STRONG CONVICTIONS
An Emmett Strong Western
G P Hutchinson
Strong Convictions: An Emmett Strong Western
GP Hutchinson
Copyright © 2015 The Hutchinson Group LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Strong Convictions: An Emmett Strong Western is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-1499151022
ISBN-10: 1499151020
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014915119
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
The author would like to thank Karla Van Horne of Purdy Gear Custom Leather Goods (www.purdygear.com) for her gracious permission to incorporate the image of “Phil’s Gun Rig” into the cover art for this novel.
Cover design by Steven Novak (www.novakillustration.com).
Strong Convictions: An Emmett Strong Western
GP Hutchinson
Contents
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
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
To the Reader
Acknowledgments
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
San Antonio, Texas, July 1876
Gabriela gasped. Emmett whipped his head around.
One minute the two of them had been peering into the window of Dalton’s custom boot shop. She had placed her hand on his shoulder and whispered, “I’ll be right next door at Baldwin’s Millinery.” Next thing he knew, she was in the grasp of a seedy-looking Mexican tough, bracketed by two of his equally coarse compadres.
Emmett pivoted as he sized up the situation. His gaze darted from Gabriela—her eyes wide—to each of the three threats.
The one clutching her was the biggest of the three. Paunchy. Thick lipped. A week’s growth of dark whiskers. “So you like to play with our girls, eh, cowboy?” he said.
Gabriela, her satin dress rustling, struggled against the sweaty troublemaker.
The Mexican sneered. “Well, they’re not for you.”
“Let go of my wife.” Emmett kept his voice low and firm. “Now.” Though his heart hammered in his chest, he was holding himself together—for Gabriela’s sake. He was determined to let neither rage nor fear get the best of him. Either would only dull his senses.
“Wife?” the tough said. “What made you think you could take her from her own people? Have her all to yourself?”
“I never belonged to you,” Gabriela hissed. She jabbed her elbow into the troublemaker’s gut but was ineffective in wriggling free.
“Let go of my wife,” Emmett said. “I won’t tell you again.” He shifted his stance.
The big man’s amigos picked up on Emmett’s subtle movement. Their hands now hovered over their holstered six-guns.
A half second more, Emmett thought. That’s all he’d give him. His senses were alive with uncanny clarity. His body felt charged.
The Mexican didn’t let go. “We don’t give our pretty girls to gringos. Maybe I’ll carve up her face. Make her look like a gringo woman.”
He and his compadres laughed.
Emmett’s skin prickled. Threatening to hurt my wife now? This little tête-à-tête’s over.
He drew first, hoping that simply thumbing back the hammer of his Colt would be sufficient to get this no-count to release Gabriela.
Didn’t look like it was going to turn out that way.
The fellow on the left cleared leather. Emmett let him have it right in the hand. No problem from eight feet away. Hadn’t thought or aimed. Pure instinct. The fellow’s gun kicked out into the street. He grabbed what remained of his bloody thumb and howled.
Both of the others drew at the same time, one pistol coming up from around Gabriela’s waist, the other from near her arm.
The fellow on the far side of Gabriela sidled toward the one holding her. He fired at Emmett and missed.
Emmett ignored him and went for the instigator of the whole affair. Without blinking he squeezed the trigger, certain he would hit his mark.
If he had feared anything, it was that one of the Mexicans might put a bullet in his wife—inadvertently or on purpose—before he could stop him.
But it was his own finger that killed her. His own overconfidence.
The fellow sliding toward the instigator stumbled. When he did so he bumped his compadre just hard enough to turn Gabi into the trajectory of the bullet.
She slumped in the Mexican’s arms, dark blood seeping out of her chest and down the silver-gray satin of her bodice.
The Mexican dropped her like a rag doll onto the plank porch. Then he and his amigos cut and ran.
Emmett grew dizzy. He fell to his knees and crawled to Gabi. He scooped up her limp body and cradled her in his arms. She wasn’t breathing. His h
eart pounded.
I killed my wife. His hands trembled. My God, I’ve killed my Gabi.
He tried to cry out for help, but his cry only broke into jagged weeping. All he could manage was to murmur, “Come back, Gabi. Please come back.”
But she didn’t come back. His Texian beauty was gone. He held her for a very long time, stroking her soft black hair, caressing her youthful but lifeless cheek.
Townspeople gathered around. At first just a couple, then a dozen or more.
In a voice just loud enough that Emmett could hear it, a tactless yokel in the crowd said, “Say, that’s Emmett Strong, ain’t it? He can shoot a rattlesnake right between the teeth at twenty yards—”
“And shove his Colt back in the holster before the snake ever twitches,” his equally indiscreet companion added.
“Wonder how them Mexicans got the drop on Strong’s woman and lived to walk away from it.”
A fellow with a graying long-handle mustache said, “It didn’t go down like that. And it weren’t Strong’s fault.” His voice quavered on his last couple words.
Though it was probably only a few long minutes, it seemed like an hour before somebody brought a doctor.
Emmett looked at the doc through a blur of tears. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
The doctor shook his head as he examined Gabriela’s wound, checked her pulse, and finally patted Emmett’s shoulder. He muttered how sorry he was.
At last Gabriela’s brother, Juan Carlos Galvez, arrived. His eyes were already red and swollen. He squatted beside Emmett. Squeezed Gabi’s shoulder. Put a hand to his forehead and let a flood of tears flow.
As Juan Carlos’s shoulders heaved, Emmett Strong stared numbly down the long, dusty street into the growing darkness.
Emmett and Juan Carlos eventually chased down the Mexican—a nasty piece of work named Victorio Sanchez. Caught up with him in a cheap cantina in Laredo—but not until after they’d joined the Texas Rangers and spent eleven months in the saddle, riding from this burg to that, following up on one person or another’s recollections.
Although Emmett still went about heeled, he found himself reluctant to draw his Colt. Fact was, during those eleven months, he never once unholstered it to point it at another human being, outlaw or otherwise.
Yet when he and Juanito finally cornered Sanchez, Emmett put on quite the fandango.
“Today,” he said, his gaze cutting through the harsh glare that painted street, adobe, and clapboard alike the same acrid white. He peered into the dark, rectangular void of the cantina’s open front doors
Juanito nodded. “You don’t have to talk me into it, hermano. I’d have gone in yesterday…or the day before.”
“Too sober yesterday. Too quick.”
“Drunk or sober, dull or slick, you’d have taken him.”
Emmett shook his head. “Waited this long. Why let him make it a contest?”
“Well…” Juanito rubbed his chin. “The muchacho you sent in says he’s stinking drunk today.”
Emmett nodded and nudged his horse forward.
As had become his method, he wasted no time between the hitching rail and the front doors of the watering hole. A quick glance at Juanito, then he breezed right on in. Allowing only moments for his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the windowless adobe, he scanned the cantina.
There was Victorio Sanchez, draped over the left end of the plain plank bar. No mistaking that ugly profile.
Emmett charged.
As expected, the Mexican drew on him. But Emmett had already closed to within arm’s reach. Giving the desperado no further time to react, he locked his hands on Sanchez’s thumb and wrist. He gave a mean twist and wrenched the six-gun away.
For a split second, he had a mind to pistol-whip the outlaw. Instead he tossed the gun to the floor and proceeded to beat the tar out of the man with his bare fists. Even without the pistol, he made a bloody mess of him. And when he finished, he dragged Sanchez out of the place by the boot.
Juanito had covered the whole affair with a twelve gauge.
Emmett was in the courtroom the day the jury declared Sanchez guilty of manslaughter. The bailiff read the decision. The judge’s gavel came down. It was official. Justice had been served.
Not certain precisely what he had expected to feel once Sanchez had been sentenced, Emmett was unsettled to experience no sense of relief. No sense of accomplishment in having tracked down and arrested the man responsible for his wife’s death. No release from the notion that, at least in part, he too was to blame. Everything felt empty. Pointless.
Emmett’s brooding was cut short when, on the way out the door, Victorio Sanchez jammed his feet against the doorframe and began to flail and shout.
“You still lose, gringo.”
The door slammed against the wall and the bailiff joined the marshal in grappling with the prisoner.
“You couldn’t even protect your woman.” A smirk twisted his lips. “She belonged in the arms of a better man than you.”
Emmett found himself on his feet with Juanito restraining him.
The marshal shot an elbow to Sanchez’s mouth—still split from the slogging Emmett had given him—and at last wrangled him out of the courtroom.
The buzz in the gallery eventually died down. Folks began to file out.
Before Emmett knew it, only he and Juanito remained. There he stood, behind the lawyers’ table—right where he’d been when Sanchez had taken his last verbal potshots. His gaze drifted to the window. He had no interest in accompanying the marshal to deliver Sanchez to the penitentiary at Huntsville. He’d seen enough of the man whose needless intrusion had led to Gabriela’s death.
After several silent minutes, Juanito spoke. Though he kept his tone low, his voice reverberated from the high ceiling and the polished wood and marble walls. “You satisfied now, brother-in-law?”
Emmett shifted his gaze to the now-closed door where they had hauled out Sanchez. “Taking him away won’t bring her back.”
Juanito put a hand on Emmett’s shoulder and gave a firm squeeze.
“What about you?” Emmett asked. “She was your sister before she was ever my wife.”
“I wanted to shoot him down in Laredo.”
“It’s what you wanted to do. But I know you. You and I are cut from the same cloth. And you couldn’t live with yourself if you stooped to brute revenge.”
Juanito leaned against the rail behind the lawyer’s table. “You make me sound nobler than I am.”
After another pause, Emmett said, “I can’t just go home now, you know. I’ll see her everywhere.”
“What are you going to do then?”
His fingers drifted to the badge on his chest. “Ride with the Rangers, I guess. Run down hard cases like Sanchez—men who go about ruining other folks’ lives.”
“Sorry, hermano, but to me that doesn’t sound like the best plan for getting over all this.”
“Don’t know whether I want to get over it.”
Juanito lowered his gaze and kicked his heel on the floor. “We both loved her. In different ways, but we both loved her. Now we need to move on, Emmett. You’re young still. There’s still plenty of time for you to—”
“Hobble your lip,” Emmett snapped. “I’m not ready for that yet. Maybe never will be.”
Juanito picked up his hat from the table. He kept his gaze on Emmett. “OK, it’s hobbled.”
Emmett drew a heavy breath and looked one final time around the empty courtroom. At last, turning toward the door, he asked, “You coming with me? I’m going to hunt desperados.”
Juanito took his own quick glance around, then nodded. “Sí, hermano. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWO
March 1881
The Jeffersonian was as grand a restaurant as any in Austin—a top-notch place for a celebration. C
rystal chandeliers above, fine china and sterling flatware on the tables, everything from oysters to steak on the menu.
Emmett clapped his brother, Eli, on the shoulder and took a seat next to him. His brother went on talking.
Today was Eli’s day, and Emmett was proud of him. Having just been sworn in as a Texas state senator, he would be filling the seat of an incumbent who had sadly succumbed to heart problems.
Emmett wasn’t paying particular attention to what Eli was saying. Instead he was musing over how often that day people had commented that the two of them looked so much alike. Both stood about five feet ten. Both had dark-brown hair, hazel eyes, and strong chins. But to Emmett, that’s about where the similarities ended—especially since, as an adult, Eli had always sported a long, full mustache. Emmett—who typically kept himself shaved—thought the facial hair gave Eli an aura completely different from his own.
Though only thirty-two, Eli seemed to Emmett like a man old before his time. Perhaps that impression of age—and along with it an air of respectability—had helped Eli gain that senate seat. One way or the other, Emmett thought, his brother looked ace-high today in his pinstriped black suit.
To Eli’s right at the circular table sat his pretty wife, Nan. Eli was older than Emmett. Nan was younger. Much to Emmett’s chagrin, Nan had a roving eye…which sometimes landed on him. On occasion she had placed her hand on his and spoken of how lonely he must be without Gabriela. With a twinkle in her bright blue eyes, she’d said she wished she could somehow help ease his loneliness. He hadn’t liked the way she’d done that, but he’d kept it to himself. Attractive as she was, Nan was no temptation to Emmett. He still clung too dearly to Gabi’s memory. Besides, he believed in the sanctity of matrimony and loyalty to kin.
Emmett couldn’t figure out Eli’s blindness to Nan’s flirtations. Worse yet, he wondered whether it was only Nan’s gaze that wandered. And then he felt like a cad for thinking such a thing.
At least today Nan was fixed on her accomplished husband, as well she should be.
Along with Eli, Nan, and Emmett at the table sat another couple—Senator Edward Lattimer and his wife, Elizabeth. Ed Lattimer, who wore spectacles and sported a full beard, had served with Eli in the cavalry a few years before. After military service they remained close friends. Ed was the one who had gotten Eli into law and now into politics.
Strong Convictions: An Emmett Strong Western (Emmett Strong Westerns Book 1) Page 1