The whip hand, p.26
The Whip Hand, page 26
Staring at the loot, his eyes black, his face stony, he shook his head slowly, fatefully. “Coulda all been ours, Fran. If you’d thrown in with the right fella. Now . . . hate to tell you this . . . but you come to the end of the road, my dear.”
He turned to her, smiled grimly.
Frannie stared up at him, fear in her eyes.
Jackson rose, slowly slid the Winchester toward her.
Frannie closed her eyes.
A rifle blasted.
Frannie gasped and jerked her head up with a start.
She looked down at herself, searching for blood. Not seeing any, she looked up at Jackson once more. His hands opened, and the rifle dropped from his fingers. Blood spread a stain across his chest. He turned his head and looked down at the smoking Spencer angled up from Angus’s lap.
Disbelief showing in his face, he staggered backward, nearly fell, then caught himself. He glared down at Angus, and said bitterly, “Damn fool. I . . . woulda . . . paid you well . . .”
“Yeah,” Nathan said, on his knees beside Angus. “With a bullet.”
Jackson convulsed then fell in a pile, jerked out his life, and died.
Frannie stared at the dead man in disbelief. Slowly, a smile shaped itself on her full, wide mouth. She turned to Angus, grinning. “Cut me loose, old man. Once we’re down out of these mountains, I’ll give you an’ the boy a cut!”
Angus regarded her sadly, shook his head slowly.
“You’ll remain tied until we’re out of these mountains, Miss Frannie . . . an’ you’re locked away in the Tigerville jail while this loot gets returned to its rightful owners. That’s a lotta money, but I haven’t lived all these years to turn outlaw now.”
Frannie’s face twisted into a mask of raw fury. She cursed him bitterly.
Angus chuckled and turned to Nate. “Close your ears, boy. Try to get some sleep. We’ll get an early start tomorrow.”
“You gonna be all right, Grandpa?”
“I’ll be all right, Grandson.” Angus chuckled. “At the moment, I’m too rich to die.”
He rested back against a rock and pulled his hat brim down over his eyes. “Time to go home.”
CHAPTER 34
Hunter caressed the Henry’s hammer as he watched the shadows of the four slave traders running toward him, silhouetted by the distant fire in the camp behind them.
He glanced over his shoulder toward where Annabelle lay silently on the flat tableland forty yards away. She made no sound; she wasn’t moving. Passed out from exhaustion, most likely. He hoped that’s all it was. Worry racked him.
He turned his head forward and levered a fresh round into the Henry’s breech, raking out, “We’re almost done here,” through gritted teeth.
The four men, running abreast roughly eight feet apart, came on quickly. The muffled pounding of their running feet grew louder until Hunter could hear the breaths raking in and out of their lungs. They held their rifles up high across their chests. He watched as they dropped down into a trough between rises. He waited. He could still hear them but he couldn’t see them.
They reappeared, running up from the bottom of the rise he was on—first their hats and then the dark silhouettes of their faces . . . their chests, two of which were crisscrossed with cartridge bandoliers, the casings glinting in the starlight. Then their pumping arms and scissoring feet. Quickly, they closed the gap between Hunter and themselves. When they were fifteen feet away, one of them said, breathlessly, “Where the hell is he?”
Hunter gained his feet and snapped the Henry to his shoulder.
“Right here.”
He shot the man on the far left first and kept shooting, jacking and shooting, jacking and shooting, until all three were screaming and twisting around, falling, dropping their rifles, and losing their hats.
Hunter stared through the wafting powder smoke, frowning, apprehension a cold finger tickling the back of his neck.
“Three?” he whispered.
Where was the fourth one?
Machado.
Hunter racked a fresh round into the Henry’s breech and moved slowly forward. Cold sweat bathed his face and the insides of his gloves as he nervously squeezed the Henry’s neck and forestock. He stepped over one of the dead men, a half-breed with long, greasy hair and a death snarl frozen on his lips, and continued down the rise into the rough in which the four slavers had briefly disappeared.
He stopped, looked around.
“Saguaro?” he said. “Come out, come out—”
He cut himself off. The sickly-sweet smell of some animal touched his nostrils.
He was about to whip around when something cold, hard, and round was thrust against his back, between his shoulder blades.
An animal, all right. The human kind. The worst kind.
“Drop the rifle or take it in the back, Buchanon,” came the outlaw’s guttural snarl from behind him. As big as he was, he could move as quietly as an Apache.
Hunter’s blood rushed like ocean waves in his ears.
“Drop it,” Machado repeated with menacing quiet, “or I blow your grayback heart through your breastbone.”
Hunter sighed, tossed the Henry into the sage.
“Think I’ll take her to Mexico,” Machado said quietly, jeeringly, in Hunter’s left ear. “Kept my hands off her till now.” Hunter heard the infuriating smile in the man’s mocking voice: “But tonight, I’m gonna find out what I been missing.”
The rage of a wild stallion inside him, Hunter started to whip around, intending to thrust the outlaw’s rifle aside and deliver a hammering blow to his jaw. Machado was ready. Hunter wasn’t halfway turned around before the butt plate of the man’s Winchester smashed into the side of his head.
“Oh!” Hunter said, staggering backward and tripping over his own boots, striking the ground hard on his butt between sage shrubs.
He looked up, shaking the cobwebs from his vision.
The hulking, one-eyed bear of Saguaro Machado, wearing his customary opera hat, aimed the rifle at a downward angle. He spread his lips in a savage smile. “Two’s company, Buchanon. Three’s a crowd.”
Hunter saw the man’s right, gloved finger begin to draw back against the trigger.
He steeled himself, waiting for the bullet.
Rapid thuds sounded to Hunter’s right, on the uphill side of the trough. Quick breaths and then a deep growl. Something long and gray leaped from Hunter’s right to his left, three feet in front of him. Bobby Lee threw himself against Machado, closing his jaws around the man’s right wrist just as the slaver squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
Machado screamed as the Winchester stabbed orange flames, the bullet tearing into the ground only inches to the left of Hunter’s head.
Machado dropped the rifle and staggered back and to one side, trying to fight off the enraged, snarling, and growling Bobby Lee biting into the man’s left arm as though trying to rip it out of its socket. Machado bellowed like an enraged, wounded grizzly as he staggered backward, trying to fight off the coyote.
Finally, he gave an echoing cry of bald fury and, using both hands, grabbed the snarling beast around its neck and hurled the coyote away from him. Bobby was a gray blur in the darkness as he struck the ground ten feet away from the bear-like Machado, who turned to Hunter, his right hand dropping toward the revolver jutting from the holster on his right thigh.
Hunter’s head was spinning, but his instincts kicked in, bypassing his brain.
Suddenly, as though of its own accord, the LeMat was in his hand and blasting and flashing once, twice, three times.
Machado wailed, triggering his own pistol skyward, as he staggered back and dropped with a grunt. He lay groaning, slowly kicking his legs, grinding his heels into the turf.
He cursed, lifted his head to stare toward Hunter. His chest rose and fell heavily as he raked breaths in and out of his lungs.
“Mierda,” he said in his native Spanish. “Forgot about that . . . whip hand!”
His head flopped back against the ground. One foot shook, stopped shaking, and the man-beast was dead.
Hunter sat up, staring at the long, broad, lumpy form of the dead man from over the LeMat’s smoking barrel.
A low yip sounded, and Bobby Lee hurried over to Hunter, whining and licking Hunter’s face with his dry, rough tongue, wagging his shaggy tail.
Hunter chuckled. “There you are, you ol’ devil! Where you been keepin’ yourself? Out fraternizing with the opposite sex, I got me a feelin’.”
Bobby Lee leaped up and placed his two font paws on Hunter’s shoulders, continuing to run his tongue over Hunter’s unshaven cheeks.
“Well, better late than never to the party,” Hunter said, shoving the coyote away and chuckling as he rose heavily, his head aching from Machado’s blow. His ribs were on fire again, too. That was all right.
As long as he still had Annabelle.
He staggered up and over the rise and over to where Annabelle lay belly down. She wasn’t moving.
“Oh, God,” Hunter said. If he’d lost her now, after all he’d gone through to get her back.
He dropped to a knee, placed his hand on the back of her neck. Bobby sat beside Hunter, nuzzling Anna’s neck.
“Honey . . . don’t you die on me, Annabelle . . .”
She stirred, turned her head to look up at him through the screen of her tangled hair, grimacing against Bobby Lee’s fervid ministrations. “Are they . . . ?”
“Yep.”
“Even . . . ?”
“Yep.”
Anna heaved a relieved sigh as she sat up. She hugged Bobby Lee tightly and then she threw herself into Hunter’s arms and hugged him, too.
Hunter picked her up, rose, and began tramping off in the direction in which he’d left Nasty Pete, whom he could hear nickering in the darkness ahead of him. Annabelle looked up at him. “What about the money . . . for the horses?”
“Got it back . . . in Lone Pine. Intercepted a courier on his way to Arapaho Creek.”
Anna frowned, deep lines cutting across her forehead in the starlight, which glinted in her bewildered eyes. “To the Scanlons?”
“It’s a long story,” Hunter said as he continued walking, Bobby Lee running ahead. “A long, sad story. Not sure what I’ll do about it. Nothing, most like.”
They’d been in agony ever since that dreaded Southern night during the war, just as Hunter had been. And would continue to be.
“Hunt, I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you on the way home.”
“Home,” Annabelle said, resting her head back against her husband’s muscular arm. “I like the sound of that.”
“Mmm. Me, too.”
“I like the sound of ‘Angus’ and ‘Nate’ even better.”
Hunter chuckled. “Wonder what those two have been up to while we been gone.”
“They’ve probably been sleeping in, waking at noon. Angus has probably been drinking his beer for breakfast. I bet they haven’t gotten a thing done!”
“Nope,” Hunter said. “Don’t doubt it a bit. Just restin’ and relaxin’. That’s Angus.”
“He’s gonna infect that boy with his sloth!”
They laughed.
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JOHNSTONE COUNTRY. HOMESTYLE JUSTICE
WITH A SIDE OF SLAUGHTER.
In this explosive new series,
Western legend Luke Jensen teams up
with chuckwagon cook Dewey “Mac” McKenzie
to dish out a steaming plate of hot-blooded justice . . .
A rotting corpse hanging from a noose is enough to stop any man in his tracks—and Luke Jensen is no exception. Sure, he could just keep riding through. He’s got a prisoner to deliver, after all. But when a group of men show up with another prisoner for another hanging, Luke can’t turn his back—especially when the condemned man keeps swearing he’s innocent. Right up to the moment he’s hung by the neck till he’s dead . . . Welcome to Hannigan’s Hill, Wyoming. Better known as Hangman’s Hill.
Luke’s pretty shaken up by what he’s seen but decides to stay the night, get some rest, and grab some grub. The town marshal agrees to lock up Luke’s prisoner while Luke heads to a local saloon, Mac’s Place. According to the pub’s owner—a former chuckwagon cook named Dewey “Mac” McKenzie—the whole stinking town is run by corrupt cattle baron Ezra Hannigan. An excellent cook, Mac’s also got a ferocious appetite for justice—and a fearsome new friend in Luke Jensen. Together, they could end Hannigan’s reign of terror. But when Hannigan calls in his hired guns, they might be... dancing . . . from the end of a rope.
National Bestselling Authors
William W. Johnstone
and J.A. Johnstone
BEANS, BOURBON, AND BLOOD
A Luke Jensen-Dewey McKenzie Western
Coming in August 2024,
wherever Pinnacle Books are sold.
Live Free. Read Hard.
www.williamjohnstone.net
Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com
CHAPTER 1
Luke Jensen reined his horse to a halt and looked up at the hanged man. The corpse swung back and forth in the cold wind sweeping across the Wyoming plains.
From behind Luke, Ethan Stallings said, “I don’t like the looks of that. No, sir, I don’t like it one bit.”
“Shut up, Stallings,” Luke said without taking his gaze off the dead man dangling from a hangrope attached to the crossbar of a sturdy-looking gallows. “In case you haven’t figured it out already, I don’t care what you like.”
Luke rested both hands on his saddle horn and leaned forward to ease muscles made weary by the long ride to the town of Hannigan’s Hill. He had never been here before, but he’d heard that the place was sometimes called Hangman’s Hill. He could see why. Not every settlement had a gallows on a hill overlooking it just outside of town.
And not every gallows had a corpse hanging from it that looked to have been there for at least a week, based on the amount of damage buzzards had done to it. This poor varmint’s eyes were gone, and not much remained of his nose and lips and ears, either. Buzzards went for the easiest bits first.
Luke was a middle-aged man who still had an air of vitality about him despite his years and the rough life he had led. His face was too craggy to be called handsome, but the features held a rugged appeal. The thick, dark hair under his black hat was threaded with gray, as was the mustache under his prominent nose. His boots, trousers, and shirt were black to match his hat. He wore a sheepskin jacket to ward off the chill of the gray autumn day.
He rode a rangy buckskin horse, as unlovely but as strong as its rider. A rope stretched back from the saddle to the bridle of the other horse, a chestnut gelding, so that it had to follow. The hands of the man riding that horse were tied to the saddle horn.
He sat with his narrow shoulders hunched against the cold. The brown tweed suit he wore wasn’t heavy enough to keep him warm. His face under the brim of a bowler hat was thin, fox-like. Thick, reddish-brown side whiskers crept down to the angular line of his jaw.
“I’m not sure we should stay here,” he said. “Doesn’t appear to be a very welcoming place.”
“It has a jail and a telegraph office,” Luke said. “That’ll serve our purposes.”
“Your purposes,” Ethan Stallings said. “Not mine.”
“Yours don’t matter anymore. Haven’t since you became my prisoner.”
Stallings sighed. A great deal of dejection was packed into the sound.
Luke frowned as he studied the hanged man more closely. The man wore town clothes: wool trousers, a white shirt, a simple vest. His hands were tied behind his back. As bad a shape as he was in, it was hard to make an accurate guess about his age, other than the fact that he hadn’t been old. His hair was a little thin but still sandy brown with no sign of gray or white.
Luke had witnessed quite a few hangings. Most fellows who wound up dancing on air were sent to eternity with black hoods over their heads. Usually, the hoods were left in place until after the corpse had been cut down and carted off to the undertaker. Most people enjoyed the spectacle of a hanging, but they didn’t necessarily want to see the end result.
The fact that this man no longer wore a hood—if, in fact, he ever had—and was still here on the gallows a week later could mean only one thing.
Whoever had strung him up wanted folks to be able to see him. Wanted to send a message with that grisly sight.
Stallings couldn’t keep from talking for very long. He had been that way ever since Luke had captured him. He said, “This is sure making me nervous.”
“No reason for it to. You’re just a con artist, Stallings. You’re not a killer or a rustler or a horse thief. The chances of you winding up on a gallows are pretty slim. You’ll just spend the next few years behind bars, that’s all.”
Stallings muttered something Luke couldn’t make out, then said in a louder, more excited voice, “Look! Somebody’s coming.”
The town of Hannigan’s Hill was about half a mile away, a decent-sized settlement with a main street three blocks long lined by businesses and close to a hundred houses total on the side streets. The railroad hadn’t come through here, but as Luke had mentioned, there was a telegraph line. East, south, and north—the direction he and Stallings had come from—lay rangeland. Some low but rugged mountains bulked to the west. The town owed its existence mostly to the ranches that surrounded it on three sides, but Luke knew there was some mining in the mountains, too.
A group of riders had just left the settlement and were heading toward the hill. Bunched up the way they were, Luke couldn’t tell exactly how many. Six or eight, he estimated. They moved at a brisk pace as if they didn’t want to waste any time.
On a raw, bleak day like today, nobody could blame them for feeling that way.
Something about one of them struck Luke as odd, and as they came closer, he figured out what it was. Two men rode slightly ahead of the others, and one of them had his arms pulled behind him. His hands had to be tied together behind his back. His head hung forward as he rode as if he lacked the strength or the spirit to lift it.
