need help carrying him?”
“No, sir,” Roy replied. “I can get him in here without no trouble. It was an accident. I was cleanin’ my gun—”
“I don’t care how he got shot,” Doc interrupted. “That’s between him and whoever shot him. Just bring him in and put him on that table in there.” He pointed to the open door of his examining room. “Where is the wound?”
“In his side.”
“Well, take him in there and get his shirt off him, and we’ll take a look.” Doc went back to the kitchen to tell his petite Cherokee wife he would need her, while Roy went outside to help Bart get off his horse.
“What did you tell him about how I got shot?” Bart grunted painfully as he leaned on Roy for support.
“I started to tell him I was cleanin’ my gun and it accidentally went off, but he didn’t let me finish. Said he didn’t care how you got shot, so I don’t reckon we have to worry about him causin’ us any trouble.” Roy helped Bart inside the door, then took him to the examining room and helped him get his shirt off.
Doc went in followed by Birdie, carrying a pan of hot water. “This is my wife. She’ll be helping me.” To prevent any insult to his wife because she was an Indian, he always introduced her as his wife, especially when working on gunshot wounds and strangers who looked as if gunshot wounds were not unusual in their lives.
“Ma’am,” Roy greeted her politely and Bart nodded his head.
After a careful examination, Doc informed Bart the bullet was deep in his side and would continue to cause him pain unless it was removed. “On surgery like this, I usually charge twenty-five dollars because I’ll have to do a lot of cutting and stitching. It won’t kill you if I just fix the hole, but it’ll aggravate you for the rest of your life.”
“Go ahead and fix me up right, Doc,” Bart said without hesitation. “I’ve got the money to pay you. Don’t worry about that.”
“We’ll get started right away.” Doc motioned to Birdie to get the chloroform. “It’s gonna take a good little while,” he told Roy, “so you might want to get yourself something to eat, or a drink or two. But if you’d rather wait here, you can just make yourself comfortable in the parlor. He won’t know whether you’re here or not. I’m gonna put him to sleep.”
Birdie came back then with a clean cotton cloth and a bottle of chloroform.
“I noticed a hotel right down the street there,” Roy said. “I think I’ll go see if we can get us a room. I don’t think Bart’s gonna be ready to travel right away. I reckon I’ll have plenty of time to take care of the horses, too.”
“Good idea. He might feel a little sick from the chloroform,” Doc told him and watched him go out the door. If he’s thinking about staying in the hotel, maybe they do have enough money to pay my bill, he was thinking. “You couldn’t tell it by looking at him,” he said aloud.
“What you say?” Birdie asked.
“Nothing. I was just talking to myself.” Doc took the bottle of chloroform and the cotton pad from her and returned to his patient.
After he got Bart to lie back on the table in a comfortable position, he poured some of the chloroform on the cotton pad and held it under Bart’s nose. “Just breathe in real deep,” he instructed and continued the process until Bart passed out.
The surgery was quickly done, and the wound bandaged before Bart showed any signs of waking up, so he was still on the table when Roy returned.
“How’s he doin’, Doc?” Roy asked when he came back in the office to find Doc Beard sitting at his desk.
“He’ll be ready to go in a few minutes,” Doc answered. “He’s just waking up right now. I’ll tell you, since he might still be a little groggy from the chloroform, tell him to leave that bandage on for three days before he changes it. Tell him to keep it dry. And don’t take a bath for three days.”
Roy chuckled in response. “Won’t be no trouble there. He can go three months, if you want him to. When can he ride?”
“To start with, it’d be best not to have him bouncing around on a horse for a couple of days,” Doc advised. “After that, it’s up to him. If it doesn’t bother him, he can get on a horse then.”
“Fine and dandy,” Roy said. “’Preciate you takin’ care of him. I’ll settle up with you now, and he can pay me later. How much did you say it was?” Doc told him it was twenty-five dollars, same as he had quoted him.
“Twenty-five,” Roy repeated. “That’s a little steep, but I ain’t complainin’. I’ll tell Bart you charged fifty,” he japed. “I rented us a room in the hotel, so I’ll see if I can get him over there to rest up.”
* * *
“You feel like eatin’ some supper?” Roy asked after Bart had rested up a little and seemed to have recovered from his surgery.
“Yeah, I think so. I know I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.”
“Well, let’s go on over to the dinin’ room and see if they’ve got a horse on the menu. Doc Beard told me they serve pretty good cookin’. Clara’s Kitchen is what they call the dinin’ room. We’ll see if Clara cooks good enough to satisfy two rich gents like me and you.”
