by J. Roberts
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
On Target
“I’ll tell you what,” Clint said. “I’m going to throw a bottle into the air. If you hit it, you can come with me.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Get ready.”
Alice braced herself, her hand hovering above her gun. Clint picked up a bottle, said, “Ready?” and tossed it up.
She drew her gun but didn’t fire. When the bottle fell to earth, she walked over to it, pointed her gun at it, and fired. The bottle shattered.
“What was that about?” he demanded.
She ejected the spent shell, reloaded, and holstered the gun, then looked at him.
“I hit it,” she said. “You didn’t say I had to hit it while it was still in the air.”
DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts
Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans
The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
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Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
BUSHWHACKERS by B. J. Lanagan
An action-packed series by the creators of Longarm! The rousing adventures of the most brutal gang of cutthroats ever assembled—Quantrill’s Raiders.
DIAMONDBACK by Guy Brewer
Dex Yancey is Diamondback, a Southern gentleman turned con man when his brother cheats him out of the family fortune. Ladies love him. Gamblers hate him. But nobody pulls one over on Dex . . .
WILDGUN by Jack Hanson
The blazing adventures of mountain man Will Barlow—from the creators of Longarm!
TEXAS TRACKER by Tom Calhoun
J.T. Law: the most relentless—and dangerous—manhunter in all Texas. Where sheriffs and posses fail, he’s the best man to bring in the most vicious outlaws—for a price.
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Jove edition / May 2010
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ONE
FORT SMITH, ARKANSAS
As Clint rode down the main street of Fort Smith, he thought about Judge Isaac Parker. Back in ’75, when Parker was appointed to this territory, he was the youngest federal judge in the West, at thirty-six. Of the first eighteen defendants brought before him and charged with murder, fifteen were convicted, and eight were sentenced to hang. Parker quickly became known as “The Hanging Judge.”
Just barely on the good side of fifty, the judge had recently sent out word that he was looking for Clint Adams and would like the Gunsmith to come to Fort Smith to meet with him.
Clint knew the judge, but would never have called them friends. He did, however, respect the man, so when he “got the word” that the judge wanted to see him, he headed for Fort Smith.
Clint took the time to get Eclipse settled in a stable and himself in a hotel. He didn’t know what the judge wanted, but whatever it was, he planned on spending at least one night in town. Some rest for both him and Eclipse, as well as some food, would do them both good.
He got a room in the Fort Smith Hotel, figuring he might as well spend his one night in town in the best hotel in town. Once he had his room, he stowed his saddlebags and rifle there and left, walking to the building where the judge did his business.
He knew that in 1883, Judge Parker’s jurisdiction had been cut down by the federal government, which had ceded parts of the Indian Territory to other jurisdictions. And there were rumblings from Washington that capital crimes might soon be handled exclusively by the Supreme Court. He wondered how the judge felt about all of that. Maybe he’d had enough, and with all that was happening and might happen, he’d take the opportunity to retire.
But from what he knew of the man, he doubted that retirement was in his plans for the near future.
When he reached the two-story brick building that housed the judge’s office, the jail, and the court, Clint had to be passed in by an armed guard. Too many attempts had been made in the past to shoot the judge while he sat on his bench, so now everyone was searched and relieved of their weapons.<
br />
“You want my gun?” he asked the deputy marshal.
“No, sir,” the deputy said. “The judge said to pass you right in.”
He turned and gave the judge’s gallows a stare before going through the door. The structure had been specially constructed to accommodate multiple hangings—as many as half a dozen at a time.
“The judge is in his office, top of the stairs, sir,” the deputy called after him.
“Yes,” Clint said, “I’ve been here before.”
Clint climbed the stairs to the second floor. He knew the judge’s office had a window that overlooked the gallows. The man always watched when the men—and women—he had sentenced to death were to be hanged. He thought it was only fair.
Clint knocked, and entered when a rumbling voice called out for him to do so.
As he entered, he saw the judge standing at that window, looking out.
Without turning around, the man said, “I’ve watched from this window as a lot of men and a few women dropped to their deaths.”
Clint didn’t respond. He just closed the door and waited.
Finally, after a few more moments, the judge turned and looked at him. The man had aged since Clint had last seen him. His ever-present beard had grown longer, and gone white, as had the hair on his head. For a man of barely fifty, he looked quite a bit older.
“Do you know what a priest once told me?” the judge asked Clint.
“What?”
“That for every person I sent to those gallows, for every life I took, I aged a bit more. I can see from the look on your face that’s probably true. I looked older, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, so do you,” Parker said.
He moved forward, hand extended. Clint shook the man’s hand, found the grip as firm as ever.
“Thank you for coming, Clint,” he said. “Have a seat. Brandy?”
“Sure,” Clint said, grimacing inside. He preferred beer over whiskey or brandy, but he didn’t want to refuse the offer.
The judge poured two snifters of brandy, passed one to Clint, and then sat behind his desk.
“What’s on your mind, Judge?”
“Belle Starr.”
“What about her?”
“You know her, don’t you?”
“I’ve met her,” he said.
“And you knew Sam Starr?”
“Yeah, I knew Sam—better than I knew Belle anyway. What’s Belle done? I thought she was laying low since Sam’s death?”
“She has,” the judge said, “which doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t like to have her in my jail. In fact, I sentenced her and Sam to prison in 1882, so I had them once, but I couldn’t keep them. But you’re right, she has been laying low.”
“Then why are you interested in her?”
“There seems to be another young lady who fancies herself an outlaw, and she’s running with a pretty mean bunch.”
“So she’s fashioned herself after Belle?” Clint asked. “Another ‘Bandit Queen’?”
“Well, actually,” Judge Parker said, “she’d be more of a Bandit Princess.”
“How’s that?”
“Her name is Pearl,” the judge said, “Pearl Starr. She’s Belle and Sam’s daughter.”
TWO
“Pearl Starr?”
“That’s right.”
“I never heard of her.”
“Nobody had, until a few months ago. She and her gang began pulling jobs in the Indian Territories and Arkansas,” Judge Parker explained.
“Are you sure they’re being led by this woman—young woman? How old is she?”
“I believe she’s nineteen or twenty.”
Clint fell silent.
“When did you know Belle Starr?”
“I met her for the first time about twenty years ago,” Clint said, “give or take.”
“And Sam Starr?”
“Not long after that.”
“After they had a child?”
“No,” Clint said, “before.”
Judge Parker sat back and sipped his brandy.
“Now wait a minute,” Clint said, seeing where this was going. “You’re not implying—”
“I’m not implying anything,” the judge said.
“Then what are you saying?”
“I would like you to go after Pearl Starr and her gang,” Parker said.
“Why me?”
“Frankly,” Parker said, “the reduction of my jurisdiction has also led to a reduction in the number of deputies I have at my disposal. And I have a couple of men laid up with bullet wounds. So at the moment, I don’t have anyone else to send.”
“Bullet wounds?”
“That’s right.”
“And just how did these two men receive their bullet wounds?”
“They were wounded while tracking the Pearl Starr gang.”
“Is that what they’re called?”
“That’s what I’m calling them.”
Clint set his brandy glass down on the judge’s desk and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“I need a beer.”
“But what about my offer?”
Clint looked down at the judge.
“I haven’t heard an offer,” he said.
“I’d like you to be sworn in as a deputy and then bring in the Pearl Starr gang.”
“That’s an offer?” Clint asked. “It almost sounds like an order.”
“It’s not an order,” the judge said. “I can’t give you any orders until you’re sworn in.”
“Which is exactly why I won’t be sworn in,” Clint said. “I’m not going to take orders from you, Judge.”
“Look here—”
“I’m going to go and have a drink and think this over,” Clint said. “If I decide to go after the gang, I won’t wear a badge, and I won’t take orders. I’ll do it my way.”
“As what? A vigilante?” the judge asked. “I don’t allow vigilantes—”
“As a concerned private citizen,” Clint said, interrupting the startled jurist, “who has obviously lost his mind.”
“See here—”
“Judge,” Clint said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, when I’ll let you know what I’ve decided.”
The judge frowned, then said, “Oh, very well. Tomorrow, then.”
“Until tomorrow.”
Clint left and went in search of a beer, to wash the taste of the brandy out of his mouth.
THREE
Clint went to the Cactus Saloon. He had been there years before, when it had been called something else, which he couldn’t remember.
“Help ya?” the middle-aged bartender asked.
“I need a cold beer,” Clint said. “I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Comin’ up.”
The bartender brought a mug and set it down in front of him.
“There ya go, friend,” he said. “Guaranteed to get any bad taste out of your mouth.”
“And I’ll want another one after this,” Clint said.
“Just wave,” the mustachioed bartender said, “and I’ll come a-runnin’.”
“That’s a deal,” Clint said.
The barman went away. Clint picked up the beer and thankfully drank down half of it. It successfully washed away the taste of the judge’s brandy, but not the taste of what the judge was trying to sell him.
He was angry that the judge would stoop to trying to convince him—or at least create some reasonable suspicion—that Pearl Starr was his daughter. True, he had slept with Belle Starr, but he doubted he had fathered a child with her. It was more likely Sam Starr who was Pearl’s father.
That didn’t mean he liked the idea of a twenty-year-old girl taking to the owlhoot trail. But she wasn’t related to him, so it really wasn’t his business.
On the other hand, if Belle Starr had come to him instead of Judge Parker, what would he have said then?
Maybe the thing to do was try to find Belle Starr and see what she knew
?
He finished his beer and was considering another when one of Judge Parker’s deputy marshals came through the batwings. Clint knew several of the judge’s marshals, but this one was unfamiliar to him.
“That’s somethin’, huh?” the bartender asked.
“When did—”
“Last month,” the bartender answered, anticipating the question. “The judge decided to add a woman to his staff of deputy marshals. I guess he was really havin’ a hard time findin’ men to do the job.”
The woman wearing the deputy marshal’s badge turned, looked at the bar, then seemed to look directly at Clint. She nodded to herself, as if she’d made a decision, and walked toward him.
“Clint Adams?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah, that’s right, Deputy,” Clint said. “Have I, uh, done anything?”
“No, sir,” she said. “I was just gonna ask you if I could buy you a beer.”
“I see.”
“Looks like you just finished one,” she said. “Another?”
“Sure,” he said, “why not, Deputy—”
“Eads,” she said. “My name is Deputy Alice Stewart Eads. Bartender? Two beers.”
“Comin’ up, Deputy.”
Clint and Deputy Eads looked each other up and down while waiting for their beers.
She appeared to be in her mid-thirties—definitely a woman, not a girl. She was tall, raw-boned, with brown hair tucked under a worn hat. Her leather holster was worn as well, but the Peacemaker resting in it was well cared for. She had gray eyes, which stared into his boldly, if not confidently. He wondered what her profession had been before this change came.
The bartender set down two beers, and they each picked one up.
“Thank you for the beer,” Clint said after a sip, “but why would you be buying me one? We’ve never met—that I remember.”
“No, we haven’t meant, Mr. Adams,” she said, “but I know your reputation. Oh, not the newspaper rep, but the one I’ve heard from other deputies who know you, and from the judge.”