Massacre at Whiskey Flats

Book 2: Sidewinders

by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

A double-barreled dose of action featuring two of the West’s unlikeliest heroes—from the bestselling authors of the Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter series. Sidewinders Don’t Look for Trouble—It Usually Finds Them In the west, there’s always work for the kind of men willing to get their hands dirty—from rounding stray cattle to stringing barbed wire. Bo Creel and Scratch Morton are just such men. Now they’ve been hired for the one job they’ve never tried: wearing badges—in a little stain of a town called Whiskey Flats. What Bo and Scratch don’t know is that a gang of outlaws is bent on burning down the town the Sidewinders have been hired to protect. With only a passing acquaintance of the law, a keen sense of self-preservation, and a range-war gathering round them, Bo and Scratch need a good plan or it’s a one-way ticket to Boot Hill. They’ll also need a little luck, a whole mess of bullets, and the courage to stand tall—and shoot true . . . Praise for the novels of William W. Johnstone “[A] rousing, two-fisted saga of the growing American frontier.”— Publishers Weekly on Eyes of Eagles “There’s plenty of gunplay and fast-paced action.”— Curled Up with a Good Book on Dead Before Sundown

Release date: October 31, 2008

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

“Sounds like a ruckus brewin’ out there.”

Bo Creel tried to ignore his trail partner’s comment, as well as the elbow that Scratch Morton prodded insistently into his side. The two Texans had spent a long, hot, dusty day in the saddle, and all Bo wanted to concentrate on at the moment was the cold beer in front of him on the bar. Condensation ran down the sides of the mug to form a puddle on the hardwood. It was a moment of delicious anticipation.

But then someone in the street outside, where a commotion had erupted in the past few minutes, shouted, “Somebody find a bucket of tar and some feathers!”

Bo sighed. He was an easygoing hombre, but some things stuck in his craw.

Tarring and feathering some luckless bastard was one of them.

“Think we ought to go see what’s goin’ on?” Scratch prodded.

“Might as well,” Bo said. “You won’t be satisfied until we do.”

He turned toward the batwinged entrance of the Buffalo Bar, casting a look of regret over his shoulder at that mug of cold beer as he did.

The Texans walked side by side, a pair of tough frontiersmen who had wandered the West from the Rio Grande to the Milk River, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast, for nigh on to forty years now. They had first met as youngsters, back when their homeland was still part of Mexico and General Santa Anna’s army had sent the Texican settlers fleeing in the great exodus known as the Runaway Scrape, in those dark days after the fall of the Alamo.

Bo’s father and Scratch’s pa had both been members of Sam Houston’s ragtag army, and the newfound friends had run away to join up, too, arriving just in time to swap lead with the Mexicans during the Battle of San Jacinto, the clash that had won freedom for Texas and Texans. Scratch had saved Bo’s life that day, the first time among many that each of them had risked his hide for the other, and they had been best friends ever since. Through tragedy and triumph, they had ridden together, and even though they never went looking for trouble, the acrid scent of powder smoke always seemed to follow them.

They were both tall, muscular men, but that was where the resemblance ended. Scratch’s hair had turned silver at an early age, but he was still handsome, with a ready grin that the ladies found quite appealing. He was something of a dandy, too, sporting a cream-colored Stetson and a fringed buckskin jacket over whipcord trousers tucked into high-topped boots. An elaborately tooled leather gunbelt was strapped around his waist, and in its holsters rode twin, long-barreled Remington revolvers with ivory grips on their handles.

Where Scratch had a touch of flamboyance about him, Bo was more restrained and sober, in a dusty black suit with a long coat that made him look a little like a reverend. He wore a white shirt and a string tie, and his flat-crowned black hat rested on thick brown hair with gray threaded through it. Bo carried only one gun, a Colt .45 with well-worn walnut grips.

The faces of both men had been weathered by the long years of wandering…tanned by countless desert suns and seamed by the frigid winds of the high country, living maps of the frontier and all its harsh beauty. Their deep-set eyes, framed by perpetual squints, had witnessed just about everything there was to witness.

In other words, they had been to see the elephant, and more than once at that.

So as they pushed past the curious customers in the Buffalo Bar who had congregated at the entrance and front windows of the saloon, slapped aside the batwings, and stepped out onto the boardwalk, Bo and Scratch didn’t see anything they hadn’t seen before. An angry mob of more than a dozen men clustered in the street, shoving their hapless victim back and forth as they jeered and taunted him about what they were fixing to do to him.

In the fading light of day, Bo and Scratch saw that the man was young, no more than twenty-five or so. He wore a dark suit and a black hat. His duds were fancier and more expensive than Bo’s similar outfit. As one of the members of the mob gave him a hard shove, his hat fell off, revealing a shock of blond hair. He looked scared, Bo thought…as well he might be.

“Here comes Ralston,” one of the men bellowed. He was the biggest man in the crowd, with powerful, slab-muscled shoulders and a prominent gut. “Did you get it?” he called to the four or five men who approached the scene in the middle of the street.

One of them waved something in the air and replied, “Here’s a couple o’ my wife’s feather pillows, and Duncan’s got a bucket o’tar! That’ll fix that four-flusher up mighty fine!”

“What’d your wife say about you takin’ them pillows, Ralston,” a man called with a jeering tone in his voice, “or did you sneak ’em out without her knowin’?”

“Damn it,” Ralston said. “I’ll have you know I wear the pants in my family!”

“Leave it alone,” snapped the big-gutted man. “We got more important things to deal with, like teaching this no-good swindler a lesson he’ll never forget!”

The mob’s victim spoke up, trying to sound reasonable. But the quaver in his voice betrayed his fear as he said, “Now, Mr. Harding, there’s no need for this to get out of hand. I’m sure if you’ll just let me explain, you’ll see that this is all just a big misunderstanding—”

“Misunderstanding, hell!” the man called Harding bellowed. “You tried to gyp everybody around here out of what they got comin’ to them! You’ll be sorry you ever set foot in these parts, mister!”

It looked to Bo like the gent was already sorry, as well as scared for his life. Most of the time, men who were tarred and feathered survived the painful, humiliating experience, but sometimes they died of the burns inflicted by the hot tar. It was one step short of a lynching, but potentially just as fatal.

Quite a few of the townspeople had gathered on the boardwalks to watch the grim scene being played out in the street. Bo looked over at one of them, a balding man with a prominent Adam’s apple who wore a storekeeper’s apron. The man had a frown of disapproval on his face.

“Who’s the fella with the big belly?” Bo asked the townsman.

“You mean the one running the show, like he runs everything else around here?”

Bo nodded.

“That’s Tom Harding,” the storekeeper went on. “Owns the biggest ranch in these parts, as well as having his fingers in half a dozen businesses here in town.”

“Big skookum he-wolf, is he?” Scratch asked.

“He thinks he is anyway.” The man sighed. “And I reckon he is. He’s got some tough hombres working for him, so most folks just go along with whatever he wants. Simpler that way.”

“And less dangerous,” Bo commented.

The merchant shrugged. “We’re just common folks, mister, not gunhands.”

“What about the law? Don’t you have a marshal?”

“That’s him with the pillows,” the man replied disgustedly. “Marshal Ed Ralston. He hasn’t seen the outside of Harding’s hip pocket since Harding got him appointed to the job.”

Bo and Scratch glanced at each other in the fading light. If they took a hand in this game, they would be going up against not only a wealthy, powerful rancher who fancied himself the lord of his own little kingdom, but also the official forces of law and order, corrupt though they might be.

But it wouldn’t be the first time they had gotten crosswise with the law. In their travels they had always been more concerned with doing what was right, rather than what was necessarily legal.

“What do you think, Bo?” Scratch asked.

Bo’s face was grim as he replied, “I think it’s time we put a stop to this.”

The storekeeper stared at them in amazement. “Are you fellas loco?” he asked. “Going up against Tom Harding is a good way to get yourselves killed! Not only that, but that hombre they’re going to tar and feather really is a crook. He tried to swindle the whole town!”

“Then he ought to be dealt with legally,” Bo said. He took a step down from the boardwalk into the street and started toward the mob.

He didn’t have to look around to make sure that Scratch was with him. He knew that his trail partner would be there.

A couple of Harding’s men had grabbed hold of the swindler’s arms. He writhed in their grasp and tried desperately to pull free, his instincts forcing him to struggle even though it was obvious he couldn’t escape from the ring of angry men that encircled him. He let out a yell as another man approached him carrying a bucket from which tendrils of steam rose. The bucket contained hot tar, ready to be dumped on the luckless victim.

“Hold it!” Harding yelled.

At this apparent last-minute reprieve, the swindler sagged in the grip of the men holding him. “I’ve learned my lesson, Mr. Harding,” he babbled. “I surely have.”

“Strip him first,” Harding ordered harshly, “then put the tar on him.”

The swindler’s face twisted in horror. He cried out and started to struggle again as hands reached for him to tear his clothes off.

That was when Bo said in a loud, clear, powerful voice that carried to everyone on the street, “That’s enough!”

Everyone froze for a second, from Tom Harding to the man who struggled in the grip of Harding’s cronies. Then the rancher turned to glare at Bo and Scratch, who stood about ten feet away, apparently as casual as if they’d been out just enjoying the evening air.

“What the hell did you say, mister?” Harding demanded furiously.

“I said that’s enough,” Bo repeated coolly and calmly. “Let that man go.”

Harding took a step toward the Texans, his prominent belly preceding him. “I think you’re mixed up, hombre,” he said. “I give the orders around here.”

“The way I understand it, you’re not the law.” Bo pointed at Ralston, who still stood there looking a little ludicrous as he clutched a pair of feather pillows. “He is. If this man has committed a crime, he ought to be arrested and held in jail for trial.”

Harding sneered. “The circuit judge isn’t due through here for three weeks yet. We’re just saving him some work. We can take care of things like this ourselves. Isn’t that right, Marshal?”

Ralston swallowed hard and bobbed his head in a nod. “That’s right,” he said. “You fellas are strangers here. You better just go on your way.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Bo said. “We’ll ride out…but we’re taking that man with us.”

Harding stared at him in disbelief for a second before he roared, “Do you know who I am, you old son of a bitch?”

“Reckon I do,” Scratch drawled. “You’re a big bag o’ hot air just achin’ to be popped.”

Harding gawked, then his face contorted in fury. “Jenkins!” he called. “Thomas! Show these old geezers what happens when somebody butts into my business!”

Two hard-faced, gun-hung hombres stepped forward from the mob. “You want us to kill them, Boss?” one of them asked.

Harding hesitated. Even a man as powerful in the community as he was couldn’t order cold-blooded murder in front of this many witnesses. He growled, “Of course not. Just bust ’em up so they hurt for the next week.”

“Our pleasure, Mr. Harding,” the other man said with a cold grin. “Nothin’ I like better’n beatin’ on some sanctimonious old fart. Learned that from my pa, I did.”

The two men advanced on Bo and Scratch while the rest of the mob looked on in rapt attention. The townspeople on the boardwalks watched nervously, too. The storekeeper Bo had spoken to earlier ventured, “This ain’t right, Harding.”

“Shut up, Gus,” Harding snapped. “Don’t forget, the bank I own a half interest in still has a lien on your store.”

The merchant grimaced, half in anger and half in fear, but didn’t say anything else.

The two hardcases were almost within reach of Bo and Scratch now. One of them sneered and said, “Say your prayers, old-timers.” Then he lunged at Bo and swung a fist at the Texan’s head in a swift, brutal blow.

But Bo suddenly wasn’t there anymore, and the punch whipped harmlessly through the empty air where he’d been. Bo had weaved forward and to the right with seemingly effortless ease, and as his opponent stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the missed blow, Bo hooked a hard left into the man’s gut. His fist sank almost wrist-deep. The hardcase gasped in pain as his breath puffed out of him and he doubled over. That put him in perfect position for the roundhouse right that Bo brought around and crashed into his jaw.

At the same time, the other man tried to grapple with Scratch, only to find himself sailing through the air as Scratch grabbed his arm, twisted around in a sharp pivot, and flung the man over his hip. The hardcase had time to yelp once in surprise before he came crashing down on his back in the street.

“An old Injun taught me that move nigh on to thirty years ago,” Scratch said with a grin into the stunned silence. “Injuns love to rassle.”

The man Bo had belted in the jaw had collapsed, too, but he was stunned only for a couple of seconds. Then he started to surge back to his feet, clawing at his gun as he shouted, “I’ll kill you for that, you old buzzard!”

Bo’s hand seemed to flicker faster than the eye could follow as he brushed aside the long black coat and palmed the Colt from its simple black holster. The hardcase’s gun hadn’t finished clearing leather when he found himself staring down the muzzle of Bo’s .45.

“Better let it go, son,” Bo advised softly. “I’d purely hate to have to kill you, because then your amigos would probably try to kill me and there’d be guns going off all up and down this street and innocent folks might get hurt. But you’d never know about that, because you’d already be dead.”

“Son of a bitch!” somebody on the boardwalk said in the hush that followed Bo’s draw and his quiet words. “That old-timer must be as fast with a gun as Matt Bodine!”

Bo didn’t smile, but amusement appeared in his eyes for a second. As a matter of fact, he had met the famous Matt Bodine, along with Bodine’s blood brother Sam Two Wolves, and he knew he wasn’t as slick on the draw as either of those two young hell-raisers. Bodine was in a class almost by himself, matched in gun-speed and prowess only by a few others such as Smoke Jensen, Ben Thompson, and Louis Longmont.

But truth to tell, Bo and Scratch were fast enough to hold their own in most corpse-and-cartridge sessions, as they had been forced to prove on countless occasions.

The gunman who worked for Tom Harding stared at Bo’s Colt in disbelief that he had been outdrawn. A muscle in the man’s jaw twitched as he warred against the impulse to complete his draw. He had to know that if he did that, he would die, plain and simple.

After a second, his fingers opened and allowed his revolver to slide back down into its holster.

“Take it easy, old-timer,” he said hoarsely. “That gun’s liable to go off.”

“Not unless I want it to,” Bo said.

Scratch unlimbered his Remingtons just in case. A fighting light gleamed in his eyes. Just like Bo, he was ready to go down with guns a-blazin’ if it came to that. He grinned directly at Tom Harding, and the message was obvious. If any shooting started, Scratch aimed to ventilate the cattle baron first and foremost.

“What the hell!” someone in the mob suddenly exclaimed. “That crook’s gone!”

Harding swung around, rage darkening his face. “What?” he bellowed. “Gone, you say?”

It was true. The young, fair-haired swindler was nowhere to be seen. He had slipped away while the brief ruckus and the near-gunfight had everyone distracted.

Harding roared curses at the men who were supposed to be holding the swindler, but that did no good. Like a rat, the varmint had slipped away in the gathering darkness. No telling where he was now, but in all likelihood he was putting as much distance as he could between himself and this settlement.

“Looks like we don’t have any reason to fight anymore,” Bo observed. “If you’d locked that gent up like you should have to start with, Harding, he’d still be here. Now he’s long gone.”

“Thanks to you two,” Harding snarled. “I ought to—”

“But you won’t,” Scratch broke in as he shifted the barrels of his Remingtons significantly.

“I’ve got a dozen men here! If I give the word, you’ll both be shot to pieces!”

“Yes, but it’ll be the last word you’ll give,” Bo said.

Harding looked like he was struggling to swallow something that tasted mighty bad. But after a moment he turned and choked out to his men, “Get back to the ranch—now!”

Bo could tell that those lean, hard-faced gun-wolves didn’t want to go, but they slowly turned away and headed for their horses, which were tied at hitch rails along the street. Marshal Ralston and the other townies who had been part of the mob started to disperse as well. Harding was the last to go, and before he did, he told Bo and Scratch, “You’d better get out of this town. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

“Mister, we’re already sorry we stopped here,” Scratch said. “It’s a plumb unfriendly place.”

“You don’t know how unfriendly,” Harding said. He stalked off, jerking the reins of a chestnut free and swinging up into the saddle. It was a big horse. It had to be in order to carry a man of Harding’s bulk. He rode away without looking back.

Bo and Scratch didn’t holster their guns until the street was empty again. Then, as they slid their irons back into leather, Scratch asked, “Are we lightin’ a shuck like Harding said?”

“Not until I get that beer,” Bo said. “Or another one rather. I expect the first one’s warm by now.”

The storekeeper they had spoken to earlier was still on the boardwalk, and as the Texans approached, he said, “I’ll buy you that beer, fellas. It’s been a long time since anybody around here stood up to Tom Harding. Quite a show.”

“You sure you want to risk being seen associating with us?” Bo asked. “Sounded like Harding’s got a hold over you.”

“His bank’s got a lien on my store, but I’m no fool. He can’t call the note in early. I made sure of that before I signed it.” The man motioned for them to follow him into the Buffalo Bar. “Come on.”

The merchant, whose name was Gus Hobart, bought beers for all three of them and joined the Texans at a table in the corner. After he had downed a healthy swallow of the drink, he licked his lips and went on. “I admire your gumption, fellas, but it might be better if you moseyed on. Having to back down like that is going to stick in Harding’s craw. There’s no telling what he might do.”

“We ain’t made a habit o’ runnin’ from trouble,” Scratch said.

“On the other hand,” Bo said, “sometimes there’s some truth to that old saying about discretion being the better part of valor.” He took a long drink of the cold beer and sighed in satisfaction. “I’m curious, though. What did that young fella do to nearly get himself tarred and feathered?”

Hobart snorted. “That’s the worst of it. You boys were risking your hides for somebody who didn’t deserve it. He came damn close to making off with a fortune that rightfully belongs to folks around here. You see, the railroad’s talking about building a spur line up here from the main route down south.”

“Ah,” Bo said. “The railroad.” He understood perfectly well that although the coming of the iron horse had done a lot to help with the civilizing of the West, it was also responsible for a great deal of violence and chicanery in recent years.

“Yeah,” Hobart nodded. “We’d been hearing rumors about that spur for a while, and then that young fella showed up. Called himself Charles Wortham, but that was probably a lie like everything else. He claimed to be working for the railroad and said he was here to arrange for the donation of land for the right-of-way. Folks had figured that the railroad would buy the land, but the way Wortham explained it, the only way they’d build the spur was if they could acquire the right-of-way free of charge. A trade-off, he called it. Folks around here would provide the land, and the railroad would provide the prosperity. So what we had to do was transfer the deeds to the property over to him, and then he would transfer it to the railroad in one big piece. So he said.”

Bo and Scratch were both shaking their heads already. Scratch said, “Nobody believed that line o’ bull, did they?”

“I’m afraid they did,” Hobart replied with a sigh. “We were that desperate for the railroad to come in.”

“Wortham would have sold that land to the railroad and made a killing,” Bo said. “Then he’d disappear before anybody found out that he’d acquired it by underhanded means.”

“Yeah, but he hadn’t counted on Tom Harding having a friend in Santa Fe,” Hobart said. “Harding got this fella to look into the matter, and he found out that Wortham didn’t work for the railroad at all. As soon as Harding got the letter telling him that, he went after Wortham. Grabbed him in his hotel room, got the deeds out of Wortham’s carpetbag, and dragged him out in the street.” Hobart shrugged. “I reckon you know the rest.”

Scratch gave a disgusted snort. “Sounds like we really did risk our necks for a skunk who didn’t deserve it.”

“He didn’t deserve to be tarred and feathered either,” Bo said. “That could have killed him. A couple of years in prison would’ve been more appropriate.”

Hobart said, “Maybe so. I got to admit, I felt a mite queasy myself at the idea of doing that to him. Nobody from around here, though, would’ve stood up to Tom Harding to stop it.”

Bo started to tell him that until the townspeople stood up to Harding, the c. . .