Forever Texas

Book 1: Forever Texas Novel

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Historical Fiction; War & Military

Synopsis

“Superb from start to finish. An instant classic. “—New York Times Bestselling Author Marc Cameron
 
Based on real events and the true history of the legendary King Ranch in South Texas, this riveting historical adventure evokes the reality of life on the Texas frontier, as one pioneering family battles to forge a new life and carve out their own piece of the American West…
 
It’s 1852. The wounds of the Mexican War are healing. Regis Royle, co-owner of a steamship fleet, has made it out alive, relatively unscarred and with enough profit and foolhardy ambition to envision a new life in south Texas. With the help of his crack-shot kid brother Shepley, his glad-handing riverboat partner Cormac Delany, and his old friend, raw-edged former Texas Ranger Jarvis “Bone” McGraw, Regis is laying claim to the prime jewel in a magnificent rolling prairie: the Santa Calina range teeming with wild mustangs, cattle, and eighteen-thousand acres of lush promise.
 
But all dreams have a price. For Regis, it’s hell to pay—and the fire is coming at him from all directions. On one side of the border, it’s banditos and a vengeful Mexican heiress with a passionate hatred for greenhorn gringos. Especially those who have their eye on land once owned by her family. On the other side, the Apaches, slave traders, and outlaws have Santa Calina in their sights. And none of them are going to walk away from the bloody battle.
 
The brothers Royle and their partners have the most to lose—including their lives. They made a pledge to themselves to build the greatest ranch in America. To see it through to the end, they’ll have to ride hard and learn the bitter necessity of violence and bloodshed.
 

Release date: April 26, 2022

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

The first shot pinwheeled the tall man’s hat off his head. The second sent him diving for cover, and the third spooked his mount and sent it crow-hopping and snorting into the pucker-brush.

He heard a harsh, barking laugh followed with shouts of “Die, gringo!” . . . then shots volleyed at him from all sides.

The tall man managed to crank off a shot of his own. He heard a groan and a curse drift up on the still, hot air as the gunfire echoed and tapered off. Regis Royle had enough time to suck in a sharp breath between his tight-set teeth before a fresh fusillade pinned him tight in a wedge of sun-warmed sandstone.

He counted what he thought might be several guns still blazing, or someone was good at reloading. He trailed his fingers to his gun belt and felt his sheathed knife. He had three shots left in his gun. Fresh ammunition rested snugly in his saddlebags on the ass end of the horse he’d likely never see again.

“What you want here, gringo?”

Regis Royle spun his gaze toward the voice and closed his hand tighter on the walnut grips of his revolver. He saw nothing save for an anaqua tree. In the blue sky far beyond, a lone gray cloud teased apart on a breeze. A meadowlark bobbed on a spiny jag and warbled its morning song.

“Who’s asking?”

Ragged laughter echoed off the slabs of sandstone chiseled by wind and time.

Not a man prone to twitching at imagined spooks, Royle nonetheless felt a shiver of ice ripple his backbone. He hunkered lower and eyed around the boulder, looking longingly toward the receding view of his squirrel-headed, bucking mount, and with it his shiny new rifle.

He held the pose as if he were part of the warming stone. The meadowlark rose into the air, trailing dewy notes, and in a series of short swoops landed on a jut of gnarled mesquite some distance to the west—two hundred, three hundred feet.

Could be the bird was a friendly sort. Could be if Regis were a betting man, and at times he was, that bird was looking for a handout, a morsel from a kindly stranger. Could be that bird found the curious laughing man for him. Could be now was the time to place a bet.

Regis almost shrugged, almost smiled at his fanciful notion. Then he didn’t smile, for he noted a shifting of light, less than a shadow’s worth, in a darkened gap in the stony declivity beyond and below the twitchy, curious little yellow-and-brown bird.

“Thanks, bird friend,” he whispered, and licked away a slow drop of sweat from the corner of his mouth, unseen beneath his thick black moustache. Too early by half for this sort of tomfoolery. He had land to check on, friends to catch up with, and an appointment in Brownsville to keep.

Now he was more annoyed than afraid for himself. He’d known, of course, of the danger of brigands out here, and had even been reminded of the cautions he should take when friends at the docks learned he was riding inland alone, on his way to Corpus Christi to visit other friends.

“Why you want to do a thing like that, Cap?” Lockjaw Hames had said. “No sir, if I was you I’d stick to the water. Safer around here. No injuns or Mexicans out to lay a man low, steal his boots and his hair, then pillage what’s left out of his middle.”

Lockjaw, who earned the odd moniker because his lips rarely seemed to move when he spoke, a task he was unafraid to undertake, had shuddered then as if he’d had a vision of something horrific happening that was fated.

Lockjaw was as solid a seaman as they’d come. Reputedly a former slave and now self-proclaimed free man, he was also the biggest man Regis had ever met, and that was saying something, as Regis himself was north of six feet tall by several inches.

Lockjaw was a steady presence on the steamers and riverboats, turning his hand to whatever task Regis or his partner in the shipping trade, Cormac Delany, asked of him.

Didn’t mean Regis was about to take his advice to heart. He’d chuckled and said, “I appreciate your concern on my behalf, Mr. Hames, and I will endeavor to remain on the good side of the soil with breath in my lungs.”

The big black man had paused, sacks of quicklime balanced on each shoulder, his bulging arms steadying them, and said, “Ain’t no call to get uppity about it, boss. But you don’t come crawling back to the safety of the docks saying how come ol’ Lockjaw didn’t warn you!” He’d stomped off, loading the hold of the Missy B., a recently acquired craft Cormac had christened after a younger sister long dead, or as Cormac had said, “called to her glory.”

And now here Regis was, pinned down in the rocks and grasses of this pretty river valley by an outlaw, no doubt. “Looks like you were right, Lockjaw,” Regis mumbled.

Another shot, this time slicing in from east of him, scored a fresh groove in the dusty rock above his head. “Okay, at least two outlaws.”

As if in response to his thought, a third, then a fourth shot, each from different directions, pinged and whined in ricochet harmlessly above him. For the moment he was safe, but if they—by his best guess that would make at least four scurvy-addled curs out for his blood—decided to close in, he’d be a dozing fawn to their pouncing lion.

His ire with himself almost outweighed any animosity he felt toward the would-be thieves. Almost. He’d save his full steam for dealing with the prairie scum. And he knew he would, in part because Regis Royle was a man who never failed at anything he attempted.

He had fought his way to his position as partner in a shipping business, co-owner of a growing fleet of riverboats plying the waters of the Rio Grande and up and down the coast. He and Cormac had worked like demons during the Mexican War, the wounds of which were slowly healing, though still bleeding aplenty, since 1846.

Here it was 1852 and he was still scrapping his way through life. He sighed and carefully extended a long leg and flexed it, massaging his knee. A bullet pinged a few inches below the heel of his stovepipe boot. He yanked it back and sucked in air through his teeth.

He needed a plan, because sitting here wasn’t getting a damn thing done. What sort of plan could he hope for? Stand up and shout, “Hey, gents, how about we talk this over?” He grunted at the folly of his thoughts. No, best wait them out, keep alert, and take advantage of the relative safety of this rocky hidey-hole he’d managed to wedge himself into.

Then another thought came to him: What if he weren’t the only critter in this hole? If it got cold at night, which it would surely do, would a pesky rattler slide out of that crevice behind him and try to get cozy with whatever warmth might exude from his cramped body?

The idea didn’t do much for his mood. Regis cursed his horse again, a feather-headed thing with a balky streak a mile wide. When he got back to Brownsville, he was going to buy it from the hostler he’d rented it from and either train it right or shoot it in the head and start with a fresh beast.

A smile tugged a corner of his moustache upward. He was thinking of the very reason he’d ventured out on this fine jaunt in the first place. It had been three days since he’d left Brownsville and ridden northward to Corpus Christi. He’d intended to pay a call on friends who’d moved there, attend a fair he’d heard was to take place in that bustling town.

Really, it was little more than a convenient excuse to get away from his beloved steamers. He still enjoyed the work, but he’d been at it for years without letup. He was still a young man, but sometimes he felt like he was ninety and ready for a rocking chair by a fireplace.

He knew the itch, for it had never really left him. He wanted to—no, he needed to venture beyond the waterways. And a trip on horseback, even if only for a few days, would help scratch that pesky, restless feeling.

But a funny thing happened on his way north. He’d cut inland a bit, in a northwesterly fashion, and he’d found a distraction he’d not even known he had been seeking. In fact, it up and smacked him in the head before he knew what was happening.

Actually, it had been more of a slow saturation of his senses. The day had been hot, as were most days in April in southern Texas, and he found himself riding without care or hurry. In light of his current situation, he knew he’d been lucky to make the journey unmolested.

Even the balky buckskin had seemed lulled into peacefulness by the green rolling prairie Regis found himself in. The wind played over an ocean of long floss-tipped grass stems, as if they were the surface of an endless sea. A little farther on and the land sloped gently to his left. Soon he smelled it, the earthy richness of flowing water. And then he saw it at the same time he heard it.

Or rather, he heard a splash. His horse’s ears perked, and he reined up and watched something he’d never before witnessed. The scene fascinated him and hooked him in all at once. A herd of wild mustangs, perhaps half a hundred, were wading into the river to his left, dipping their muzzles and sipping long of the cooling flow.

All of them, that is, but a magnificent dappled brute of a stallion with wide flexing nostrils and a near-black mane and tail. His gaze scanned the far bank and raked across the all-but-hidden presence of Regis and his horse. Then the stallion’s gaze swung back and locked with Regis’s eyes.

The mustang stallion stared for long moments, an unfelt breeze riffling his topknot. He flicked his ears, snorted once, and stomped a foreleg. The splashing alerted the other drinking horses, and the entire mass of them—brown, fawn, black gray—swung their dripping muzzles upward and seemed to stare at him.

Regis felt at once awed, at home, and unnerved, a combination of feelings he’d not experienced since the war’s battles. The herd wasted no time in stomping up and out of the river. In moments, there was little more to prove that their presence had been real but dissipating swirls of mud that soon the river carried away.

He guessed the water for what it was—the Santa Calina, a flowage of clear, cool water that fed live oaks and anaquas along its banks. Those trees gave way to the waist-high grasses of the prairie he’d been admiring.

He took the mustang herd’s advice and guided his horse through the grasses until they broke through and emerged along the muddy creek’s bank. He slid from the saddle but held the reins as the horse sipped long and deep, glancing often at the spot where the mustangs had been across the river but moments before.

When the horse had slaked its thirst, Regis squatted low upstream and lifted his hat free. He squinted—the sun had been given free rein to annoy his sight—and scooped the refreshing liquid onto his face, down the back of his neck, and finally over the top of his head.

It felt so good that he remained squatting at the edge of the water and let his eyes close as he breathed in the lush, verdant smells surrounding him. A kiskadee called out, and another answered, somewhere up in the high, blue sky.

With a sigh, he stood and mounted up and kept riding, spying turkeys, quail, antelope, and deer, all eyeing him with interest and perhaps a twinge of suspicion as the wayward breeze carried his strange scent to them. They would scatter in all directions, coyotes as much to blame as Regis’s presence in this otherwise seemingly untouched place.

It wasn’t so much a valley as a wide, endless sea or rolling green cut through by the Santa Calina. Rough, wild, vague thoughts formed in his mind, drifted out again, and reformed, telling him little more than one thing. He knew, somehow deep in his guts and bones, that he wanted to be here for longer than just the duration of this pleasant ride.

He surprised himself by realizing he wanted to live here, to possess it somehow. But how? And why? Did he not have a life, a thriving business, friends, several women—prominent young things themselves the daughters of men of society—who wished to impress him? Why here, then? What was it about the place, other than its obvious raw beauty?

In this manner, Regis’s thoughts rambled and ricocheted off one another as he rode, much of the time at little more than a leisurely walk, the horse in no hurry, either.

It wasn’t until he heard a crashing and a stamping in a thicket to his left, between him and the river, from which he’d strayed, that something happened that would alter forever the course of his life, the lives of countless others, and the very land on which he rode.

For Regis Royle, steamship captain, saw cattle. A vast herd of them—feisty feral beasts little more than ornery goats with wide horns and blood-red eyes and burr-stickled hides. Cattle that fought and stomped one another and rubbed their rank hides raw against mesquite trees. But they were cattle. And in that moment an idea came to Regis Royle almost wholly formed. He would ranch this very land.

He knew instinctively that if it weren’t him, someone would, for it teemed with life. And what gave life its very essence? Water, the tincture of life itself, for without it life will not last. But here in the midst of this hot-as-sin place known as South Texas, there was ample water and lush green grasses, and massive herds of wild mustangs, hundreds, perhaps thousands strong, barely outmatching herds of balky, crazy-eyed cattle. And that wasn’t to mention the wild game.

Here a man could own land, good and valuable land—though he knew some might debate those descriptions—and never go hungry. And more than that, he could raise beasts, horses, and cattle and sell them to others for profits that one day might far exceed the solid earnings he’d made from plying the waters of the Rio Grande.

And here, here it all was. He might be no landman, but he, by golly, knew opportunity when he saw it. And this was it—prime ranching land, water and all.

That had been three days prior, and thoughts of the place throughout his long, slow trip had leeched into his mind, his heart, the marrow of his very bones, and would not let him be.

He’d been poor company, he knew, to his kind friends in Corpus Christi, but he’d been haunted by the place, and he had cut short his trip by a day in order to repeat the journey from north to south, half expecting the mystical place to have been little more than some fiendish trick of the brain, some devilish whim sent from on high to torment him, for what purpose he knew not.

But it had not been the case. Instead, he had been, if possible, even more impressed with the sights and smells and sounds and feel of the Santa Calina range. All of it had been repeated—the stretches of lush grasses, gamma near water, the ample game and stock roaming the hills, the very creek, the Santa Calina itself.

Only this time his thoughts of it were anything but vague. They were sharp and shrewd and calculating, all the things that had made him a solid businessman now came into play, and he knew he had made a decision. Or maybe some unseen hand had made it for him. No matter, he was a practical man and now was the time for action. He would have the Santa Calina range.

He knew he would be bullish, ruthless if need be, in his pursuit of it. He’d not intentionally cause anyone harm, but neither would he mince in his pursuit of his goal. To the devil with anyone or anything that might get in his way.

Regis knew there would be plenty who would dare to stop him. This region was famous for Apaches and Mexican and Texas outlaws, all eager to lay low newcomers with blind ambition and money to burn.

Regis snorted. They’d not have reckoned on Regis Royle, for once he set his mind to a task, let alone his heart and his wallet, it would take all the Indians, outlaws, and the US Army, too, to peel him from his dream.

He’d just have to convince his pard, Cormac Delany, to back his play in laying claim to the Santa Calina. Regis wasn’t exactly sure how much this land was selling for, but he doubted a place like this would come too dear. On the other hand, what did he know? How much land had he bought? Exactly none. So it could well come hard, and his own coin purse, while healthy, wasn’t what he’d call fat.

Yet somehow he knew that Cormac would be intrigued, too, and not just because he’d want to humor Regis. He’d been a father figure to young Royle when he had been little more than a skinny starving stowaway on one of Delany’s steamers.

Delany could have tossed him overboard and been well within his rights to do so. Instead, the seemingly surly Irishman had scowled at Regis, told him he was too thin to be of use to anyone, and fed him.

He’d plied him with more food than the kid had seen since the Christmas before, when his mother’s family back in Maine had hosted dinner for her and her two young boys, a kind but charitable gesture given that Regis’s philandering father had gambled away their savings some months earlier.

Cormac had then made Regis a cabin boy, and he’d worked his way up, year after year, with Delany teaching him to read and cipher at night by light of an oil lamp.

Yes, Delany would back his play because he’d trust Regis and his intuition, in part because it was his own teaching that guided Royle. And it had paid off handsomely in the past. It had landed them shipping contracts that had rewarded the pair well, allowing them to expand their holdings.

Regis also knew he had to have Cormac in on such a deal because the older man’s cultured ways would more than compensate for Regis’s own reputation for a distinct lack of tact when it come to protracted negotiations.

And so, wedged in his rocky nest, Regis had smiled and nodded, caught in his blissful dream of the future despite the grim situation in which he now found himself.

And that’s when the bullets, which had trickled to a random but steady flecking on him with rock chips that stung and nicked, poured on him once more. Through the long hours, the bandits never seemed to gain any ground, nor did they seem to lose interest in him.

They’d lobbed insults and sneers and jeers and hoots, and twice he heard glass shatter. So they’d been drinking. That was a two-edged sword. Good because their senses might be dulled, but bad because they would be emboldened for even more of this fool’s fight.

“Well, let’s get to it,” he mumbled. He had decided to shuffle to his knees and prairie-dog up to see if he could size up one of the rats, when a fresh voice shouted from afar, and it kept shouting.

It was a yip—no words, but it sounded an awful lot like a man trying to imitate a drunken coyote. Or maybe the other way around. But curiously, the awful yowling was accompanied with the increasing loud sound of pounding hooves and, most important, fresh shots. Sounded as if it was coming at him fast and from the northeast.

Regis bent low and risked a peek around the base of the rock, hoping he’d not get a third eyehole for his trouble.

It was definitely a crazy rider, barreling pell-mell into their midst. Puffs of blue smoke from three directions told him the rider was not one of his attackers. Whoever he was, he was still yipping and howling and cranking off shots with a revolver and what looked to be a shiny new rifle. And he was tugging along a second horse behind. Hmm.

The man seemed to be pounding at everything in sight, except at Regis. Maybe his luck had turned. He resumed his own firing, measuring his shot and taking his time. Regis heard a scream and saw the back of a man as he emerged from behind the rock pile he’d suspected the first shots came from, thanks to the bird. The man bolted for a ground-tied speckled horse and leapt on, one hand held to the side of his head.

Regis saw spatters of blood on the man’s white tunic. He also saw that the man wore an unusually tall blue-banded sombrero and a bright red sash about his waist. Regis aimed for the man’s back, raised his barrel to adjust for distance, and . . . he held his shot. He’d not fired at many men in his life, and he’d certainly not shoot one in the back, marauder or no.

That didn’t seem to bother the man who’d apparently ridden to his rescue. Friend or foe, he’d yet to find out. But the man wasn’t bothered by shooting at the retreating bandits.

Regis risked a wider peek and counted four, five of them. He looked again at the man barreling on in. He was still smoking the blue blazes out of the pan-hot afternoon. And what he saw surprised him almost as much as the events of the previous hour. It was most definitely his own horse lined and trailing behind the newcomer.

Regis stood, visoring his eyes with his left hand and holding his cocked revolver on the slowing howler with his right. The man raised the rifle and butted the stock on his thigh as he trotted up.

The sun was in Regis’s eyes, but he swore there was something familiar about this fellow. Then the newcomer spoke and removed doubt.

“That any way to treat kin, Mr. Royle?”

No, couldn’t be, thought Regis. He goosed his neck forward and peered up at the mounted man now but three paces from him. “Shepley? That you?”

“The one and only, big brother!” The newcomer slid from the saddle and landed with a plunk, his boots raising dust.

If a full-bore circus troupe had wandered at him out of the shimmering landscape, Regis Royle could not have been more surprised. And yet, the impossible had just happened. Before him stood his very own little brother, his only sibling, one Shepley Royle, who until that moment Regis had assumed was still a student at that Quaker boarding school in Connecticut he’d been paying for.

“What . . . But how . . . What are you doing here?”

The younger man doubled over as if he were choking on a hunk of cheese, laughing and smacking his leg with a palm. “To think . . . Regis Royle at a loss for words! Hoo-boy, I never thought I’d see the day!”

Regis shook his head and strode forward and stuck out his hand. “Shepley, I . . . I don’t know what to say!”

“Start with thank you, you big ninny! I come all this way, show up in time to save your sorry hide, and all you can do is shake my hand?”

Before Regis could react, the kid jumped up and locked his free arm around Regis’s neck. “Good to see you, big brother!”

They smacked each other’s backs for a few dusty pats, then stood back, Regis holding the youth’s shoulders. “Let me look you over.” He saw little and yet everything of the youngster he’d last seen four, five years prior? “Still the whip-snap, hell-raisin’, risk-taking kid brother, I see.”

“And a good thing, too, from the looks of it. I’m not sure how you ever got along without me all these years.”

“Oddly enough, I managed.” Regis smoothed his moustaches. “Question is, What are you doing out here? And at just the right moment, too.”

“Oh, I come looking for you, of course. I had your address in Brownsville from that last letter you sent a few months back. Talked with a huge man, funny name . . . Big Jaw? Something like that. Anyway, he said you’d ridden out this way, but he forbade me to go after you.”

“That’d be Lockjaw. And how’d you get away from him? He’s not an easy man to disobey.”

“He made a big mistake when he told me not to do something. Cause then I just had to do it! It’s as certain as the moon and stars coming out at night or the sun rising and baking our heads off out here in this cursed wasteland! It’s just the way it is with me, Regis. Can’t explain it.”

“I believe you just did.”

Shep shrugged and smiled. “So I hopped my horse and rode on out. And the rest, as they say”—the kid looked around him as he untied Regis’s horse and led him over—“is now history.”

“Or dumb luck on both our parts. No matter, I see you are as humble as ever,” said Regis, still smiling. He didn’t think he’d ever smiled so much all at once in all his days. “Funny thing. I promised Ma I’d look out for you.”

“Well, looks like you got it backward, big brother.”

Regis worked his jaw muscles. Nobody in the world could be as exasperating to him as Shepley, and that included a pile of annoying, ornery old businessmen of his acquaintance. By gaw’d, but he’d forgotten how the kid could set him off. And this, despite the fact he was mighty glad to see him.

“Won’t happen again.” He stabbed his left boot into the stirrup and paused, looked up, then over at his brother. “Thanks, Shep. Appreciate it.”

The younger man nodded. “Of course, brother.”

Regis scanned the distance where the banditos had ridden. He fancied he saw puffs of dust growing fainter with each passing second. Whoever they were, they were not interested in a second dose. “I best find my hat. Oh, by the way, I’m pleased to see my rifle worked for you.”

The kid raised the long gun and nodded. “Yep, just fine, just fine.” He admired the blued barrel and rich walnut stocks. “Course it’s tricky to load and ride fast, so I switched to my revolver.” He patted the gun on his belt.

Regis nodded and mounted up without asking for the rifle back. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, anyway?”

“That fancy school you sent me to,” said Shep as they rode eastward. “Best part about it was the riding and shooting lessons.”

“I thought they were Quakers.”

“Oh, they are, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t pursue the more practical arts on my own time.”

“Uh-huh. So you still didn’t tell me what you’re doing here. South Texas is a long ol’ way from Connecticut, unless I’m forgetting something about maps.”

Shepley smiled and sighed. “Mighty thirsty work saving your hide.”

Regis didn’t say anything but slid from the saddle and retrieved his hat. He held it up and poked a finger through a fresh bullet hole angling from left to right across his top knot.

“Yep, mighty good to have me around, huh, big brother?”

Regis felt the twinge, the momentary urge to clout, playfully, the kid on the ear. Instead he nodded. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want answers from you, boy. But thanks again.”

They rode in silence for a few moments, then Shep cleared his throat. “Course, this means you’ll stand the first beer.”

Regis, slightly ahead, cracked a smile. “Only if you beat me to it.” He tucked low and spurred his horse into a hard gallop, knowing Shep’s brown eyes were wide and a growl was already crawling up out of the kid’s throat.

Regis glanced back and saw his younger brother jam heels into his buckskin. Then the kid’s old beaver topper, more hole than hat, whipped off his head. He didn’t slow a hair. Time for hats later. Regis grinned and looked forward again. He had a brother to beat—and a beer to drink. A free beer, or he wasn’t fit to wear the name of Regis Royle.

It was close to dark by the time they rode down the dusty main street of Brownsville. All about them, squares of light shone long across their path. Bawdy, bold shouts from men, laced with good-natured shrieks from their fair counterparts, filled the night air, still warm but with an edge of ease only night in the desert can bring.

Piano music, pounding and urgent, leaked from over and under a set of poorly hung, puckered batwing doors.

“How about that beer, brother?”

Regis looked over at the slouched youth riding beside him. “I guess one for celebratory purposes wouldn’t hurt.”

“One?”

The kid’s bald disappointment made Regis smile. “Unless you’d rather have milk?”

“Oh no, anything but that. I ever have enough money I’m never going to drink milk again.”

“Thought you liked growing up on the farm back in Maine.”

“Ha!” Shepley shook his head. “You’re confusing me with you.”

“Wasn’t me! Why do you think I made for the coast?”

“Yeah, and left me to . . .” The kid’s words pinched out, and he looked ahead at nothing. Regis didn’t question him.

“How about here?” said Shep.

Regis eyed the cantina. “The Lucky Dog? Nope, too rough for the likes of us.”

“After what we’ve been through?” The kid angled his horse toward the hitch rail out front.

“Nope, Shep. I mean it. There’s a decent place down the lane. You go in there, you’ll come out poor and dead. Place is filled to brimming with card sharps and worse.”

Regis noticed how the kid watched through the open doorway, his gaze lingering on the dimly lit action taking place at the games tables.

Shep pulled on his wide smile and said, “Okay then, lead on, oh fearless brother of mine.”

A half-minute later, Regis stopped his horse before a quiet, well-lit establishment.

“Millie’s?” said the kid, reading the sign. “This a . . . bordello?”

Regis chuckled. “Not that I’m aware of. And don’t let Millie hear you say that. But they do make a sinful apple pie, and I’m about ready to indulge. Figured we could fill our bellies before that beer.” He looked at Shep, who eyed him back with the same dark-eyed stare. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, little brother, but if I don’t eat something soon, I’m not going to be fit company for man or beast.”

Shepley climbed down out of the saddle and sighed, then clapped a hand to his waist and offered a short bow. “To err is h. . .