“What in the Sam Hill . . .” the major whispered, as he lowered the hammer on his revolver and stepped inside.
“Hey!” Frenchy yelled. “It’s the little arsonist. He ain’t dead!”
As Frenchy and Worsnop greeted their cellmate, the major walked numbly to Doctor Gripewater, glanced at the baby, the pale but smiling mother, and Harry Fallon.
Two other soldiers walked and stared at the body of The Mole, still sitting on the stone, and his back blocking the hole in the wall. Another one picked up the Schofield that Warden Underwood had dropped.
“What in the Sam Hill . . .” The major tried again.
“How are things outside?” Eve Martin asked.
The major started to answer, then realized that the matron was a woman. Slowly, he recognized the sexes of Claire, Liza, and Bedbug.
“What in the Sam Hill . . .”
“Outside?” Doc Gripewater reminded the commander.
“It’s . . . slowly . . . It’s . . .”
“The bloodiest forty-seven acres in our country,” Gripewater said.
“Ain’t that the God’s own truth,” muttered one of the militiamen.
“I’d like to get this woman and her son to the city hospital,” Gripewater said.
“Well . . . yes, sir, Doctor, ummm, of course.”
“And these prisoners . . . well, no . . . that one there. The puny one. He’s a guard. Don’t look at me like that, Major. I’ve had a hell of a day and a long, long night. These prisoners are to be treated with the utmost of care. They are heroes. And the whole world is going to know about them. All except . . .” He pointed at Fallon. “This one.”
A few rifles were now trained on Fallon, but he didn’t care. He was staring at the little baby, wrapped in his undershirt.
“No.” This time it was Eve Martin who spoke. “Don’t touch that body. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
Gripewater blinked. “Yes. Absolutely. Leave the bodies where they are. It’ll come in handy for the investigators. Mister . . .” Gripewater glared at Fallon. “If you touch one of these bodies before we come to fetch you, there will be bitter hell to pay. Do you understand?”
Fallon nodded.
“Major,” Gripewater said, “if your men could shoulder their rifles and give us a hand, I’d really like to get this young woman out of there and to the city hospital. And then I’d damn sure like to get drunk.”
Fallon leaned over to Jess Harper and whispered. “You did a great job, ma’am. And your boy’s going to love you forever and ever.”
“I’ll love him, too,” she said softly.
“I know you will. It comes with the job.”
Still smiling, Fallon moved toward the skull of the funny man, and watched the soldiers as they started to lift the blanket. But his eyes fell back on the bodies of The Mole, and the warden, and then he saw himself staring at Charley Muldoon and the cat.
Gripewater looked at the soldiers. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “that one of you soldier boys would happen to have a snort of gin, would you?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
So here sat Harry Fallon, back on the other side of a giant chair in a dark brown office in a flatiron building in Chicago, Illinois, across from a little man in a brown suit who puffed on a repugnant cigar.
“How’d you get out?” Sean MacGregor asked.
“I walked to the depot,” Fallon said. “Took the train.”
“I see.” MacGregor flicked ash into the tray. “Where’s Holderman?”
Fallon shrugged. “For all I know, he’s still in Jefferson City. Waiting for me to get out.”
Fallon looked around. “Where’s Dan?”
“If I were him, I’d be hiding. Maybe trying to catch the next stagecoach to Canada.”
Fallon kept quiet. MacGregor laid the cigar in the tray, spit out some flakes, wiped his mouth, and leaned back in the chair.
“What about the woman? And the money from Linc Harper’s bank robbery?”
Fallon shook his head. “She didn’t know anything about it. A smart man like Linc Harper. He wouldn’t trust anyone, especially a woman, with that tidbit. I’m afraid the money’s lost.”
If that wasn’t the truth, well, a young woman with a little baby would have need of money.
To Fallon’s surprise, the detective agency president nodded in agreement. “Which is what I told Dan when he came up with the confounded idea.”
Fallon waited an eternity in silence. At length, Sean MacGregor reached over, lifted the Chicago newspaper off the desk’s top and tossed it across the big hunk of mahogany. Fallon somehow managed to catch the paper.
“I don’t suppose you know anything of this, do you, Hank?”
So he was Hank now? Fallon unfolded the paper and read the headline. He didn’t have to read it aloud, but he did.
“Pinkertons End Linc Harper’s Reign of Terror. Outlaw’s Body Discovered After Lightning Strike Burns Down Ice Factory in Small Missouri Town. Detectives . . .”
“Enough with the headlines, damn you!”
Fallon dropped the paper to his side, but he shook his head and could not resist. “Do you really think it was lightning?”
“I don’t know.” Sean MacGregor sounded a hell of a lot older, and very, very tired.
“But if it was an icehouse, how could they identify the body?”
MacGregor was relighting his cigar. “It says the ice melted. The body was soaked. There’s a woodcut of the body in another newspaper. Yeah, it was Linc Harper all right. No question. At least my damned fool son kills him. And that cheap bastard across town gets all the glory. I’ll nail Dan’s hide to the barn.” He puffed on the cigar for a moment but brought it out of his mouth and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Yours, too, perhaps.”
“Listen,” Fallon said. “You don’t get Harper. You don’t get the reward for the missing money. But you get something better.”
“What?” The man waved the cigar in a dismissive gesture.
“You know exactly what. You can point out the hired murders going on, right out of the Missouri State Penitentiary.”
“Yeah. And with Underwood, Fowlson, and even Brandt dead, finding proof will be hard. Nothing but speculation. I bring that up, I’ll be hounded for defaming the character of the dead.”
Fallon leaned back, drew in a deep breath, and let it out. “So it’s true.”
“You knew it was true,” Sean MacGregor said.
“But I wasn’t sure you knew.”
The room turned frigid.
“The Mole,” Fallon said. “Coleman Cain. He killed Renee. He killed Rachel. Didn’t he?” He felt his fingers clench into tight balls.
The cigar dropped again into the ashtray. This time, Sean MacGregor sighed. “We don’t know for sure. We thought so. Dan thought so. Well, you must’ve thought the same thing. Isn’t that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him,” Fallon said.
The room fell silent for a long, long time.
“Well, now you know.” MacGregor shook his head. “That had to have been a costly job. Underwood must’ve been well paid for that one.”
“They were living in Columbia,” Fallon said. “With her mother. Short trip, more or less, from Jefferson City.”
“I’m sure,” MacGregor said, “that Underwood and his predecessors had people murdered even further away.”
“Maybe.” His voice sounded as frigid as the room.
“Well. Now you know. Or as close to knowing as we can.”
Fallon knew. Maybe he couldn’t prove it to a judge or a jury or a newspaper reporter, even one like the late Julie Jernigan, but he knew. It made sense. Coleman Cain had been released for a few days to kill Renee and Rachel. And that’s what had likely snapped The Mole’s grasp on reason. The hired killer who had put preachers and saloon girls and politicians in their graves had gone insane. After murdering the only people in the world that mattered to Harry Fallon, Coleman Cain couldn’t kill anyone else—except a funny man
who had been dumped into the cell with him and forgotten. And maybe a few others who told The Mole what they planned on doing, who they had been told to kill.
Fallon tried to get his feelings back under control. If he didn’t, he might wind up killing Sean MacGregor, today, this very minute.
“That’s why I got put in the cell with The Mole,” Fallon said. “Underwood recognized my name. He thought either I would kill The Mole or The Mole would kill me. And The Mole recognized my name. But . . . well . . . But what I can’t understand is why Underwood and the others kept him alive all those years.”
“My guess,” MacGregor said, “is that they wanted him to suffer. Or they wanted him to come back to their fold. Face it, Fallon. Nobody in Missouri killed better than Killer Cain.”
“Yeah.” Fallon wanted to spit the bitterness out of his face.
“So . . . now you know. I told you I’d help you, Fallon. You’ve gotten your revenge.”
“No,” Fallon said. “Coleman Cain might have murdered my family, but the man in that basement cell wasn’t Coleman Cain. He was The Mole. And he saved my life.”
“All right.” MacGregor had spoken merely to fill the dead space.
“I want the man who paid for it.”
Sean MacGregor nodded. “I know you do.”
“And when I first was brought to this office, you said three jobs.”
“Or four.”
“So . . .” Fallon swallowed down the gall. “What’s next?”
Sean MacGregor sank deeper into his chair. “Let’s talk about it, Fallon. Have you ever been to . . . ?”
Turn the page for an exciting preview!
JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. PATRIOTS WELCOME.
In this thrilling frontier saga, bestselling authors William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone celebrate an unsung hero of the American West: a humble chuckwagon cook searching for justice—and fighting for his life . . .
With one successful cattle drive under his belt, Dewey “Mac” McKenzie is on a first-name basis with danger. Marked for death for a crime he didn’t commit and eager to get far away from the territory, he signed on as cattle drive chuckwagon cook to save his own skin—and learned how to serve up a tasty hot stew. Turns out Mac has a talent for fixing good vittles. He’s also pretty handy with a gun. But Mac’s enemies are hungry for more—and they’ve hired a gang of ruthless killers to turn up the heat . . .
Mac knows he’s a dead man. His only hope is to join another cattle drive on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, deep in New Mexico Territory. The journey ahead is even deadlier than the hired guns behind him. His trail boss is an ornery cuss. His crew mate is the owner’s spoiled son. And the route is overrun with kill-crazy rustlers and bloodthirsty Comanche. To make matters worse, Mac’s would-be killers are closing in fast. But when the cattle owner’s son is kidnapped, the courageous young cook has no choice but to jump out of the frying pan—and into the fire . . .
DIE BY THE GUN
A CHUCKWAGON TRAIL WESTERN
by WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE
Coming in December 2018
Wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
CHAPTER ONE
Dewey McKenzie spun away from the bar, the finger of whiskey in his shot glass sloshing as he avoided a body flying through the air. He winced as a gun discharged not five feet away from his head. He hastily knocked back what remained of his drink, tossed the glass over his shoulder to land with a clatter on the bar, and reached for the Smith & Wesson Model 3 he carried thrust into his belt.
A heavy hand gripped his shoulder with painful intensity. The bartender rasped, “Don’t go pullin’ that smoke wagon, boy. You do and things will get rough.”
Mac tried to shrug off the grip and couldn’t. Powerful fingers crushed into his shoulder so hard that his right arm began to go numb. He looked across the barroom and wondered why the hell he had ever come to Fort Worth, much less venturing into Hell’s Half Acre where anything, no matter how immoral or unhealthy, could be bought for two bits or a lying promise.
Two different fights were going on in this saloon, and they threatened to involve more than just the drunken cowboys swapping wild blows. The man with the six-gun in his hand continued to ventilate the ceiling with one bullet after another.
Blood spattered Mac’s boots as one of the fistfights came tumbling in his direction. He lifted his left foot to keep it from getting stomped on by the brawlers. A steer had already done that a month earlier when he had been chuckwagon cook on a cattle drive from Waco up to Abilene.
He had taken his revenge on the annoying mountain of meat, singling it out for a week of meals for the Rolling J crew. Not only had the steer been clumsy where it stepped, it had been tough, and more than one cowboy had complained. Try as he might to tenderize the steaks, by beating, by marinating, by cursing, Mac had failed.
That hadn’t been the only steer he had come to curse. The entire drive had been fraught with danger and more than one of the crew had died.
“That’s why,” he said out loud.
“What’s that?” The barkeep eased his grip and let Mac turn from the fight.
“After the drive, after the cattle got sold off and sent on their way to Chicago from the Abilene railroad yards, I decided to come back to Texas to pay tribute to a friend who died.”
The bartender’s expression said it all. He was in no mood to hear maudlin stories any more than he was to break up the fights or prevent a disgruntled cowboy from plugging a gambler he thought was cheating him at stud poker.
“Then you need another drink, in his memory.” When Mac didn’t argue the point, the barkeep poured an inch of rye in a new glass and made the two-bit coin Mac put down vanish. A nickel in change rolled across the bar.
“This is for you, Flagg. I just hope it’s not too hot wherever you are.” Mac lifted the glass and looked past it to the dirty mirror behind the bar. A medium-sized hombre with longish dark hair and a deeply tanned face gazed back at him. The man he saw reflected wasn’t the boy who had been hired as a cook by a crusty old trail boss. He had Patrick Flagg to thank for making him grow up.
A quick toss emptied the glass.
The fiery liquor burned a path to his belly and kindled a blaze there. He belched and knew he had reached his limit. Mac had no idea why he had come to this particular gin mill, other than he was footloose and drifting after being paid off for the trail drive. The money burned a hole in his pocket, but Dewey McKenzie had never been much of a spendthrift. Growing up on a farm in Missouri hadn’t given him the chance to have two nickels to rub together, much less important money to waste.
With deft instinct, he stepped to the side as two brawling men crashed into the bar beside him, lost their footing, and sprawled on the sawdust-littered floor. Mac looked down at them, then let out a growl. He reached out and grabbed the man on top by the back of his coat. A hard heave lifted the fighter into the air until the fabric began to tear. Mac swung the man around, deposited him on his feet, and looked him squarely in the eye.
“What mess have you gotten yourself into now, Rattler?”
“Hey, as I live and breathe!” the cowboy exclaimed. “Howdy, Mac. Never thought our paths would cross again after Abilene.”
Rattler ducked as his opponent surged to his feet and launched a wild swing. Mac leaned to one side, the bony fist passing harmlessly past his head. He batted the arm down to the bar and pounced on it, pinning the man.
“Whatever quarrel you’ve got with my friend, consider it settled,” Mac told the man sternly.
“Ain’t got a quarrel. I got a bone to pick!” The drunk wrenched free, reared back, and lost his balance, sitting hard amid the sawdust and vomit on the barroom floor.
“Come on, Rattler. Let’s find somewhere else to do some drinking.” Mac grabbed the front of the wiry man’s vest and pulled him along into the street.
Mayhem filled Hell’s Half Acre tonight. In either direction along Calhoun Street, saloons belched customers out to continu
e the battles that had begun inside. Others, done with their recreation outside, crowded to get back in for more liquor.
Mac brushed dirt off his threadbare clothes. Spending some of his pay on a new coat made sense. He whipped off his black, broad-brimmed hat and smacked it a couple times against his leg. Dust clouds rose. His hair had been plastered back by sweat. The lack of any wind down the Fort Worth street kept it glued down as if he had used bear grease. He wiped tears from his cat-green eyes and knew he had to get away from the dust and filth of the city. It was dangerous on the trail, tending a herd of cattle, but it was cleaner on the wide-open prairie. He might get stomped on by a steer but never had to worry about being shot in the back.
He knew better than to ask Rattler what the fight had been over. Likely, it had started for no reason other than to blow off steam.
“I thought you were going to find a gunsmith and get some work there,” Mac said to his companion. “You’re a better tinkerer than most of them in this town.”
Mac touched the Model 3 in his belt. Rattler had worked on it from Waco to Abilene during the drive and had turned his pappy’s old sidearm into a deadly weapon that shot straight and true every time the trigger was pulled. For that, Mac thanked Rattler.
For teaching him how to draw fast and aim straight he gave another silent nod to Patrick Flagg. More than teaching him how to draw faster than just about anyone, Flagg had also taught him when not to draw at all.
Rattler said, “And I thought you was headin’ back to New Orleans to woo that filly of yours. What was her name? Evie?”
“Evangeline,” Mac said.
“Yeah, you went on and on, even callin’ out her name in your sleep. With enough money, you shoulda been able to win her over.”
Mac knew better. He loved Evangeline Holdstock, and she had loved him until Pierre Leclerc had set his cap for her. Leclerc’s plans included taking over Evie’s father’s bank after marrying her—probably inheriting it when he murdered Micah Holdstock.
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