A Time to Slaughter

Book 4: Brothers O’Brien

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Fiction; Westerns; Thrillers

Synopsis

The USA Today bestselling author continues the saga of this pioneer family with a tale of danger south of the border and a schoolteacher in need of rescue . . .

An epic saga of the O'Briens, father Shamus and his sons Shawn, Patrick, Jacob, and Samuel, homesteaders fighting to survive the untamed Western wilderness . . . A bestselling author whose novels ring with authenticity and power . . . A thrilling adventure across the border of Mexico, as the O'Briens go up against a powerful and deadly enemy . . .

Slaughter time

New Mexico Territory is no stranger to bad men. But south of the border, on the wild Mexican coastline, is another kind of wicked: a murderous Arab with a ship full of stolen women—to be sold as sex slaves in the four corners of the world. Among them is a missing local schoolteacher Shawn O'Brien has been searching for—a woman with a past she's kept carefully hidden. Now Shawn, along with a half-mad bear hunter and a professional hangman fight their way to the coast for a blood-soaked battle between the slavers and the US Navy. When the action runs aground, O'Brien gets his chance: to face down a sheik who profits from human misery—and makes a sport of slaughter . . .

Release date: May 6, 2014

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 432

Sample

Black was the sky and bitter the wind, but Silas Creeds felt no chill, for the wind was not colder than he and the sky no blacker than his killer’s heart. Truth to tell, he was highly amused. In the dead and dreary winter of 1888, he was not in the New Mexico Territory to kill a man, but to return a runaway woman to her rightful owner.

This was a first for him, and the cause of his mirth.

From a rise studded with pines, he looked down on the Dromore ranch. Pyramids of windblown snow lay at the bases of each trunk as though the trees had dropped their drawers in preparation for a scamper down the hill. His thoughts turned to the job at hand. How does a man born to the gun treat another man’s trophy woman?

Well, he could truss her up and throw her behind his saddle, Creeds decided. Or he could loop a noose around her neck and drag her after his horse.

Neither method struck him as satisfactory. He shook his head, a smile playing around the corners of his thin scar of a mouth. It required some serious thought. Why did Zebulon Moss want the treacherous little whore back anyhow? It would’ve been a lot simpler to put a bullet into her and have done. Serve her right.

Creeds sighed. Ah well, Zeb knew his own mind and he set store by the little baggage, so there was an end to it.

A lone rider hazing a Hereford bull toward a cattle pen near the big plantation house took his attention. The puncher showed a shaggy wing of gray hair under his hat, but the turned-up collar of his sheepskin hid his face.

Creeds grinned and slid the Winchester from the boot under his left knee. He drew a bead on the rider and had him dead to rights. A head shot, easy at that distance. “Pow!” Creeds said quietly.

The puncher rode on and Creeds shoved the rifle back into the leather. There was to be no killing on this trip. “Just bring my woman back,” Zeb had said. He was paying the money, so he got to choose the tune.

Creeds scanned the ranch again.

A big plantation house with four pillars out front, white-painted fences and corrals, a bunkhouse for seasonal punchers and the single hands, a commissary, and a row of eight neatly built cabins for the married men.

Creeds nodded. No doubt about it, those were civilized folks down there and that meant they’d be fat and sassy and easy to kill.

Set apart a ways from the other buildings was a timber structure with a V-shaped shingle roof and a low bell tower. Smoke from its iron chimney tied bows in the wind and even from where he sat his horse Creeds heard the noisy laughter of children. The building was painted red and that amused him greatly. “Well, well, well, ol’ Zeb’s information was correct . . . Trixie Lee is out in the boonies, teaching snot-nosed brats in a little red schoolhouse.”

That was a far cry from working the tinpans and cowboys up Santa Fe way. And an even farther cry from being Zebulon Moss’s kept woman, bought and paid for.

Creeds shook his head. He had to smile. Damn, this was getting better and better. A real challenge.

He was a tall, scrawny man, dressed in the ankle-length black coat he wore summer and winter. On his head, he sported a battered silk top hat he thought became him, and a long woolen muffler in the red Royal Stuart tartan was wound twice around his turkey neck. He’d taken the scarf off a tinpan he’d shot a spell back, but he couldn’t remember the exact circumstances of that killing. After a while they had a way of all running together.

Apart from the rifle under his knee, Creeds showed no other weapons. But the pockets of his coat were lined with buckskin and in each nestled a Colt double-action Lightning revolver in .38 caliber. A careful man, he’d bobbed the hammers of both guns so his draw would not be impeded.

Creeds had killed seventeen men. One he did remember was good ol’ Charlie Peppers, who was reckoned by them who knew to be the fastest man with a gun south of the Picketwire.

After the fight, Creeds had taken Charlie’s title and his left ear as a trophy. He’d also bedded his woman, but that ended badly when he’d had to shoot her after she came at him with a knife in her hand, crying rape.

All in all, Creeds considered himself the West’s premier gunfighter, and no one cared to argue the point with him.

Silas Creeds was trespassing on Dromore range and knew men had been shot for less, but it didn’t trouble him in the least. He was confident of his gun skills, and such fears were for lesser men. He rode past the big house, skirted the corral where the Hereford bull was penned up, then crossed fifty yards of open ground to the red schoolhouse.

He drew rein and studied the front of the building, a flurry of snow spinning around him. Because of the iron-gray sky the windows on either side of the door were opaque and stared back at him like lifeless eyes. Inside the kids were quiet, probably studying their ciphers, he guessed. Or was Trixie telling them about the good old days in Santa Fe?

After a while he stood in the stirrups and yelled, “Trixie Lee! Come out!”

The children’s voices raised in an excited babble and Trixie hushed them into silence.

“Trixie Lee!” Creeds yelled. “Get out here! I won’t tell you a second time.”

The door opened a crack and the woman’s voice called out, “What do you want, Creeds?”

“Me, I want nothing, Trixie. But good ol’ Zeb wants his woman back in his bed. He says he’s hurting for you real bad, if you get my meaning.”

“I’m not going back,” Trixie called out. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Creeds.”

Creeds relaxed in the saddle and smiled. “Trixie, Zeb paid two hundred dollars for you, fair and square as ever was. You’re his property. Now get the hell out here or I’ll come in after you.”

“You heard the lady. She’s not going anywhere with you.”

The gunman’s head turned like a striking snake toward the handsome young man who lounged against the corner of the building. The man’s sheepskin was open and he wore a belted Colt.

Creeds’ yellow, reptilian eyes glowed. “Who the hell are you?”

“Me? I’m the man who’s throwing you off this property.”

“Give me a name.” Under Creeds’ sparse mustache, his thin lips were peeled back from his teeth. “Damn it, boy. I never did cotton to gunning a nameless man.

“Name’s Shawn O’Brien. I’m co-owner of this ranch, and you’re on it, Creeds, which is causing me no little distress.”

“So you’ve heard of me, O’Brien?”

“Some talk”

“What did you hear?”

“That you’re a tinhorn killer who’ll cut any man, woman, or child in half with a shotgun for fifty dollars.”

“Hard words, O’Brien. And payment for such words don’t come cheap.” A wrong-handed man, Creeds slipped his left hand into the pocket of his coat.

But suddenly he was looking into the muzzle of Shawn’s Colt.

“Mister,” Shawn said, “when you bring that mitt out, either have a prayer book in it or nothing at all.”

As slow as molasses, Creeds’ long-fingered hand spidered out of his pocket. “All right. You got the drop on me, O’Brien.”

“Seems like.”

“I want to talk with Trixie.”

“You’ve already done that, and she’s not interested in anything you have to say.”

Creeds, irritated that he’d been shaded on the drop by a hick with cow crap on his boots, turned away from Shawn and yelled with a vicious edge to his voice, “Trixie! Get the hell out here!”

The triple click of Shawn’s cocked Colt was an exclamation point of sound in the snow-spun morning. “Mister, I warned you—”

But he bit off his remaining words when the schoolhouse door opened and Trixie Lee stepped outside.

Creeds grinned. “Good to see you again, Trixie. Now get up on the back of this here hoss. We got some travelin’ to do.”

The girl shook her head. “I told you I’m not going anywhere with you, Silas.”

“And I told you that Zeb wants you back.”

“Zeb doesn’t want me.” Her fingers touched the deep scar that ran from the corner of her left eye to her mouth. “He just can’t handle the thought that a woman would even think about running out on him.”

“That doesn’t signify with me, Trixie. But Zeb paid two hundred dollars for you, more than your puncher friend here makes in a year. The way I see it, he ain’t getting his money’s worth what with you lighting a shuck for a schoolhouse on a hick ranch an’ all.”

“I’ll pay him back. Tell him that. It may take me a couple years, but I’ll repay every last cent of his money.”

Creeds shook his head. “He wants his woman, not the money.”

“Then he can go to hell,” Trixie spat out. “And tell him to take you with him.”

“You heard the lady,” Shawn said, stepping away from the corner of the building. “Now fork that bronc on out of here and don’t even think about coming back.”

Creeds smiled and glanced at the sky. Lifting his top hat, he revealed a bald head covered with a red bandana. “Oh, I’ll be back, cowboy, count on it. No man gets the drop on Silas Creeds and lives to boast of it.”

Holding the hat with his right hand inside it, he brushed off a few flakes of snow from the crown.

A moment later, a bullet slammed into the hat.

The bullet hit the holstered derringer under the crown, and rammed the sneaky gun with venomous force into Creeds’ hand. The man yelped, let the top hat drop, and shook his stinging fingers.

“I seen that tinhorn trick for the first time twenty years ago. It didn’t fool me then and didn’t fool me now.” Grim old Luther Ironside, the Dromore segundo, walked from the corner of the schoolhouse behind a smoking Colt. “You heard Mr. O’Brien, Creeds. Now git off his damned property.”

Creeds was livid, raging beyond anger. The gunman’s face twisted into a demonic mask of hate as he stepped along the ragged edge of insanity. He was enraged enough to draw.

“Try it, Creeds.” Ironside’s voice was low and dangerous. “See what happens.” Snow flurried around him and his gray hair tossed in the wind. He looked like an Old Testament prophet come to justice.

Creeds was game, but he backed off like a snail into its shell when he saw Ironside adopt the classic gunfighter pose, right arm extended, the revolver steady in his fist, left foot forming a T behind the heel of the right, deciding he didn’t want any part of the tall old man. Not that day. “Mister, I’ll be back and I’ll kill you.”

Ironside nodded. “Yeah, you do that, sonny. But wait until them fingers o’ your’n have straightened out some. A blowed-up sneaky gun stings like the dickens.”

Creeds swung back to Trixie. “Last chance.”

The girl shook her head, turned on her heel, and rushed back into the schoolhouse.

“I’m going, O’Brien,” Creeds said. “But I’ll be back and I’ll bring down the fires of hell on this place.”

Shawn picked up the man’s hat and handed it to him. “You’ll need that. Keep your head warm.”

The gunman cursed, then swung his horse away and was soon swallowed by cartwheeling snow, winter darkness, and distance. His threat hung in the air and made the morning foul.

“We should’ve killed that feller, Shawn,” Ironside said. “I figger I taught you better than that.”

“I thought about it. But it didn’t seem to call for a shooting.”

“Damn it, he had a sneaky gun,”

“Yes, he did at that. Why didn’t you kill him, Luther?”

Ironside was silent for a moment, but couldn’t find an answer. Finally, he said, “Well, your brother Jacob would’ve gunned him right off.”

“Probably.”

“No probably. Jake would’ve gunned him fer sure.”

“Yes . . . he . . . would . . .”

Ironside snorted like an angry bull. “Hell, Shawn, you’re not listening to me.”

“I’m thinking, Luther.”

“Thinking, huh? Well study on this—if you’ve got the drop on a man never let him take his hat off. I teached you that a long time ago.”

Shawn smiled. “I guess I must’ve slept through that lesson.”

“I guess you did, an’ it near got your fool head blowed off.”

“But you were around to save me, Luther, as always.”

“Damn right I was, as always.”

Shawn quickly stepped close to the old man, taking him by surprise, then laid a smacking kiss on Ironside’s unshaven cheek. “You’re my hero, Luther.” He grinned.

Ironside rubbed his cheek as though he’d just been stung by a hornet. “Damn it, boy, don’t ever do that again.”

Shawn laughed and walked toward the schoolhouse.

Ironside watched him until he opened the door and stepped inside. Only then did Ironside smile. God knows, he’d tanned their hides often enough doing it, but he’d taught his O’Brien boys right. No doubt about that.

When Shawn stepped into the school, the black eyes of a dozen kids turned to him. All were the children of the Dromore vaqueros, and their education was one of his father’s pet projects.

His spurs chiming in the sudden hush, Shawn walked to the front of the class. He smiled at the teacher he knew only as Julia. “We have to talk.”

The woman nodded, realizing that the morning’s events had changed everything. She turned to her class. “Children, the snow is getting heavier. I’m letting school out early today.”

The kids had learned enough English to understand the gist of that. They cheered before stampeding out the door in a wild tangle, perhaps fearful that Miss Julia might change her mind.

After the children left, Julia said, “I guess I’ve got some explaining to do.”

Shawn nodded. “Trixie Lee to Miss Julia Davenport is quite a leap. It confuses a man.”

“Julia Davenport is my real name. I was Trixie Lee when I worked in Zebulon Moss’s saloon in Santa Fe. He gave me that name and I’ve always hated it.”

“All right. Tell me about it,” Shawn said, his chin set.

But Julia saw no accusation or judgment in his eyes. Rather she saw a reined patience, a man waiting for what was to come. She wiped off the chalked blackboard with a yellow duster, giving herself time to collect her thoughts and leaving circular white smears that matched the color of her face.

Shawn came from a direction she didn’t expect. “Did Moss give you the scar on your face?”

Julia turned then shook her head. “No, no, he didn’t.”

Shawn waited. The only sound in the room was the whisper of the north wind around the eaves and, far off, the voices of the children.

“My mother did that with a carving knife,” Julia explained. “It was part of a carving set that had been a wedding present to her and Pa.”

“What happened?”

“She went crazy. Mad, I guess you’d say. Pa failed at everything he’d tried in life, including the poems he wrote that nobody ever published. Farming on the Kansas plains was his last chance to make good. Have you ever been in Kansas?”

Shawn shook his head.

“It’s a flat, lonely place, grass as far as the eye can see and not a tree in sight. Well, Ma stuck it out for five years—five years of drought, prairie fire, torrential rains, blizzards, whirlwinds, locusts, rattlesnakes, and gray wolves, to say nothing of horse thieves and begging, destitute Indians.” Julia smiled. “What is it they say? ‘In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted.’ That’s how it was with us, and with our poverty came not only hunger but the death of hope.”

“When you talk about Kansas, you shut your eyes,” Shawn said.

“I’m seeing it again, just like it was, so lonely and bleak.”

“And it finally drove your ma mad?”

“Yes. I guess it was the loneliness that drove her mad, that and the constant prairie wind. The wind blows day and night and it never stops, not for a moment. Then one day, she went outside the cabin and screamed and screamed and we thought her screams would never end. Finally Pa took her inside and she was quiet for a few days. I mean she didn’t speak or eat; she just stared and stared at nothing. Then, on the Sabbath, after Pa had read from the Bible, Ma got the carving knife and stabbed my little sister Bethany through the heart. She slashed at me and gave me the scar on my face, then she cut her own throat.”

Julia blinked, seeing pictures she didn’t want to see. “There was blood everywhere. The cabin was full of blood, red, scarlet blood on the floor, on the walls, all over Pa, all over me. Then Pa roared as though he was in pain and he held Ma and my sister to him for a day and a night and then another day. We buried the bodies away from the house, but shallow because the ground was hard with frost. The coyotes came and took them and we never found anything of Ma or Bethany again.”

“I’m sorry,” Shawn said, knowing how inadequate that sounded.

Julia took a breath and continued. “After that we moved to Dodge, where Pa thought he might prosper in the dry goods business, but he died of nothing more serious than a summer cold within a year.”

Shawn stepped to a side window and looked outside. Sky and earth were the same shade of dark purple and snow cartwheeled through the sullen day, driven by a wind cold as a stepmother’s breath. Julia had lit the oil lamp on her desk, but its dull orange glow did little to banish the gloom shadowing the schoolhouse.

“So you were left alone in the world,” Shawn said. “You were just a child, I guess.”

“I lived as best I could for a while, then I jumped a deadheading freight to Wichita. I couldn’t find a job so I worked the line for the next three years for a four-hundred-pound gal I knew only as Big Bertha. That’s where Zeb Moss found me. I’d just reached my seventeenth birthday.”

“And he gave you a new name,” Shawn said.

“And a job. He paid Bertha two hundred dollars for me and made me a hostess in his saloon in Santa Fe. He said with my scarred face I’d have freak value to customers who valued such things.”

“So after a while you ran away and came here?”

“Not for a couple years. I became Zeb’s kept woman and he never let me out of his sight. Then I read an advertisement in the newspaper about a teaching job and answered it. I made my break from Zeb when Colonel O’Brien wrote, telling me the job was mine.”

“You sent references to the colonel,” Shawn said. “Pa said you were obviously a genteel young lady of good breeding and that you’d worked as a tutor back East.”

Julia smiled slightly. “Say what’s on your mind, Shawn. Tell me I’m not a genteel young lady at all. I’m just a cheap whore and now my pimp wants me back.”

Julia Davenport’s words stung Shawn O’Brien like wasps, yet he had to push her and discover why the colonel could make such a mistake. “Your references were impeccable. You sent three letters of recommendation from good Boston families that fooled even Pa, and he’s not a man easily hoodwinked.”

Julia looked like a woman in pain. “The letters were forged by a Caddo Indian by the name of Billy One Wing. He’s got only one arm, but he’s the best counterfeiter in the business. He gets a lot of work from Zeb, and I gave him mine. I trusted Billy because he doesn’t like white men and knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

Shawn nodded. “He must be good to have fooled the colonel.”

“Billy One Wing could fool anybody.” Julia took her cloak from the peg on the wall and threw it around her shoulders. She doused the oil lamp, then said, “Well, shall we go see the colonel?”

“You’re a good teacher, Julia. Everybody agrees on that.”

“My ma taught me to read and cipher. The rest I know comes from books.”

“I’ll talk to the colonel first,” Shawn said. “Prepare the way.”

“What difference does it make? You know he’ll fire me and throw me out of Dromore.”

“If . . .