“I hope so,” Lusita said. She stepped into a lingering embrace and then, as they parted and she turned from him, she added a whispered, “Vaya con Dios.”
After she was gone, Buckhorn muttered under his breath, “I’m trying, lady. It ain’t easy, but I’m trying.”
Keep reading for a special preview of the first book in a new series from WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE
THE JACKALS
Alone, these justice fighters are dangerous enough. Together they’re a wild bunch known as the Jackals. Now, national bestselling authors William W. and J. A. Johnstone are turning them loose ...
Holed up in a West Texas way station after a savage Indian massacre, ex–cavalry sergeant Sean Keegan, bounty hunter Jed Breen, and ex–Texas Ranger Matt McCulloch are determined to make good on a promise to a dead man: deliver his blood-soaked stash of $50,000 to his kin—especially when the dying man promised them five grand.
The trio, soon to be known as the Jackals, aren’t all that honest, but they have one thing in common: they keep their word, and they gave their word to a dying man. It’s rough enough backtracking over warpath country. Worse—turns out the loot they’re hauling is the stolen property of the vengeful Hawkin gang, and those prairie rats are merciless, stone-cold killers. But McCulloch, Keegan, and Breen aren’t riding for their own lives. They’re protecting a prisoner in tow—a hot-as-a-pistol female who can shoot with the best of them. The Jackals are ready for a showdown—and may not live to spend that $5,000.
Look for THE JACKALS, on sale now where ever books are sold.
PROLOGUE
Front-page editorial from the Purgatory City, Texas, Herald Leader, Alvin J. Griffin IV, editor and publisher:
THE TIME HAS COME FOR OUR CITIZENS TO STAND UP TO THE JACKALS OF WEST TEXAS AND MAKE A STATEMENT FOR LAW AND . . . ESPECIALLY . . . ORDER!
The War Between the States is well behind us, the Mexicans have been behaving themselves of late, and the only thing that must be eradicated in the state of Texas—and our neighbors in the Southwest—are the menacing Apache marauders.
Yes, cowboys will be cowboys when they get paid, and most soldiers who risk their lives for our safety against these Apache butchers who torment our neighbors on the homesteads and ranches and small mines, or those lone travelers who make an “easy kill,” yes, those soldiers get carried away much like cowboys when they have money to spend. Sure, we have gamblers who cheat and floozies who seek to soil our young men, and there is graft and dishonesty, even an occasional fistfight between friends.
All of this is part of progress, of sowing one’s oats, of growing up. West Texas is seeing progress, and our towns and cities and communities are growing up. We have the telegraph. We have the railroad. We have stagecoaches. Our cities and towns have fine places to eat, comfortable beds that aren’t ticky and are free of bedbugs. Our bankers are willing to make loans to reputable citizens at fine rates to build and build and build.
We must commend our fine city marshal, Rafe McMillian, and our county sheriff, Juan Garcia, for all they do. Likewise, we know MOST of the Texas Rangers under the command of Captain J.J.K. Hollister try to keep peace in our communities. Colonel John Caxton expertly commands the soldiers at Fort Spalding. Our district marshal for the federal courts, Kenneth Cook, and his valiant deputies are busy tracking down other offenders and lawbreakers.
The only thing we should have to worry about, other than the Apache menace, is the weather.
But, of course, the weather must be left to the Almighty’s hand.
We should be free of worry.
We should be free of most crime.
We should, and we must, be free of jackals. Yet, West Texas and the territories of New Mexico and Arizona, and even our neighbors below the Rio Grande, are not free of such beasts.
And as much as it sickens your editor of your best and leading newspaper, I feel it is time to single out the worst offenders, the jackals who could prevent corporations from investing in our communities. Those who tarnish our good standing, who smear our good name, and who, if we are not diligent, may destroy all of our hard work.
Certainly, Jake Hawkin and his band of desperate bandits have been rampaging our towns, stagecoaches, banks, and our decent citizens for far too long, and have started to rival the James-Younger gang and other bushwhacking border trash up in Missouri and elsewhere. Where there is progress, where there is success, where you find money and people and beer and whiskey and wine and gambling halls, there will be a few rotten eggs. Jake Hawkin is a rotten egg. He and his cutthroats must be killed or captured and hanged by the neck until they are dead, dead, dead.
Marshal Cook assures your trusted editor this will happen, as his deputies are following leads and trails and believe that they have the outlaw butchers on the run.
But this paper—this editor—does not consider Jake Hawkin or his rogues to be Jackals.
A jackal, according to the dictionary on my desk, is “a wild animal of India and Persia, allied to the wolf.”
Jake Hawkin is a coward. He wore neither blue nor gray during the late unpleasantness. He is too lazy to make the proverbial honest dollar. He is not wild. He has no allies, not even the men who ride with him, for all they want is that easy dollar. The men who ride with Hawkin, and Hawkin himself, have no calluses on their hands. Colt revolvers, Winchester repeating rifles, poker chips, and pastecards rarely cause calluses, and that’s all these swine know.
In Thessalonians, it is written that we should reject every kind of evil.
We reject the Hawkin Gang, and they will be brought to justice. But we have not rejected all of our terrible jackals.
Alas, for the jackals in our midst, we must look closer to our homes.
At Fort Spalding, for instance.
Last week, Sergeant Sean Keegan all but destroyed The Killers & Thieves Saloon & Gambling Parlor on Acme Street. Oh, how we have asked saloon owner Ryan O’Doul to change the name of his establishment, but the fun-loving Irishman (meaning O’Doul, not Keegan, who speaks with not even the slightest brogue) says he wants people to have fun when they come into his place. According to O’Doul, “A man will remember The Killers and Thieves, no matter how much Who Hit John he drinks, and he will come back. Because, ladies and lasses, that name sticks out more than the Acme, the Place, and even The Alamo—saloons that line our streets on the other side of the railroad tracks.” He went on by saying, “Folks, I try not to serve killers and thieves.”
Yet he served Keegan and probably regrets it. The sergeant decided, after much too much Who Hit John, that he was being cheated at the roulette table. So he broke a bottle of rye whiskey over the operator’s head, turned over the table, busted the wheel, drew his Remington revolver and began shooting out the lights that had been imported all the way from Saint Louis and were just installed a month ago to brighten the favored saloon in our great city.
Patrons ran out screaming in the street, as Keegan was the only man armed in the saloon, for bartender Saul Ferguson wisely left the sawed-off shotgun under the bar and helped Louie Roebuck, our lovable town drunk, out through the back entrance. Seeing he was alone, Sergeant Keegan walked to the bar and helped himself to more shots of whiskey. He then broke the mirror on the back bar with the whiskey bottle . . . that must have been empty. He kicked over the spittoons and as he walked out of the saloon, overturned tables and chairs—even busted three chairs—and tossed an entire table through the fine plate-glass window. He kicked open the batwing doors, ripping one off its hinges, and then holstered his still-smoking revolver, rolled a cigarette, and leaned against the hitching rail—which by this time was empty of all horses as the owners had wisely mounted up and moved at a fast lope for safer climes.
City Marshal McMillian and three deputies approached the drunken trooper, who finished his cigarette, offered his empty revolver, and was escorted to our new jail. Our fine constable said that the sergeant surrendered peaceably and has agreed to pay Mr. O’Doul for damages, by t
aking out a third of his monthly pay. Colonel Caxton insists that his officer in charge of payroll will make sure that this is, indeed, done. However, if you consider that a sergeant in our United States Army makes, perhaps, eighteen dollars a month, O’Doul might see those damages finally paid for in four and one-half years.
Sergeant Keegan, Colonel Caxton reminds us, was a decorated veteran for the Union Army during the war, riding for the Second Michigan Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, rising from private to brevetted major from his initial enlistment at Detroit in October of 1861 until he and his fellow soldiers were mustered out in August of 1865. He was decorated for valor at the Battle of Island Number Ten, the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Resaca, the slaughter and carnage at Franklin, Tennessee, and again at the Battle of Nashville. He has, likewise, Colonel Caxton said, shown his bravery time and again since enlisting in the regular army in 1867.
We do not argue with Sergeant Keegan’s past bravery. But his actions last week were not the first time he has spent the rest of his leave in our jail.
Judge Preston Barnes says that, to the best of his memory, Keegan has been fined and jailed at least ten times over the past two years. Colonel Caxton said that the sergeant has spent several weeks in the guardhouse at Fort Spalding and has been demoted to private at least three times. Yet the sergeant’s stripes keep being sewn again onto the sleeves of his blouse because, “Good sergeants,” Caxton says, “are hard to come by, and the Apaches haven’t all been turned into ‘good injuns,’ as we like to say.”
The Army, we must say, needs to make a stand and weed out such jackals as Sergeant Sean Keegan.
“From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.”
—Psalms 73:7
But Sergeant Keegan is not the only mad wolf and demon that Texas needs to weed out.
Two months ago, Jed Breen brought in another outlaw—dead. Breen does not live in one of our cities or towns. In fact, we doubt if Jed Breen has a home . . . or a mother or a father, for that matter, for he is, indeed, a jackal, a man kin to the wolf, and not any humans. Yes, Breen has rid our great state of vermin. It is said that he fights for justice, but, oh, what a sham that is. Justice?
Jed Breen wears no badge. He is neither sheriff, marshal, constable, Texas Ranger, nor Pinkerton agent. He has never been hired as a deputy. In fact, there are rumors that he is wanted for crimes in Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, Montana, and California. We have searched and made inquiries but have found no proof that Jed Breen is wanted for any crimes in any of those states, nor in our own glorious Texas. But who is to say Jed Breen is this vagabond’s real name?
Breen, of course, is easy to recognize. He is lean, he is leathery, and although probably no older than his thirties, his hair is stark white, close-cropped. His eyes are a piercing blue. He has a unique countenance, and, indeed, many ladies have a tendency to swoon when he tips his hat in their direction.
Tipping his hat is about the only polite thing Jed Breen does, and I do not think that the man is recognized merely for his white hair.
You smell him before you see him. And the smell is that which reeks of death.
He brings in outlaws to various lawmen in towns from here to there. He collects the rewards posted for those men, but these wanted felons have not gotten their day in court. For they are dead upon arrival. Once, Jed Breen merely brought in the head of the criminal Fat Charles Wingo.
Dime novels are not noted for their veracity, but this quote from the author, Major Kiowa J. Smith (likely a pseudonym), rings true. It is from The Last Days of Fat Charlie Wingo, Savage Outlaw and Comanchero; or Bloody Revenge on the Staked Plains of Texas. “Why just the head? Well, Judge,” the leathery killer said with a grin, “Fat Charlie runned his hoss to death in the middle of Comanch country, and the injuns weren’t in no hospitable mood. Fat Charlie had to weigh nigh two hundred and fifty pounds, and that was before I put about a pound of lead into his body. My hoss was fairly winded his ownself, and iffen it come to a runnin’ fight with dem red devils, well, my mustang wasn’t likely to come out the victor in such a race. That’d mean I was either dead or wishin’ I was dead after the Comanch took their pleasures on me. My Bowie knife was sharp, and Fat Charlie’s grain sack was empty. It just seemed like the thing to do, Judge. ’Sides, the head’s all you need to identify that scoundrel. Ever’body this side of the Pecos River knowed Charlie had a mouthful of gold teeth, and if you peel up that eyelid you’ll see his marled eye, which he’s also knowed fer. The rest of his body I left for the coyot’s, Judge, on account that coyot’s gots to eat, too.”
The body of Jimmy Martin was intact, head and all, and, yes, Jimmy Martin was wanted dead or alive for the robbery of the Lordsburg stage. But Jimmy Martin was all of seventeen years old, just a misguided youth who was hurting after the Apaches killed his father and older brother on the malpais. Jimmy Martin was wrong, yes, indeed, he was wrong, and deserved to be punished. But he was no jackal. He could have been reformed.
And no kid deserves to be shot in the back.
“I called for the boy to surrender,” Jed Breen told Judge Barnes (this comes from the fine jurist himself, and not from Breen, whose quotes to this newspaperman could not be printed in even the most gratuitous and salacious and scandalous publication). “He popped a cap at me, and I returned fire. He just happened to be turning around to make a run for his horse, when I touched that trigger.”
Young Jimmy Martin is not the first corpse this awful bounty hunter has brought to our courts, our towns, and our dedicated peace officers. He has claimed to have brought in men alive, but we find no record that has ever happened. Your intrepid editor did question Jed Breen, and the response was one that, as it lacked vile and profane language, was something we could actually print.
Editor of the Herald Leader: “Why must you always bring in outlaws for their reward, and not for a sense of duty and justice?”
Jed Breen: “Ink slinger, I shoot a Sharps rifle. You ever tried pricing a box of .50-caliber Sharps cartridges in this country? A man’s gotta eat, and an officer of the court has got to buy lead.”
For the record, upon checking past issues of your Herald Leader and other newspapers in Texas and the Southwest, we have learned that Jed Breen does not use just a big and powerful Sharps rifle (although that long brass telescopic sight affixed to his murderous weapon likely gives him an advantage when it comes to facing his “deadly” adversaries). Breen has also brought in bodies riddled with buckshot from his Parker double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun, which is even more brutal since the Damascus barrels have been sawed off. And at least twice, he has killed men with his 1877 double-action Colt Lightning revolver.
And, no, your honest and busy editor did not walk across town to Dillon’s Gun Shop to find out the price of a box of double-ought buckshot for a twelve-gauge nor a box of .38-caliber cartridges for a Colt revolver.
In short, Jed Breen hunts outlaws for the prices on their heads. But who hunts this jackal?
“For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.”
—Mark 7:21–22
Finally and most disappointing, there is another jackal in our midst—and perhaps he is the worst of the entire lot.
Matt McCulloch is a man of middle age, tall, lean, with a fine head of hair (yes, your balding editor is jealous of his black and gray mane). Once, he lived in our town, was respected, was honest, and the only time longtime residents recall him ever wearing a gun came when he went hunting for a deer or some rabbits to feed his family; or to rid West Texas of an unnecessary rattlesnake that had its fangs set to sink into the leg of one of the fine horses McCulloch and his sons raised and sold.
And then, some years back, Matt McCulloch returned home after driving six fine horses to sell to Texas Rangers Captain John Courtright—Courtright was killed in the line of duty four y
ears ago, and ably replaced, but never forgotten, by our current Rangers leader, J.J.K. Hollister. McCulloch’s home and barn were in ashes, his family butchered, and his horses stolen. The one daughter in the family was missing, kidnapped by those red-heathen butchers.
So McCulloch, after burying his beloved wife and sons, spent more than a year futilely searching for his daughter. Eventually, reluctantly giving the child up for dead like the rest of his family, he rode back to the Rangers headquarters and enlisted with Captain Courtright. He pinned on the cinco pesos star. He bought a long-barreled Colt revolver, and his Winchester carbine was replaced with a new, more current model, as his previous rifle had been consumed by the flames the murderous fiends had set to his home. The Texas Rangers in his battalion pitched in for the new carbine, I have been informed.
Of course, none of us at the Herald Leader can know how it must feel to lose one’s entire family and home to such butchery. We do, on the other hand, feel Matt McCulloch’s pain. And for a few years, Matt McCulloch wore his badge with honor and lived by the code of the Texas Rangers and by the law of the state of Texas.
Yet if you look at the stock of his Winchester rifle or the walnut butt of his revolver of .44-40 caliber, you will see the carvings that represent the men he has killed—as well as three Apache women, and one Mexican bandit woman—all reportedly as rough and wild as the brutes they rode with and all deservedly and justifiably killed. The brown stocks are now, literally, carved so much that the walnut is but a mass of ditches and scratches covered with grime, filth, and, yes, stained by blood.
“Sometimes,” a former friend of the weary-eyed Ranger told me, “I get the feeling that Matt has to kill. He just doesn’t know anything else after these years. He thinks every man he goes after, or every outlaw that comes after him, is responsible for the murders of his wife and children. And the truth of the matter is, it pains me to say, but we’ll never know—not while we’re living on this earth, I mean—who all committed that horrible crime. Those Apache vermin might be alive. Most likely, they’re dead. And some think that maybe it was white renegades who made it look like the work of those red devils. And it just doesn’t matter. McCulloch kills. He kills because he has to kill. He kills, I sometimes think, hoping that somebody will kill him.”
Bloodthirsty Page 29