Shot in the Back

by William W. Johnstone

  “I kinda lost my taste for life,” he said. “Crawled into a whiskey bottle and stayed there for a spell. Whiskey ain’t a cure for pain, though—it numbs you to be sure . . . but as any drunk will tell you, the heartache is still waitin’ for you right around the corner when you sober up.”

  “I apologize, Jesse.” Faust said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Perhaps we should stop for the day?”

  “You know,” Jesse went on as if he hadn’t heard Faust, “maybe I shouldn’t have encouraged Billy. If he hadn’t gone law-breaking with me. If he had settled down, met some nice girl—he wouldn’t have caught that bullet. Things might’ve been different.”

  “It’s no use thinking like that,” Faust said. “We none of us can change the past. Not even the legendary Jesse James.” He smiled weakly.

  “I know,” Jesse said. “That’s what I tell myself. Sometimes I lay awake all night, just telling myself that . . . but that’s why I wanna join this war! Don’t you see, Faust? I could help these young fellas. Do right by them. Like the way I shoulda done for Billy.”

  “I understand. And I agree. I think there’s a lot you have to offer.”

  “Like my story?” Jesse raised a silver eyebrow.

  “Well, it’s quite a tale.” Faust laughed. “If this story was published, I don’t think there is a man, woman, or child who wouldn’t want to know the real Jesse James.”

  Jesse stopped smiling and stared into the distance. “Right. The real Jesse James. Whoever he is.”

  Faust leaned forward in his chair, a concerned expression on his face. “Are you all right, Jesse? Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

  “No, thank you,” Jesse answered, snapping back from reality as if being pulled out of a dream. “But I reckon I’m plum tuckered. Getting old’ll do that to you. You don’t mind if we call it quits for the day?”

  “Not at all. Can I walk you home?”

  “Heck no! You think an outlaw like Jesse James needs anyone for to walk him home?” But he was smiling as he said it.

  Faust laughed. “Okay, Jesse. See you tomorrow?”

  Jesse nodded, a strange light in his eyes. “Tomorrow.”

  Jesse left. Faust watched from the widow as the noble old figure walked down the dusty street until he disappeared from view. Somehow he just knew that he would never see the man they called see Jesse James again. He’d seen it in the man’s eyes.

  Faust couldn’t blame him for that. Jesse was a man who lived life, not one to sit around talking about regrets. Faust knew Jesse’d had a bellyful of reminiscing and just wanted to live out his days in peace. Seemed like the way it ought to be.

  Faust turned away from the window and stared at the piles of papers and notes stacked neatly on the table. His manuscript. His masterpiece. The true life story of Jesse James.

  He walked over to the papers and picked them up. Amazing that an entire man’s life could be captured on a few pieces of paper. More than a man’s life, really. A legend.

  Maybe he wouldn’t turn in this manuscript to his publisher after all, Faust thought. Oh, it would mean giving up a fortune. A damned-near gold mine—that was if he could find a publisher who actually believed he wasn’t making the whole thing up, or wasn’t going crazy.

  But there was something else nagging at Faust. Another reason he didn’t want to turn in the manuscript. The legend of Jesse James was too big to ever be put down in one book. It was a legend that lived on, in the hearts and imaginations of Americans young and old. And legends never die. Why try to change that? Maybe that’s what Jesse was trying to tell him all along.

  With the manuscript still in his hands, Faust walked to the fire and threw the papers into the flames. He watched as the orange tongues devoured the pale leaves. Ashes to ashes.

  “Good-bye, Jesse.”

  EPILOGUE

  In the Granbury Cemetery in Granbury, Texas, there is a tombstone with the following inscription:

  CSA–JESSE WOODSON JAMES

  Sept. 5, 1847–Aug. 15, 1951

  Supposedly killed in 1882

  A small Confederate flag is etched above the inscription. But who lies buried in this grave is something none of us may ever know.

  Turn the page for an exciting preview!

  BY THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  A bold, sprawling epic of the American West, the Jensen

  family saga has captivated readers for nearly three decades.

  Now comes the untold story of Smoke Jensen’s long-lost

  nephews, Ace and Chance, a pair of young-gun twins

  as reckless and wild as the frontier itself . . .

  THOSE JENSEN BOYS!

  Their father is Luke Jensen, thought to be killed in the

  Civil War. Their uncle, Smoke, is one of the fiercest

  gunfighters the West has ever known. It’s no surprise

  that the inseparable Ace and Chance Jensen have a

  knack for taking risks—even if they have to blast their

  way out of them. Chance is a bit of a hothead, good

  with his gun and his fists. Ace is more of a thinker,

  sharp as a snakebite and just as deadly quick. Their

  skills are put to the test when two young ladies ask

  them to protect their struggling stagecoach line from a

  ruthless bloodthirsty mine owner with money, power—

  and enough hired killers to slaughter half the territory.

  Those Jensen boys have to ask themselves:

  What would Smoke Jensen do?

  THOSE JENSEN BOYS!

  by William W. Johnstone

  with J. A. Johnstone

  First in a new series!

  On sale now, wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Wyoming Territory, 1885

  The atmosphere in the saloon was tense with the potential for violence. All the men around the baize-covered poker table sat stiffly, waiting for the next turn of the cards—and the trouble it might bring.

  Except for one young man. He sat back easily in his chair, a smile on his face as he regarded the cards in front of him. He had two jacks and a nine showing. He picked up some greenbacks from the pile next to him and tossed them into the center of the table with the rest of the pot. “I’ll see that twenty and raise fifty.”

  Most of the other players had already dropped out as the pot grew. The bet made them look even grimmer.

  The player to the young man’s left muttered, “Forget it,” and shoved his chair away from the table. He stood up and headed for the bar.

  The game had drawn quite a bit of attention. Men who had been drinking at the bar or at other tables drifted over to see how the hand was going to play out.

  The young man said, “Looks like it’s down to you and me, Harrington.”

  “That’s Mayor Harrington to you,” said his sole remaining opponent.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean any disrespect, Mr. Mayor.” The young man’s slightly mocking tone made it clear to everyone around the table and those standing and watching that disrespect was exactly what he meant.

  One patron who seemed to be paying no attention at all stood at the bar with the beer he’d been nursing. He was a man of medium height, dressed in range clothes, with sandy hair under his thumbed-back Stetson. At first glance, not much was remarkable about him except the span of his broad shoulders. He took another sip of his beer and kept his back to what was going on in the rest of the room.

  Harrington’s pile of winnings was considerably smaller than that of the young man. He hesitated, then picked up some bills and added them to the pot. “There’s your damn fifty.” He was a dark-haired, well-dressed man of middle years, sporting a narrow mustache. “Deal the cards, Blake.”

  The nervous-looking dealer, who happened to be the owner of the saloon, swallowed, cleared his throat, and dealt a card faceup to the young man. “That’s a three,” he announced unnecessarily, since everybody could see wha
t the card was. “Still a pair of jacks showing.”

  With expert skill, he flipped the next card in the deck to Harrington. “A seven. No help to the mayor, who still has a pair of queens.”

  “We can all see that, blast it,” Harrington snapped. “Who the hell bids up the pot like that on a lousy pair of jacks? It’s not good enough to beat me and you know it.”

  “I thought we’d already been introduced,” the young man said as his smile widened into a cocky grin. “The name’s Chance.”

  He was in his mid-twenties, handsome, clean-shaven with close-cropped brown hair. The brown suit he wore had been of fine quality at one time, It was beginning to show some age and wear, but the ivory stickpin in his cravat still shone.

  “I know who you are,” Harrington said coldly. “A damn tinhorn gambler who should have been run out of town by now.”

  The grin on Chance’s face didn’t budge, but his eyes turned hard as flint. “I think everybody here knows this game has been dealt fair and square, Mr. Mayor. They’ve seen it with their own eyes.” He put his hand on the pile of bills and coins and pushed it into the middle of the table. “And I reckon I’m all in.”

  Before Harrington could react, another man pushed through the batwings into the saloon and started across the room toward the poker table. He was the same age as Chance but bigger and huskier, with a thatch of rumpled dark hair. He wore denim trousers and a pullover buckskin shirt. His black hat hung behind his head from its chin strap. A Colt Peacemaker rode in a holster on his right hip.

  A couple hard-looking men got in the newcomer’s way, but a flick of Harrington’s hand made them move back.

  “I need to talk to my brother for a second,” the dark-haired young man said.

  “Ace, you know better than that,” Chance drawled. “You don’t go interrupting a fella when he’s in the middle of a game.”

  “It’s all right,” Harrington said. “Those cards stay right where they are, though.”

  “Of course,” Chance said smoothly. He stood up, and he and his brother Ace moved a few feet away from the table. Chance continued to smile and look relaxed, but his voice was tight and angry as he asked under his breath, “What the hell are you doing? I’ve got the mayor right where I want him!”

  Ace kept his voice low enough that only his brother could hear him. “I heard over at the general store that you’d gotten into a game with him. The mayor is crooked as a dog’s hind leg! Those are his hired guns around the table. You can take that pot off him, but he’ll never let you leave town with it.”

  Chance tried not to appear as shaken as he felt. “How’d you find that out?”

  “The fella over at the general store likes to gossip. Seems like Harrington’s got everybody around here under his thumb, and some folks don’t like it.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad,” Chance insisted. “I haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m not gonna throw in my hand now. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to quit? What would Doc think if I did that?”

  “Doc wouldn’t want you getting killed over a poker game.”

  “I don’t know about that. Seems like he always knew what was important in life.”

  From the table, Harrington said, “Are you going to play or jaw with your brother all day?”

  Chance was as self-confident as ever as he turned back to the table. “Why, I’m going to play, of course, Mr. Mayor. I believe the bet was to you.” Chance settled back into his seat while Ace stood a few feet away, looking worried.

  “And I’m going to call, you impudent young pup. I’m not going to let you bluff me.” Harrington pushed his remaining money into the pile at the center of the table. “I’ll have to give you a marker for the rest.”

  “Well, I don’t know. . . .” As Harrington’s men loomed closer to the table, Chance went on. “Of course I’ll take your marker, Mr. Harrington.”

  The mayor turned over his hole card, which was an eight. “My queens beat your jacks.”

  “But they don’t beat my jacks and my threes,” Chance said as he flipped over his hole card, which was the second trey. “Two pairs always beat one pair.”

  Harrington’s face was bleak as he stared at the cards on the table.

  Chance said, “I believe you mentioned something about a marker. . . .”

  Harrington’s breath hissed between his clenched teeth. He shoved his chair back and stood up abruptly. “You think you’re so damn smart.” He looked around. The two men who had tried to stop Ace from talking to his brother had been joined by three more big, tough-looking hombres. “Teach these two a lesson and then dump them somewhere outside of town. Make sure they understand they’re never to come back here.”

  “Wait just a minute.” Chance’s right hand moved almost imperceptibly closer to the lapel of his jacket. “Are you saying you’re not gonna pay up, Harrington?”

  “I don’t honor debts to a cheater,” Harrington snapped.

  “It was a square deal,” Chance insisted. “What’ll your constituents think of you welshing like this?”

  Everybody in the saloon had started edging away. The feathered and spangled serving girls headed for the bar where they could duck behind cover. In a matter of moments, nobody was anywhere near Ace and Chance to offer them help.

  Harrington smirked at the two young men. “Why in the hell would I care what they think? Nobody dares do anything about it. They all know I run this town.” He gestured curtly, and his hired toughs started closing in around Ace and Chance.

  The sandy-haired man who’d been standing at the bar, seemingly paying no attention to what was going on, turned around then. “Hold it right there, gents.”

  Harrington stiffened. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this, stranger.”

  The man ambled closer, thumbs hooked in his gun belt. “You’re right. I’m a stranger here. So I don’t care if you’re the mayor and I don’t care if these hombres who think they’re tough work for you. I don’t like to see anybody ganging up on a couple young fellas.”

  One of Harrington’s men said, “We don’t just think we’re tough, mister. We’ll prove it if we have to.”

  The stranger stood beside Ace and Chance. “I reckon you’ll have to.”

  “Get them!” Harrington barked.

  Five men charged forward. Two headed for the stranger, two for Ace, and one lunged at Chance and threw a looping punch.

  Chance ducked under the blow and stepped in to hook a left into his opponent’s belly. His punch packed surprising power. As the man’s breath gusted out and he bent over, Chance threw a right to his jaw that landed solidly. The man’s head jerked around and his eyes rolled up. His knees unhinged and dropped him to the sawdust-littered floor.

  A few feet away, Ace had his hands full with the two men who had tackled him. One of them grabbed him around the waist and drove him back into the bar. He grunted in pain. Stunned, he couldn’t stop the man from grabbing his arms and pinning them. Grinning, the other man closed in with fists poised to deliver a vicious beating while his friend hung on to Ace.

  As his head cleared, Ace threw his weight back against the man holding him and raised both legs, bending his knees. He straightened them in a double kick that slammed into the chest of the man coming at him. The kick was so powerful it lifted the man off the floor and sent him flying backwards to crash down on a table that collapsed underneath him and left him sprawled in its wreckage.

  The move also threw the man holding Ace off balance. His grip slipped enough for Ace to drive an elbow back into his belly. As the man let go entirely, Ace whirled around and planted his right fist in the middle of his opponent’s face. Blood spurted and the man’s nose flattened as he reeled against the bar. Ace finished him with a hard left that knocked him to the floor.

  While that was going on, the broad-shouldered stranger dealt with the two men attacking him. Moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, his hands shot out and grabbed each man by the throat. With the corded muscles i
n his shoulders and arms bunching, he smashed their heads together with comparative ease—about as much effort as a child would expend to do the same thing to a pair of ragdolls. The two toughs dropped as limply as rag dolls, too, when the stranger let go of them.

  Clearly furious at seeing his men defeated, Harrington uttered a curse and clawed a short-barreled revolver from under his coat. He started to lift the gun—only to stop short as he found himself staring down the barrels of three revolvers.

  Ace, Chance, and the stranger each had drawn a weapon with breathtaking speed, Chance’s gun coming from a shoulder holster under his coat. All it would take to blow Harrington to hell was a slight bit of pressure on the triggers.

  Harrington’s hand opened, the pistol thudded to the floor, and his eyes widened in fear. “P-Please, don’t shoot. Don’t kill me.”

  “Seems pretty foolish for anybody to die over a stupid saloon brawl,” the stranger said. “Why don’t you kick that gun away?”

  Harrington did so.

  The stranger went on. “I was watching in the bar mirror, and as far as I could tell, this young fella beat you fair and square, mister. I’d like to hear you admit that.”

  “O-of course,” Harrington stammered. “He beat me.”

  “Tell him, not me.”

  Harrington swallowed and looked at Chance. “You won fair and square.”

  “That means the pot’s mine,” Chance pointed out.

  “Certainly.”

  He replaced his gun in the shoulder holster, then began gathering up the bills and stuffing them in an inside pocket of his coat.

  “I-I’ll make out that marker,” Harrington went on.

  “Forget it. What’s here on the table is good enough. My brother and I are leaving, and I’d just as soon not have to come back to this burg to collect.”