Biscuits and Gravy

Book 4: Chuckwagon Trail Western

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

HOT BISCUITS. COLD GRAVES.



A hot meal, a hard drink, and maybe a friendly hand of poker—that's all Dewey "Mac" Mackenzie wants when he drifts into the small town of Harcourt City, Montana. What he gets is a fistful of trouble. When he defends a saloon girl from the unwanted advances of some local toughs, he earns the wrath of the town’s powerful namesake, Oscar Harcourt. Harcourt rules this place with an iron fist—and a steely eyed gang of thugs. Now he has his eyes on a ranch belonging to the saloon girl and her brother. A ranch they won’t give up—without a fight.



To raise funds, the brother and sister arrange a cattle drive to Rattlesnake Creek, and they want Mac to join them. As an experienced cattle pusher and chuckwagon cook, he's sure to be an asset. But as a secret gunslinger with a price on his head, he might end up getting them all killed.



Now the cattle are ready to go. Mac is ready for anything. But with so many devils riding on their tails, Mac is ready to turn up the heat—and send them back to hell . . .

Release date: December 28, 2021

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter 1

Dewey Mackenzie hadn’t seen what prompted the slap. But he’d heard the sharp crack of it landing and then, when he looked around, he saw all too plain what was about to happen next—the cocked fist of the hombre who’d been on the receiving end drawing back and getting ready to lash out in response.

Problem was, the target for this intended punch was a young, pretty gal. That was something Mac could hardly allow. Not if he could help it.

He knew better than to stick his nose in other folks’ business, especially when it was taking place in a public establishment in a town where he was a freshly arrived stranger. But he also knew there were exceptions to every rule, and a grown man getting ready to slam his fist into a woman, even if she hadn’t been such a doggone pretty one, surely fell into that category.

So, before the slapped cowpoke hurled his fist forward, Mac reached out, clamping the man’s wrist in a tight grip, and gave the arm a hard yank in the opposite direction.

Not quite six feet in height and still with a trace of boyishness to his clean-shaven features, in spite of being darkened and sharply etched by days in the sun and wind, Mac had a naturally muscular build, made even harder and more solid by the work he’d been doing during all those hours out in the elements. When he grabbed hold of something—or someone—it stayed grabbed hold of until he chose to let go.

The cowpoke—a lanky specimen, average in height and build, thirty or so, with furry reddish sideburns running down either side of his narrow face—was pulled off balance and staggered. Turning half around, he faced Mac with a look of surprise and rage and demanded, “What are you doing?”

Mac met and held the man’s glare for two or three tense heartbeats, then shoved his arm down and away before answering, “What I’m doing, mister, is saving you from making a big mistake.”

The activity and murmur of voices that had been taking place throughout the rest of the cramped, low-ceilinged, moderately crowded Irish Jig Saloon now ground to a halt. The portly old gent playing a squeeze box over in one corner stopped, too, and his instrument went quiet after gasping out a final sour note. All eyes came to rest on Mac and the man with the furry sideburns. The slap from the barmaid had drawn only minimal interest. But this confrontation, to the eyes of the onlookers, apparently had the makings of something not to be missed.

Furry Sideburns turned the rest of the way around to face Mac, both of his hands now balling into fists. Lips peeled back to show gritted teeth, he said, “Well, maybe you think you fixed one mistake, you stinking meddler, but I guarantee you made an even bigger one for yourself!”

One of the other two men still seated at the table Furry Sideburns had risen up from said, “Go get him, Jerry Lee!”

Jerry Lee raised his fists and began waving them in small circles, like he thought he was some kind of boxer. “Since you ain’t packing no gun, Mr. Nosy, I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson the hard way. And when I’m done, I’ll leave enough of you to be able to look up and still see me give that snooty gal what she’s got coming, too!”

Mac adjusted his weight, hands hanging loose and ready at his sides, and stood waiting. In truth, he was packing a gun—an old Smith & Wesson Model 3, .44 caliber, that he kept tucked in the waistband of his trousers rather than in a side holster. A gift from his late father, which, at present, was hidden by the short-waisted jacket he was wearing.

All things considered, that was just as well. While Mac had grown fairly proficient with the gun in recent years, he was never eager to reach for it and this occasion hardly seemed to warrant doing so. At least not yet.

From behind the bar, the elderly apron who was barely tall enough for his scrawny neck and liver-spotted bald head to poke above the level of the hardwood did his best to sound authoritative.

“You gents knock it off. Either that, or take it outside,” he hollered. “You know what Farrell will do if he walks in on this!”

Hearing the warning, Jerry Lee snarled, “You keep your beak out of this, Shorty—and to blazes with Farrell!”

And then he charged at Mac.

Mac had been waiting for that. Instead of holding still for the other man’s rush, he agilely stepped aside and at the same time swept an empty chair from the unoccupied card table he’d been standing next to directly into the path of the oncoming Jerry Lee. The latter immediately barked his shins on the sturdy chair, resulting in him issuing a painful yelp, and then got his legs tangled up in it as his wild swing at Mac pulled him forward and off balance. Jerry Lee belly-flopped across the toppled chair, taking hard jabs from the sharp wooden edges to his stomach and ribs before rolling off into an awkward sprawl on the sawdust-littered floor.

Some onlookers winced at this painful collapse. A few others chuckled at the ungainliness of it.

Jerry Lee roared in pain and heightened rage as he scrambled to get to his hands and knees so he could then rise to a standing position. But before he could do that, Mac took a hurried step around behind him, braced himself, then leaned over to haul Jerry Lee up to his knees. From there, Mac quickly slipped his left arm under the cowboy’s chin, clamping the throat in the crook of his arm.

At the same time, he once again locked Jerry Lee’s right wrist in the grip of his own right hand, then wrenched the arm back and up between the struggling cowpoke’s shoulder blades.

“All right now, Jerry Lee,” Mac rasped with his mouth close to the man’s ear, “I think you’d better calm down before somebody gets hurt.”

“There’s hurtin’ to be done, right enough,” Jerry Lee managed to squawk out, even with the lock on his throat. “And you’re the one gonna be gettin’ a hard dose of it!”

“That’s the wrong answer, you stubborn galoot,” Mac told him. He squeezed the throat tighter and cranked the arm up even higher. “Now you’d best think about changing your mind and doing it quick; otherwise I might decide to start ramming your head against the side of that bar over yonder until you’re ready to take a different notion about things.”

Jerry Lee tried to issue another angry retort, but this time all that came out was a gurgling sound and some spit bubbles leaking from the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t worry, Jerry Lee—we got your back!”

These words, accompanied by the sound of chair legs suddenly scraping on the floor and the clump of boot heels also in hurried movement, caused Mac to look around. Sure enough, the two men who’d been seated at the table with Jerry Lee were shoving to their feet and starting to surge forward.

Mac didn’t wait for them to get very far on their intended rescue mission. He immediately hauled Jerry Lee the rest of the way up, whirled him around, and gave him a hard shove that sent him staggering with wind-milling arms straight into his two pals.

One of the would-be rescuers, a plumpish number with a round face, oversized nose, and eyes set too close under shaggy black brows, was directly in the path of the propelled Jerry Lee. He put his hands up, as if to catch his friend, but Jerry Lee’s momentum was too much to stop. Round Face was staggered in reverse until the back of his legs hit the edge of the chair seat he’d just vacated, forcing him to suddenly sit down again with Jerry Lee more or less flopping onto his lap.

While this was taking place, the remaining hombre from the table—lean and cat-like, with heavy-lidded eyes, a surly curl to his mouth, and slicked-back black hair complete with another set of thick sideburns—momentarily froze. But then, when he broke into motion once again, it came in a long forward stride with his right hand reaching down to hover claw-like over the black-handled Colt riding in a tie-down holster on his right hip.

Mac swore under his breath. It looked like avoiding gunplay wasn’t going to be possible after all.

Yet even as the fingers of his own right hand were getting ready to dive under the flap of his jacket, the pretty barmaid who’d played a part in setting this whole works in motion suddenly stepped forward to help bring it to a halt. She did this by raising the partially poured pitcher of beer she had evidently just delivered to the table and crashing it down on the back of Surly Mouth’s head before his fingers had a chance to close on the grips of his Colt.

 

Chapter 2

Just as Surly Mouth was crumpling to the floor, a dark-haired, middle-aged man dressed in a corduroy jacket worn over a brocade vest came striding purposefully through the Irish Jig’s front door. As he pushed apart the batwings and passed between them, his expression was open, amiable. But a single sweep of his eyes, making an appraisal of the scene he was entering into, quickly brought a scowl to his countenance.

“What in blazes is going on here?” he demanded to know.

Then his gaze came to rest on Jerry Lee, struggling to shove up out of Round Face’s lap, and beyond that clumsily flailing pair the sprawled form of Surly Mouth. The scowl intensified. “You three chowderheads ... again. I might have known.”

“Now you hold on a doggone minute, Farrell,” huffed Jerry Lee, finally getting untangled from Round Face and standing upright. “You ain’t gonna lay this on us, not this time. No, sir. We was the ones attacked, and all we was doing was defending ourselves.”

“You were attacked?” Skepticism rang sharp in Farrell’s tone. “By who?”

“By that high-minded wildcat of a barmaid you hired, that’s who.” Jerry Lee thrust a finger in the direction of the pretty, beer pitcher-wielding blonde standing on the other side of the table. “First, she hauled off and walloped me across the face for no good reason. Then, as you can see, she took that beer pitcher and banged it down on the back of poor Edsel’s head! And if that wasn’t enough, this slippery stranger”—a jab of his thumb to indicate Mac—“stuck his nose in and nailed me with a sucker punch from behind!”

Farrell listened, the look on his face remaining every bit as skeptical as his tone had been. “A lick of truth in any of that, Becky?” he asked the blonde as soon as Jerry Lee’s spiel ended.

Becky thrust out her chin defiantly and answered. “You bet there is. Yes, I slapped that pig Jerry Lee’s face. And yes, I also clobbered Edsel with this beer pitcher when he was going for his gun to use on that unarmed stranger. The stranger, by the way, never sucker-punched Jerry Lee. He just grabbed his arm and gave him a shove after Jerry Lee was getting ready to club me with his fist for slapping him. Would you like to know the reason for the slap that started it all?”

“I think I can make a pretty good guess,” Farrell said through clenched teeth.

“You can’t hold that against a fella,” Jerry Lee was quick to protest. “Any gal who takes a job parading herself around in a saloon is bound to get grabbed a little bit. And don’t tell me she don’t know it from the start. She not only has to know it, truth to tell she’s probably wanting—”

“Shut your dirty mouth!” Farrell cut him off, taking a step forward.

Jerry Lee backpedaled so hurriedly he almost tripped and landed in Round Face’s lap again. He held up one hand, palm out. “Now you hold off with that blasted Irish temper of yours, Farrell! That ain’t no way to treat steady, paying customers, is it?”

“Whether it is or isn’t no longer applies to you three,” Farrell told him, his voice strained by the anger he was barely managing to hold in check. “Effective immediately, you are no longer customers here. None of you are welcome in this establishment ever again. Now, collect your change from the table, pick up your friend off the floor, and the lot of you clear out before I take a bung starter from behind the bar and hurry your sorry butts along!”

“You’ll be sorry if you try to keep us run out,” warned Jerry Lee. “Oscar Harcourt is bound to hear of it, and I can guarantee he won’t like it one bit!”

Farrell replied, “You let me worry about that. Tell Oscar to come around any time he wants—I’ll be glad to tell him the same thing. In the meantime, clear out of my sight before I lose my patience with you!”

In just a handful of minutes, the three were slinking out the door, Jerry Lee and Round Face dragging their partner with his arms hung over their shoulders. In the doorway, Jerry Lee paused for a moment, casting a baleful glance over his shoulder as if he intended to say something more. But then, facing Farrell’s glare, he thought better of it and went ahead on out.

Once the trio was gone, Farrell turned and again swept the room with his eyes. Swinging one arm in a broad gesture, he announced, “Show’s over, gents. Go on about your business, nothing more to see here. Especially not from those three louts ... who won’t be returning, I assure you.”

The other patrons scattered around the room returned obligingly to the conversations, card games, and, in a couple of cases, solitary drinking that had been occupying them before the ruckus broke out. A nod from Farrell also started the accordion player squeezing out his music once more.

With the strains of a lilting Irish tune drifting through the air, Farrell then turned his attention to Mac, who had been standing quietly by, watching and listening. Becky, the pretty blond barmaid, set down her beer pitcher and drifted over to stand with them.

Farrell’s expression was again quite amiable, a touch of a smile even curving his wide, expressive mouth. “Now then,” he said, his eyes dancing back and forth between Mac and Becky, “are the pair of you done wreaking havoc in my otherwise peaceful establishment, at least for the balance of the evening?”

Becky’s mouth dropped open. “Eamon! You know better than that. I just got done telling you—”

Farrell held up a hand, stopping her. “Of course you did,” he said with a chuckle. “I was just teasing you a bit. You think I don’t know that any trouble involving those three scoundrels surely wasn’t your fault? My only regret is that you feel the need to be here at all, where exposure to their kind of trash is bound to—”

Now it was Becky who cut him off. “We’ve been all through that. I need this job, and you know all the reasons why. You agreed to give me the chance and you also know that I’ve done well at it. I was fully aware from the beginning there would be a certain amount of rough conduct and I’m able to handle most of it without ever causing a scene. But tonight, that sleazy Jerry Lee and his pawing hands ...”

“You don’t have to go into any further detail,” Farrell told her. “In fact, if you tell me too much more, I may have to go hunt down that piece of vermin and finish what our new friend here”—a flick of his eyes to Mac—“was luckily on hand to deliver a piece of.”

“Number one, I don’t want you hunting down Jerry Lee and making things worse,” said Becky. Then, bringing her lovely blue eyes also to rest on Mac, she added, “But number two, I certainly am grateful that this stranger was on hand to do what he did. Hadn’t been for him, I hate to think what Jerry Lee’s fist was getting ready to do to me.”

Eyes probing into Mac’s, Farrell said, “You can certainly add my gratitude to the list. But before going any further, I think it’s time to dispense with this ‘stranger’ business. Will you be so kind as to share your name with us, sir?”

With an easy nod, Mac replied, “It’s Mackenzie. Dewey Mackenzie. Most folks just call me Mac.”

Farrell promptly extended his hand. “Mac it is, then. I, in turn, am Eamon Farrell. In case you haven’t already figured it out, I am the owner and proprietor of our modest surroundings, the Irish Jig Saloon.”

As the two men shook, Farrell tilted his head toward Becky, adding, “And this fair princess, to whose rescue you came, is Becky Lewis.”

“Pleased to meet the both of you,” Mac said, releasing Farrell’s hand and pinching his hat to Becky. “Far as that rescue business, no need to make more of it than it was. Mostly, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Ain’t my way to butt into other folks’ affairs, but standing by and letting a man take a punch at a woman ... well, that ain’t my way neither.”

“I’d say it sounds like you have some pretty good ways,” declared Farrell.

“And I say, again, how very grateful I am that you happened to be in the right place at the right time,” said Becky.

Mac felt himself blushing some at her focus on him. Up close, she was even prettier than he’d first realized. Not more than a couple years past twenty, with finely chiseled facial features and those striking blue eyes, all framed by pale gold hair falling loosely to her shoulders. Clad in a simple white blouse and a flaring maroon skirt that reached to midcalf, she was no more than five-two in height, trim but sturdy looking, and very appealingly curved in all the right places.

“Inasmuch as you are present here in a saloon, Mac, I presume you came inclined toward having a drink,” Farrell allowed. “That being the case, I’d be honored to buy you one and invite you to join me at one of the tables.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mac told him. “A cold beer is what I had in mind when I came in.”

“You two have a seat,” Becky said. “I’ll bring a pitcher.”

“That’s not necessary,” Farrell countered. “You need to head for home. It’s getting on toward evening and you have a ways to go before darkness settles in.”

Becky shook her head. “Nonsense. I’ve ridden the trail between here and home dozens of times. I could do it with my eyes closed, plus my horse knows the way as well as I do. Besides, before I go I’ve still got a mess to clean up where I wasted that half-full pitcher of beer on the head of Edsel Purdy.”

“All things considered, it was far from wasted,” Farrell corrected her. Then, sighing fatalistically, he rolled his eyes over at Mac and said, “But I recognize when an argument is hopeless. Let’s have a seat, Mac, and I’ll join you in putting away some of that beer after the young lady fetches us a pitcher, as she insists on doing.”