They were alone. Dewey had fired many of the old hands and hired new cowboys. Those men were out with the cattle, riding fence, and doing the many other jobs that were required of punchers.
Dewey lost patience with his brother. He felt no pity for Hubby. He knew that Hubby was a mad dog, and while one might feel sorry for the animal, it had to be killed for safety’s sake.
“Draw, Hubby!”
Hubby jerked iron. But he’d forgotten that Dewey had spent many hours with Charlie Starr. Dewey’s draw was as smooth as velvet and as deadly as a striking rattler. A heartbeat later, Hubby lay dead on the ground.
A puncher came fogging into the yard and jumped from his horse.
“Get you a fresh horse and ride into town, Boone,” Dewey told him. “Tell the sheriff that Hubby is dead.”
* * *
“I fixed you a sackful of doughnuts,” Millie told the brothers. “They should last you for several days.”
“Not with him around,” Sam said, jerking a thumb toward Matt. “He’ll attack that sack like a bear to a honey tree.”
“Where are you boys headin’?” Pete asked.
Matt shook his head. “Probably north to see my folks. After that . . . who knows?”
“You boys must be runnin’ tryin’ to forget something terrible,” Pete said, coming alarmingly close to the truth. “You’re welcome back here anytime, boys. Don’t forget where we live, now.”
They shook hands and walked to their horses. “I keep thinking that we’re forgetting something,” Sam said.
“We are,” Matt replied in no more than a whisper. “Robert, Denise, and Carl.”
A rider from the Circle V came busting into the yard. “I just talked to Boone down the road. He was on his way into town to fetch the sheriff. Hubby braced Dewey in the front yard of the ranchhouse. Said he was gonna have the ranch and Dewey’s new wife. Dewey killed him. Couldn’t have been no more than an hour ago.”
“Light and sit,” Pete told the rider. “Give your horse a chance to blow. You, there, Judy,” he spoke to the little girl he’d adopted, “get some doughnuts and bring them to this puncher. And a mug of coffee.”
“Obliged,” the cowboy said. “I’m Augie. I come down from North Dakota way.”
“Pete could never kill his own son,” Sam said in a whisper. “I guess we’d better stick around for supper while we’re at it. They’re in the area.”
“All right.” Matt raised his voice. “Pete, my horse is startin’ to limp. You mind if we sleep in the barn tonight and give this fellow a chance to rest?”
Pete smiled sadly. “Thanks, boys. But I can saddle my own horses and stomp on my own snakes.”
“But could you kill your own son?” Sam asked gently.
“I don’t know,” Pete said, after a moment. “Mother, we’ll have two more for supper.”
Twenty-seven
The brothers ate lightly, not wanting to fill their bellies and sleep too soundly. They both knew that there was only a remote chance that Robert would show up; for all they knew, he could be five hundred miles away. But most of Pete’s hands were out with the just-gathered herd, preparing to sell off a bunch to the Army. Only Shorty, Coop, and the cook were still on the ranch compound.
After supper, they rolled up in their blankets under a tree in the front yard. Matt would take the first two-hour watch, then awaken Sam, and they would do that throughout the night. Dawn came, and nothing else.
“You boys can’t bodyguard me forever,” Pete said, over breakfast. “I . . .”
“Somebody comin’!” Shorty shouted from the outside. “It’s the sheriff.”
Jack stepped inside and took off his hat. “Pete, your boy’s in the area. He was spotted by a farmer not five miles from here. He was stealin’ eggs from the henhouse about four o’clock this morning. Him and the farmer traded shots, but the man don’t think he hit him. Carl and that girl was with him.”
Pete nodded his head and motioned to the table. “Sit and eat, Jack. Got flapjacks and bacon and eggs, and Mother just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
Jack pumped water and washed his hands at the sink and sat down. Millie filled his plate to overflowing and the sheriff dug in.
Pete said, “Stealin’ eggs. He could have had a two-hundred-thousand-acre ranch. This one. I bought that little spread up north of here, that little ten thousand acres, just for him. With plenty more to add to it over the years. Lookin’ back, it seemed to insult him. Now he’s stealin’ eggs in the dead of night. Lord God!”
“Pete,” Charlie said, stepping in through the back door. He had come in during the night. There was a funny tone to his voice. “It’s Robert and Carl and that girl. They’re ridin’ up to the front just as big as brass.”
Pete reached down and jerked Jack’s guns from the man. Jack didn’t let up on his eating; it was almost as if he expected that. “You can put them back, Pete. I know you’d rather see your son dead now than see him swing. It’s better that I don’t even know he’s in the yard until it’s all over. And that’s the way I’m gonna write it up.”
Pete shoved his guns back in leather.
“I’ll handle this,” Charlie said.
“No!” Sam’s voice was firm. “You’ve a good steady job for the first time in years, Charlie. You couldn’t work for a man whose son you killed. There would always be a strain between the two of you. Matt and me? We’re drifting. We won’t be back. It’s better that we face them.”
“He’s right, ol’ hoss,” Pete said gently. “But I aim to see if my son dies well. Mother, you and Millie take the kids into the bedroom. Come on, Charlie.”
They followed Matt and Sam out the front door. Jack Linwood refilled his coffee cup and calmly settled in to eat his breakfast. The West might be slowly taming, but it was still the West. Sometimes it was better to settle things outside of a court of law.
None of them saw Millie slip down the hall and exit the house through a side window, a rifle in her hands.
Matt and Sam stepped out into the yard. Robert and Carl faced them, Denise off to one side. The young men looked terrible. They were unshaven and unwashed. Their clothing was torn and dirty and stinking. Denise didn’t look or smell a damn bit better.
“So you don’t have the belly to face me, huh, Pa?” Robert called. “Well, it’s better this way. After we put the Injun and his so-called gunfighter brother down, we’ll take on you and that old fart beside you.”
Pete and Charlie looked at one another and smiled grimly. They both nodded their heads and stepped off the porch.
“Now, wait a minute!” Sam said.
“Shut up and go inside and have a cup of coffee,” Pete told them. “Or go to the porch and sit down. Just get the hell out of the way.”
Matt opened his mouth. Charlie shut it. “Go stick a doughnut in that hole, boy.”
Matt and Sam retired to the porch.
Pete faced his son, Charlie faced Carl Raner. Pete said, “I changed your diapers and wiped your butt when you were a baby. Me and your ma nursed you through sickness and worried and fretted about you. I built this ranch for you and your sister. I put in eighteen-hour days so you could . . .”
“Shut your goddamn mouth!” Robert screamed at his father. “I asked you to retire and give the place to me. You wouldn’t do it.”
“Retire! Hell, boy, I’m not yet fifty years old. What the devil would I do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do,” Robert told him. “You’re gonna die. Right now!” The son began his pull.
The guns of Pete Harris and Charlie Starr roared. Robert and Carl stumbled back, both of them with a sick expression on their faces. Denise screamed as the young men fell to the earth, both of them mortally wounded. She cursed and leveled her rifle at Pete and a Winchester snarled, a small blue hole appearing in the center of Denise’s forehead. She fell backward, dead before she hit the ground.
Millie walked out into the yard. “Since you talked so much to me and Robert about Charli
e Starr when we were kids, Pa, he was always sort of an uncle-person to me,” she said. “So I figured we’d best keep this in the family.”
Twenty-eight
When the brothers forded the uppermost curve of the Little Snake, they knew they were back in Wyoming. They crossed the continental divide and rode toward the South Fork Powder. It would be good to see family and home country again, and check on their ranches.
The elder Bodine looked out the living room window one afternoon and smiled. “Mother,” he called. “Put on a fresh pot of coffee. Our boys have come home for a spell.”
AFTERWORD
Notes from the Old West
In the small town where I grew up, there were two movie theaters. The Pavilion was one of those old-timey movie show palaces, built in the heyday of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin—the silent era of the 1920s. By the 1950s, when I was a kid, the Pavilion was a little worn around the edges, but it was still the premier theater in town. They played all those big Technicolor biblical Cecil B. DeMille epics and corny MGM musicals. In Cinemascope, of course.
On the other side of town was the Gem, a somewhat shabby and run-down grind house with sticky floors and torn seats. Admission was a quarter. The Gem booked low-budget “B” pictures (remember the Bowery Boys?), war movies, horror flicks, and Westerns. I liked the Westerns best. I could usually be found every Saturday at the Gem, along with my best friend, Newton Trout, watching Westerns from 10 A.M. until my father came looking for me around suppertime. (Sometimes Newton’s dad was dispatched to come fetch us.) One time, my dad came to get me right in the middle of Abilene Trail, which featured the now-forgotten Whip Wilson. My father became so engrossed in the action he sat down and watched the rest of it with us. We didn’t get home until after dark, and my mother’s meat loaf was a pan of gray ashes by the time we did. Though my father and I were both in the doghouse the next day, this remains one of my fondest childhood memories. There was Wild Bill Elliot, and Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, and Tim Holt, and, a little later, Rod Cameron and Audie Murphy. Of these newcomers, I never missed an Audie Murphy Western, because Audie was sort of an antihero. Sure, he stood for law and order and was an honest man, but sometimes he had to go around the law to uphold it. If he didn’t play fair, it was only because he felt hamstrung by the laws of the land. Whatever it took to get the bad guys, Audie did it. There were no finer points of law, no splitting of legal hairs. It was instant justice, devoid of long-winded lawyers, bored or biased jurors, or black-robed, often corrupt judges.
Steal a man’s horse and you were the guest of honor at a necktie party.
Molest a good woman and you got a bullet in the heart or a rope around the gullet. Or at the very least, got the crap beat out of you. Rob a bank and face a hail of bullets or the hangman’s noose.
Saved a lot of time and money, frontier justice.
That’s all gone now, I’m sad to say. Now you hear, “Oh, but he had a bad childhood” or “His mother didn’t give him enough love” or “The homecoming queen wouldn’t give him a second look and he has an inferiority complex.” Or “cultural rage,” as the politically correct bright boys refer to it. How many times have you heard some self-important defense attorney moan, “The poor kids were only venting their hostilities toward an uncaring society?”
Mule fritters, I say. Nowadays, you can’t even call a punk a punk anymore. But don’t get me started.
It was, “Howdy, ma’am” time too. The good guys, antihero or not, were always respectful to the ladies. They might shoot a bad guy five seconds after tipping their hat to a woman, but the code of the West demanded you be respectful to a lady.
Lots of things have changed since the heyday of the Wild West, haven’t they? Some for the good, some for the bad.
I didn’t have any idea at the time that I would someday write about the West. I just knew that I was captivated by the Old West.
When I first got the itch to write, back in the early 1970s, I didn’t write Westerns. I started by writing horror and action adventure novels. After more than two dozen novels, I began thinking about developing a Western character. From those initial musings came the novel The Last Mountain Man: Smoke Jensen. That was followed by Preacher: The First Mountain Man. A few years later, I began developing the Last Gunfighter series. Frank Morgan is a legend in his own time, the fastest gun west of the Mississippi . . . a title and a reputation he never wanted, but can’t get rid of.
For me, and for thousands—probably millions—of other people (although many will never publicly admit it), the old Wild West will always be a magical, mysterious place: a place we love to visit through the pages of books; characters we would like to know . . . from a safe distance; events we would love to take part in, again, from a safe distance. For the old Wild West was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a hard, tough, physically demanding time. There were no police to call if one faced adversity. One faced trouble alone, and handled it alone. It was rugged individualism: something that appeals to many of us.
I am certain that is something that appeals to most readers of Westerns.
I still do on-site research (whenever possible) before starting a Western novel. I have wandered over much of the West, prowling what is left of ghost towns. Stand in the midst of the ruins of these old towns, use a little bit of imagination, and one can conjure up life as it used to be in the Wild West. The rowdy Saturday nights, the tinkling of a piano in a saloon, the laughter of cowboys and miners letting off steam after a week of hard work. Use a little more imagination and one can envision two men standing in the street, facing one another, seconds before the hook and draw of a gunfight. A moment later, one is dead and the other rides away.
The old wild untamed West.
There are still some ghost towns to visit, but they are rapidly vanishing as time and the elements take their toll. If you want to see them, make plans to do so as soon as possible, for in a few years, they will all be gone.
And so will we.
Stand in what is left of the Big Thicket country of east Texas and try to imagine how in the world the pioneers managed to get through that wild tangle. I have wondered about that many times and marveled at the courage of the men and women who slowly pushed westward, facing dangers that we can only imagine.
Let me touch briefly on a subject that is very close to me: firearms. There are some so-called historians who are now claiming that firearms played only a very insignificant part in the settlers’ lives. They claim that only a few were armed. What utter, stupid nonsense! What do these so-called historians think the pioneers did for food? Do they think the early settlers rode down to the nearest supermarket and bought their meat? Or maybe they think the settlers chased down deer or buffalo on foot and beat the animals to death with a club. I have a news flash for you so-called historians: The settlers used guns to shoot their game. They used guns to defend hearth and home against Indians on the warpath. They used guns to protect themselves from outlaws. Guns are a part of Americana. And always will be.
The mountains of the West and the remains of the ghost towns that dot those areas are some of my favorite subjects to write about. I have done extensive research on the various mountain ranges of the West and go back whenever time permits. I sometimes stand surrounded by the towering mountains and wonder how in the world the pioneers ever made it through. As hard as I try and as often as I try, I simply cannot imagine the hardships those men and women endured over the hard months of their incredible journey. None of us can. It is said that on the Oregon Trail alone, there are at least two bodies in lonely, unmarked graves for every mile of that journey. Some students of the West say the number of dead is at least twice that. And nobody knows the exact number of wagons that impatiently started out alone and simply vanished on the way, along with their occupants, never to be seen or heard from again.
Just vanished.
The one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old ruts of the wagon wheels can still be seen in various places along the Oregon Trail. But
if you plan to visit those places, do so quickly, for they are slowly disappearing. And when they are gone, they will be lost forever, except in the words of Western writers.
The West will live on as long as there are writers willing to write about it, and publishers willing to publish it. Writing about the West is wide open, just like the old Wild West. Characters abound, as plentiful as the wide-open spaces, as colorful as a sunset on the Painted Desert, as restless as the ever-sighing winds. All one has to do is use a bit of imagination. Take a stroll through the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona; read the inscriptions. Then walk the main street of that once-infamous town around midnight and you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts that still wander the town. They really do. Just ask anyone who lives there. But don’t be afraid of the apparitions, they won’t hurt you. They’re just out for a quiet stroll.
The West lives on. And as long as I am alive, it always will.
Keep reading for a special excerpt of the new western from William W. and J.A. Johnstone.
FRONTIER OF VIOLENCE
a
A RATTLESNAKE WELLS,
WYOMING WESTERN
Welcome to the most dangerous town in the West. For Marshal Bob Hatfield, that means rough justice and a hundred ways to die . . .
In the shadow of the Prophecy Mountains, the ramshackle boomtown of Rattlesnake Wells draws schemers, predators, and desperate pilgrims. As for the law, that’s the town marshal, a former Texas outlaw trying to make a new life for himself. But Sundown Bob Hatfield knows a man who’s slick on the draw can’t escape trouble for long. In Rattlesnake Wells, you fight fire with fire—and a new one has just exploded.
An enterprising saloon owner stages a shooting contest with a matched pair of gold-plated revolvers as first prize. But some contestants don’t play by the rules, and these aren’t just any old gold-plated guns. Now the guns are gone, innocent hostages have been taken for a violent ride, and a chase is on into the vast Wyoming wilderness—where a terrifying dark secret will be exposed, much blood will be spilled, and a fast-gun marshal will bring the real outlaws to their knees . . .
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