Turn the page for an exciting preview from USA Today Bestselling Authors William W. Johnstone and J. A. Johnstone

 

BUTCH CASSIDY: THE LOST YEARS

 

“Johnstone is a masterful storyteller, creating a tale that is fanciful and funny, exciting and surprisingly convincing . . . great fun.”

—Publishers Weekly

 

THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITER OF THE 21ST CENTURY

 

In a small Texas town in 1950, a Pinkerton detective interrupts a game of dominoes to learn the truth about Butch Cassidy—who is still very much alive. He’s the old-timer playing dominoes.

Seems that after the infamous shoot-out in Bolivia that claimed the life of his partner, the Sundance Kid, Butch returned to Texas to find a place to call home. When he comes across a dying rancher who’s been shot by rustlers, Butch promises to avenge him—and take over the ranch. As “Jim Strickland,” Butch begins a new chapter in his life. Yet trouble has a way of finding Butch. A corrupt railroad baron pulls him into the most dangerous train robbery he’s ever attempted. But if Butch Cassidy is to ride again, he’ll need a newer, and wilder, Wild Bunch . . .

 

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PROLOGUE

Zephyr, Texas, 1950

 

After the hot, bright sunlight outside, the grocery store was dim and pleasantly cool. Electric fans sitting here and there in open spaces on the shelves stirred the air around and blended the smells of pepper, vinegar, cinnamon, coffee, and a thousand other items into an aroma that intrigued the senses of Nathan Tuttle. The irregular slap of ivory against wood drew him toward the rear of the store. A bluish-gray haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air above the scarred wooden table back there, past the meat case and the counter where the cash register squatted.

Four men sat at the table playing dominoes. One of them, a stout man wearing a white apron, was probably the store’s owner. Another wore jeans and a grease-stained mechanic’s shirt with the name “Howard” stitched onto an oval patch sewn to it. The overalls and dirt-encrusted work shoes of the third man indicated that he was a farmer.

The fourth man, who had a brown, hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips, was lean almost to the point of gauntness, his leathery face a study in planes and angles. He wore a straw cowboy hat tipped back on his head, revealing crisp white hair. His faded blue shirt had snaps on it instead of buttons. He sat with his back to the wall, facing the door, Nathan noted, so he would be able to see anyone who came in.

The man glanced up at the newcomer, and even though he had to be at least eighty years old, his eyes were those of a younger man, blue and piercing and intelligent. He had a small scar under the left one.

The old man looked down at the dominoes in front of him again, obviously dismissing Nathan from his thoughts. That came as no surprise. Tall, slender, and bespectacled, with a natural awkwardness about him, Nathan knew he wasn’t a very impressive physical specimen. He liked to think he made up for that with his mind, but the jury was still out on that.

The storekeeper looked up at Nathan, too, and asked, “Something I can do for you, son?” In the middle of a hot afternoon like this, the store wasn’t busy. In fact, Nathan was the only potential customer at the moment.

“I’m looking for Mr. Henry Parker,” he said.

The glances the other three players shot toward the man in the cowboy hat told Nathan he had come to the right place.

“This here’s Hank,” the storekeeper said with a nod toward the old cowboy.

The man added a domino to the arrangement on the table and said, “Makes fifteen.” A rectangular piece of board with holes drilled in it lay on the table near his left hand. The holes were arranged in five columns, with ten holes in each column. The cowboy took a small wooden peg and moved it up three holes. He didn’t look at Nathan.

“Hello, Mr. Parker,” Nathan said. “I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

Parker drew on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle out his nostrils.

“Go ahead.”

“In private, if we could,” Nathan said.

The farmer chuckled and said, “Sounds like you might be in trouble with the gov’ment, Hank. This boy looks like he might be a gov’ment man.”

Parker finally looked up at Nathan again and asked, “You come from Washington, son?”

“No, sir. Dallas.”

That brought more chuckles from the other three men, as if being from Dallas was almost as bad as being from Washington.

“We’re right in the middle of a game here,” Parker said. With a graceful motion, he gestured toward the dominoes on the table. “I’m ahead, and I only need thirty more points to go out.”

The mechanic said, “The lousy dominoes I’m gettin’ today, it might take me three hands to score that much count.”

“Jim Strickland told me to look you up, Mr. Parker,” Nathan said.

Parker’s face looked like it might have been carved from old wood. Without changing expression, he said, “Jim Strickland, eh? How is ol’ Jim?”

“Very interesting,” Nathan said.

The storekeeper asked, “Don’t think I know a Jim Strickland. He any relation to the Stricklands up at Blanket? I recollect one named Mose, and another boy called Alvy, somethin’ like that.”

Parker shook his head and said, “Jim’s no relation, as far as I know.” He turned his dominoes face-down. “You fellas go on without me.”

“You’re quittin’ in the middle of a game?” the farmer asked. “That ain’t like you, Hank.”

“Well, hell,” Parker said as he got to his feet, “there’ll always be another game, won’t there?” He pointed to the store’s entrance and went on to Nathan, “We’ll go sit on one of the benches on the front porch and talk. You got to buy me a cold soda pop, though. It’s hot out there today.”

Nathan reached into his pocket for a coin and said, “Sure. How much?”

“Soda pop’s a nickel,” the storekeeper said.

Nathan handed him a dime.

“I’ll get one for myself, too,” he said as he went to the red metal drink box. He paused with his hand on the lid and looked back at Parker. “What would you like, sir?”

“Co’-Cola will be fine, son,” Parker said as he stepped around the table and the other players.

Nathan took two bottles of Coca-Cola from the bed of half-melted ice on the bottom of the box, let them drip for a few seconds, and then popped the caps on the opener attached to the side of the box. He handed one to Parker, and the two of them strolled outside together.

It was warmer out here, but at least the awning over the sidewalk put the wooden benches in the shade. The single block of businesses that constituted the community’s downtown was all but deserted. No cars hummed past on the highway.

The two men sat down. Parker stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles. His plain brown boots showed signs of long wear.

“My name is Nathan Tuttle, sir.”

“Am I going to be pleased to meet you, Nathan?” Parker asked with a faint smile on his face. “Or am I going to regret it?”

“I suppose that depends on our conversation.”

“Ain’t that always the way?” Parker lifted the bottle to his lips and let a long drink slide between them. When he lowered it, he went on, “What brings you to Zephyr besides a hankerin’ to act all mysterious-like, Nathan?”

“I work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.” Nathan had intended to be very forthright and open, putting his cards on the table right away, so to speak. But something about Henry Parker was intimidating, despite his mild appearance and soft-spoken manner. After admitting that he was a Pinkerton, Nathan fell silent.

Parker took another drink of the soda and said, “Go on.”

“My father was a Pinkerton agent,” Nathan said. “So was his father before him.”

“It’s not a job that’s usually handed down from father to son, from what I hear,” Parker said.

“That’s the way it worked in my family. My father and grandfather were both devoted to the idea of upholding the law.”

“Most fellas who feel like that become cops, not strikebreakers and railroad goons.”

Nathan bristled with anger, unable to suppress the reaction.

“That’s not all the Pinkertons do. They pursue criminals all over the country.”

“Is that what you’re doin’, Nathan?” Parker drawled. “Pursuin’ a criminal?”

Nathan felt like the man was making fun of him. He knew that he ought to be used to that by now, but it still rankled him.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said. Warming to his subject now, he continued, “A couple of years ago, not long after I went to work for the agency, I came into the possession of my grandfather’s trunk. Inside it were a lot of his notebooks and papers concerning the cases he worked on. I found them to be fascinating reading, especially the ones about his search for one outlaw in particular: Butch Cassidy.”

“When was this, when your grandpa was lookin’ for Butch Cassidy?”

“Around the time of the First World War.”

Parker shook his head slowly and said, “I hate to break it to you, Nathan, but he was wasting his time. Butch Cassidy was killed before that down in South America, in one of those countries that’s even hotter than Texas. I remember hearin’ all about it. Seems like it was . . . 1906, maybe. Somewhere around in there.”

“1908,” Nathan said. “In Bolivia, at a little town called San Vicente.”

“See, there you go, you know a lot more about it than I do.”

“That’s where Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh, better known under their aliases Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, supposedly were killed in a battle with the Bolivian army.”

“Well, two men against an army . . . It don’t sound very likely they would have come through that alive.”

“The Pinkertons have never officially declared them dead.”

“I don’t reckon you have to be declared dead to be dead.”

Nathan ignored that comment and went on, “My grandfather, Newton Tuttle, believed that while Longabaugh was indeed killed in Bolivia, Robert Parker survived the shooting, although he was wounded, and escaped from the Bolivians. A week after the battle at San Vicente, an American who appeared to be ill—or suffering from a gunshot wound—appeared in a coastal village in Chile and bought passage on a trading ship that took him to Lima, Peru. From there he was able to secure a berth on a liner bound for Liverpool. He traveled under the name Leroy Michaels.”

“Now, I can see why you might think I’m related to Butch Cassidy, since my name’s Parker and you say that was his real name, too . . . even though there are a whole heap of people with that last name. I don’t recall that I’ve ever known anybody with the last name of Michaels, though.”

“Robert Leroy Parker started calling himself Butch Cassidy after he met a rustler named Mike Cassidy,” Nathan said. “The connection seems obvious to me.”

“It’s your story, Nathan,” Parker said softly.

“Actually, it’s my grandfather’s story. He’s the one who traced Leroy Michaels to England, where he recuperated from his wound and eventually traveled to France and Spain, only by then he was using the name Jameson Lowe. Jim Lowe was another name Butch used as an alias for a while.”

Parker sipped from the soda bottle and said, “Go on.”

“Eventually Jameson Lowe sailed to New York and disappeared. There’s speculation that Etta Place, Harry Longabaugh’s lover, was in New York about the same time, so it stands to reason that Cassidy wanted to see her and break the news of the Sundance Kid’s death himself.”

Nathan’s eyes were keener than they looked behind his glasses. He didn’t miss the way Henry Parker’s hand tightened on the bottle when he mentioned Etta Place. Parker didn’t say anything, though.

“Jameson Lowe dropped out of sight after his visit to New York. My grandfather actually hadn’t been assigned to track down Butch Cassidy and determine once and for all if the outlaw was dead or alive. That was just a tangent off another investigation, but he became so interested in it that he continued to follow up on his own time after his superiors insisted that he drop the matter. He came to believe that Butch Cassidy was living in Texas under the name Jim Strickland and had become a successful rancher.”

“What made him think that?” Parker asked.

Nathan hesitated, then said, “I don’t really know. There are . . . gaps . . . in my grandfather’s documentation of his investigation. I know at one point he planned to travel to Texas to meet this fellow Strickland and see if he was right. But I haven’t been able to find any indication that he ever made the trip.”

“And why do you think I’d know anything about Strickland?”

“Well . . . you agreed to talk to me after I mentioned the name, didn’t you?”

That brought a slow chuckle from Parker. He said, “I just wanted to see what sort of burr you had under your saddle, son. I could tell as soon as you came in the store you were fit to bust about somethin’. You’ve spun an interestin’ yarn, but what does it have to do with me?”

“I suppose I’ve talked around it for long enough, haven’t I?” Nathan took a deep breath. “I’ve taken up the challenge where my grandfather left off, sir. I’ve been trying to find out what happened to Jim Strickland, and I’ve traced the man I believe was using that name through several more identities until I arrived at a conclusion. I believe that you are the man who was once known as Jim Strickland, Mr. Parker. Or should I say . . . Mr. Cassidy?”

For a long moment, Parker didn’t say anything. Then he tipped his head back and let out an easy laugh.

“Son, you’ve been out in the sun too long,” he said. “It’s done somethin’ to your brain. Do I really look like a famous owlhoot and train robber to you? I’m just a stove-up old cowboy.”

“You seem rather spry for your age, sir . . . which, if I’m not mistaken, is just about the same age as Butch Cassidy would be if he survived that shootout in Bolivia. Mid-eighties, am I right?”

“Be eighty-five my next birthday,” Parker said. “Just what the hell would you do, kid, if I said, yeah, I’m Butch Cassidy?”

Nathan was prepared for that question. He said, “In all likelihood, I wouldn’t do anything. There are no charges still on the books against Butch Cassidy. I just want to know the truth. I want to know if my grandfather was right.”

Parker still seemed amused. He took another drink and said, “Well . . . I’m not admitting anything of the sort, mind you, but folks around here seem to think I’m a pretty good storyteller. Tell you what I’ll do. You’ve spun me a yarn, so I’ll spin you a yarn of what it might have been like if I really was Butch Cassidy. How about that?”

“I’m more than willing to listen to anything you want to tell me, sir.”

“All right, then.” For a moment Parker squinted as if in thought, then resumed, “If you’re right about that wild idea you’ve got in your head—and I ain’t sayin’ you are, mind you—then the story you’re lookin’ for begins on a cold night in West Texas in 1914 . . .”

CHAPTER 1

When I saw the blue norther coming I would have found a place to hole up and wait it out, except there didn’t seem to be any such a thing in these parts. It was a damn fool stunt to begin with, starting from San Antonio to El Paso on horseback in December. But I had never spent that much time in Texas, and I wanted to take a gander at some of the country. You hear Texans bragging about the place all the time, as they’re in the habit of doing, and after a while you want to see it for yourself.

So I bought a couple of good horses and some supplies, figuring I’d use one of the animals as a packhorse and the other as a saddle mount and switch back and forth between ’em, and set off across country. I figured I’d probably run into some fences along the way, at least until I got farther west, but . . . well . . . fences have never bothered me all that much, if you know what I mean.

I could’ve bought a car and driven to El Paso, I suppose—you could do that, even that far back—but while I could handle one of the contraptions if I had to, I’d never been comfortable doing so. The worry that the damned thing might blow up on me always lurked in the back of my mind.

So it was horseback for me, and that’s how I came to be out in the middle of nowhere when the sky turned so blue it was almost black and the wind began to howl out of the north, bringing with it a bone-numbing chill. I lowered my head, hunkered deeper in my sheepskin coat, and kept going. Wasn’t nothing behind me, so I knew it wouldn’t do any good to turn around.

At least it wasn’t raining or snowing, even though a thick overcast hung above me. I knew there had to be a ranch house somewhere ahead of me, and if I kept moving I’d find it. I knew that because if there wasn’t, I stood a good chance of freezing to death before morning.

The light was starting to fade when I heard popping sounds. With the wind blowing so hard and making such a racket it was hard to be sure, but I thought they might be gunshots. It was hard to tell exactly where they came from, too, but I turned my horses in what I hoped was the right direction.

Now, you may think it was foolish of me, riding toward gunfire rather than away from it, but I looked at it like this: whoever was shooting that gun probably had a place to get in out of the weather, and that was what I needed more than anything else tonight.

The last of the gray light disappeared, and I was left to plod along in darkness. There had been only a handful of shots, and the shortness of the volley could mean almost anything, so I didn’t see any real point in speculating about it. Keep going and I might find out, that’s the way I looked at it.

My horse stopped short and shied back a step. I said, “Easy there, fella.” I couldn’t see what had spooked him.

I wasn’t carrying a handgun, but I had a Winchester in a scabbard strapped to the saddle. I drew it out and worked the lever to throw a cartridge into the chamber. Then I swung a leg over the saddle and slid to the ground. The packhorse’s reins were tied to the saddle horn. I hung on to the reins of the animal I’d been riding as I moved forward cautiously.

It only took a couple of steps to tell me why my horse had stopped. The ground fell away into a gully. I could barely make it out as it twisted across the plains like a snake.

If the gully wasn’t too deep and the sides weren’t too steep, the horses and I could climb down into it and get out of the wind, at least. I might find enough wood to build a small fire. It was a slender hope but better than nothing. Ever since night fell I’d been looking all around, searching for a yellow pinpoint of light that marked the window of a ranch house, but hadn’t seen anything except endless darkness.

I put the rifle back in its sheath and hunkered on my heels at the edge of the gully. I reached into my coat and fished a match from my shirt pocket. It lit when I snapped the head with my thumbnail, but the wind snatched the flame right out. Trying to get one burning up here was just going to be a waste of matches. I slid a foot over the edge and used it to explore the slope. It wasn’t a sheer drop-off, so I had hopes of being able to get the horses down there.

The prairie was dotted with mesquite trees, their limbs skeleton-bare at this time of year. I tied the saddle horse’s reins to one of them and went back to the edge of the gully. I was going to have to explore it by feel until I got down out of the wind.

I turned around so I was facing the slope and started climbing down. The gully wall was rough enough that there were plenty of places to brace myself. When I got down low enough that my head was out of the wind, the night was still plenty cold but not as breathtakingly raw.

My right foot came down on something soft that let out a loud groan.

I like to think my nerves are pretty steady, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t let out a holler and jump up in the air. When I came down I lost my balance and started rolling.

I was lucky that gully wasn’t very deep. I only turned over a couple of times before I hit bottom. Even so, I landed hard enough to knock the wind out of me and send my hat flying.

“What the blue blazes!” I yelled when I got my breath back. I probably said a few things that were worse than that, too, but I disremember.

Whoever or whatever I’d stepped on groaned again.

That pained sound, mixed in with the howl of the wind, gave me the fantods. I sat up and scuttled backward a little, well aware that I’d left my Winchester up on the flat with the horses and cussing myself for doing such a foolish thing. I hadn’t expected to find anything in this gully, but I’d been around long enough to know that whatever you expect in life usually ain’t what happens.

I didn’t know if my companion could answer me or not, but I said, “Who’s there?”

The answer came back in a weak voice.

“You have any . . . whiskey . . . amigo?”

Despite calling me amigo, he didn’t sound like a Mexican, but I’d already discovered that in that part of Texas, most people, white and brown alike, spoke a mixture of the two lingos. And as a matter of fact, I did have a flask in my saddlebags. But before I fetched it, I wanted to find out more about what was going on here.

“Are you hurt, old son?” I asked.

The man tried to laugh, but it came out more like a pained grunt.

“You could . . . say that. Got a couple of... bullet holes . . . in my guts.”

Well, that was bad, and a damned shame to boot. One bullet hole in the belly was enough to kill a man. Two and he was a goner for sure. But I said, “Hold on, I’ll see what I can do.” I started to crawl toward the sound of his voice, then paused and asked, “You ain’t fixin’ to shoot me, are you?”

“No reason to,” he said. “You ain’t . . . one of the varmints who shot me. They’ve long since . . . took off for the tall . . . and uncut.”

I found another match and lit it. This time I was able to keep it going by cupping my hand around the flame, although the wind caused it to dance around quite a bit. The feeble, flickering glow from it revealed a stocky man with a close-cropped white beard lying against the bank like he’d slid part of the way down it. His coat must have hung on something and stopped him. He had both arms crossed over his belly.

A glance over my shoulder told me that the gully was about a dozen feet wide, with a sandy, fairly level bottom. Clumps of brush grew here and there.

“Let me help you lay down, old-timer,” I said, “and I’ll take a look at those wounds.”

“I told you . . . I want whiskey. Ain’t nothin’ you can do . . . about the other.”

I figured he’d be more comfortable stretched out, though, so when the match burned down I shook it out and got hold of him, lifting him as gently as I could and easing him down so that his legs were in front of him on the gully floor and his back was leaned against the bank. He muttered some things I didn’t understand, most likely complaints because I hadn’t fetched that flask yet.

It took me only a few minutes to find my hat, gather some dry branches from the brush, place them in a heap, and get a fire burning. Once the flames were going, they gave off enough light I could see a broken-down place in the bank where I thought I could get the horses down.

“I’ll be back,” I told the gut-shot old man.

“I ain’t . . . goin’ nowheres.”

I brought the horses down one at a time and tied them to a sturdy-looking bush. They were close enough to the fire to draw a little warmth from it. Then I got the flask from my saddlebags and knelt next to the wounded man.

I uncapped the flask and held it to his mouth.

“Here you go.”

He sucked at it greedily as I tipped it up. I didn’t give him too much. The stuff was going to burn like fire when it hit the holes in his guts. He might pass out from it, and I wanted to know what happened to him.

Whoever shot him might still be roaming around, I thought, and I was curious just how trigger-happy they might be.

I set the flask aside and asked, “Who shot you, mister?”

“Abner . . .” he struggled to say.

“Somebody named Abner ventilated you?”

“No . . . damn it! That’s . . . my name . . . Abner . . . Tillotson. Don’t want to . . . cash out . . . without somebody knowin’ who I am.”

“All right, Mr. Tillotson. What happened?”

“Thought you was gonna . . . try to patch me up.”

“I decided there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point to it,” I told him honestly. His coat was open enough for me to see how black with blood his shirt was underneath it.

He chuckled and said, “You’re right . . . about that. I’ll tell you . . . what happened . . . I was shot by three . . . no-account rustlers . . . that’s what.”

“You’ve got a spread hereabouts?”

“We’re on it . . . the Fishhook.”

“You have family there?”

“Naw . . . no family anywhere . . . just me. Three or four Mex hands . . . work for me part-time. None of ’em there now. I knew there was a norther comin’ . . . so I rode out to . . . check on my critters. That’s when I come across . . . them rustlers . . .”

“Who’d be out wide-looping cattle in weather like this?”

“Those no-good Daughtry boys . . . Stealin’ comes as natural . . . as breathin’ to them. They don’t care . . . what the weather’s like. They were pushin’ . . . a dozen of my cows . . . toward their place. I yelled for ’em to stop . . . and they turned around and started . . . burnin’ powder at me.” Abner paused. “I could do with . . . another drink.”

I gave him one. He winced, but he got it down.

“Where’s your ranch house? I’ll get you back there.”

“Two miles . . . due west of here. It backs up . . . against a butte. You’ll find it.” He raised a blood-smeared hand and waved vaguely in the direction he’d mentioned. “But you’ll have to . . . come back and get me later . . . if the coyotes ain’t dragged me off. You got . . . somethin’ else to do tonight.”

“I wasn’t planning on doin’ anything except trying to keep from freezin’ to death,” I said.

“No . . . you’re gonna go after . . . them Daugh-tr ys . . . and settle accounts for me.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

The words came out of my mouth a mite harsher than I’d intended, but he had startled me with that flat pronouncement.

“Because I’m gonna . . . give you my ranch in return for . . . avengin’ me.”

I started to say something else, but he held up that bloody hand again to stop me.

“I’ve seen . . . a thousand drifters like you . . . in my time, son.”

I doubted very seriously that he’d ever seen anybody exactly like me, but I wasn’t going to argue with a dying man.

“I know what . . . you need,” he went on. “You need a home. You ain’t . . . as young as you used to be.”

Well, he was right about that, I thought. I was pushing middle age, pushing it pretty hard, when you come right down to it.

“You’re bound to be . . . gettin’ a mite tired. You need a good place . . . to settle down . . . and the Fishhook’s a fine spread. I’ll sign it over to you . . . right here and now . . . if you give me your word you’ll settle those rustlers’ hash.”

“You said there were three of ’em. Three against one ain’t very good odds.”

“Yeah, but I can tell by lookin’ at you . . . You still got the bark on you, boy. I’m bettin’ my ranch . . . you can do it.” He laughed again. “Of course . . . I’m losin’ one way or the other . . . ain’t I?”

To this day, I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe I just wanted to ease his way from this world into the next. But I said, “All right, Mr. Tillotson, I’ll do it. I’ll go after those rustlers. Can’t promise you I’ll kill all of them, but I’ll do my damnedest.”

“That’s all . . . anybody can ask of a man. You got paper and . . . a pencil?”

“Yeah.”

“Get it. Write out a bill of sale . . . I’ll sign it. But gimme . . . another drink first.”

I did that, then took out a book I’d bought in San Antonio. I’d picked it up because it was a story about a cowboy named Cassidy who had a bum leg, and that struck me as funny. The book had a blank page or two in the back, so I tore one of them out, flattened it on the cover, and after pausing to build up the fire a little and make it brighter, I used a stub of a pencil to scrawl a bill of sale transferring ownership of the Fishhook Ranch from Abner Tillotson to . . .

Until that moment I hadn’t thought about what name I was going to put down. I had gone by several different names in my life. Sometimes it came in handy for a man in my line of work to be somebody else. I’d used the name Jim before, and to be honest I just plucked Strickland out of thin air. I didn’t recall ever knowing anybody by that name.

So I wrote down “Jim Strickland,” and then I read what I’d written to Abner. He managed a weak nod and said, “That’ll be fine. You’re a good man . . . Jim.”

I don’t know if he just ran out of breath before he said the name, or if he was telling me in his own way that he knew it wasn’t real and didn’t care.

He held out his hand and said, “Gimme the pencil. Afraid I’m gonna get blood on it.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I told him.

He took the pencil. I held the book where he could sign his name on the page. His hand was shaking some, but I could read his signature. I didn’t think anybody would dispute the bill of sale, since he didn’t have any family, and anyway I wasn’t sure I would ever use it. While the idea of settling down held some appeal, I didn’t know if I could do it. I’d been on the drift for a long time.

When he was finished his hand fell back in his lap. He said, “You better . . . get after ’em now. They got a shack . . . couple miles north of here. Ain’t much more than a lean-to . . . built against a little rise. Don’t trust ’em . . . they’re tricky bastards. I never should’ve . . . give’ ’em any warnin’ . . . Should’ve just started shootin’ first myself. You might want to . . . bear that in mind.”

“I sure will, Abner,” I told him. “You better get some rest now, hear?”

“You think you could . . . see your way clear to leavin’ that flask with me . . . while you go after those skunks?”

“Sure, I can do that.” I pressed the silver flask into the hand that had held the pencil. He had dropped it on the ground beside him.

“Much . . . obliged.”

He seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open now. His head rested against the dirt wall behind him. His chest still rose and fell, but slow, slow.

I knew if I piddled around a little before riding out after the Daughtrys, Abner would be dead and I could forget the whole thing and go find the ranch house. His horse was long gone, doubtless having run off after the shooting, but I could pack his body in on my extra animal. I could even toss that bill of sale into the fire and watch it burn. A part of me wanted to. If I’d wanted to live the life of a rancher, I could’ve stayed in Utah when I was a kid.

Anyway, I couldn’t rightfully condemn the Daughtry boys for rustling. My own past was not without blemish in that respect, and I never cared for the idea of being a hypocrite.

But shooting an old man in cold blood . . . well, I had to admit that rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t really know a blasted thing about Abner Tillotson, but I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character, and my instincts told me he didn’t deserve to go out like this.

I folded the page with Abner’s signature on it and stuck it in my hip pocket. Then I went over to my horse and put the book back in the saddlebags. I looked at Abner but couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.

“I’ll be back, Abner,” I told him anyway.

Then without thinking too much about what I was doing, I untied the reins, swung up into the saddle, and rode off into a dark, bone-chilling night in search of a trio of murdering rustlers.

CHAPITRE 2

If you were to ask me about the coldest I’ve ever been, you probably wouldn’t think that it would be when I was in Texas, what with me spending so much time in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and places like that. But all these years later, even on the hottest day of the summer, a shiver still goes through me when I think about that night ride across the Texas plains.

I left the packhorse in the gully with Abner. I left the fire burning, too, which went against the grain because of the danger of prairie fires. My hope, though, was that it would keep the scavengers away from him for a while. Maybe I would get back before the fire burned down completely.

He had said the Daughtry place was a couple miles north of the gully. It was too dark to be sure how much ground I was covering, but I was counting on spotting a lighted window to steer by. Until then I had to rely on instinct to keep me going in the right direction.

After a while, just when I started to worry that I was lost and wouldn’t even be able to find my way back to the gully, a faint yellow glow appeared in the distance ahead of me. It was tiny at first but got bigger as I rode toward it. Eventually I was able to tell by its roughly rectangular shape that it was the window I’d been looking for.

From what Abner had told me, I felt confident that I was approaching the Daughtry place. He hadn’t mentioned anybody else living around these parts.

With the wind blowing out of the north the way it was, I didn’t think they would hear my horse’s hoofbeats. Just to be sure, though, I reined in when we were about fifty yards away. I didn’t see anything close by where I could tie the horse, so I let the reins dangle and left him ground-hitched. I pulled the Winchester from the scabbard and started toward the light on foot.

When I got closer I could make out more of the details, even on that dark night. The shack looked like a jumble of boards piled against the face of a little bluff. It had a tin and tar paper roof with the iron stovepipe sticking up through it. With the bluff to block the wind and a fire going in the stove, it might be halfway comfortable in there, I thought.

Off to the right was a shed that actually looked more sturdily built than the shack. I saw several bulky shapes huddled together in there. I guess the Daughtrys knew how important it was for a man to take care of his horse. Beyond the shed was a corral. The stolen cattle stood stolidly inside it with their back ends turned toward the wind.

It would have been easy enough to kick the door down and go in shooting. They wouldn’t know I was anywhere around until it was too late for at least one of them, and probably two. Maybe, if I was really lucky, all three of them. I mulled it over for a minute or so and came mighty close to doing it that way.

But something stopped me. As I mentioned, I’ve had what you might call a checkered past, but for most of that time, even in my wildest years, I had managed not to kill anybody. There had come a point where that changed—sometimes there’s just no other way out, and to be honest, there are some evil bastards in the world who just need killin’—but I still didn’t want to ventilate anybody who didn’t have it coming.

As I stared at that lighted window, I realized that I didn’t know for an absolute certainty it was the Daughtrys in there. Even if it was, I didn’t know who else might be in the shack with them. Wives, kids, maybe even an old dog or two. I didn’t want any of them getting in the way of a stray bullet.

What I needed to do was draw them out some way, and I thought I saw a way to do it.

That stovepipe poked up through the tar paper fairly close to the bluff. I circled around and climbed the bluff well away from the shack. Even though I was only about eight feet higher than I had been, the wind felt even harder and colder up there. I tried to ignore it as I cat-footed toward the shack.

When I was behind that haphazard assemblage of lumber, I took off my coat. Under it I wore a thick flannel shirt and a pair of long underwear, but the wind cut through both garments like they weren’t there. Shivering and trembling, I hung the jacket on the end of my rifle barrel and extended it toward the stovepipe. It almost reached. I gave the Winchester a flick of my wrist. The jacket jumped in the air and settled over the top of the pipe.

It wasn’t blocked off as well as if I’d been able to get out on the roof and stuff something down the pipe. From the looks of that roof, though, if a pigeon landed on there it might fall through. Doing it this way, some of the smoke was going to escape, but I thought enough of it would back up into the shack to do the job.

I crouched there on the bluff waiting for something to happen. I didn’t have to wait long. Somebody started yelling and cussing inside the shack. The door slammed open and three men stumbled out, coughing.

The Winchester held fifteen rounds, so I figured I could spare one. I put it into the ground near their feet, making them jump. They had made the mistake of all standing close together instead of spreading out, which told me they were pure amateurs when it came to being ambushed. I didn’t want to give them a chance to realize that mistake, so I yelled, “Stand right where you are! I’ll kill the first man who moves!”

Well, they moved, of course. They twisted around toward the sound of my voice. One of them even started to reach under his coat. He stopped when I worked the Winchester’s lever and he heard that sinister, metallic clack-clack.

It was a dramatic touch and I shouldn’t have done it. I should have already had a fresh round chambered. I have a liking for those little flourishes, though, and even though I’ve been told that they’ll get me killed someday, a man’s got to entertain himself from time to time.

Still coughing from the smoke that followed them out the door, one of the men shouted, “Who in blazes . . . are you?”

“Never mind about who I am,” I yelled back at him. “Is your name Daughtry?”

“What the hell business is that of yours?”

I pointed the rifle at him and said, “Just answer the question.” I tried to make my voice as cold and deadly as the wind.

“I’m Ned Daughtry,” the man admitted. “These are my brothers Clete and Otto. You satisfied now, you son of a bitch?”

“Anybody else inside?”

A wracking cough bent the man forward. When it was over he said, “No, just the three of us.”

“In that case,” I told him, “Abner Tillotson says you should all go to hell.”

That threw them. One of the others said, “Who’s Tillotson to you?”

“A friend,” I said. What else could you call somebody who was giving you a ranch?

That decided it. They knew they’d gunned Abner, and they knew I’d come gunning for them in return. Wasn’t nothin’ left but to get to it.

So that’s what they did.

I already had the Winchester pointed at one of them, so I went ahead and shot him as soon as they started to reach. The slug bored through him at a downward angle, bent him back, and dropped him to his knees. I worked the lever as I swung the rifle and fired two more rounds as fast as I could crank them off. Muzzle flashes lit up the night, but despite them I still couldn’t see much. They returned fire. I went to one knee as a bullet whistled over my head.

For a couple of heartbeats the night was filled with fire and lead from both sides of the fight. A second Daughtry brother stumbled and fell. I tried to locate the third one so I could shoot at him some more, but he was gone.

I couldn’t see him, but he might be able to see me. I flattened out on top of the bluff.

A part of my mind kept up with the shots even though I wasn’t really thinking about it. So I knew I’d fired nine times and had six rounds left. That ought to be plenty, I thought, but first I had to have something to shoot at.

I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything except the wind. But I knew somewhere out there was a fella who wanted to kill me, and I didn’t like the feeling. Not one bit.

He was a slick bastard. Got around behind me somehow. If he hadn’t stumbled a little in the dark and made a tiny noise, he might’ve plugged me. As it was, I rolled over just in time to feel his shot whip past my ear and hit the ground instead of blowing off the back of my head.

A Winchester’s not real good for close work. I got a shot off, but it must’ve gone wild because he was on me, kicking me in the side and screaming curses at me. I dropped the rifle, grabbed his leg, and heaved on it. He fell and landed on top of me, and we both went off the edge of the bluff and dropped two feet to crash onto the shack’s roof.

It was just as flimsy as it looked. We broke through it and fell another few feet, landing on a table this time. He was still on top of me, and the impact was enough to knock the breath out of me for the second time tonight. I was half stunned and my muscles didn’t want to work, but I forced them to anyway. I shoved him off the table onto the floor.

The smoke had cleared out some with the door open, but there was still enough of it in the air to sting my mouth and nose and eyes as I rolled off the table the other way. I put one hand on the table to steady myself as I looked around for a weapon of some sort. My rifle was still up on the bluff, and I didn’t know if the last Daughtry had managed to hang on to his pistol when we fell through the roof.

He had. The damned thing blasted again as he rose up on the other side of the table. But he hurried his shot and it went into the wall behind me. I didn’t give him a chance to get off another one. I grabbed the handiest thing I could and flung it at him.

That was a kerosene lantern sitting on a shelf against the wall. It hit him and broke, and fire leaped up on his chest and set his beard on fire. He got so worked up about that, yelling and jumping around, that he forgot about trying to shoot me again. I leaped onto the table and pushed off of it into a diving tackle that took him off his feet. The back of his head hit the hard-packed dirt floor with a sound sort of like what you hear when you drop a watermelon. He didn’t move after that, just lay there with the fire consuming his buffalo-hide coat, his beard, and his face.

I knew that was really going to stink, so I picked up the revolver he’d dropped, tucked it behind my belt, and grabbed his ankles so I could drag him outside.

I hadn’t forgotten about the other two brothers, so as soon as I had the burning one out of the shack, I dropped his legs and drew the gun, even though I didn’t know whether it still had any bullets in it. Turned out it didn’t matter, because neither of the other Daughtrys were moving and never would again unless somebody picked them up and carried them. I didn’t intend to waste that much effort.

From the corner of my eye I saw some other flames and looked up to see that the heat from the stovepipe had finally set my coat on fire. I let out a heartfelt, “Son of a bitch !” That coat was a good one, and without something to break the wind I might still freeze before morning.

Stay here tonight, I told myself. The shack was pretty drafty, but there was a fire in the stove. I could make my way back to the gully in the morning.

But by then coyotes and maybe even wolves would’ve been at Abner’s body for sure, and they might have gone after my packhorse and supplies, too. Sighing, I looked around the inside of the shack for something I could wear.

I found another buffalo-hide coat. It stunk to high heaven when I shrugged into it, but it was better than nothing. I found a box of cartridges, too, and reloaded the Colt I had picked up.

I stood by the stove for a few minutes to warm up as much as I could before venturing out into the night again. When I knew I couldn’t postpone it any longer, I climbed up onto the ridge, got my rifle, and then went in search of my horse.

He had wandered off but hadn’t gone far with his reins dangling like that. The whole affair had spooked him some. I hadn’t had him long enough for him to be used to such violent ruckuses. Hell, I wasn’t used to such ruckuses, and I’d been in the middle of plenty of them over the years. I had to whistle a little tune and talk soft to him for a few minutes before he settled down enough for me to catch him.

Maybe he just didn’t want somebody wearing a coat that stunk that bad on his back.

Soon I was riding south again, hoping I could find the gully where I’d left Abner Tillotson and my other horse.