“Who are you?” McKee asked impatiently.
“Roscoe Goldsmith, attorney-at-law, representing Mr. Matt Jensen. If I might be allowed to ask a few questions . . .”
“This isn’t a court of law, blast it. Although I’m severely tempted to place this town under martial law. Where’s the sheriff?”
Walt Sanger had come up to the edge of the crowd, Matt noted, but when McKee asked that, the lawman turned his back and quickly scurried away, ducking out of sight down an alley. Matt suspected they wouldn’t see hide nor hair of Sanger again until it was all over.
Goldsmith ignored McKee’s question and turned toward Judd Talley as Preacher and Spivey rode up. “Mr. Talley,” Goldsmith said sharply. “Mr. Talley!”
The big gunman slowly lifted his head, blinked his eyes several times, and looked around. Goldsmith pointed at Spivey and said in a loud voice, “The clerk has just testified that he saw you go up to Virginia Barry’s room a short time before Mr. Jensen ever reached the hotel. He heard Miss Barry scream while you were up there, Mr. Talley, before Mr. Jensen even arrived! What do you have to say to that?”
“That . . . that’s a lie,” Talley mumbled through swollen lips.
“But he says he heard it,” Goldsmith insisted.
“He couldn’t have! She never . . . she never made a sound. She never even saw it comin’—”
Talley stopped short as he realized what he had just done. From the porch of the hotel, an obviously desperate Longacre exclaimed, “My God, Judd! You mean that you—”
“You told me to!” Talley screamed at him. “It was all your idea! You’ll hang, too, you—”
On the porch, Longacre dropped his cigar, took a quick step back, and ordered the hired gunmen around them, “Kill them all!”
It was a desperate move, but Smoke knew what Longacre was thinking. The sergeant and the rest of the soldiers hadn’t reached the settlement yet. If Longacre’s men could kill Smoke, Matt, Preacher, and Captain McKee, along with Spivey, Longacre could take over again. With his hired guns running things, the citizens would be too afraid to tell anybody the truth about what had happened in “Helltown.”
And that’s truly what it would be from then on. A dictatorship ruled by Cyrus Longacre.
There was one more thing Longacre needed to do to secure that outcome. As he ducked through the hotel door, he yanked a pistol from under his coat, jerked it up, and fired. Judd Talley’s head rocked back as the slug smashed between his eyes, killing him. He would never testify in court that Longacre had ordered him to kill Virginia Barry.
As the shot rang out, Longacre’s other men clawed at their guns, following orders to the last.
Both of Smoke’s Colts were already in his hands, and Matt held the .44 he had recovered at Bloody Ridge. Preacher whipped out his Remingtons with blinding speed. The guns of those three men, those men who were as close as brothers or a father and his sons could ever be, roared out in a smashing wave of thunder. Bullets pounded into Longacre’s men, ripped through their bodies, smashed windows in the hotel behind them. They got a few shots off, mostly into the planks of the boardwalk at their feet, as powdersmoke rolled and guns sang a song of death.
Captain McKee, seeing how he had been used by Longacre, unlimbered his revolver and joined in the fight, slamming a couple shots into one of the hired killers who was trying to draw a bead on him. Elsewhere in the street, people were yelling and scrambling to get out of the way of any wild shots. Roscoe Goldsmith reached up, grabbed Maureen, and dragged her off her horse to get her out of the line of fire as much as possible. Colin Ferguson joined them as they ran for cover in a nearby alley.
One by one, Longacre’s men crumpled. But Longacre himself had disappeared into the hotel. As the last of the hired guns went spinning off his feet, blood spouting from his wounds, Matt leaped off his horse and bounded into the building.
Anybody who had been in the lobby when the shooting started had lit a shuck. Matt ran up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. As he reached the second floor landing, he spotted Longacre emerging from the suite at the end of the hall. He had a valise in his left hand and still gripped the pistol he had used to kill Talley in his right. He snapped the gun up and fired.
Matt felt the heat of the bullet as it sizzled past his ear. The .44 in his hand blasted a split second after Longacre’s shot. The railroad man reeled back, dropping the valise. It came open, spilling cash across the floor. Longacre’s gun sagged, but he tried to lift it again. Matt fired a second shot that punched into Longacre’s chest and knocked him back through the doorway.
Matt approached cautiously. He could see Longacre lying in the sitting room, not moving. When he reached the doorway, he saw that the pistol had fallen on the floor. He kicked the gun away and stood over Longacre, who stared up at him through pain-wracked eyes. Blood from the wounds in his chest turned his expensive shirtfront into a sodden crimson mess. Longacre gasped one last time, then his eyes glazed over in death.
It was just about the same spot where he had found Virginia’s body, Matt thought. Longacre’s blood had spilled in the same place.
“Matt?” Smoke asked from behind him. “Matt, are you all right?”
Matt lowered the .44 to his side and turned away from Longacre’s body. “Yeah,” he answered. “You said it was over before, Smoke, but it really wasn’t.” Matt glanced back the corpse as he stepped out of the suite. “Now it is.”
“You can rest assured I’ll make a full report of what happened here and who was really to blame,” Captain McKee said. “But if everything you’ve told me is true, Mr. Jensen . . . I can’t promise you what will happen to that report.” The officer’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “Things that are uncomfortable or embarrassing for certain parties tend to get lost in Washington.”
“I understand,” Smoke said as he nodded. “But the truth can only be hidden for so long. Eventually, people figure out how to recognize a varmint for who he really is.”
“I hope you’re right.” McKee put his hat on and held out his hand. “Good luck to you, Mr. Jensen.” He smiled faintly as he and Smoke shook hands. “Having seen you and your, ah, friends in action, I don’t suppose you really need that much luck. Just plenty of ammunition.”
Smoke went out on the porch of the Ferguson Hotel to watch the cavalry ride away. Matt and Preacher came out of the building to join him.
“What’s gonna happen to that railroad line now, you reckon?” Preacher asked.
Smoke shrugged. “Somebody else will take over and finish building it. Longacre’s heirs, whoever they are, will probably sell the whole shooting match to the Southern Pacific.”
Preacher scratched at his beard. “I was thinkin’ I might hang around here for a while. Me and that lawyer fella been talkin’ about how we want to make sure Walkin’ Hawk and his people get a square deal when the railroad comes on through, which is bound to happen sooner or later.”
“Bound to,” Smoke agreed. “As long as it’s done the right way next time.”
“We’ll see to that,” Preacher said.
Smoke turned to Matt. “How about you?”
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do next,” Matt replied with a shake of his head.
Preacher chuckled. “Reckon some of that will be up to the redheaded gal who’s comin’ across the street.”
Maureen Ferguson and her uncle were coming toward them. Colin Ferguson had his cane again, and the local doctor had cleaned and bandaged the cut on his forehead.
As they stepped onto the porch, Ferguson said, “I was hoping you’d still be here, Matt. We have something for you.”
“What’s that?”
Maureen held out her hand. A sheriff’s badge lay in the palm of it.
“We found that in Walt Sanger’s office, but there’s no sign of Walt,” Ferguson went on. “It appears he’s resigned his position and moved on to greener pastures, leaving Halltown in need of a sheriff.”
“You want me to be tak
e over as sheriff?” Matt asked.
“The whole town does,” Maureen said. “As soon as you rode in, Helltown started becoming Halltown again.”
“Well, I appreciate the offer, but . . . but . . .” Matt looked over at Smoke and Preacher.
“Don’t look at us,” Preacher said. “You got to make up your own mind, boy.”
Smoke nodded. “Preacher’s right.”
“Well . . . maybe for a little while.” Matt quickly added, “I’m not taking the job permanent-like, though. Just until you can find somebody better suited to it.” He gave Smoke and Preacher a hard stare. “And I could sure use a couple deputies while I’m at it.”
“Preacher’s already said he’s staying here for a while,” Smoke pointed out. “Not me, though. I’m headed for Colorado as soon as that ’Paloose of mine rests up a bit. I’ve got a ranch to get back to”—he grinned—“and a pretty wife.”
“I can understand why a man would want to get back to his wife,” Maureen said as she looked at Matt. It was all Smoke could do not to laugh when he saw the flicker of panic in the younger man’s eyes. Matt was going to have his hands full keeping the peace in Halltown . . . among other things.
Though Smoke would be headed back to Sugarloaf as soon as he could, he knew he would be seeing Matt and Preacher again. The Indian Ring was still out there, still powerful, and still up to no good. The way he, Matt, and Preacher got around, sooner or later they were bound to run up against some other scheme hatched by that crooked bunch.
When that day came, whichever of them was in trouble would put out the call, as Matt had done, and the others would come a-runnin’. Gunsmoke bound them together more strongly than blood.
And family always answered the call.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2011 William W. Johnstone
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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: 978-0-7860-2351-6
The Family Jensen Page 27