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
STAND UP AND DIE
THE JACKALS
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
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2020 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: 978-0-7860-4390-3
Electronic edition:
ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4391-0 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-7860-4391-1 (e-book)
PROLOGUE
About a week or two after Matt McCulloch had settled into the dugout he called home on what once had been a sprawling horse ranch in that rough land known as West Texas, he remembered the dream that had happened before all this death, misery, and hardships had begun.
The old Comanche warrior appeared in the middle of a dust devil that spun as furiously as a tornado. When the wind died, dozens of wild mustangs parted, snorting fire from nostrils and hooves looking like something in a Renaissance Era painting of old Lucifer himself. An old Comanche, face scarred, braids of dark hair wrapped in otter skins that dripped with blood, emerged from thick clouds of dust and walked through the gate of the corral. He walked through the damned wood. Didn’t bother opening the gate. The old man walked straight to the dugout where Matt stood, curious but not frightened.
“You will travel far.” The warrior spoke in Comanche, but McCulloch understood as though the warrior spoke with a thick Texas drawl.
“How far?”
“Farther than you have ever gone in all your life. Farther than you will ever go.”
“Where will I travel?” McCulloch asked the apparition.
“To a place far away.”
“How far?”
“Into the hell that you in this country call the Territory of Arizona.”
“Where?” McCulloch asked again. He had little patience for men or spirits who spoke in riddles.
“It is a place known as the Dead River.”
McCulloch shook his head. He remembered understanding the Comanche . . . but didn’t know how he could have. Hell, the Indian could have been speaking Russian, for all he knew. He could have been a lousy white actor playing a damned redskin in some stupid play at the opera house in El Paso for all that Matt McCulloch could tell. He remembered every detail. He could describe the designs on the shield slipped over the Indian’s left arm, the quillwork on his beaded leather war shirt . . . the number of rawhide strips wrapped around the otter skins that held his long braids together.
Even the number, length, and colors of the scalps secured by rawhide on the sleeves of his medicine shirt.
He remembered the old warrior telling him he would travel farther than he would ever go “until the time comes when you must travel to your own Happy Hunting Ground.”
Some drunks in saloons might have silently chuckled at a vision or a dream or a damned big windy using such a ridiculous cliché, but none doubted that it was exactly what he had heard—he was Matt McCulloch. He had been branded a jackal, along with bounty hunter Jed Breen and former army sergeant Sean Keegan who had taken the mystical, violent journey with him. His word was as good as any marker an honest gambler put up in Purgatory City. If any honest man ever set foot in the roughshod Texas town.
McCulloch remembered everything, including his last question: “And what awaits me at this place in the Territory of Arizona?” he had asked.
No matter how many times he told the story, or where he told the story, or how drunk or sober his listeners were by that time, he always paused. He wasn’t an actor, but it came naturally, and the mustangers, soldiers, or Texas Rangers always fell silent. So quiet, one could hear a centipede crossing the sand over the crackling of the fire, or hear the breathing of the audience outside the barbershop, or hear the bartender cleaning a beer stein in some Purgatory City saloon with a da
mp bar towel. It always remained the same. The listeners would always hang on to every word.
When McCulloch had finished, he would sip his beer, whiskey, coffee, or the water from a canteen. Although he knew the ending always led to a gasp from the collected breaths of his listeners, he returned his thoughts to the nightmare.
* * *
“What awaits you at the Dead River,” said the mystical warrior, “Is what awaits you. What awaits all men at some point on this long, winding road of life.
“At the Dead River . . . you will find . . . death.”
CHAPTER ONE
A woman might say “This has to be the prettiest spot in Texas” about the Davis Mountains in West Texas. A man, on the other hand, could respond “What’s so damned pretty about Apaches hiding behind slabs of volcanic rock over your head and keeping you pinned down below with fire from a rifle they took off a dead cowboy whose horse give out at the wrong time? Or moving from canyon to canyon trying to find that herd of wild mustangs you’ve been chasing forever? Or getting baked by the sun because you’re five thousand to maybe eight thousand feet higher than you ought to be in Texas, then, five minutes later, freezing your butt off and getting peppered by sleet?”
As he crouched by the campfire along Limpia Creek, sipping his last cup of coffee before starting his day, Matt McCulloch smiled. It was a pleasant memory, that conversation he recalled having with his wife shortly after they had married. She thought they should settle here, grab some land. There was good water—though you might have to dig pretty deep to find it—enough grass to feed cattle and horses, an army post for protection, and a thriving, friendly town, with churches, a good restaurant or two, and a schoolhouse so that their children, when they got around to having children, could get a good education. But McCulloch had figured he could get more land for his money farther west and south, so they had moved on with a farm wagon, a milk cow, the two horses pulling the wagon, the horse McCulloch rode, and the two broodmares tethered behind the Studebaker that carried all their belongings.
Yeah, McCulloch thought as he stood and stretched. All their belongings. They’d had a lot of extra room in the back of that wagon to collect the dust as they traveled on, eventually settling near the town of Purgatory City . . . which wasn’t so pretty unless you found dust storms and brutality pleasant to the eyes . . . where churches met whenever a lay preacher felt the call . . . where the schoolhouse someone built quickly became a brothel . . . and where the best food to be found was the dish of peanuts served free to patrons at the Perdition Saloon.
He tossed the last mouthful of the coffee onto the fire and moved to the black horse he had already saddled, stuffing the cup into one of the saddlebags. Found the well-used pot and dumped the last of the coffee, hearing the sizzle, letting the smoke bathe his face and maybe blind him to any bad memories, make him stop thinking about that dangerous question What if ?
Would his wife and family still be alive had he settled here instead of over there? Would his daughter not have been kidnapped, never to be found again? Taken by the Apaches that had raided his ranch while he was off protecting the great state of Texas as one of the state’s Rangers?
Besides, even Purgatory City wasn’t as lawless as it had once been, especially now that a certain contemptible newspaper was out of business and its editor-publisher-owner dead and butchered. Even the Perdition Saloon had been shuttered. After a couple of fires and a slew of murders, the owner had been called to rededicate his life after learning that he had come down with a virulent case of an indelicate disease and inoperable cancer on top of that. The Perdition Saloon was now—McCulloch had to laugh—a schoolhouse. The city still boasted five other saloons, and all did thriving business when the soldiers and cowboys got paid, although Texas Rangers and some dedicated lawmen generally kept a lid on things.
He kicked rocks and dirt over the fire, spread out the charred timbers, and stuffed the pot into the other saddlebag.
McCulloch was getting his life back together, had even begun to rebuild that old ranch of his. Not much, not yet anyway. Three corrals, a lean-to, and a one-room home dug into what passed for a hill. It was enough for him.
The corrals were empty, but horses were what had brought Matt McCulloch to the Davis Mountains. Wild mustangs roamed all over these mountains, and he had decided it was a good time to get back into the horse-trading business. Find a good herd of mustangs, capture those mares, colts, fillies, and the boss of the whole shebang. Break a few, keep a few, and sell a bunch. It was a start, a new beginning. All he had to do was find a good herd worth the bruises and cuts, and maybe broken bones, he would get trying to break them.
Folks called the Davis Mountains a “sky island,” and McCulloch knew his late wife would have considered that pure poetry. The sea was just sprawling desert, flat and dusty, that stretched on forever in all directions. But nearby greenery and black rocks, rugged ridges and rolling hills rose out of nowhere, creating an island of woodlands—juniper, piñon, pines, and aspen. Limpia Creek cut through it, and canyons crisscrossed here and there like a maze.
He had a square mile to cover, six hundred and forty acres, but he could rule out much of the high country, those ridges lined by quaking aspen trees. So far, all McCulloch had seen were wild hogs, a few white-tailed deer, one antelope, and about a dozen hummingbirds. But he had also seen the droppings of horses—and the scat of a black bear.
He stepped into the stirrup, threw his leg over the saddle, and moved south to find the grasslands tucked in between slopes where a herd of mustangs would be grazing. Keeping one eye on the land and one eye scanning for any Indian, outlaw, snake, or some other sort of danger, he noticed that the black bear must have had the same idea. Well, an old mare or a young foal would make a tasty meal for a bear.
McCulloch stopped long enough to pull the Winchester from the scabbard.
When he came upon the next pile of excrement the bear had left, he swung out of the saddle, and broke open the dung with his fingers, rubbing them together. He smiled, picturing the looks on the faces of his wife and daughter had they been around to witness it. He could hear both of them screaming to go wash his hands in lye soap. Quickly, he shut off those thoughts, not wanting to ruin such a beautiful morning with a burst of uncontrollable rage at God, his life, his decisions, and this tough country where he had tried to make a life.
All right. The scat was about a day or so old. A mile later, when the bear had started up the mountain, McCulloch did not follow. But he did keep an eye overhead.
Eventually, he forgot about the bear, for something else commanded his attention—tracks left by unshod horses. And not of a war party of Comanches, Kiowas, or Apaches. He dismounted for a closer look. No, some of the tracks belonged to youngsters, the colts that eventually might challenge the big stallion leader. It was a big herd, too, and McCulloch thought how he would handle such a large bunch. He’d have to trap them at a water hole or in a canyon. Do some breaking there. Then drive all he could all the way to his spread to start the real work. The bone-jarring, backbreaking work.
He was about to mount his black horse when something caught his eye. He moved a few yards away and sank his knees, protected by the leather chaps he wore, into the dirt. One of the horses he was following wore iron shoes. The rear hooves had been shod. Maybe a mare had wandered into the herd from some ranch or farm. Perhaps it had lost the iron shoes on its front feet. But some men in these parts were known to put shoes on only the rear feet of their mounts, so McCulloch might have competition for the herd.
Texas, he reminded himself, was a free country.
The other thought that crossed his mind, however, was that whoever was trailing this herd—if that indeed were the case—might not like competition. Especially if the horse had been stolen by an Indian.
His own horse had four iron shoes. Traveling across the volcanic rock and stones that lined the trail he had to follow would produce far too much noise. He leaned the Winchester against a rock and fished
out leather pads from a saddlebag. These he wrapped around the black’s feet, and the heavy hide would muffle the noise of his horse’s footfalls. Carbine back in hand, McCulloch mounted the horse, and rode through the canyon.
When he came into the opening, he didn’t see the horse herd, but he found the black bear.
It lay dead at the base of a rocky incline to the east.
McCulloch reined in, dismounted, and wrapped the reins around the trunk of a dead alligator juniper. The blood from the dead bear made his horse skittish, and the last thing McCulloch wanted was to be left afoot in this country. He stepped a few feet away from the horse and squatted, studying the country all around him, including the dead bear. No birds sang, no squirrels chattered, and the wind blew the scent of death and blood across the tall grass. Fifteen minutes later, he moved closer to the bear, seeing the drying blood soaking the ground.
The bear hadn’t been dead very long, McCulloch thought after he reached his left hand over and felt the thick fur around the animal’s neck. His fingers ran across the stab wounds. Knife? Lance? Certainly not the claws from another animal. Wetting his lips, McCulloch again looked across the canyon, up and down, and listened, but the only sound detected came from the stamping of the black’s hooves and the wind moaning through the rocks and small trees.
He moved to the bear’s head and saw the flattened grass and the blood trail that led into the rocks. Whoever had killed the bear had been wounded and dragged itself—no, himself—into the hills. A busted Spencer carbine lay in the grass, and McCulloch saw the holes in the bear’s throat. Two shots that had done enough damage, caused enough bleeding, to end the bear’s life, but not before that bear had put a big hurt on the . . . Indian.
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