The Edge of Violence

by William W. Johnstone

  A gunshot exploded, and the bullet whirred past Colter’s left ear. Closer than he would have guessed. He ducked, worked the bar, and saw that only fifty or sixty yards separated him from the crazed, brutal killer named Clint Warren. Colter drew the big LeMat from its holster. He stepped away from the pumping lever, dropped to a knee to steady himself, and squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet might have missed, but it sure drew the attention of Clint Warren. He spun around, and snapped a shot from his own pistol. And then the handcar disappeared in a cloud of dust—dust because the swarm of locusts had reduced this country into a bowl of nothing but earth, without any grass or anything that could nourish a locust.

  Colter blinked, trying to comprehend. Quickly he realized that the heavy iron rails had been pulled apart, as though someone had decided that this was the best way to stop a train. He saw the handcar he had been chasing, laying on its side, maybe a quarter buried underneath the dirt. That made him smile—at least, until another thought struck him.

  His handcar was following that same path.

  He stepped back from the pump, desperately looking for some brake. Something that might stop the cart he was on from leaving the rails and crashing into the earth. He had yet to figure that part out. The last time he had ridden a handcar, it, too, had flown into oblivion, descending to crash upon boulders and earth and two would-be train robbers.

  There was no time to find a brake, a lever, or some damned parachute. So Tim Colter leaped off the side of the handcar just a few moments before it left the rails and slammed into bare earth.

  He hit hard, rolled over, and felt the soil rip through his shirt, tearing his skin, leaving him dizzy and aching as he rolled and rolled and rolled. Then he was up, on his knees, and grasping for the LeMat.

  Only the big revolver was no longer there. He must have lost it during his rolling and tumbling. Through the dust, through the blurring of his vision, he could just make out the big man. Colter tried for the Barlow knife in the pocket of his pants, but he knew he would be too late. He knew he could not stop Clint Warren.

  The big man no longer had a revolver, either, and his nose was busted, and a big gash stretched across his forehead. The right sleeve of his shirt hung in tatters, and his knee was bleeding. Blood spilled from his mangled lips. Yet, the man’s face remained intense, and intimidating.

  “I’ll kill you . . . ,” Warren began. “I’ll tear you from limb to limb.”

  And Clint Warren might have done just that. Except an arrow suddenly appeared in his stomach, quivering from the force of impact, buried almost to the feathers on the shaft. The big man stopped, and looked down at the slim piece of ash. His eyes began to glaze. Still, he took another step.

  That’s when an arrow hit him just above the knee. Another arrow caught his left leg. And two more arrows hit the backs of both legs.

  Clint Warren fell to his knees.

  He looked to his left, and then his right, and then his eyes found an equally stunned Tim Colter.

  “What?” the crazed rancher asked.

  Seven more arrows riddled his body. And Clint Warren fell onto his back.

  Rough hands instantly jerked Tim Colter to his feet. A knife blade bit into his throat. His nose caught the scent of pemmican and sweat and dye and grease and buffalo.

  A voice barked. The knife withdrew from his throat, and Colter felt himself pushed back onto the sod. His eyes opened. He brushed the dirt and grime off his lips, and he stared into a pair of black eyes.

  “We are even, white man,” the Cheyenne warrior Red Prairie barked in English.

  And the Indians, maybe a dozen of them, were gone, just two or three minutes before Jed Reno and Mix Range galloped up.

  CHAPTER 41

  “Well?” Jed Reno asked. “It sure ain’t much to look at.”

  Tim Colter looked down Union Street. He brought the bottle of white wine—rescued from Paddy O’Rourke’s place—and passed the wine to Betsy McDonnell. She didn’t even wipe off the mouth of the bottle before she drank. Nor did Jed Reno when Betsy passed the bottle to him.

  “But I do like the view.” Reno tossed the bottle to Mix Range. “No people to spoil this country,” the old mountain man said. “And once all that wood is burned this winter, and the grass grows up again next spring, it’ll be prime country.”

  “There’s still the railroad,” Mix Range said.

  Reno shrugged. “Can’t have everything, I guess.” He turned toward Betsy. “What do you think, ma’am? Looking better. I mean, I figure you miss them kids, but they never would have made a home in this land. Just ain’t farming country.”

  “Maybe,” Betsy said. “But it might be a home . . . for us.” She leaned against Tim Colter’s shoulder, and Colter kissed her head.

  Mix Range burped. “Sure is quiet,” he said.

  Tim Colter laughed. “Well,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to live in a nice, quiet town.”

  Turn the page for an exciting preview!

  William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone deliver a special holiday gift for devoted fans of the Jensen saga—a warmhearted story of burning justice, blazing bullets, and other Jensen family traditions . . .

  Like most families, the Jensens gather together to celebrate the holidays. This year, since half the clan is scattered across the American West, they’ve decided to split the difference and meet up in Tucson. Matt and Luke will be there for sure and maybe Ace and Chance, too. That leaves Sally, Preacher, and Smoke Jensen, who’ve reserved three seats on a westbound stage to make certain that they don’t miss out on the festivities. What could possibly go wrong?

  Mother Nature is the first to strike, dusting up the trail with a sandstorm as blinding and deadly as any northern blizzard. Then comes the Apache ambush. Even if Smoke and Preacher manage to shoot their way out of this, they have another big surprise waiting—a ruthless gang of outlaws after the cargo of cash on the stage, happy to slaughter anyone who tries to stop them. If the Jensens hope to save Christmas this year, they’ll need to save their own lives first . . .

  AN ARIZONA CHRISTMAS

  B Y NATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHORS

  WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

  with J. A. JOHNSTONE

  First Time in Paperback! On sale now,

  wherever Pinnacle Books are sold!

  Belgium, December 1944

  Gun-thunder filled the forest. Artillery shells screamed overhead, machine guns chattered, and rifles cracked, all punctuated by the occasional boom of a pistol. It was a terrible symphony of death and destruction, accompanied by the near-constant flashing of muzzle flame that made the forest almost as bright as day.

  When the shooting stopped, as it always did sooner or later, an eerie, echoing silence settled down over the war-torn landscape, along with the thick gloom of the cold night.

  Corporal Wallace leaned back from the M1919A4. 30-caliber machine gun and breathed heavily as he tried to calm his galloping pulse. Beside him, Private Bexley, the assistant gunner, cursed softly, over and over.

  He finally eased up on the profanity “The Krauts nearly settled our hash that time, didn’t they?”

  Before Wallace could answer, a deep, calm, steady voice came from behind the two machine gunners. “Wasn’t even close. We’ve got the bastards right where we want ’em.”

  Wallace glanced over his shoulder. “That’s right, Sarge. When there’s so many of them and so few of us, and they’re all around us, you don’t even have to worry about aimin’. Just point a gun and shoot, and you’re bound to hit a German.”

  Sarge moved up beside the .30 cal, hunkered on his heels, and chuckled. “Now you’re thinkin’, Wallace.”

  Thorp, a private from Indiana, called from behind the tree where he had taken cover. “If we’ve got ’em on the run, Sarge, how come we ain’t out there chasin’ after ’em?”

  “Well, we’re tryin’ not to take advantage of them. Wouldn’t hardly be fair. No, we’ll stay here and let ’em come visitin’ again when they
’re good and ready.”

  “They’re gonna kill us all,” another voice said.

  Sarge’s head swung around sharply toward the private who had spoken. “Can that talk, Mitchell! Our orders are to hold this position, and that’s what we’re gonna do. That means stayin’ alive. Nobody in my squad is gonna disobey orders, so get this through your head right now. The Krauts are not gonna kill you, and they’re not gettin’ through here!” Sarge blew out his breath in a dismissive sound. “Simple as that.”

  Silence hung over the woods for a moment, then the squad’s sixth and final man, Hogan, said, “Sarge is right. We don’t have to worry about the Krauts. Now, starvin’ or freezin’ to death, that’s a whole other matter entirely, right, Sarge?”

  The noncom had to laugh at Hogan’s dry tone. “I can’t argue with you there, Private.”

  The half-dozen men were quiet. It was unlikely the Germans would attack again in the night, but it was a good idea to keep an ear open since it was hard for men to move through the woods in the dark without making some noise. The thin layer of snow on the ground could muffle their steps.

  After a while, Wallace said quietly, “It sure is cold.” From Florida, he wasn’t accustomed to frigid weather.

  “That’s the way it gets in December in this part of the world,” Sarge said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t much cotton to it either, Wallace. Back in the part of Arizona where I grew up, we usually don’t get weather like this, even in December. Hardly ever even got down to freezin’.”

  “Must not have seemed much like Christmas,” Thorp said. “Hell, back home in Indiana, nearly a foot of snow was always on the ground when Christmastime rolled around.”

  “Yeah, at least here we’ve got snow on the ground for Christmas,” Hogan said. “And lots of little Santa Clauses waitin’ out there in the woods to deliver presents to us.”

  Mitchell said, “We’ll never live to see Christmas.”

  “Damn it,” Sarge rasped. “What’d I tell you about talk like that, Mitchell? Stow it!”

  Mitchell was stretched out behind a deadfall where he had kicked some snow out of the way. Propped up on his elbows, he could shoot over the log. He twisted around and said, “There are too many of them, Sarge, and they’ve got us surrounded! You can joke about it all you want, but that’s the truth! We’re almost out of rations and ammo, and as long as this overcast holds, they can’t drop in any more to us. It’s only a matter of time until the Germans overrun us and slaughter us all.”

  Sarge let him spew the words. Dogfaces had to bitch. That was just the way it was. He was hearing more than the usual griping, though. Mitchell’s near-hysterics could ruin morale. When the private fell silent, Sarge said in scathing tones, “You got it all out of your system now, Mitchell?”

  “I don’t see why the brass doesn’t just surrender,” Mitchell said bleakly.

  “Because they don’t have any backup in ’ em,” Sarge said, “and neither do I. I learned a long time ago, listening to my grandpa talk, that you don’t give up, no matter how bad the odds may seem. As long as you’re drawing breath, you keep fightin’, because you never know what’s gonna happen. Things can take a turn you never expect.”

  “Your damn grandpa never had to fight off thousands of Nazis!”

  Sarge straightened and took a quick step toward Mitchell, but he stopped himself before he completely lost control of his temper. The tension in his voice revealed how he was trying to rein in his anger. “Maybe not, but he was in a few mighty tight spots in his time, and he got out of everyone of ’em because he never gave up. Sure, he had some help from his friends, but none of us are alone here, either. If we stick together and keep fightin’ and never give up, we’ll come through this just like Gramps did back in Arizona one Christmas when all hell broke loose.”

  “Sounds like a good story, Sarge,” Wallace said. “Why don’t you tell it?”

  “Yeah,” Hogan chimed in. “Maybe it’ll keep us from thinkin’ about how cold and hungry we are.”

  Sarge thought for a moment and then nodded. “It just might. It all happened a long time ago. Almost sixty years ago, when Arizona was still a pretty wild and woolly place.”

  “Were there cowboys and Indians?” Bexley asked. “Back in Brooklyn, I went to the movies every Saturday, and I always loved them cowboy pictures.”

  “Yeah, there were cowboys and Indians and a bunch of other folks,” Sarge said, moving over to sit on another log. An artillery shell had landed a few yards away, back in the opening days of the German offensive, and knocked quite a few trees over. “The whole thing actually got started before Christmas, and it wasn’t in Arizona, either. That was in Colorado, in a settlement called Big Rock . . .”

  CHAPTER 1

  Smoke Jensen dropped to one knee and fired twice. Flame licked from the muzzle of the Colt in his hand.

  On the other side of the main street in Big Rock, Colorado, the man Smoke had just shot staggered back toward the plate-glass window of a store. He pressed his hand to his chest. The palm was big enough to cover both bullet holes. Blood welled from the wounds and dripped between his splayed fingers.

  He went over backwards in a crash of shattering glass.

  That didn’t mean the danger was over. A slug whipped through the air only inches from Smoke’s left ear. He dived forward, off the boardwalk, and landed behind a water trough. Bullets thudded against the other side of the trough. A few plunked into the water.

  Smoke had seen four other outlaws besides the man he had shot. From the sound of the guns going off, all of them were trying to fill him full of lead.

  Hoofbeats pounded in the street. A man yelled, “I got the horses! Come on!”

  They believed they had him pinned down, Smoke thought. They figured if they kept throwing lead at him, he couldn’t do a thing to stop them from getting away.

  They were about to find out how wrong they were.

  No doubt spooked by all the gunfire, the horses stomped around in the street, making it more difficult for the outlaws to mount up.

  Smoke thumbed more cartridges from his shell belt into the .45’s empty chambers. Then he rolled out into the open again, tipped the Colt’s barrel up, and fired.

  The outlaws had managed to swing up into their saddles. Smoke’s slug ripped into the chest of the man leading the gang’s attempt at a getaway. He jerked back in the saddle and hauled so hard on the reins that his horse reared up wildly.

  The man right behind him tried to avoid the rearing horse but was too close. The two mounts collided and went down, spilling their riders.

  Smoke pushed himself up and triggered again. His bullet shattered the shoulder of the third man in line and caused him to pitch out of the saddle with his left foot caught in the stirrup. As the horse continued galloping down the street, the wounded outlaw was dragged through the dirt past Smoke.

  The fourth man fired wildly, several shots exploding from the gun in his hand. Smoke didn’t know where the bullets landed, but he hoped no innocent bystanders were hurt. To lessen the chances of that happening, he took a second to line up his shot and coolly put a bullet in the outlaw’s head.

  That left one man in the gang who wasn’t wounded or dead, the one who had been thrown when the two horses rammed into each other. He scrambled to his feet as soon as he got his wits back about him, but as Smoke’s gun swung toward him, his hands shot in the air, as high above his head as he could reach.

  “Don’t shoot!” he begged. “For God’s sake, mister, don’t kill me!”

  Smoke came smoothly to his feet. He was only medium height, but his powerfully muscled body, including exceptionally broad shoulders, made him seem bigger. His ruggedly handsome face was topped by ash blond hair, uncovered because his brown Stetson had flown off when he threw himself behind the water trough.

  The gun in his hand was rock-steady as he covered the remaining outlaw. From the corner of his eye, he saw his old friend Sheriff Monte Carson running along the street toward him.
Monte had a shotgun in his capable hands.

  “One in the store over there,” Smoke said, nodding toward the building with the broken front window. “The others are all here close by, except for the one whose horse dragged him off down the street.”

  “I’ll check on them while you cover that hombre,” Monte said. “Not much doubt that they’re all dead, though.”

  “How do you figure that?” Smoke asked.

  “You shot ’em, didn’t you?” A grim smile appeared on the lawman’s weathered face.

  Smoke knew the question was rhetorical so he didn’t answer. He told the man he had captured, “Take that gun out of your holster and toss it away. Slow and careful-like. You wouldn’t want to make me nervous.”

  The idea of the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen ever being nervous about anything was pretty farfetched, but not impossible. He had loved ones, and like anybody else, sometimes he feared for their safety.

  Not his own, though. He had confidence in his own abilities. Anyway, he had already lived such an adventurous life, he figured he was on borrowed time, so a fatalistic streak ran through him. If there was a bullet out there somewhere with his name on it, it would find him one of these days. Until then, he wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it.

  The surviving outlaw followed Smoke’s orders, using his left hand to reach across his body and take out the iron he had pouched when he mounted up to flee. With just a couple fingers, he slid the gun from leather, tossed it aside, and thrust his hands high in the air again. Then he swallowed hard. “No need to shoot me, Mr. Jensen. I done what you told me.”

  “How do you know who I am?” Smoke asked with a slight frown. Although he had spent quite a few years with a reputation, first as a notorious outlaw—totally unjustified charges, by the way—and then as one of the fastest men with a Colt ever to buckle on a gunbelt, he was still naturally modest enough to be surprised sometimes when folks knew who he was.