Preacher's Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  Ryker smirked. “Well, now, that’s going to be a little bit more of a problem . . .”

  Pidge strode forward. “Hoyt, you shouldn’t be doin’ this,” he said. “I thought you was a good man, the way you treated me at first.”

  “That’s your problem, you big, dumb ox.”

  Pidge frowned and clenched his hamlike hands into fists. “You shouldn’t ought to talk like that to me,” he said as he took another step forward. “I don’t like it.”

  “Stop right there!” Ryker ordered. “Unless you want me to gut this girl right in front of your eyes.”

  “Stay back, Pidge,” Preacher told the giant. The sun still wasn’t up, but there was enough light for him to see dimly into the wagon, behind Chessie and Ryker. He had just spotted some movement there. He didn’t think any of the outcasts had made it as far as the wagons, so that left only one person who could be stirring inside the vehicle . . .

  Edgar Merton stepped up behind Ryker, pressed a small pistol to the back of the man’s head, and said, “Drop that knife, Ryker . . . or I . . . I’ll blow your brains out.”

  Ryker had stiffened at the unexpected touch of the gun, but now he grinned again and said, “I thought you were either out cold or dead, Merton. I sure as hell didn’t think you had the strength to get up.”

  “A man can . . . find the strength . . . when he needs to.”

  “The hell he can. I’ll bet you can’t even pull that trigger. You’re going to pass out before you ever get the chance—”

  Ryker moved suddenly, twisting toward Merton, letting go of Chessie as he jerked away from the gun and swung the knife at Merton’s belly. Merton screamed as the blade sunk into flesh. The pistol sagged in his hand.

  But it was still pointed toward Ryker’s chest when he pulled the trigger.

  The close-range blast knocked Ryker back into Chessie. Both of them toppled over the tailgate, followed by Merton. All three sprawled on the ground at the rear of the wagon as Oliver cried, “Chessie! Father!” and dashed forward.

  Ryker had dropped the knife when he was shot, but it was lying on the ground next to him. He reached for it, but Preacher’s boot came down first on Ryker’s wrist and pinned his hand to the ground. Blood bubbled from Ryker’s chest wound as he gazed up at Preacher. The color was draining rapidly from his face. He struggled to form words and finally gasped, “At least tell me . . . what it was all about . . .”

  “Ask the Devil when you get to hell,” Preacher said, then watched without expression as the life faded from Hoyt Ryker’s eyes.

  A few feet away, Chessie babbled, “I’m all right, I’m all right,” as Oliver tried to help her sit up. “See to your father!”

  That wasn’t going to do any good, no matter what any of them did, Preacher knew. That slash from Ryker’s knife had opened up Edgar Merton’s belly. There was a good chance he never would have made it back to civilization alive, but now death was only moments away.

  “Ol . . . Oliver,” he said, groping upward with a hand.

  Oliver scrambled over and caught hold of it. “I’m here, Father,” he said, struggling to hold back sobs. “Hang on—”

  “Oh no,” Merton whispered. “I’m not . . . going to make it. But at least . . . I can die knowing . . . you found . . . two treasures . . . the gold . . . and that . . . young woman . . .”

  The long, rattling sigh that came from Merton’s throat told Preacher the man was gone.

  Oliver bent over his father’s body and cried unashamedly. Chessie knelt beside him and put an arm around his shoulders to comfort him. Preacher, Hawk, and Pidge stood well aside so as not to intrude on the young man’s grief.

  “I believe I am glad that Chessie made the decision she did,” Hawk said quietly to Preacher. “Oliver needs her more than I ever will. I have what I need.”

  “What’s that?” Preacher said.

  Hawk lifted a hand and made a small but eloquent gesture to indicate the Black Hills that surrounded them. “The frontier,” he said. “My home.”

  * * *

  By the middle of the day, they had laid Edgar Merton to rest here in this valley that had haunted his hopes and dreams ever since his first visit many years earlier. Pidge insisted that they bury Hoyt Ryker as well.

  “He was a bad man,” Pidge said with the simplicity Preacher had come to appreciate, “but there were times when he was good to me.”

  “And that’s reason enough,” Preacher agreed.

  The outcasts would lie where they had fallen, and in time it would be as if they had never brought their madness into this lush wilderness.

  Preacher, Hawk, and Pidge had taken down the barricade as well, so the wagons could be driven out of here. As they were getting ready to go, Oliver came over to Preacher and held out his hand.

  “I found this in my father’s belongings, like he said.”

  Preacher looked down at the object lying in Oliver’s palm, a rough, mostly dull chunk of rock with brighter streaks in it. He grunted in surprise.

  “It’s gold, isn’t it?” Oliver said.

  “Well . . . in a way,” the mountain man replied. “That there is a chunk of what some folks call fool’s gold, ’cause people look at it and mistake it for the real thing.”

  Oliver stared at him for several seconds before asking, “You mean it’s worthless?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Oliver looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He settled for laughing, but there was pain in his voice as he said, “That means this whole horrible business was for nothing, doesn’t it? My father spent years dreaming a dream that was false.”

  “He made a mistake,” Preacher said. “Everybody does. But at least he died thinkin’ he’d done a good thing, and that’s somethin’ to be thankful for.” He looked over to the wagon where Chessie was petting one of the mules and talking to Pidge. As the girl laughed, Preacher said, “Anyway, your pa told you you had two treasures now, and he was half-right. That’s pretty good, considerin’ some folks never find even one.”

  A short time later, when they were ready to pull out, Preacher suddenly lifted his head and said to Hawk, “Listen.”

  “To what?” the young warrior asked.

  “Thought I heard a horse . . .”

  A gray, rangy form came high-stepping out of the trees on the other side of the creek, lifted his head, and whinnied a greeting. Dog barked and bounded across the stream to run around and around his old friend, who had been lost for days now.

  “Horse!” Preacher said. “He must’ve been trailin’ Ryker and the others the whole way.” He hurried across the creek and rubbed Horse’s neck while the stallion bumped his nose against the mountain man’s shoulder. It was a touching reunion for the three trail partners.

  When what was left of the expedition headed south, Preacher was mounted on Horse again, with Hawk riding beside him and Oliver, Chessie, and Pidge driving the wagons. All of the men had suffered minor wounds in the final battle with the outcasts, but nothing that would keep them from putting these dark, bloody hills behind them as soon as possible.

  “I think I have seen enough of the white man’s world,” Hawk said as they rode ahead of the wagons. “We brought it back with us from St. Louis, and it fouled this land. Next time you go there, you go without me.”

  “Your choice,” Preacher told him. “Anyway, we got to hunt up White Buffalo. I’m sure he’d be happy to have you around for a while.”

  “So there is no gold in the Black Hills,” Hawk said, looking around. “Only the gold of fools.”

  “Well,” Preacher replied, “I didn’t exactly say that.”

  TURN THE PAGE FOR AN EXCITING PREVIEW!

  JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. FRONTIER SPIRIT LIVES HERE.

  There are a lot of ways a man can end up on a wanted poster. There’s the easy way (murder), there’s the hard way (robbery), and then there’s Dooley Monahan’s way (by accident). On the trail west with his trusty horse and dog, the hapless gunslinger stops a mean, hungry
bear from making lunch out of the legendary Buffalo Bill Cody. In turn, Cody grubstakes Dooley for the purchase of a silver mine in the lawless, violent boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Dooley can’t believe his good luck. But when he guns down three deadly outlaws, the grateful townsfolk pin a sheriff’s badge on Dooley. And that’s when his luck runs out . . .

  Turns out there’s a war going on between two rival gangs. Stagecoaches are being robbed every other day, and fingers are being pointed at Dooley himself. There’s a tradition here in these parts, he discovers. If a sheriff’s no good, they hang him. And if the next one’s no better, they hang him twice . . .

  National Bestselling Authors

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. Johnstone

  THE TRAIL WEST

  HANG HIM TWICE

  Coming in February 2018,

  wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

  Live Free. Read Hard.

  www.williamjohnstone.net

  CHAPTER 1

  Some things, a man knows, he ought never do.

  Like placing your hat on a bed. Or riding a pinto horse—unless you happen to be an Indian. Or borrowing a pocketknife that has the blade open but then returning it with the blade closed. Or not sharpening a straight razor three times on each side. Or removing the ashes from a stove on a Friday. But here sat Dooley Monahan in the Elkhorn Saloon in Denver City, Colorado, about to make the worst move of his life.

  Which was saying a lot.

  “One card,” Dooley told the dealer while tossing his discard onto the center of the table.

  The dealer, a pockmarked man with a handlebar mustache, sleeve garters, and shaded spectacles, deftly slid a paste card across the green felt cloth toward Dooley’s pile of chips, which happened to be a lot smaller than when he had taken that empty seat four hours earlier.

  The stagecoach messenger—the one the size of a grizzly with about as much hair, not the other driver, who was bald and had no teeth—drew three cards. The merchant wearing the bowler hat and plaid sack suit took three as well. The dealer sent the stagecoach driver, the bald one, two cards.

  That was it. The dealer had folded on the first bet, and the other chairs had been vacated during the course of the four hours, and no one in the Elkhorn appeared willing to try to bust the stagecoach driver’s—the bald one, without any teeth but a massive pile of chips—run of luck.

  Dooley watched as the players picked up their cards, shuffled them into the proper places among the cards they held.

  “Your bet.” The dealer nodded at the toothless stagecoach man, who grinned, wet his lips, and studied his chips.

  “Check,” the man said.

  “Check,” said Dooley.

  That caused the stagecoach messenger—the one who looked like a grizzly, and smelled like one, too—to use his substantial neck to turn his substantial head at Dooley.

  “You ain’t even looked at your card, mister,” the big cuss said, and tapped a substantial finger on the felt, pointing at the card Dooley had drawn.

  Dooley sipped his beer. “I don’t have to,” he said.

  That caused the big man to straighten and study Dooley closer. Then he eyed the dealer, who merely shrugged and said, “Your bet, sir.”

  The big one looked at his cards, then at Dooley, then at the dealer, then at that double-barreled coach gun, which he used to guard against stagecoach robberies. Dooley did not plan on robbing any stagecoach, and, at this point, he wasn’t even sure he planned on sticking in the game once the betting started.

  The grizzly bear looked back at Dooley.

  “You some kind of clear voyager?” he asked.

  Dooley blinked.

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard you,” Dooley said. “I just don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I said either you’s some kind of clear voyager or this here’s ’bout as crooked a deal as I’ve ever had—and I’ve had me a passel of crooked deals.”

  Dooley’s mouth turned to sand, and he had just swallowed about a fifth of his freshly poured beer. He began running those superstitions through his head again as the big man placed his cards on the table and lowered the right hand toward the substantial scattergun that would make even Buffalo Bill Cody or Wild Bill Hickok nervous.

  Never place your hat on a bed . . . Always sharpen your straight razor three times on each side . . . Don’t ever take ashes out of a stove on a Friday . . . And don’t be a danged fool and . . .

  The merchant interrupted Dooley’s thoughts.

  “Do you mean clairvoyant?”

  Now the leviathan turned his massive head at the merchant. “That’s what I said, gol darn it.”

  Dooley grinned, shook his head, and said—after breathing a sigh of relief: “I’m no clairvoyant.”

  Which turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

  Because the stagecoach messenger rose, tipping his chair over. “Then that means this here be a crooked deal.”

  The man’s hand reached for the shotgun, a massive Parker ten-gauge that looked more like a howitzer than a scattergun. And as big as that cannon seemed, the big cuss’s hand practically dwarfed it.

  The dealer had reached for the much slimmer Colt in a shoulder holster. The merchant simply turned about as pale as Dooley thought his own face must be looking about now. Blue, Dooley’s merle hound, growled. A saloon gal bringing drinks toward the neighboring table abruptly took her ryes and bourbons and beers and one glass of champagne toward the other side of the saloon. And the folks sitting at the neighboring table stopped playing cards and quickly cleared out of the way.

  That’s when the other stagecoach man—the jehu without any teeth—broke into laughter.

  “Sit down, you ignorant oaf,” he said to the grizzly bear. “He ain’t no clear voyager and this ain’t no crooked deal.”

  The grizzly trained his angry eyes at the skinny old man, who downed a shot of rye and smiled a toothless smile.

  “He ain’t got to see what card he drawed on account I didn’t bet,” the jehu said as if explaining a math equation to a bumpkin. “He’s waitin’ to see how this hand plays out, you fool. So bet, check, or fold.”

  Those words finally registered, and the giant released his grip on the shotgun. One of the neighboring poker players decided to be a gentleman and lifted the grizzly’s chair off the floor, smiled at Blue, who settled back down by Dooley’s chair legs, and returned to his own chair at his own table.

  Dooley finished his beer.

  After the giant settled back into his seat and reexamined his cards, he snorted, gave Dooley a sideways glance, and said, “I still think you might be a clear voyager.”

  Bet and find out, Dooley started to say, but he had already broken one of the sacred vows of cowboys and poker players and decided now was not the time to push his luck. He shrugged, and nodded at the saloon gal and called out, “Another round for my compatriots.”

  “Thank you,” everyone said except the grizzly, who spit into the sawdust and said, “I wasn’t no conned patriot, mister. I wore the blue with the finest artillery regiment in Rosecrans’s army.”

  “What were you?” the slim jehu said, sniggering. “A cannon?”

  The grizzly frowned and slid his winnings into the pile in the center.

  “It’ll cost you my whole pile to find out.”

  As the dealer eyed the chips, greenbacks, and coins, the merchant tossed his cards onto the deadwood. “I am too drained after this excitement to think clearly,” he said, “so I shall fold.”

  The toothless driver of stages laughed. “On account you didn’t draw what you needed.”

  The merchant did not respond.

  Said the dealer: “I make that right at one hundred thirty-seven dollars and fifty-five cents.”

  “You done all that in your noggin?” the toothless jehu said.

  “He’s probably one of ’em clear voyagers, too,” the grizzly bear growled.

  Dooley swallowed
down his nerves and looked at the one card he had drawn, still facedown on the felt, but did not lift it . . . yet.

  The skinny driver grinned and said as he reached for his chips, “Why don’t we make it an even five hundred dollars?” He tossed in some greenbacks and gold coins.

  “But you checked,” the merchant pointed out.

  “There’s no law against checking and raising,” the dealer said.

  “But it’s not gentlemanly,” the merchant said.

  Dooley had to agree with the merchant’s assessment, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was to see what the dealer had delivered him. Since Dooley was neither a clairvoyant nor a clear voyager, he stretched his left hand across the table, put his fingers on the card, and thumbed the corner up just slightly. He left the card on the table and laid the four cards he kept on top of them.

  “I guess that’s a fold . . .” The sentence stopped in the toothless coot’s throat as Dooley picked up his cards and asked the dealer:

  “So it’s five hundred to me?”

  “That’s right.”

  Holding the five cards in his left hand, Dooley began counting what he had left. It amounted to a little more than $230.

  “Tell you what, mister,” the toothless codger said. “That’s a fine dog you got lyin’ there by your boots. I mean, if you want to raise.”

  Dooley grinned. “How much you think old Blue’s worth?”

  Thin lips cut off the toothless grin.

  The merchant’s chair legs scraped across the floor, and the man pushed back his bowler and walked around. “I know a few things of dogs.” He studied Blue, who did not seem the least interested. “That’s an Australian shepherd, I think. Maybe seven, eight years old. Good dog.”

  “You some dog clear voyager?” the grizzly bear asked.

  The merchant smiled. “No. I just know dogs. A dog like that, in Denver, would go for six hundred dollars.”

  Everyone at the table stared incredulously at the merchant, who sat down. “Boys,” he said, “this is Denver City. You know how much a bath costs. Or an all-night woman. A dog like that is worth a lot of money.”