Gut-Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  Most of Rufus Brooks’ place, a saloon and adjoining structure, had been cut out of the rise, but they were fronted by a mud brick façade that gave them a Spanish flair.

  To the left of the saloon’s timber door, where Sullivan dismounted, was a painted blue coyote tall as a man. Its howling head was turned to the moon represented by a chipped white platter fastened to the wall.

  The effect was quite artistic and he wondered if it was Brooks’ work or that of a bored saloon girl.

  If he were a betting man, his money would be on the girl.

  The door swung open just as he slid his Henry from the saddle boot. He left the muzzle drop when he saw that it was a boy, a small, underfed Mexican with a mop of black hair and huge eyes.

  “Take care of your horse, mister?” the boy asked.

  “Seems like you ain’t tall enough to rub him down,” Sullivan said.

  “I stand on a box. Brush him good.”

  It was only then that the bounty hunter noticed a barn set in a clump of oaks, most of its front obscured by a massive limestone rock that had tumbled from the ridge during some ancient earth-shake. “You got hay and oats in there?”

  His question was answered by a thin man who stood framed in the doorway. “Hay with a scoop of oats, seventy-five cents.”

  Sullivan frowned. “A shade high, ain’t it?”

  As though he hadn’t heard, the man continued. “Beer, ten cents. Whiskey, a dollar. The stew in the pot is a dollar a bowl if you provide your own eatin’ iron.”

  Then, like a man who’d recited it many times before, “One hour, two dollars. All-nighter with bed, six dollars, and the young lady will expect champagne at ten dollars a bottle.”

  “What do you call this place?” Sullivan asked.

  “Call it what you want to call it,” the thin man said.

  “Judging by your prices, I’d call it the Savoy.”

  “Take it or leave it,”

  Sullivan tossed the reins of his sorrel to the Mexican boy. “Brush him down good and feed him hay and oats, and don’t skimp on the oats.”

  “Nice looking hoss,” the thin man said as the boy led the sorrel away. “How much you pay for a big American stud like that.”

  “Too much.” Sullivan unbuttoned his sourdough, a tan-colored canvas coat with a heavy blanket lining that reached to his lean hips. His .44 Army Colt was holstered high in the horseman fashion.

  He had killed four men with the graceful revolver, all of them fugitives with dead or alive bounties on their heads. His conscience didn’t keep him awake nights.

  “I’m looking for a man goes by the name of Crow Wallace. Is he inside?”

  The thin man shook his head. “I never ask a man his name. If he don’t give it out, then it ain’t none of my business. But mine’s Rufus Brooks. Well known in these parts for my sweet, generous nature.” He had the quick eyes of a bird of prey and his tall scrawniness did not suggest physical weakness, but rather a lean, latent force that could move fast when called on to do so. Like a rapier blade.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Sullivan said. “Now if you’ll give me the road.”

  The inside of the saloon was pretty much what he expected. From the Mexican border to the Missouri Breaks, he’d been in a hundred just like it—dark, dingy dens where the oil lamps cast shadows and men with closed mouths and careful eyes stood still in the gloom. Every dugout shared in common the same stink, a raw mix of whiskey, spilled beer, sweat, vomit, and cheap perfume.

  The bar was a couple of timber boards laid across barrels, a few bottles displayed on an old bookshelf behind, and above the bottles an embroidered sign.

  Have You Written to MOTHER?

  “What will it be, stranger?” Brooks asked.

  Sullivan had already taken stock. Two shaggy men in bearskin coats sprawled on an overstuffed sofa that was spilling its guts. A young Mexican girl in a state of considerable undress sat between them. The dugout behind the bar, a half-dome cut out of living limestone rock, was wide enough to accommodate two tables and some chairs. Three men holding greasy cards sat at a table sharing a bottle of whiskey.

  One of the men, a breed with lank, black hair that fell over his back and ended at the top of his gun belt, looked up from his cards and saw Sullivan. “The game is poker, mister. Table stakes.”

  Sullivan took time to order a rye, then said, “I reckon not.”

  “Then go to hell,” the breed said.

  Sullivan smiled and said to Brooks, “Friendly folks.”

  The man shrugged. “He gave you an invite. That’s neighborly.”

  “Man shouldn’t refuse an invite,” one of the bearskin coats said. “I mean, it ain’t genteel.”

  “True words as ever was spoke, Clyde,” his companion said. “I wonder what he’d say if old Queen Vic offered him a chair at her poker game.”

  The Mexican girl giggled. “That is silly.” Her naked breasts were brown and small.

  Sullivan ignored the comments. There was no profit in doing otherwise. He took off his gloves and reached into the inside pocket of his coat. He produced two things, a slender, silver cigar case and a piece of paper folded into a rectangle.

  He chose a cheroot, lit it, then unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on the bar. “Another rye.” He turned toward the table. “Crow, your likeness don’t do you justice. Makes you look almost human.” He held up the wanted dodger to the breed and the men sitting with him.

  “Can you read, Crow?” Sullivan asked. “Them big words where my finger is say Wanted Dead or Alive.”

  Crow Wallace rose slowly to his feet, the chair screeching away from him along the stone floor. His right hand clawed over the handle of his Colt. “That ain’t a dodger, mister. It’s your death warrant.” He had a strange way of talking, a lisp so pronounced that mister came out “mithter.”

  Sullivan could see his thick tongue move.

  Wallace was a skinny little runt with buckteeth that gave him the look of a malignant teenager—which he was.

  According to the dodger, Wallace was nineteen years old that winter, one of the new breed of draw fighters Texas had spawned by the hundreds after the War Between the States.

  But young though he was, Wallace was a killer, fast and dangerous as a striking rattler.

  “Here’s how I see it, Crow,” Sullivan said. “Unbuckle and drop the iron and bring them saddlebags over to me. Then we both walk out of here alive. See, that word right there says Alive.”

  Wallace smiled, a twisted, vicious grimace. “Then read this, bounty hunter.” He drew.

  He was fast. Real fast. Smooth as silk.

  Wallace fired, fired again. One shot tugged at Sullivan’s sleeve, the second split the air less than an inch from his ear.

  Tam Sullivan jerked his gun and then adopted the duelist position, revolver extended in front of him with a straight arm, the inside of his left foot against the heel of his right. He thumbed back the Colt’s hammer and fired.

  Wallace took that shot smack in the middle of his forehead.

  Already a dead man, Crow triggered his Colt dry and .36 caliber balls ricocheted off the floor then spaaanged! from wall to wall, precipitating a hasty stampede from the card table.

  Sullivan shifted aim and centered on the chest of one of Wallace’s companions. “You in? State your intentions.”

  “Hell, no, I’m not in,” the man said. “I was only playing poker.”

  The older man hurrying behind him yelled, “I’m out of it. Don’t shoot.”

  A movement flickered at the corner of Sullivan’s eye.

  Rufus Brooks eared back the hammers of a scattergun and flung the butt to his shoulder.

  Sullivan fired by instinct.

  The big .44 ball struck the side plate of the Greener. Badly mangled, it ranged upward into Brooks’ throat just under his chin. By some strange quirk of velocity and energy, the ball continued its upward momentum and exited in an exclamation point of blood, brain, and bone from the top of the man’s h
ead.

  Brooks stumbled back and the shotgun fell from his hands. He crashed against the bookshelf that toppled over and the Have You Written to MOTHER? sign fell across his chest.

  Sullivan glanced at the dead man. “She must be mighty proud o’ you.”

  Both bearskin coats were on their feet and the young Mexican girl had vanished.

  “You taking a hand in this?” Sullivan asked.

  As the sound of hooves receded outside, the man called Clyde, a tinpan by the cut of his jib, shook his bearded head. “No we ain’t, mister. Just don’t expect no po-lite invites from me an’ Jules here.”

  “He means to a fiddle soiree and such,” Jules said with a French-tinged accent.

  “I take that real hard,” Sullivan said. “You boys disappoint me.”

  “Nothing personal,” Clyde said. “But you shouldn’t be around folks.”

  The door to the adjoining quarters opened and a slim woman who looked a tired and worn age stepped inside. She glanced at Sullivan’s leveled Colt, dismissed it, then moved to the wreckage of the bar. For a moment she stared in silence at Rufus Brooks’ lifeless body, then spat in his face.

  Sullivan smirked. “Not one to hold a grudge, are you, honey?”

  CHAPTER THREE Death of a Yankee

  Bill Longley stood at his room window of the Bon-Ton Hotel and stared out sullenly at the sluggish river of mud the good folks of Comanche Crossing, New Mexico Territory, were pleased to call Main Street. Snow flurries cartwheeled in the wind and a wooden sign hanging outside a general store banged back and forth with the sound of a muffled drum.

  By times, he was a past-thinking man, especially when it came to reminiscing about women he’d enjoyed and kills he particularly relished.

  A grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. The mud outside reminded him of another road in another time and place....

  The Camino Real, the old Spanish royal highway between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, ran within a mile of the Longley farm. On a cold, early December day in 1867 sixteen-year-old Bill was warned by his father to stay close because mounted Yankees had been seen patrolling the road.

  Campbell Longley, who’d been a close friend of General Sam Houston and had helped bury the American dead at Goliad, had passed on two traits to young Bill. One was a virtue—his skill with firearms. The other, a vice—a pathological hatred of Yankees and blacks.

  As snow flurried and the Camino Real turned to mud, Bill took his father’s Navy revolver. Never one to avoid the chance of a confrontation with Yankee soldiers, he sneaked out of the house and headed for the highway.

  “There are Yankees on the road! Stay away!” a woman wrapped in a blanket yelled at him from the shelter of a wild oak, frantically waving her hands.

  “Where are they?” Bill hollered.

  The woman pointed back down the highway. “That way. Stay clear. They’ll kill you and eat you.”

  He walked up a gentle rise that led to the road. Snow clung to the brush and salted the trunks of the bare trees. As he stepped closer, he saw that the woman was old. Her gray eyes had faded to the color of smoke and the hair that showed under her bonnet was white. She was thin and looked hungry.

  She carried a wicker basket, as did all the old men and women who scavenged along the Camino Real. She’d already found an old horseshoe and what looked to be a dented can of meat.

  “Go back, son,” the woman said. “That Yankee up there will arrest you and then you’ll get skun an’ your hide stretched on a frame.”

  “Who, grandma? Who’ll arrest me?”

  “Black man on a hoss, wearing a blue coat. He’s got stripes on his sleeves and a rifle.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  The woman shivered, from cold or memory he couldn’t tell.

  “He told me to get the hell off the road. Said there’s too much thievery going on along the highway.”

  Bill’s dark, sudden anger flared. “A black man spoke to you like that?”

  “Son, since the war ended, a black man can speak to a white woman any way he damn pleases. Or didn’t you know that?”

  “Not in San Jacinto County, he can’t. Where the hell is he?”

  “That way. Down the road apiece.”

  Bill nodded and laid his hand on the woman’s skinny shoulder. “You go home now. I’ll take care of the black. He’ll never sass a white woman again.” He opened his coat and revealed the Navy in his waistband. “I got me some uppity negro medicine right here.”

  He watched until the old lady vanished from sight behind a hill, then followed her directions, avoiding the worst of the mud puddles as he walked, head bowed against the chill wind and slashing sleet.

  He saw the soldier sitting his horse under the thin cover of an oak. A Spencer carbine lay across the pommel of his McClellan saddle as he intently peeled a green apple with a folding knife.

  The corporal spotted Bill and took account of his ragged coat, pale, underfed face, summing him up as local white trash. Taking a bite of the apple, the soldier made a face and tossed it away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and kneed his horse into motion, approaching Bill at a leisurely walk. The Spencer was upright, the butt resting on his thigh.

  When he was a few feet away, the corporal drew rein and again studied the lanky teenager, not liking what he saw. “You, Reb. Git off the damned highway. We’ve had enough of thieves and footpads preying on decent folks.”

  “And if I don’t?” Bill said, his anger simmering.

  The soldier leveled his rifle. “Then I’ll damn well blow you off the road.”

  Bill whimpered a little. “Please, mister, don’t. I didn’t mean no harm.”

  “You look like dirty, thieving Reb spawn to me,” the soldier said. “Now get off the highway and run home to your mama and ask her to dry your tears.”

  The solder then made a mistake. He turned his back on Bill.

  It was a gesture of contempt that cost Corporal Thetas Washington, age twenty-six, his life.

  Bill drew from the waistband, aimed at a spot between the shoulder blades and pulled the trigger. The .36 caliber ball shattered the black man’s spine as he cried out in pain and rage at the time and manner of his death.

  The sixteen-year-old didn’t fire a second time. Powder and ball cost money his father didn’t have. He waited until the soldier toppled from his horse then stepped beside him.

  A clean kill!

  The man was as dead as he was ever going to be.

  Working quickly for fear of being discovered, Bill searched the man’s pockets. He took twenty-three Yankee dollars, a nickel watch and chain, and a whiskey flask. Made from pewter, the Bonnie Blue Flag was engraved on its side. Under that was another engraving. Lieut. Joseph Herbert, 17th Georgia Infantry.

  Longley uncorked the flask, fastidiously wiped it off, then took a swig. He gathered the reins of the dead man’s horse, picked up the Spencer, and walked back to the farm.

  He had his first kill, a black carpetbagger at that, and he was so elated that even the icy wind and spinning sleet could not chill him.

  Bill Longley was pulled from his pleasant reverie by a shadow of movement on the street. A careful man, he turned down the oil lamp and stepped to the window again, one of his beautiful .44 Dance revolvers in his fist.

  The night was so torn and dark it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the gloom. When they did, he saw a tall man on a sorrel horse stop outside the town sheriff’s darkened office.

  After a few moments, the rider swung out of the saddle and stepped to what Longley at first thought was a packhorse. Only when the tall man dumped the horse’s burden into the street did he see that it was a body.

  While the tall man worked the kinks out of his back and looked around him, Longley quickly moved away from the window. Suddenly he felt an odd sense of unease . . . as though a goose had just flown over his grave.

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

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  Copyright © 2014 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.

  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: 978-0-7860-3358-4

  First electronic edition: October 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3359-1

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-3359-2