A second boy had emerged from the shadows inside the barn to fire that shot. He swung the scattergun’s twin barrels toward Donelson and Jones to touch off the second barrel, but Jones leaped forward and knocked the shotgun up with the barrel of his empty rifle. He slashed the Springfield’s stock to the side of the boy’s head and dropped him in an unconscious heap.
“Leave them!” Donelson snapped. He had just spotted John Slaughter. The lawman from Tombstone had stepped out of the hotel, several more buildings along the street from the stable. He didn’t even glance in their direction as he turned toward the church at the end of the street.
Donelson rushed closer, eager to seize this chance. He lifted his revolver and drew a bead on the back of the unsuspecting Slaughter.
Another few seconds and Slaughter would finally die, Donelson thought with a savage, exultant grin on his face.
Chapter 37
The roar of gunshots was torture to Gabriel. He had never been around fighting before when he wasn’t in the thick of it. The two old gringos, Gentry and Harmon, who had been left in the cantina with him, insisted that he had to stay in bed and rest.
Enough was enough, he told himself. He had no desire to be in Mercedes’ bed if Mercedes wasn’t in it, too.
Gritting his teeth against the weakness that filled him, Gabriel got his hands under him and pushed.
He rolled onto his side and swung his legs off the bed. When he stood up, the room spun crazily around him for a moment before his head settled down. Then, with his jaw still clenched, he started stiffly toward the door. The pain in his back subsided slightly as he stepped into the cantina’s main room.
Gentry and Harmon stood near the door, holding Springfields. When they heard Gabriel’s shuffling steps, they looked around in surprise.
“Dadgummit, Hernandez,” Harmon said. “You ain’t supposed to be outta that bed.”
Gentry added, “Miz Slaughter’d prob’ly skin us alive if she knew we let you get up. Not to mention that sister o’ Romero’s.”
“You better—”
The crack of a rifle shot interrupted Harmon. It was followed almost immediately by the boom of a shotgun somewhere not too far off. Both old men looked toward the door.
Gentry exclaimed, “What in blazes—”
A familiar figure appeared in the street just outside the cantina. Gabriel’s eyes widened and his face flushed with rage as he recognized the man. All the pain inside him vanished and was replaced by anger as he lowered his head and charged like a maddened bull between Gentry and Harmon.
Donelson never saw what was coming as Gabriel fell on him like a mountain.
Slaughter heard the commotion behind him and whirled around in time to see Gabriel emerge from the cantina and crash into Donelson. The renegade officer went down under the impact, but he hung on to his gun and slashed at Gabriel’s head with it. The revolver slammed into the big outlaw’s skull and momentarily stunned him.
Slaughter had instinctively drawn his Colt as he turned, but he couldn’t risk a shot with Gabriel and Donelson so close together. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see Donelson in La Reata. He had sensed that the two of them would wind up facing each other again, even when it had looked like Donelson had fled and might never come back.
A rifle cracked across the street and a bullet buzzed past Slaughter’s ear. He pivoted and dropped to one knee as he thrust the Colt out in front of him. More of the blue-uniformed deserters had slipped back into La Reata, and one of them was drawing a bead on him.
Slaughter fired first and sent a .45 slug punching into the man’s belly. As the trooper doubled over and collapsed without firing his rifle, Slaughter shifted his aim to the one who had fired the shot at him and squeezed off another round, drilling that man as he tried to reload the Springfield in his hands.
At the same time, Gentry and Harmon burst out of the cantina and joined the fight. Gentry downed the third and final trooper on the other side of the street while Harmon traded shots with the man who had been with Donelson. The saddle maker staggered as the deserter’s bullet struck his hip, but his shot had found its target and driven into the trooper’s chest, killing him. The man dropped his rifle and toppled over backward with his arms outflung.
That left only Brice Donelson. He freed himself from Gabriel’s grip and came up firing. Slaughter felt the wind-rip of a slug past his ear. His pearl-handled Colt roared and bucked in his hand as he triggered it. He fired all three rounds left in the cylinder.
All three rounds slammed into Donelson’s chest. The impacts made the renegade captain take a step back, but he didn’t go down. Stubbornly, Donelson stayed on his feet. His gun had sagged, but he struggled to lift it for another shot.
Slaughter’s Colt was empty, as were the Springfields held by Gentry and Harmon. Donelson seemed to know that. He grinned as he thumbed back his revolver’s hammer . . .
Blood welled from his mouth and he pitched forward on his face. He twitched once and didn’t move again.
Slaughter didn’t have time to feel any satisfaction at the fact that Donelson was dead at last and would never plague him again. La Reata was still under attack by Montoya’s men. Slaughter pulled fresh cartridges from his pocket and started thumbing them into the Colt.
“Riders comin’ from the north, Sheriff!” Gentry called to him. The liveryman had dropped to a knee beside Harmon, who had collapsed from being nicked on the left hip.
“I’m all right, Luther, dadblast it!” Harmon complained. “Get your rifle reloaded before that new bunch of trouble gets here! And reload mine while you’re at it!”
Slaughter paused as he snapped the Colt’s cylinder closed. He saw the dust cloud closing in on the village from the north and for a second he thought the same thing that Gentry and Harmon had, that some of Montoya’s men had circled around and were attacking from that direction.
When he got a look at the two men galloping hard in the forefront of that group, he recognized them.
Stonewall Jackson Howell and Burt Alvord had made it at last, and they had several dozen fighting men from Tombstone at their back.
The charge by the Mexican soldiers had almost reached the southern edge of La Reata. Slaughter waved Stonewall and Burt on and shouted to them. “Invaders!”
That was enough to send the force from Tombstone smashing into Montoya’s men with all guns blazing. The soldiers hadn’t expected reinforcements to show up, and the attack crumpled almost instantly. The chaos that ensued filled the air with dust, gun smoke, and a terrible cacophony of shooting and yelling.
It was all over in minutes.
The ragtag remnants of Montoya’s force fled south as fast as they could go. Slaughter knew they wouldn’t be coming back. He didn’t figure they would stop running until they were deep inside Mexico, even if Montoya tried to rally them.
He holstered his gun and hurried over to Gabriel’s side. He had seen enough to know that the big outlaw had saved his life by tackling Donelson. He grasped Gabriel’s arm and pulled. “Let me give you a hand, amigo.”
With Slaughter’s help, Gabriel climbed to his feet, swaying a little. “The fight, she is over?”
“Seems to be.”
“Good. I think maybe I’m tired after all.”
Gabriel started to fall, but Slaughter caught him and braced him up. Spotting Diego Herrara and Pete Yardley, he called, “You men give me a hand here!”
Slaughter turned Gabriel over to them and told them to help him back into the cantina. He had spotted Stonewall and Burt walking their horses along the street toward him. Rifles cracked occasionally as the men from Tombstone sent hurry-up shots after the fleeing Mexicans, but other than that the shooting had stopped.
The two deputies reined in. Stonewall thumbed his hat back and grinned at his boss, who was also his brother-in-law. “Looks like we got here just in time, Sheriff.”
Slaughter snorted. “Almost too late, if you ask me. Anyway, I think we would have beaten General Montoya’s men wi
thout your help. It was just a matter of time.”
“General Montoya?” Burt repeated. “Was that the dadgummed Mexican army?”
“That’s right. You boys just turned back an invasion of the United States.”
Stonewall let out a low whistle. “Hear that, Burt? We’re heroes!”
Slaughter wasn’t going to waste time arguing with the youngster, especially when Burt pointed to the body of one of the deserters who had been with Donelson and exclaimed, “Hey! I know that hombre.”
“Who is it, Burt?” Slaughter asked.
“He’s the fella who came into Tombstone yellin’ about that silver strike in the Dragoons.”
“Yeah, the silver strike that turned out to be a dang bust,” Stonewall added with a disgusted look. “There wasn’t any silver.”
Slaughter nodded slowly. It all made sense. Donelson had planned the whole thing carefully, sending a man into Tombstone dressed as a prospector to start a rush to the Dragoons. That had left the town largely undefended and made it easier for Romero and his men to rob the bank of the loot they would use to buy the stolen rifles.
It was a pretty cunning scheme, Slaughter thought, but in the end it hadn’t gotten Donelson anything except a few fatal ounces of lead in his vitals.
“I’d sure like to know what’s goin’ on here,” Stonewall went on.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Slaughter said. “Right now I need to find your sister and make sure she’s all right.”
He hurried toward the mission, but he hadn’t gotten there yet when the double doors opened and Viola rushed out. She ran to meet Slaughter, who swept her into his arms.
“You’re all right?” he whispered as he held her and brushed his cheek against her hair.
“Never better, now that I know you’re all right.”
That was true for both of them, Slaughter thought. They made quite a team.
* * *
That evening the cantina was full and the merriment was great. La Reata had been saved.
The joy was tempered by the fact that several more of Romero’s men had lost their lives in the fighting. Out of the force he had taken to Tombstone, only he, Gabriel, and three other men remained alive.
Romero had insisted that he was strong enough to get up and come to the cantina to join the gathering. After considerable argument, Viola and Mercedes finally had agreed, and some of the men Stonewall and Burt had brought with them from Tombstone had carried the bandit leader to the cantina on the same stretcher that had been used to transport him earlier. Once there, he had been set up in an armchair with pillows around him.
Gabriel felt much better. “I’m bouncing back like the big strong bull that I am,” he claimed in a booming voice.
Mercedes, sitting beside him with her good hand on his arm, said quietly, “I’ll make sure of it”.
Romero looked around the big table where they all sat—Slaughter, Viola, Stonewall, Burt, Mose Tadrack, Gabriel, and Mercedes—and said gloomily, “My revolution is over before it ever began. You might as well take those rifles back with you after all, Sheriff. Five men cannot hope to overthrow a beast like Díaz.”
“Five men and one woman,” Mercedes said. “I’m selling the cantina and going back to Mexico with you and Gabriel, Chaco. I never should have left.”
“You don’t have to do that,” her brother told her.
“I think I do.” She patted Gabriel’s arm. “Someone has to look out for this reckless animal.”
Slaughter said solemnly, “I’ll take the rifles to the army, all right . . . all the ones I was able to recover, anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?” Romero asked.
“Seems to me like one wagonload must have gone astray somewhere. There was no sign of them here in La Reata.”
Viola squeezed his arm, and he knew by her reaction that he had made the right decision.
“With those rifles,” Romero mused, “a man might be able to drum up some interest in removing a dictator from power.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Slaughter said. “All the money is going back to Tombstone with me, though.”
Romero shrugged and nodded while Gabriel made a face. Clearly, he wasn’t fond of the idea of giving up all that loot. But Slaughter didn’t expect him to cause any trouble over it.
Stonewall said, “You know, we found Jack Doyle’s body on the way down here, Sheriff.”
“Gave him a decent burial,” Burt added.
“I appreciate that,” Slaughter said.
Stonewall went on. “That wasn’t much of a posse you brought down here. A bunch of old men and storekeepers and—no offense, Tadrack—a saloon swamper.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Slaughter leaned back in his chair. “I think we did all right for ourselves. Don’t you agree, Deputy Tadrack?”
Stonewall looked surprised.
A grin broke out across Tadrack’s face. “You mean that, Sheriff?”
“I do,” Slaughter declared. “I told you you’d need a new job when you got back to Tombstone. You’ve got one, if you want it.”
“I’ll take it. And I’m much obliged to you.”
Stonewall said, “Well, hey, I . . . I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said—”
Viola laughed and told her brother, “Just let it go, Stonewall. Who knows, Mose might wind up being sheriff one of these days, if I can ever convince John to give up being a lawman and come back to the ranch permanently.”
Slaughter smiled. “Not for a while yet, my dear. Not for a while.”
Keep reading for a special excerpt . . .
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The First Mountain Man
PREACHER’S HELL STORM
For the sake of the son he never knew, Preacher goes on the warpath.
Long ago, the legendary trapper known as Preacher took shelter with the Absaroka and fell in love with a girl called Bird in the Tree.
Twenty years later, he rescues a woman and her son from an ambush by the hated Blackfoot.
The woman is Birdie, and the valiant young warrior is Hawk That Soars—Preacher’s son. Now the greatest fighter on the frontier is about to go to war to protect a family he never knew he had.
Led by the vicious war chief Tall Bull, the Blackfoot are trying to wipe out the Absaroka. Hopelessly outnumbered by vicious warriors, Preacher and his son launch a war that will stain the Rocky Mountain snow with Blackfoot blood.
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Chapter 1
Moving slowly and carefully, Preacher reached out and closed his hand around the butt of a flintlock pistol. The night was black as pitch around him, but he didn’t need to be able to see to know where the gun was. He had committed all his surroundings to memory before he rolled in his blankets and dozed off.
Another pistol lay next to the one Preacher grasped, and a flintlock rifle and a tomahawk were nearby as well. Both pistols were double-shotted and heavily charged with powder.
Let the attackers come. He was ready to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, as his friend Audie might say. The little fella had been a professor once and was fond of quoting old Bill Shakespeare.
On Preacher’s other side, the big wolflike cur he called Dog growled softly. He knew enemies were out there in the night and was eager to tear into them, but he wouldn’t attack unless Preacher gave him the go-ahead.
Preacher sat up and put his hand out, resting it on the back of Dog’s neck where the fur stood up slightly. He waited and listened, not knowing what had roused him and Dog from slumber.
Preacher’s almost supernaturally keen eyes adjusted to the darkness well enough for him to see the rangy gray stallion known as Horse. He stood not far away, head up, ears pricked forward. He’d sensed whatever it was, too. The pack mule Preacher had brought from St. Louis stood with its head down as it dozed.
A breeze drifted through the trees and carried voices to Preacher’s ea
rs. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was familiar.
The voices were Indian, but they weren’t on the warpath. If they had been stalking an enemy, they would have done so in grim silence. In this case, they sounded amused.
Preacher was on the edge of Blackfoot country, which meant he didn’t see anything funny about the situation. For more than twenty years, he had been coming to the Rocky Mountains every year to harvest pelts from beaver and other fur-bearing animals, and nearly every one of those years, he’d had trouble with various Blackfoot bands.
In fact, it was the Blackfeet who were responsible for the name he carried to this day.
Early on in his frontier sojourn, he had been captured by them and tied to a stake. Come morning, he would have been tortured and eventually burned to death.
However, something had possessed him to start talking, much like a street preacher he had seen back in St. Louis, and when the sun rose he was still going at it, spewing out words in a seemingly never-ending torrent.
Crazy people intrigued and frightened the Indians, and they figured anybody who started talking like that and wouldn’t stop had to be loco. Killing somebody who wasn’t right in the head was a sure way of bringing down bad medicine on the tribe, so they had scrapped their plans to roast the young man known at that point as Art, and let him go.
Eventually, word of the incident got around—the vast wilderness was a surprisingly small place in some ways—and other mountain men started calling him Preacher. The name stuck. He didn’t mind. Eventually, he never thought of himself any other way.
His war with the Blackfeet had continued over the years. He had killed countless numbers of warriors, some in open battle, some by creeping with such stealth into their camps at night and slitting their throats that no one knew he had been there until morning.
They called him the White Wolf, the Ghost Killer, and probably had other names for him, as well. The Blackfoot warrior who finally killed Preacher would be the most honored of his people.
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